All of us have a deep need to be loved. The most fulfilling & joyful moments of our lives can result from the presence of true love being shown to us, and times when we’ve been hurt can result from a lack of that love. We believe that our love for God leads us to love others. We aren’t meant to keep His love all to ourselves, but to share it! - Jesus said that we prove our love for Him by how we love those around us. As we stay close to Jesus, His love grows in us and He asks us to extend that love to others.

Riverway Church Sermon Podcast

Horizontal Love

As parents, we have direct influence with our kids; we’re positioned to be the models that they look to for guidance. We get to be a part of their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual growth.  God intends that we lead our kids on a healthy spiritual path. It’s about teaching them to depend on Him. As we purposefully model spiritual growth to our kids, they learn how important it is to develop their personal relationship with God.

Purposeful Spirituality

Life as a parent can be a non-stop wild ride of responsibilities and pressures. The commitment & dedication required to lead our family consumes our time, our energy, our emotions, and can leave us with little-to-no margin in our lives. God wants to remind us that He is our source of strength, and we aren’t meant to do everything ourselves. Taking time to intentionally pause and connect with Him gives our life the breathing space necessary to receive His strength & guidance. It allows God to be our guide as we walk the path of parenthood.   How much healthier can we be as parents if we implement some purposeful care for OURSELVES? What keeps us refreshed and restored, even when our world seems to become busier than ever? And how can that empower us to better care for our families?

Purposeful Care

As parents, we’re in the position of influencing our kids and directing them on a healthy path in life. That’s a big responsibility, but we’re setting them up for their future! We get to create the boundaries they grow up in, so that they can develop and learn about life within the space they are given. Establishing purposeful boundaries for our kids disciplines them and prepares them so that they can make wise decisions in their future.

Purposeful Boundaries

Purposeful parenting starts with the foundation of relationship. Without a healthy relationship with our kids, we lose out at the opportunity to be an influence in their lives.   As we intentionally invest time and effort in building a connection with our kids, it keeps them close to us and deepens our relationship with them.

Purposeful Relationships

Our deepest pain and darkest hours are powerful moments in our lives. The loss & sorrow can overwhelm us, and we wonder just why God would allow this to happen to us.   God wants to teach us that no matter the circumstance we are facing, He is able to leverage it to become a building block of our faith foundation. We can choose to trust God even when it doesn’t make sense!   What makes the difference in our situation? Our response is to either lean away from God or lean closer to Him. When we willingly place our life in God’s hands, He can use both positive & negative circumstances as pivotal moments to build our future.

Pivotal Circumstances

One of the greatest ways to build our faith foundation is the action step of following God in whatever direction He leads us. Following God could mean Him leading us in a direction we never thought we would go. Sometimes God places a clear opportunity in front of us and asks us to step towards it. At other times God speaks quietly to our hearts, gently nudging us. In both cases, we get to choose how we respond to His leading.   God wants to do amazing things in our lives and in the lives of those around us. He may ask us to start doing something NEW! It might take us outside of our comfort zone to a completely new area of personal ministry. Yet even if we feel unqualified or inexperienced, God is faithful to carry us and will build our foundation of faith as we trust & follow Him.

Personal Ministry

Our relationships have the potential to be much more than good friendships or mutual connections; Healthy relationships help to grow our lives & build our faith foundation. It’s also true that relationships can cause negative influence on us. Yet we can intentionally choose to be in the right places for positive relationships to develop. When we are in the right place, God can place new relationships in our life so that we might grow and develop.   Life is meant to be shared with others. We need others, and others need us as well! God can providentially use human connections & relationships to help transform our lives.

Providential Relationships

To grow and become stronger in life, we need patterns of discipline. We know that DISCIPLINE always progresses us, even though it can be really hard! Our Faith grows very similarly to our bodies’ muscles: when we go through the tension of choosing to trust in God when it’s hard to, the foundation of our faith becomes strengthened in Him. Obedience to God is dependent on our confidence in Him. Private disciplines give us the opportunity to obediently follow God’s direction and trust that He will lead us, making us secure in Him. God wants to faithfully fulfill His promise to provide for us and protect us as we stay disciplined in following Him.

Private Disciplines

Everything in life has a foundation; something that holds it together. Buildings have a foundational structure, and our lives are much the same. With a firm foundation, we're strengthened and empowered to live our lives with great purpose and meaning. So, is there a way to strengthen and grow our foundation? Jesus gave us the answer that as our faith stays grounded in Him, He will strengthen and secure us in life. For us to grow, we must stay connected to God and receive the wisdom that He is speaking to us. And as we intentionally APPLY Jesus’ teachings to our lives, our foundation grows stronger.

Practical Teaching

God showed us His Love by giving us His Son, Jesus. Through Jesus, God’s love arrived in a powerful, real way that brought us hope, peace, joy, forgiveness, and renewed relationship with God. Our world changed because Jesus came to give ALL of Himself to us. That was His sacrificial gift of Love! As Jesus has come to us, He asks that we follow Him and allow Him to guide & direct our lives. He is our Lord and leader. He’s the one who has promised to forgive us of what we’ve done wrong and give us new life in Him. And He’s the friend who wants to be near us, so that He might continuously show how great His love for us is. Receiving Jesus as our Lord means we have a relationship with Him, and it means we get to experience all that He wants to give us, through His perfect Love.

The Arrival Of Love

How often do we consider the Joy in our lives? Is it the same as happiness, or is there something special to Joy? Something that comes from deeper within us? Circumstances will surely come our way that have the potential to drain the happiness from us. The hard parts of life: interruptions, challenges, and difficulties, can leave us feeling anxious, afraid, or even lost. Jesus came to us, right in the middle of the hard parts in life, to give us His Joy. This Joy is not just a one-time thing; It’s a spiritual condition that He continually renews in us. As we focus on staying close to Jesus, He promises to make our Joy complete in Him. Hard circumstances are not the end for us, because we have HOPE through Jesus as Emmanuel, “God with us”. We know that He will see us through any situation in life, as His LOVE guide us, directs us, and fills us with Joy.

The Arrival Of Joy

Christmas is one of the most cherished and special times of the year, but it can also bring extra stress, pressure, and chaos into our already busy lives. - When Jesus was born, this world was no less busy and chaotic than it is today. In the middle of our mess, Jesus came to fulfill a promise that God made to us: His promise to bring Peace to our confusing and painful world.   The Peace that God gives us doesn’t simply mean a lack of conflict in our lives, it’s all about Him bringing COMPLETENESS & WHOLENESS to us. Jesus brought us Peace by restoring us to God, so that we could be close to Him again. He also restored us to each other, because Peace is never meant to be kept to ourselves; we’re meant to share it, and to extend it to others. God’s promises were fulfilled when He gave us Jesus as our Savior, and those promises are still being fulfilled in us today. Even with all the crazy in our lives, God wants to grow something miraculous inside of us; the powerful blessing of Peace that can only come from Him.

The Arrival Of Peace

Giving and receiving gifts can bring us so many emotions: Excitement, Hope, Anticipation, and genuine Joy! There is a great expression of love that comes through the giving of a thoughtful, timely gift. That’s what makes gifts so special. It’s not just about the gift, but about the GIVING.   We’ve been given a great gift that expresses God’s love to us: He sent Jesus to this world FOR US. He has saved us from our sin, our failures, from our debt of wrongdoings that we could never begin to repay, and GIFTED us NEW LIFE in Him! Jesus is the greatest gift ever given; He is a gift available to all of us! Will we choose to receive Him?

The Arrival Of A Gift

Everyone needs Hope - it’s essential to life. The challenges, disappointments, & surprises of daily life have a way of slowly draining the Hope out of us. Are circumstances in your life giving you Hope or draining it from you? Do you feel lost simply trying to figure life out? We all trust in something or someone as our source of hope, but people & things can often fail us. God promises that He will never fail us, and the Bible is filled with evidence of the Hope He has promised to us. Christmas is a reflection of that Hope; a sign that even in the most difficult times of life, God is with us and He will never leave us on our own. He is continually in the process of bringing Hope to our lives.

The Arrival Of Hope

Hear this week's sermon from Riverway Church in Champlin, MN.

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Riverway Church Sermon Podcast

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