Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

Fueled By Grace | God Wants You To Be Rich

God wants you to be rich. 

A lot of people might think this, but God doesn’t want you to be rich in what most people mean when they use the word rich. Instead, God wants you to be rich in what Jesus is rich in. 

These are the qualities that he shows us in his grace, and which sustain us as we live live fueled by it. And one of the things we learn as we study Paul and The Collection, a large fundraising project he embarked on and speaks about in several of his letters, is that we become rich in what Jesus is rich in through giving financially, among other ways. In this sermon, Pastor Joel talks about how we can think through our generosity with our money to become richer ourselves in something worth more than money.

Fueled By Grace | Generosity Creates New Realities

We all probably believe generosity is a good thing, but how do we go about patterning lives of generosity? It all comes down to how we understand gifts and generosity, and in the ancient world the word grace gets us to the heart of this question. It’s also one of the most important words in the whole Bible, the electrical current at the heart of the Christian life. It creates new realities, spilling out of us as God gifts us new life in Jesus, into those around us. Pastor Joel gives some thoughts on how this creates a template of grace for us in our own habits of generosity.

As we enter a new year, consider God may be calling you to make a resolution for more generosity in your life, and when we really understand grace, it’s hard not to respond in joyful attitudes of giving. 

Advent: God Keeps His Word | Jesus as Promised Deliverance

The systems of the world around us convince us that our best life is one where we’re calculated, successful, and triumphant. We encounter the Advent of Jesus in a way that is far from calculated, successful, or triumphant in the eyes of the world. Instead, Jesus arrives in a horrible conglomeration of circumstances in which He dubs as the upside-down Kingdom of God. 

Advent becomes a season where Jesus arrival signals hope and deliverance, but in the most unusual and ordinary ways. It brings us to see that Jesus is the promised deliverer, but that true deliverance and participation in the Gospel hope comes most often and most clearly in the reality of disappointment. 

Advent: God Keeps His Word | Jesus, Bringer of Peace, Love, and Hope

Advent: God Keeps His Word | Finding Hope this Christmas

We live with the PTSD of a world full of hypocrisy, and it makes us cynical even about God himself. When we lose hope we start to have actions that aren’t aligned with what we profess. This was a problem the prophet Micah challenged Israel over, and we see King Herod living this misalignment out 700 years later.

However, Christmas is a season of hope, where we celebrate that God isn’t like us: his words match his deeds and character. And so Christmas recalibrate us to hope again. Pastor Joel shows us how we can find hope this Chrismas season when we soak ourselves in the story of a faithful God.

Advent: God Keeps His Word | The Promised Immanuel

In the Christmas narrative, Matthew frequently mentions the words of the prophets being fulfilled. Who are those prophets and how does Jesus fulfill their words? In this Advent series, we will be looking at how God keeps his word through Jesus. Today, Pastor Julie talks about how Jesus is the promised Immanuel who brings a sign of God’s presence, security and salvation.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Heaven & Hell

We saved one of the big ones for the last sermon in this series! These are two of the most controversial subjects today in Christian theology. How do we deconstruct some of the unbiblical things we’ve learned about them but not get rid of them? In this sermon, Pastor Joel challenges us to get outside our own cultural setting to find a fresh vision for both heaven and hell, by embracing two principles: that it’s good for God to do something about evil, and that God restores his world instead of abandoning it.

God’s judgment is his solidarity with people that know in their bones evil is not okay, and must be made right. God hears & knows & remembers. But he goes beyond that—making the world itself again right by bringing heaven to earth, just like the Lord’s Prayer says.

When we can grasp this, we can understand the biblical vision for heaven and hell. Join us in this sermon as we do dig into these things, as well as a final reflection from Pastor Joel on deconstruction and rebuilding around Jesus.

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Jesus and the Divided Culture We Live In

We currently live in a culture marked by division. Pastor Julie looks at how should Christians should engage with these divisions by looking at the way Jesus engaged with similar divisions in his time. When political tensions were high, Jesus found a way forward that amazed everyone around him. We can follow that same path by listening to Jesus' words in Matthew 22:15-22 when he tells us to "give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s."

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Understanding the Holy Spirit

Pastor Joel shares in this sermon his journey through learning to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). This can be a confusing issue, and you may be tempted to shut that part of your Christian life off, like he did. Yet when we understand the reason God gives us his Spirit and the marking of it, the fruit of the Spirit, you understand our need for it in the church. If you’re wrestling with this issue or even if you aren’t, this sermon is for you!

Rebuilding Around Jesus | Commissioned to Share the Good News

In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus commissions the disciples to continue God's mission of bringing his reconciliation, peace, love, and justice in the world. In the sermon, Pastor Julie talks about the basis of this commission, the message of the commission, and the method of going about this commission. She also takes a deeper look at our past expectations and experiences of evangelism and suggests more helpful ways to go about evangelism in our current cultural climate - all starting with Jesus.