Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

Ordinary Faith | Finding Glory in the Ordinary

Sometimes, the most extraordinary thing is right under our noses. In this final message of the series, Pastor Joel talks about the ordinary is good, but we must be careful to not let ourselves believe the good news we believe and the Savior and King we give our allegiance to is ordinary. He walks through the story of the transfiguration of Jesus to talk about how we need these reminders from time to time, but also that they come in glimpses.

Ordinary Faith | When Times Are Good

Sometimes, we find ourselves in seasons of deep goodness—refreshed, our needs met, nothing burdening us, vibing. As Dallas Willard writes, “God has yet to meet anyone except for where they actually are,” which means even in these seasons, just like any other, God is looking to meet us. How can we be intentional to give those times of goodness over to God? In this message, Pastor Joel walks through why gratitude and alertness are so essential to disciples of Jesus. As summer starts and you hopefully enter a season of goodness, this might be the perfect message to kick it off!

Ordinary Faith | Finding God in Spiritual Wildernesses

Many Christians go through a period of their life where they walk in what feels like a spiritual wilderness: A season where we feel lost to God and our faith and many other things. Our spirit is crushed, and we feel unable to hear God’s voice. Depression might be part of it, but it’s more than that. God feels hidden to us. Some call this season a dark night of the soul.

Has God abandoned us? Is he hiding from us in these seasons? Does he even care? The truth is, God is always looking to draw us deeper into his love, and so if he seems hidden then there must be a reason—and it must be to draw us deeper into his love.

In this message, Pastor Joel preaches about how how we can walk off these seasons by using Jesus’ time in the wilderness in temptation as a model.

Ordinary Faith | Ordinary, Spiritual Friendship

Friendship is one of the most vital parts of a healthy life as well as faith, but it's increasingly harder to do well in ordinary life. In this message, Pastor Julie shares some wisdom from Proverbs on what we should seek in a friend--and how to be a good one ourselves!

Ordinary Faith | Abiding Our Emotions in Jesus

Have you ever had a day where something happens and it just throws off your day? One of those emails, a conversation with a co-worker, something your kid says to you, whatever it is. Productivity, peace, patience, just gone. And worst of all for us who follow Jesus, our ability to bear fruit is out the window too.

Usually when this happens, it’s because some fear has been triggered: I’m worthless, I’m helpless, I’m unlovable. Should followers of Jesus have this happen to them? What do we do in those moments?

In this message, Pastor Joel talks about how when we abide in Jesus, we can take those emotions and deal with them in a healthy way.

Ordinary Faith | Finding the Grand Old Story in the Stories We Watch

Humans love stories, and the main places we tell stories in our modern culture is through movies, TV shows, and increasingly, video games. In our ordinary lives movies, video games, and TV shows are some of the places we go to find something special, to find, as actress Nicole Kidman says in a well known AMC Movie Theater ad, “magic…to laugh, to cry, to care, because we need that. To find that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before, not just entertained, but somehow reborn.” The stats bear out the feeling Kidman is describing. Various studies all say the average American watches around three hours of TV a day, and that doesn’t include time spent watching movies or playing video games. We come to stories looking to be inspired and find meaning in our own ordinary lives.

But what if the hope of finding some magic in the stories we tell indicates a longing in the human heart for a greater story, one as old as time put there by God? In this message, Pastor Joel walks us through Acts 17 to show us how this is the case, and encourages us to be thoughtful about the stories we take in.

Ordinary Faith | Caring For Others

For many of us, caring for others like children or family or friends with needs is ordinary. How do we do so with gentleness, like Jesus? In this Mother's Day message, Pastor Julie shares how from the book of Hebrews.

Ordinary Faith | This is Your Brain on Politics

In this series, we’re talking about the ordinary. Something that is ordinary for Americans is elections, and we have another contentious one coming up in a few months. We’re hunkering down for the fear, the anxiety, the conflict seeking, the black and white, back alley, bare knuckles, street fighting with the other side nature of it all. It’s exhausting. Is it how we should approach it as Christians? The answer is emphatically no, and in this message, Pastor Joel talks about why Christians have a whole different agenda when it comes to politics than we normally are told. Join us as we study 1 Peter and find out what that looks like.

Ordinary Faith | Lament, the Language of Suffering

Most upper and middle class Americans are uncomfortable with suffering, and we often think of our faith in terms of the triumph and success we can get from it. But when we read Scripture, we find stories of suffering are a lot more common than we think, and we need to be exposed to them so that we can learn how to speak and think about our seasons of suffering.

Suffering is ordinary. What are we going to do when we enter it? In this message, Pastor Joel walks through how to speak the language of lament, looking at the book of Lamentations.

Ordinary Faith | Minding Our Bodies

Having a body is a lot of work! It requires a lot of ordinary maintenance, and we can get annoyed by it or view our body simply as a machine. But according to Scripture, our bodies are spiritually very significant to God. In this message, Pastor Joel explains why that is the case, from why it has significance, the stories it tells as we maintain it, and the sacredness of how God dwells in us and when we engage it in worship.