Oak Hills Church, Folsom

Oak Hills Church, Folsom
  • 4.8 (12)
  • CHRISTIANITY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Oak Hills Church, Folsom

Oak Hills Church in Folsom, CA presents weekly messages about the reality of God and a vision of life under His guidance and leadership

  1. 5 DAYS AGO

    Making Some Things New

    Epiphany sets in front of us the reality that Jesus Christ claims to be King of everything, and everywhere, and every person, and every moment. And all of His truth, goodness, holiness, righteousness, love, mercy, grace and beauty saturates every square inch of His reign. That’s just a really good reminder to savor and soak in here at the beginning of a new year. And to do that, today, I’d like for us to consider what I’m going to call, Three Worthwhile Investments in 2025. And each of these investments is ultimately an investment of our most treasured, precious, important commodity; time. If Jesus Christ is King. If He is Lord of all. If He’s the sovereign One. And if He’s more than a plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of our car. If we are someone who is seeking to orient ourselves around Jesus as King, Lord, Sovreign One. Then these three investments of time seem not only reasonable and wise, but I would suggest necessary, for those who profess to follow this King.

    40 min

  2. 12/29/2024

    Unexpected Encounters: Seeking

    All the time, Jesus the Messiah, the one born King of the Jews and of the entire universe for that matter, lay helpless as a baby born to a poor unimportant family, lying in obscurity, literally just a few miles away from Jerusalem. And however tempting it might be to look at Herod, and the Magi, and Snicker, and comment, like the emperor that wasn't wearing any clothes. Probably better, is to see ourselves in this meeting. This meeting between these fake kings. You see, our whole society is like that. People trying to impress each other, with their money, with their degrees, with their accomplishments, their sports team affiliations, how well their portfolio is doing, how attractive their boyfriend or girlfriend is, how smart their children are. And us religious people, we're probably worse of all. Constantly trying to pretend that we are better than we actually are. That we know more than we know. That we are certain, more than we are actually certain. We are half breeds and frauds pretending to be kings. The good news of course is that we don't have to live that way.

    29 min

  3. 12/22/2024

    Unexpected Encounters: Mystery

    Advent, in other words, is a time for wondering and marveling at the Christ child and a time for wrestling with the mystery of life's hard questions like, how, and why, and when? And just to wrap this up, this is not some psychological cathartic purge so we can really enjoy Christmas dinner. This is our faith in action. This is the Christian faith; not sugary, not phony, not surface level, not dabbling here and there, not, oh yeah God's cool, it's not that. This is our faith in the action of real life, where there's real pain, no matter what time of year it happens to be. Confidence we might say, in the reality of God's presence with us. Confidence in the knowledge, and I use that word on purpose. Confidence in the knowledge, the reliable knowledge, that in Jesus, as Simeon said, “our eyes have seen our Salvation”, a light for revelation.

    35 min

  4. 12/15/2024

    Unexpected Encounters: Listening

    God speaks to whomever he wants to speak, about whatever he wants to speak, whenever he wants to speak to them. The message isn't about how to make God speak to us more. What we're talking about here is how to put ourselves in a posture to listen. To hear when he speaks. And I don't know about you, but if I am predisposed to not want to do what God says, and yes sometimes I'm not. Did you hear that, he's a pastor? The pastor doesn't want to do what God asks him to do sometimes, shocking! But when I am predisposed to not want to do what he says, I'm more inclined to avoid him. Like take literal steps to avoid him. To make myself unavailable when his number pops up on my phone. I'm much more likely to let it go to voicemail, and then conveniently forget to check it. But I've also experienced the opposite. I've also experienced those times and seasons where I've practiced saying yes. Stepping out in faith when I think I hear God asking me to do something, even when it's scary. Even when it feels, at first, like I'm actually losing something. And every time I do, I relearn the lesson, that truly His yoke is easy, His burden is light, He does not lay anything too heavy or unfitting on me. And every step of obedience I've taken, always ends up leading me in the right direction. Sure, God comes and asks these people to do some pretty crazy things in these stories, but man, when they said yes to Him, what a ride! What an adventure! And I believe that those adventures, those experiences, those encounters with God, are available. Available to us, right now, right here, where we are, if only we would listen.

    37 min

  5. 12/08/2024

    Unexpected Encounters: Ordinary

    Seems to me Jesus, by his example, prefers a table at the back of the restaurant. He prefers the obscure. The small places. The small people. The small things. So, he works his plan through a carpenter named Joseph. A teenager named Mary. Some Shepherds working in the fields. A little town called Bethlehem. An atmosphere of poverty, powerlessness, and oppression. He prefers the simplicity and the humility of a baby. These are the actors and the factors in the Advent story. Not a random or meaningless group of details. Rather this is the Jesus way and God did it this way because this is who he is, and this is how he works. He is found in the small places. He dwells in the unspectacular. He sneaks in the back door. He prefers the shadows. We find God on the back roads, off the beaten path. So, we find God in children. We find him in the elderly. We find him in the Forgotten. We find him amongst the hurting. He's a community theater God, not a Broadway God, we might say. Big and flashy and loud and impressive are not his way. He can be found there, but often the big and the flash and the loud are distractions that keep us from seeing and hearing and encountering the humble God, who puts on flesh and shows us God's heart.

    37 min

  6. 12/01/2024

    Unexpected Encounters: Waiting

    The story that Luke chooses to begin his telling of the coming of Messiah with, is the story of a couple waiting. And sure, like with everybody else, they are waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Like everybody else in the Jewish Community was in those days. But more personally, Zachariah and Elizabeth are waiting for something else. They're waiting for a baby of their own. And as those who have experienced it know, infertility is a special kind of waiting. When you're waiting in infertility, it's not like waiting in a long line at Costco, where you know eventually it will be your turn. Waiting to conceive, it's waiting for something that you really, really, really, really, want but there is no guarantee that you're going to get it. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Oh, I know, there's lots of options for fertility treatments out there. There are tons of things that you can try. But for all our fertility treatments, have only served to further prove the point, getting pregnant isn't something you can control. And so you wait. Of course getting pregnant isn't the only kind of waiting that fits that category, right? There's tons of things that fit the waiting for an uncertain outcome list.

    36 min

  7. 11/24/2024

    Third Person: Power & Presence of the Holy Spirit – Our Empowerer

    This Faith thing is a we thing not just a me thing. But today we remember that Jesus breathed on each of his disciples. John, Peter, Simon, Matthew and all the rest were filled with His Spirit. Each had a transformational encounter with God and ongoing experiences with him for the rest of their lives. Their lives were never the same. Everyday life was never the same because the Holy Spirit now inhabited each of them. He was at work in and around them. So if you are a follower of Jesus, he has breathed His Spirit into you. And when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into us we experience God. And the key word is experience. The key emphasis is experience. This isn't the transaction in triplicate form. You know sign here, initial there. The spirit lives in you. You interact with him. He speaks to you and you to him. He teaches you. He reveals things to you. You hear his voice. In The Bible or through another person. He nudges you to take action. He stirs in you when you stray off the path. See, we're talking about an interactive relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit, who right now lives in you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Yes we received him when we first believed and when we first asked Jesus into our lives, but we're not talking about just one experience. We're not talking about an experience with God back then. There are fresh experiences with the Spirit, in the course of everyday life, that without a doubt, hear this really loud and clear, without a doubt, are usually small and unspectacular. Not wild or wacky kinds of things, but real experiences, real encounters.

    32 min

  8. 11/17/2024

    Third Person: Power & Presence of the Holy Spirit – Our Teacher

    Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit judges the world and the verdict is guilty and that has implications for the particulars of our lives here at the end of 2024. If Jesus and his way, and His Kingdom, truth, and goodness are true north, the way things are supposed to be. The way God intended them to be. The way God wants them to be. Then the world, that is wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment is morally, intellectually, ethically, and spiritually headed south. When the New Testament uses the term world, there's a whole lot of meaning packed up in that. When it uses the term world it often means, maybe even usually means, that the world and its systems are bankrupt. They're not slightly off course, they are completely off course. Instead of heading toward true north, they are heading toward false South. In every single way, a train bound for nowhere, literally. And the Holy Spirit's job is to alert the world that it's traveling this train bound for nowhere.

    32 min
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4.8
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Oak Hills Church in Folsom, CA presents weekly messages about the reality of God and a vision of life under His guidance and leadership

Information

  • Creator
    Oak Hills Church, Folsom
  • Years Active
    2009 - 2025
  • Episodes
    315
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2019
  • Show Website
    Oak Hills Church, Folsom

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