The Summit Church

Everlasting Father

You’ve got to stop viewing your Heavenly Father through the lens of your earthly one. Reverse the order: Understand your earthly father through the lens of your Heavenly one.

Wonderful Counselor

What is the best thing God can do for you in the midst of any given problem? Do you trust him as Wonderful Counselor, and are you ready to do whatever he says?

And So We Wait

Waiting can be hard, because in waiting, what we want to happen just hasn't happened yet. And waiting can especially be hard at Christmas. In Luke chapter two, there's a Christmas story for those who wait. It's not the Christmas story most of us are familiar with.

Seizing Our Moment

Unlike Esther, who was not confident her life would be saved if she obeyed God, we know how the story ends: God wins. The only question is whether or not we’re willing to follow God’s purpose for our lives and be a part of what he is doing in the world.

The 5 Laws of Sowing and Reaping

As we finish strong in our two-year Multiply faith journey, it’s timely to take a look at a passage in Galatians 6 that speaks to the principle of sowing and reaping. We’ll look at how God multiplies in kingdom fruit what we offer to him with open hands and how our money infallibly reveals what we worship.

Freed to Love

Paul ends his letter to the Galatians by tying together his two main concerns of gospel integrity and relational unity and giving a litany of practical applications—not a list of things to do but out-workings of what has been done for us through Jesus Christ.

Freed to Be Alive

One of the familiar themes from Galatians is the finished work of Jesus and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Paul wants us to understand that sin will lose its grip on our lives when we focus less on limiting the power of sin—the desire to do the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit—and more on the growing presence of God in our lives. Only when we soak ourselves in the love of Jesus and what he did for us will we really come alive and bear fruit.

Come, Buy, Eat, and Go

Freed from the Law, for the Law

In this message, Pastor J.D. talks about the ongoing uses for the law in our lives and learn how being justified by faith actually drives us in devotion back to the law and gives us the desire to obey out of love for God our Father.

Freed to Change

Have you ever been at a point where you wondered why, even after becoming a Christian, you still feel unhappy or you can’t find peace or satisfaction or you just can’t make a relationship work? In his letter to the Galatians, which we’ll continue studying this weekend, the Apostle Paul explains why we can’t just think of salvation as simply Jesus Christ paying our sin debt. We have to recognize that sin leaves us not only guilty before God but also unable to live the Christian life, and the only...

Freed to Unite

In this message Pastor J.D. unpacks four kinds of freedom that Paul says we should have when we believe in Jesus - all illustrated in a story of a confrontation between Paul and Peter.

It's All Part of the Plan

A Freedom That Could Only Come From God

God has given you a lens through which to see how God has been preparing you - through your gifts and experiences and even through your sins and failures - to tell others about his grace, and he’s given you his Word in which to ground your statement of belief.

A Freedom Worth Fighting For

In the first message from the series "Freedom in the In-Between", Pastor J.D. talks about why Martin Luther considered it the most important book of the Bible, how only the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to save us, and why we have to fight for it.

Get to Work

Many of us suffer from something that we often cannot see in its entirety in ourselves: an undisciplined life. The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of instruction and rebuke to those of us that find ourselves neck deep in indiscipline.

Life is Absurd…Now What?

"Eat, drink, and be merry” may not sound like sound biblical instruction, but that often seems like Solomon’s main point in the book of Ecclesiastes. God wants his people to "eat, drink, and be merry", but that is not the end of it. Solomon is speaking from the perspective of one who, like us, lives under the sun. In this message, Pastor J.D. looks at the conclusions drawn in Ecclesiastes and how they should shape the lives of us as believers, who know there is much more to look forward to over ...

It’s All Gone to Hevel

Ecclesiastes makes no apologies for its blunt talk about the senselessness of living. In this message, Pastor J.D. looks at several ways Solomon experienced this absurdity but also what we should do while we are under the sun in light of our eternal perspective and what we know to be true over the sun.

You're Not the Hero

Our default mode is to "be better", "do more", and "try harder" in order preserve and provide for ourselves and our families. But in Psalm 127, we are reminded that we will only experience the true rest that God promises when we embrace our true role and trust in him, because he has already provided for us.

How to Bring a Good Man Down...and Back Again

In 1 Kings 11, the downfall of the wisest man who ever lived seems to come out of nowhere. But does it really? Were there any warning signs along the way? In this message, Pastor J.D. takes a look at what brings a good man, even the world’s wisest man, down and what we can learn from his mistakes.

Don't Waste Your Life

Matthew 25:14-30

Solomon's Knowledge of God

In this message, Pastor J.D. takes a closer look at Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the temple. We’ll see how, in his embodiment of his knowledge of God and thanks for God’s faithfulness, our right understanding of God can lead us to ask him in faith to use us and pour out his blessing.

World-Renowned Wisdom

Ask Me Anything

Soil and Roots: The Key to Being a Fruitful Christian

At the most basic level, what does it take to be a fruitful Christian?

You Can't Do It...But He Can

The fruit of the Spirit is not about achieving something, because you can’t anyways. Rather, it is about knowing someone, and his name is Jesus.

Fruit of Evangelism

In this message, Pastor Will Toburen shares five characteristics of faithful evangelism that we see from the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well.

Fruit of Repentance

One of the greatest misconceptions about the church is that we don't sin very much. We often live superficial lives of fake smiles. Sadly, over time God's people have learned to hide sin and sorrow. But the church is not a showcase of Colgate smiles. It's a hospital for sinners.

Malachi: Healing Love

In Malachi we see how the cycle of Israel’s persistent unfaithfulness is mirrored in many people’s lives today. Though they keep trying harder and doing more religious things, Malachi reminds them—and us—that we cannot do more to make a way for our reconciliation with God but that he would send someone who would do it for us.

Habakkuk: Hope-Giving Love

Can you think of a more common question being cried out in the midst of a difficult season of life than “How am I going to make it through this?” Maybe that’s the cry of your heart today. Or maybe you’re wondering where God is in your pain or how what you’re going through is fair. We’ve all asked these questions at some point in our lives. As you read through Habakkuk, consider this: Habakkuk’s hope came from remembering what God had done for Israel in the past and repeating what he knew to be t...

Amos: Unpopular Love

If Amos were a modern-day prophet, he would be equally unpopular in our midst, because he could point out the same truths about our culture and even some uncomfortable truths about the church. But we’ll learn from this Minor Prophet that when we start treating sin lightly, we don’t take God seriously. And if we don’t start taking sin seriously, we’ll never experience the presence of God in our lives.