Cornerstone Atl Weekly Sermons

As Jesus nears his death, he looks at two groups of people who are involved in religious practices. While outwardly both groups seem to be doing good, Jesus looks deeper and condemns one group while commends the other. What's the difference? Pastor Richard explains as he preaches from Mark 12.

How does the life to come shape the life you presently control? The hope of the resurrection is meant to provide more relief than just at funerals or in personal evangelism. The hope of the resurrection is supposed to provide very relevant hope for our daily lives.

How do we as Christians navigate the racial and political tensions that exist in our world, our nation, our homes and even our church. As we constantly find ourself facing situations where it feels like every choice we make has the potential to be the wrong one? In Mark 12:13-17 we see Jesus facing a similar problem and with 13 words, He turns our world upside down. "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and render to God what is God's"

Pastor Trip preaches from 1 John 3:16-18 about the authenticating signs of love. Real love shows up in our actions.

When the reality of death hits us close to home we instinctively go searching for a real sense of peace. Death has a way of showing us how inadequate our past search for peace has been. In Psalms 23 we see where David (a man who has felt what it means to walk through the valley of the shadow of death) has found a true peace for real pain.

For the Christian, love is how we know whether or not we're alive.

Knowing God means, you don't have to know shame

Knowing God Means....you don't have to know the future.

Knowing God means you don't have to know despair.

It's no secret that as humans we all want something. But what may be less apparent, is that at the end of the day, we really all want the same thing. That thing. The ability to "not want"--in other words we all want contentment. Is there a way to really find true contentment in this life amidst all of our other wants? If we're ever going to true rest it's not going to be as a result of our work, but God's.

The most repeated command in the Bible to us is to "Fear not". We all know that just because something is repeated, it doesn't necessarily make it any more real for us. God, offers us two reasons why we shouldn't fear. His presence and His provision. What knowing God means is that we don't have to know fear.

We tend to live our lives for the avoidance of pain. Because we think that suffering tends to stand in the way of our joy we find ourselves constantly longing for things that will make our lives easier and more enjoyable. While this pathway seems like the one that will lead us to joy, Jesus walks a different path. He shows us that suffering doesn't stand in the way of our joy, it is the actual pathway to joy.

Jesus isn't looking for arguments for your worthiness, He's looking for your admission of weakness.

We've all had cases of mistaken identity before. Usually, the outcome is either embarrassment or inconvenience. With Jesus, however, a case mistaken identity can be tragic. Jesus is more than a man, He is your Savior and goes to great lengths to help us see this life-changing truth.

Jesus' miracles aren't merely acts of power, but signs that highlight aspects of His character. Jesus heals a blind man in Mark 8 to show us that even though God opens blind eyes completely, He does so gradually. Jesus is a patient Savior, and that's good news for those of us who are never as far along as we think we are.

God not only sees our fatigue and hardship but he can identify with it and he responds to it with grace and mercy. The main idea of this text is providing Christians with at least 3 reasons why we can endure the race of faith till the end.

Jesus offers much more than just a remedy for our problems, He offers us a relationship. While that's great news for the man in Mark 7 that can't hear, it's better news to those of who won't listen.

Religion (as a system of trying to gain peace with God by our works) looks like it protects the truth, but it only really perverts it. It doesn't fix old problems, it merely creates new ones. This happens because religion addresses the symptoms of our problems instead of the source. In Mark 7, we see that Jesus cleans up what religious systems can only call out.

Sometimes it can seem that our expectations fall way short of our theology. We say with our lips that we serve a great God, but find that we have very small expectations. Jesus reminds us that when we approach God we should approach Him with expectant hearts. And expectant hearts witness extraordinary power.

Every story we've every interacted with is made up of a struggle between good and evil. Often, we're left in suspense, not knowing who's going win. It's easy for us to look at Jesus the same way, we look at other good guys in stories. In so doing, we miss out on the fact that he is not like other characters. He's the Lord of all. There is no struggle when he faces storms, demons, or sickness. We can go to him knowing that victory is only and always found in Him.