Connexus Church Audio Podcast

If you don’t want a relationship like the majority of relationships, don’t date like the majority of daters. It can be easy to blend, bend, and pretend in order to get in or stay in a relationship. But we need to ask ourselves: Am I losing myself in order to do so?

From elementary school through high school, many of us had ideas of what the perfect relationship would look like in the future. While those dreams may not represent our current reality, a step in the right direction could be to follow the apostle Paul’s advice—move from our childish ways and start being grownups.

If becoming the right kind of person is key to a great relationship, how do you do that? Is there something you can do to prepare? Does it just happen? Sure, we’re supposed to love others, but what does that really mean? Let’s lean in and read the fine print.

In relationships, we often believe if we find the right person it will make everything right. So we ask ourselves, “Is this the right person for me?” Maybe we need to be asking a different question—a question that shifts our focus from seeking the right kind of person to becoming the right kind of person.

If you were designed by God and sin marred that design, how do you push past those limits to reach your potential? The answer is, surprisingly, through the redemptive work of Jesus. Following Jesus doesn’t just change eternity, it changes your present. The path to spiritual and emotional health is the key to redeeming the image of God in you. 

So you were created by God to be a certain way, but somehow sin got in the way. You have great intentions, but they’re difficult to realize. You try your best, but you fail. What gives? Were your personality flaws part of God’s design? Is this just how He made you? When sin entered the picture, so did un-health. And as we’ll see this week, lurking beneath your wiring is a wound.

So...why isn’t everyone a little more like you? The world would be a better place, would it not? Apparently, not. When God designed humankind, he pronounced his work to be very good. However, as the Enneagram reveals, He didn’t make us all the same. Maybe the differences aren’t deficiencies, they’re design. 

Ian talks to Carey about how the Enneagram can help grow your self-awareness and how to reduce conflict at work and at home by understanding how different personality types work. They also discuss the Enneagram as a spiritual growth tool.

Resolutions are a decision to put in some extra effort to achieve a goal. But when it comes to our faith, often growth comes faster when we step out into what God calls us to - taking a risk more so than making a resolution. Why is that? Where does reading scripture and prayer fit into this? What would 2020 look like if you chose to “step out of the boat”?

The Church is remarkable. And against all odds, it changed the world. There is still a great deal that needs changing. By God’s grace and with your help, perhaps we can be a small part of bringing about that change.

You might sometimes feel like life, fate, and even God are against you. What if this Christmas you discovered a God who is FOR you? 

God’s grace to us is an invitation to be amazing. It’s our chance to extend to others what God has freely extended to us. But while most of us are full of something . . . it’s usually not grace. So what are you full of? And what would it take for you to give someone what they don’t expect? Or deserve?

The kingdom of God is characterized by unsettling generosity —the kind of generosity that gives the undeserving what they don’t deserve and regardless of how unright we’ve been, makes us right with God. So what do we do when we’re faced with this math that doesn’t add up? And how do we respond to this unfair, unsettling system that Jesus came to invite us into?

There is an unsettling solution for just about everything, and we can sum it up in one word. Grace. It’s the undeserved, unearned, unearnable favor that Jesus came to offer us. So why wouldn’t we want Christianity to be true? And where should you start if it’s a word that was never part of the equation for you?

Don't miss the incredible full stories of God moving in the lives of these 5 women. Today, we share the FULL stories of what God is doing in their lives. On Sunday, we saw them publicly share their faith in Jesus, tell about how God is moving in their lives, and take the step of baptism together. Listen in on the stories of Jennifer, Megan, Nicole, Nicole, and Carol-Anne.

How can you be FOR your community during this Christmas season? The Christmas Season marks the beginning of the final month of the year, which often means people are more generous, more compassionate and more giving of their time. But what if we not only ended the year this way but began the next year this way? What if we not only finished strong but started strong, too? 

Is hell real? If so, what is it like? Very few people take hell seriously anymore. These days, hell has been reduced to a joke, a swear word, a cartoon, or a reality only mean-spirited people believe in. If that’s the case, why did Jesus appear to take hell so seriously? Hell isn’t actually an Old Testament concept. While the Old Testament barely mentions hell, the New Testament, Jesus and others talk about it a lot. What’s going on? IWe’ll work through your top questions about hell this weekend. 

So if you’re going to live forever, what’s it like? This week, we’ll look at the biblical descriptions of heaven, what role Jesus plays, what role your deeds play (they do play a role, just not the one most people think), and we’ll answer your top questions on heaven as submitted through Instagram. 

A lot of people struggle to believe what they read in Scripture. Instead, they argue that they’d be more likely to believe if someone came back from the dead and told them about what happens when you die. In Part 2 of What Happens When You Die, we look at the stories of three people who did just that. 

Almost everyone has an opinion about the afterlife, but so many things people believe about eternity may or may not be true. How do you know whether what you think is true...is true? To kick off the series, we’ll cover five commonly held myths about eternity (like everything works out just fine) that it’s time to bust.