Kaleo Church Podcast

The Bible calls us to wait quietly and eagerly and patiently upon the Lord, but that is far easier to said than done. How are we supposed to wait quietly without growing anxious? How do you wait eagerly without grasping for control? How do you wait patiently without eventually giving in to despair? These are the questions we will seek to answer in this message…

How do you respond when faced with a crisis? When your desires come under threat? When faced with a crisis do you seek God in order to receive more of him or do you simply go to him to get what you want? Whatever struggles you face remember the promise of Christmas – that God through his Son Jesus Christ has defeated our greatest enemy and has given us the sure sign of his salvation in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s people will wait on God’s victory and hope in God With Us. When the crisis comes – stand as the defiant remnant of God’s people and say to your enemies – sin, death, and evil – “You will come to nothing! You will not stand! For God is With Us!”

In the book of Isaiah, we read about God's own chosen people refusing to wait upon God. Instead, they seek protection from one of their enemies. As crazy as it may sound, we aren't much different. Waiting is hard for us and it often exposes what we truly believe about God. Listen and hear how the Gospel comes to comfort and empower those who will turn to God alone in times of waiting.

What is shame and why do we resort to it so often with our children? What’s the difference between punishing our children and disciplining them? How can we find freedom from the shame we carry and help make our home a place where our children feel safe? What do we do when we fail to be the parents we know we should be? In this sermon we will seek to answer these and other questions that parents may find themselves asking.

Often children find themselves feeling like everything truly important and significant is reserved for adults. Children can’t drive or work or make major decisions or vote and that’s why it’s easy for children to be constantly looking ahead, waiting to reach the next milestone in order to finally feel like they can do something meaningful. But Paul comes to remind us that God has invited children to do the most significant thing in the entire universe.

Marriage can be hard. Fortunately, God has not left us to navigate the difficulties of marriage on our own. Instead, he has given us very specific instructions for what marriage is supposed to look like and the roles that he has called both the husbands and wives to play. Unfortunately, God’s instructions about marriage don’t make it any easier. Instead, what they do is show us that despite the difficulties our God has designed marriage to be good and beautiful and more than worth any sacrifices that it will inevitably require. Ultimately, we will see that God has designed marriage to be a reflection of the Gospel and he has given both husbands and wives an exalted role to play.

There is something about the combination of story and song that is able to drill truth deep down into our hearts. You can probably think of times in your own life where a song has impacted you in a way that words by themselves may not have. That is why in this passage Paul calls us to sing to one another as one of the means of drilling the word of Christ deep into our hearts.

Anxiety, that feeling of dread that comes over us when we realize that we are not in control and we think of all the terrible things that might happen. The truth is that our anxiety shouldn’t surprise us. Anxiety is the natural response of people who were made for Eden but can’t seem to find their way back. But in Colossians 3 Paul offers us an alternative, the peace of Christ. In this message we will consider how it is possible to experience true peace in a world full of anxiety.

No one will disagree with the statement that we should "put on love." However, often when we pursue love from the world's perspective we find that it leads to division and disappointment. In fact, self-centeredness often lies at the heart of what we call love. So, what makes Christian love - love that springs forth from a new identity in Christ - different? Jesus shows the heart of God in his self-giving love for sinners. When we are satisfied in his love we are freed to love others with the same self-giving love.

What is forgiveness and how is it possible? How do you forgive someone who has deeply hurt you? How do you forgive someone who keeps repeating the same old sin? How do you forgive someone who does something completely inexcusable? How do you forgive someone who does something that you know you would never do? In this message we will seek to answer these and other questions related to the very difficult but beautiful call to forgive one another the way Jesus has forgiven us.

Compassion, kindness, humility and meekness, these things sound great but the truth is that there are many times that we find them very difficult to actually practice. In this message we will look at what each of these attributes look like and what can make them difficult for us to actually do. In the end we will see that before we can ever truly demonstrate these things to others we must receive them ourselves. Fortunately, there is one who has demonstrated each of these things towards us if we are only willing to receive them.

Anger. Anger occurs when we say “That’s not right and it matters!!” Anger is our natural response to displeasure. In others, anger often seems irrational, overblown, and terribly destructive, but in ourselves, anger feels justified, reasonable, and the only option if we want to have any hope of seeing justice done. In this message we will ask ourselves “What makes me angry?” and “How do I respond when I get angry?” We will consider why it is that our anger often goes wrong and what alternative there might be to responding to the brokenness of this world. In the end we will see that taking off our destructive anger is possible because our God has given us something far better to put on in its place.

What is sexual immorality? Who gets to answer this question and on what basis do they get to make that decision? In this sermon we will discuss what the Bible teaches us about the one who designed sex and the purpose that he designed it for. We will also discuss what makes sexual immorality so bad and why it often comes with so much shame. Lastly, we will consider the depths of God’s love and the price that he paid to free us from our sexual past and wash us white as snow.

Over the past year people have become more and more aware of just how unstable the things of this world are. Of course this growing awareness has led to a growing sense of worry and anxiety. Things we once trusted to keep us safe no longer seem as reliable as they once did. In Colossians 3 Paul calls us to stop trusting in the fleeting things of this world and to set our minds on things above. One of the things Paul wants us to set our minds upon is the reality that we have died and our life is now hidden with Christ in God. The reason Paul wants us to think about that is because it means that we are safe. For all those whose life is hidden with Christ in God there is no longer anything in the universe that can ultimately harm us. In this sermon we will consider how our lives might be different if we would set our minds more fully on the things above.

In Colossians there were some teachers who thought that they had discovered the secret to experiencing the presence of God. Because of this they became puffed up and looked down on those who did not share their experience. In this sermon we will talk about the danger of allowing our knowledge of the Bible or our experience of God to lead us to feel superior to others. We will also look at the true path into the presence of God and talk about how it crushes our pride and keeps us humble.

One of Satan’s weapons of choice is shame. The Bible calls him the accuser and he loves to hold our sins over our head and remind us that we are not enough. He whispers that if anyone knew the things we had done there is no way they could ever truly love us. But in Colossians 2:13-15 Paul tells us how our God has disarmed the accuser by cancelling the massive debt that we owed at the cross. In this message we will discover the connection between the forgiveness of our past sins and freedom from slavery to sin in the present.

The book of Colossians lays claim to a glorious picture of Jesus that is meant to spur people on to daily worship and adoration. However, sometimes we are quick to look to our own daily disciplines and human traditions to give us confidence before God. But Paul takes the Colossian church back to the moment they first believed in the person and work of Jesus and commands them to trust in that same person and work day in and day out. Listen and hear how the gospel is such great news that we never have to move beyond it.

You and I will become like whatever we give our attention to. Knowing this Paul tells the Colossians that he toiled and struggled in order to proclaim Christ to them so that they might behold him and become more like him. This raises the question, “What are you giving your attention to?” Knowing what is at stake are you and I willing to toil and struggle for our own soul in order to make sure that we are giving our attention to beholding the one who is truly worthy.

I think most of us wish we were more bold in talking about our faith with others. However, many times we find ourselves holding back because we are not sure how talking about Jesus will be received by those around us. But what if suffering or even the fear of suffering didn’t hold us back from sharing the Gospel? How would that change our lives? In this passage Paul comes to shift our view of suffering from an obstacle to be avoided into a means of proclaiming the Gospel to be rejoiced in. It sounds crazy, right?

In this passage Paul reminds us that the most broken relationship we have ever experienced was with the most important person we have ever known and it was 100% our fault. Nevertheless, Paul tells us that we have a savior who has reconciled that broken relationship in his body through his death! Let that sink in, the most broken thing in all of the universe has already been fixed! You could summarize all of this by saying that you and I have been more wrong than we have ever realized and yet we remain more loved than we could ever imagine. In this sermon we will talk about what it means to be wrong and loved and why that truth can sometimes be difficult to swallow.