Journey Church :: Raleigh, Nc

Over 14 years ago, the families that would eventually become the foundation of Journey Church wrestled with two questions: Can one church reach an entire city? If so, how? All these years later, we’ve never ceased to believe that God can use the people who call Journey home to reach our city. And we have a better answer to the question of how to do it than ever before.

We live in a culture of entitlement, and entitlement is the enemy of gratitude. When the attitude of entitlement becomes our normal mode of operation, we live outside of God's design for us. His desire is that we deepen our appreciation for the grace of God so that gratitude becomes a way of life. This is grace-motivated gratitude.

Easy. Fast. Convenient. These words, better than most, describe our expectations and our cultural moment. But when it comes to life transformation, those three words are exactly what you don’t want. The question is: What should we replace them with?

It’s natural to wonder if we are good enough. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know how to alleviate our concerns without comparing ourselves to others. That’s why we get stuck spending our whole lives in an imaginary competition with the people around us. For those looking to get off the comparison treadmill, Jesus had some radical ideas that may just result in the fullness of life.

Nobody wants to be weak or vulnerable. That’s why power, and all it promises, looks so attractive. Power says you can get your way; you can have control over your life and circumstances. The biggest problem with this worldview is Jesus, the most influential man in history, who sees power differently. Perhaps His life has something to teach us all about what power really looks like.

The desire for more, bigger, better, newer, or faster is like the cultural air we breathe. But what if there was a way to own stuff and have peace at the same time? The secret, according to Jesus, is in learning how to possess without being possessed.

Pleasure is one of those incredible gifts that should inspire our hearts and enhance our worship of God. If we aren’t careful, though, we can spend our lives chasing the gifts--feelings, experiences, or quality of life--that we find pleasurable instead of the Giver of the gifts.

Our hearts, shaped primarily through our habits, practices, and behaviors, were designed to be the wellspring for our worship to God. The problem is that sometimes our hearts go rogue.

The importance of Paul’s advice to walk worthy of our calling cannot be fully appreciated until we account for the fact that we have an enemy with a vested interest in seeing us fail and fall. Fortunately, we don’t have to fail or fall because we have been given everything we need to be faithful and victorious.

Two thousand years ago, Paul reimagined what relationships in the home could look like in light of Jesus and it changed the world. The model of self-giving love has the power to transform anybody’s relationship, even yours.

“Work harder” might be good advice when it comes to your career, but it’s a terrible strategy for following Jesus. The danger with putting all of the emphasis on our effort and activity is that we tend to lose the plot, and end up with something that doesn’t look at all like our Leader.

Have you ever given someone a thoughtful gift only to be met with a reaction of entitlement or thanklessness? If so, then you know that how a person receives a gift says a lot about their hearts and their view of themselves. Once we understand how truly incredible the gift of Jesus is, we won’t be able to contain the appropriate response.

Few questions are more profound than those which cause us to consider our identity. Perhaps it’s because our answer, however we answer, goes a long way in determining how we live our lives, which ultimately shapes who we end up becoming. If that’s true, then the most important question of all may just be: Who or what gets to tell me who I am?

Of the few guarantees in life, seasons of difficulty are one thing we wish we could do without. We may not always know what the future holds, but we can be certain that a storm is out there somewhere. The question is this: Can the foundations on which you’ve built your life sustain you through the storms?

Nobody likes to be judged--sized up by someone else and written off from a distance. Fortunately, Jesus had a command that specifically addressed the tendency in all of us play the part of judge, jury, and executioner. Unfortunately, we sometimes get it confused and twisted. There is a world of difference between judgment at the expense of another, and judgment for the benefit of another.

Do not sin. This is the type of command we would expect to hear from the mouth of the Son of God. It may not be radical that Jesus said it, but the reasons may surprise you. We assume that God is all about His rules, and sin is what happens when we break them. But Jesus gave us a better reason not to sin, and it has nothing to do with guilt, fear, or condemnation.

We never see doubt coming. It’s not something we plan for or schedule into the calendar. Sometimes doubt hits us all at once like a tidal wave, but other times we simply become aware that our faith is eroding, suffering the death of a thousand small drips. The good news is that doubt-free faith has never been a prerequisite for following Jesus. It’s not doubt, but what we do with doubt that makes all the difference.

Today, we find ourselves somewhere in the aftermath of the climax of God’s story, anticipating its ultimate conclusion. Naturally, we have questions about when and how it will all come to pass. While there may be uncertainty about the timeline of events and the players involved, there is no uncertainty about the outcome. The victory is assured, and the King is coming soon. Will you be ready when He arrives?

The introduction of Jesus into the grand narrative of the Bible demands nothing less than a complete reimagining of the whole story past, present, and future. The exclusivity of Israel becomes the inclusion of the whole world. Commitment to a nation transforms as people from every tribe, tongue, and nation commit themselves to a Kingdom beyond geographical borders. That is what it means to be the Church, a movement of Spirit-filled people living and working as representatives of Jesus in and for the world.

If all we had was the Old Testament, we would reach the end of the story with a feeling that something was missing. We would anticipate something exciting and new, even if we weren’t quite sure what it should be. Fortunately, the story of Israel wasn’t the end of the story. All that God had been doing and promised to do reaches its unexpected climax in the story of Jesus.