Preparing for Sunday - July 5, 2026This Sunday we start something new: Anointed and Hunted, our walk through the back half of 1 Samuel. Chapter 15 ended with Saul rejected and Samuel grieving him till...  Read More

This past Sunday we closed our series on the rise and rejection of King Saul. But here is something worth noticing. We did not close the book on Saul. He does not walk offstage when the series ends. H...  Read More

There is a moment fear loves. The situation is pressing, the clock is running, and a voice starts up inside you. Do something. Anything. You cannot just sit here.Saul knew that voice. In 1 Samuel 13 t...  Read More

Sunday we stood with Israel at Gilgal, a people who had failed and knew it, standing in the rain and certain they were about to be swept away. And we watched Samuel do something remarkable. Before one...  Read More

There is a moment in the life of a growing church when the question stops being can we afford to hire? and starts being can we afford not to? We have reached that moment.Over the past few years, First...  Read More

The sermon Sunday named a pattern. We crown things beside God, ask God for them, and discover they cannot save us. The bottom line was simple: the king you ask for is not the King you need.On a Sunday...  Read More

Some of you left Sunday with something sitting on your chest. You know what it is. You have known for a while.Maybe it is a pattern you keep returning to. Maybe it is something you have been carrying ...  Read More

Two nations. Two chapters. One truth.The Philistines thought they could own God. They put the ark in Dagon's temple like a trophy and went to sleep assuming their god had won. By morning, Dagon was fa...  Read More

There's a question most religious people never think to ask. It's not a comfortable one, but this past Sunday it was the one the text forced on all of us.Is it possible to do everything right on the o...  Read More

There is a moment in 1 Samuel 3 that should feel uncomfortably familiar. The word of the Lord was rare. Not gone entirely, but scarce enough that you'd notice the absence the way you notice when a roo...  Read More

Most of us will never steal from a church offering plate. Most of us will never commit the kinds of sins Hophni and Phinehas committed in plain sight at the tabernacle. So it's easy to read a passage ...  Read More

As we step into a new series in 1 Samuel, I want to invite you to do something a little different. Before we walk through it week by week, let’s zoom out and see the whole story. Not every detail, but...  Read More