"Eat Dessert First" | Ret. Pastor Tom Bridges | December 26, 2021
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Recent Sermons by New Hope
Vicki Harrison opens What's My Next Step, God? with prayer — the early church, released from custody and warned to stop preaching, asking God not for safety but for boldness. Three questions to locate where your own prayer life actually is, and a next step from wherever that turns out to be.
Vicki Harrison closes Learning from Jesus with the end of the Sermon on the Mount — false prophets known by their fruit, the warning that words alone are not enough, and two houses built by the same builder on different ground.
Vicki Harrison opens Matthew 6:19-24 and makes the case that this passage is not really about money — it is about treasure, the thing we have the hardest time letting go of, and the direction our hearts travel once we have chosen one.
Julie Hamilton opens Matthew 6:5-13 — the one subject the disciples asked Jesus to teach them — and walks through the pattern he gave them, starting with a childhood quilt and the prayer stitched onto it.
Pastor Roberto Chaple opens Matthew 5:38-48 and walks through four of Jesus's hardest instructions — turn the other cheek, hand over your coat, go the second mile, love your enemies — and what they ask of us now.
Pastor Vicki Harrison opens Matthew 5:13-16 and shows us that being salt and light isn't something we do — it's who we already are as followers of Jesus.
Jesus opens the most famous sermon in history by calling the poorest people in the room blessed. Pastor Vicki Harrison launches New Hope Church's fall series in Matthew 5, and the Beatitudes turn every rule about who counts upside down.
Rev. Vicki Harrison opened Matthew 12 with a question that would have stunned the room in Jesus' day: "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" Jesus points to the people around him and redefines family for good. "The church is not like a family," Vicki said. "The church is a family." On Promotion Sunday and the day before school started back, she showed what that means at New Hope Church — a household of households, led by Jesus, where the mask comes off and we actually learn to love each other. Then the whole church gathered for a family photo and prayed over its teachers.
On Communion Sunday, Rev. Vicki Harrison opens Matthew 26 — the night before the cross, where Jesus takes the oldest meal of God's people and fills it with new meaning. "This is my body… this is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." The message walks through what actually happens when we come to the Lord's Table: we experience the grace of Jesus, we come together as one body, all people are welcome, and we return to it again and again. It is not a ritual to observe from a distance — it is grace we receive with open hands.
Hebrews 10 says perseverance in worship is a class project, not an individual one. Pastor Roberto Chaple names the three half-truths that keep us worshipping alone.