New Story Church

There's a kind of not-knowing-yourself that's harmless, even sweet. And there's a kind that can rip your life apart. James writes to people who say "Jesus is Lord" but whose lives tell a different story. He calls them double-souled. Divided. And the worst part is, they can't see it. They're self-deceived. So how do you find the gaps in your life when you're the last person who can see them? James gives us three telltales: what makes you angry, what comes out of your mouth, and how you tre...

When something hard happens, your instinct says: I'm being set up. In James 1:12-18, Jesus' own brother, the one who once thought Jesus had lost his mind, takes that suspicion head-on. In this sermon, we walk through what to do when life presses on you, where the pull toward our worst choices actually comes from, and what God has to do with any of it. Along the way, there's a pear tree that the teenage Augustine never stopped thinking about, a fishing rod, why you can crave what you don't e...

Hardships will come. Choose joy. Easy to say. Terrible advice if you don't understand what James actually means. James isn't telling you to feel happy when your life falls apart. He's saying something far greater: that the very thing you hate might be the thing God is using to make you whole. In this message, we continue our study of the Letter of James — likely the earliest writing in the New Testament. James picks up three themes he'll develop across the entire letter: how you suffer, ho...

That tension. James has a word for it: double-souled. And if you don't do something about it, it's going to tear you apart. In this message, we begin our study of what scholars believe to be the earliest New Testament writing: the Letter of James. But this letter has quite an edge to it. His message can be summed up in three words: "You adulterous people." So that needs some explaining. Who exactly is this James? And what could he possibly mean calling me adulterous? If you (like me) ...

I spent years studying the Bible, and it almost killed my faith. Turns out you can master every word and still miss the whole point. In Luke 10, an expert in the Scriptures tries to get Jesus to enter into his convoluted debates over the meaning of the text. Instead, Jesus invites him to enter into the Word of God. It's a whole different way of reading the Scriptures as prayer. It's something Christians down through the ages have called Lectio Divina. It's ancient but has largely been...