Anger might be the most complicated monster of all — because unlike the others, it isn't always wrong. It's wired into us as a response to threat and injustice, and it can move in either direction: toward bitterness and rage, or toward something that looks a lot like peacemaking.

This week, as the series closes and Palm Sunday approaches, a question from the book of Jonah becomes the lens: Is it good for you to be angry? It's an invitation to slow down, get honest, and ask where our anger is actually headed — and whether we're willing to let it be aimed somewhere better.

Because at the cross, Jesus takes the hostility and brokenness of the world and channels it into the ultimate act of peace. That, pastor Steven suggests, is the pattern we're invited into.

Most of us aren't short on passion — we have plenty of it for coffee, sports, music, the small pleasures that light us up without much effort. The question this week is why that same energy so rarely finds its way toward God.

The monster of apathy doesn't cause chaos by anything it does — but by everything it doesn't. It's the quiet cold that settles into the heart and makes the pursuit of God feel like something we'll get to eventually.

The antidote comes from a striking image: David, running for his life through a wilderness with literally no water, writing — my soul thirsts for you. Not for rescue. For God.

Excessiveness vs. the Art of Balance & the Beauty of Belonging

Some monsters are loud and obvious. These three are often overlooked — not because they're rare, but because they've become so familiar we've stopped noticing them.

This week covers gluttony, greed, and lust together, not as a moral checklist, but as expressions of the same restless human impulse: the drive to take more than we need. A birthright traded for a bowl of stew. A man who keeps building bigger barns. A powerful figure undone by desire that overrode everything else.

What holds all three together — and what begins to undo them — is a surprisingly simple idea from the Sermon on the Mount: that we are not the center of the story. When we know we belong to God, and to our neighbor, something in the relentless grasping starts to loosen.

Of all the monsters lurking in the human heart, envy may be the most hidden — and the most corrosive. It starts as a familiar ache: I want what they have. But it can quietly slide into something darker: I want them not to have it.

From King Saul's spiraling jealousy of David, to the older brother seething outside the prodigal son's welcome-home party, scripture keeps returning to this particular monster — the one that takes another person's good fortune as a personal insult.

This week, we look honestly at the ways envy hides in us — in our scrolling, our comparing, our quiet celebrations when someone else stumbles — and at the surprising antidote scripture offers: not willpower, but the life-giving forces of gratitude, contentment, and love.

We kick off Monsters of the Heart — a Lenten journey through the seven deadly sins — with the monster that underlies them all: pride. But this isn't a lecture on bad behavior. It's an invitation to look honestly at something quietly lurking in every human heart: the deep, subtle sense that we don't really need God.

From the garden of Eden to a powerful Syrian general asked to humble himself in a muddy river, the stories of scripture keep returning to the same question — whose play are we living in? Our own, or something much bigger?

This week, pastor Steven introduces the series and explores what it might mean to "open the windows" and catch a glimpse of the larger story God is telling — and how that glimpse is the very thing that begins to loosen pride's grip on us.

In this final message from our 7 Signs series, we encounter Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. After this incredible miracle, some believed—but others went straight to the religious leaders to report what happened.

Reviewing all seven signs, we see a beautiful pattern: Jesus' glory meets people right in the middle of their mess. He touches desperation, helplessness, famishment, fearfulness, hopelessness, and even death itself. These aren't just distant stories—they show us what God's glory looks like when it touches our lives.

If Jesus can meet all these individuals in the middle of their mess with his glory, we can experience that same glory in the middle of our mess. And for those of us with a messy week ahead, that's really good news.

In this message from our 7 Signs series, we explore the sixth sign from John's Gospel—Jesus healing the man born blind. This powerful story does more than showcase a miracle; it busts theological myths and challenges our assumptions about suffering, faith, and what it means to truly see Jesus.

Through the journey of a man who receives sight through an unconventional healing with mud and spit, we discover a process: removal of blindness, sorting through confusion, clarification of who Jesus really is, and finally—belief and worship. But here's the danger: many of us engage in religious activity, check all the boxes, and never clearly see who Jesus is.

The real question isn't whether we've done enough religious things, but whether we truly see Jesus. In all our confusion, brokenness, and heavy hearts, we must daily come back and say, "Jesus, we can't see. If you don't turn the lights on, we will never see again." This is the heart posture of those following Jesus—learning to see clearly through muddy eyes, believing, and worshiping.

Episode: Waterworks from Heaven (7 Signs - Part 5)

In this message from our 7 Signs series, we explore the fifth sign from John's Gospel—Jesus walking on water and calming the storm. Just as "waterworks" can mean different things depending on the context, this miracle reveals something profound about who Jesus truly is.

John intentionally chose these seven signs to show us Jesus's true glory, depth, and beauty. No matter what storms are pounding down on us—lost relationships, opportunities, or uncertainty in our world—the real question is: can we honestly say, "Jesus, you are everything to me"?

When we reach that place, Jesus responds with the words his disciples heard on that stormy sea: "It's me. Don't be afraid." This isn't about every storm being calmed or every problem being solved, but about encountering Jesus in a way that changes the entire tone of our lives.