Reality Church Vancouver Teachings Podcast

As we near the end of our series on the Beatitudes, we look at Jesus’ words: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” In a world shaped by empire and conflict, Jesus offers a radically different vision of peace— which is not withdrawal, segregation, violence or collaboration, but the invitation to join Jesus in becoming a sacrificial shalom-maker. This teaching invites us to reconsider how followers of Jesus live faithfully in the midst of our own modern empires. Recorded March 8, 2026.

Jesus’ promise, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” challenges our assumptions about what it means to truly know God. In this message, we explore how Jesus shifts the focus from religious performance to an honest, undivided heart that brings our whole selves before him. Even in seasons when God feels distant, this beatitude invites us to discover the surprising gift of seeing God in the ordinary moments of life. Recorded March 1, 2026.

In this episode, we focus on the beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy,” where we're invited to honestly wrestle honestly with our resistance to mercy—how resentment, anger, envy, and scorekeeping quietly shape our relationships, especially with those closest to us. By tracing how Jesus defines and embodies mercy throughout Matthew’s Gospel—and ultimately at the cross—we’re invited to move beyond a transactional view of God and discover mercy not as sacrifice or divine bookkeeping, but as God’s covenant love in action. The question at the center is both personal and practical: Have we truly received mercy—and what would it look like to become people who live it? Recorded February 22, 2026.

In this episode, we explore Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” and wrestle with what that means in a world that often feels anything but right. Moving through the Sermon on the Mount and into the season of Lent, we unpack righteousness as right relationship — with God, others, and creation — while honestly naming our longing for justice, peace, and restoration. This is an invitation to live in the tension of the “now but not yet” kingdom, learning to practice hope, lament, and faithful presence as a community shaped by Jesus. Recorded February 15, 2026.

In this teaching, we explore what Jesus really meant when he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Rather than describing personality traits like being quiet or gentle, Jesus is pointing to a specific group in the biblical story—the aniy—the poor, powerless, and overlooked who refused both violent revolt and cultural assimilation, choosing instead to wait on God for justice and restoration. This message challenges us to stop reshaping Jesus into a guide for achieving our version of the good life, and instead invites us to see, listen to, and serve those on the margins, while learning from their posture of dependence, hope, and faithful waiting. Ultimately, the Beatitude points us to Jesus himself, who embodied this way of life and invites us into a kingdom built not through power or comfort, but through trust, sacrifice, and renewal. Recorded February 8, 2026.

In this episode, we continue our journey through the Beatitudes, exploring how Jesus reshapes common sense and redefines what the “good life” looks like in the light of God’s kingdom. Mourning doesn’t sound like blessing, and comfort doesn’t look like quick relief—but Jesus invites us into the mystery that God is not absent from grief, lament, or loss. Instead, these places become unexpected meeting grounds with the living God, where the Comforter draws near in presence and power. This sermon reflects on everyday grief, deep loss, and honest lament, and asks what it might mean to recognize kingdom life unfolding not in triumph or improvement, but in the tears we dare to bring to God. Recorded February 1, 2026.

Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount by announcing that the kingdom of heaven is already here—and by redefining who is truly flourishing. The Beatitudes begin with Jesus' proclamation, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” which challenges our cultural obsession with control, success, and accumulation. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa’s idea of resonance, this sermon invites us to see powerlessness not as failure, but as a posture that opens us to receive God’s kingdom and a different way of being human. Recorded January 25, 2026.

In this sermon, we continue our introduction to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, centering on the Beatitudes, which challenges our deeply held assumptions about “the good life” and who we consider truly blessed. Jesus reframes flourishing away from power, comfort, and status, and toward humility, mercy, peacemaking, and dependence on God. What emerges is an invitation to repentance—not as guilt or shame, but as a reorientation of our imagination—turning from the stories our culture tells about success and happiness, and learning to see life, blessing, and human flourishing through the revolutionary vision of Jesus. Recorded January 19, 2026.

We’re starting a new series and a new season by returning to the story of Jesus—the one the whole Bible has been pointing toward. In this message, we begin exploring the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus’ surprising announcement: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Rather than an escape from earth to heaven, Jesus proclaims good news about heaven breaking into earth right now. This series invites us to see Jesus more clearly and to consider what it means to follow him as God’s kingdom takes shape here and now. Recorded January 11, 2026.

Our world is crying out for help—through violence, disaster, exhaustion, and deep loneliness. We’re told to fix ourselves, push harder, and start over, but those promises rarely deliver. In this message, we turn to Jesus’ familiar story in Luke 15 to explore how God responds to the prayers of his people, and how discipleship looks different in different seasons of life as God meets us exactly where we are. Recorded January 4, 2026.

In this final message of our series on identity, we return to the pivotal moment in Moses’ life—the encounter at the burning bush. Throughout this series, we’ve traced a recurring pattern in Moses’ story: a deep identity longing, an attempted solution that fails, an encounter with God, and a newly formed identity rooted not in self-definition but in God’s self-revelation. Today, we slow down at the turning point of that pattern. As God names himself, calls Moses by name, and sends him into God’s larger story, we’re invited to reconsider how identity is formed—not as a solitary monologue, but through dialogue with God and within community. Together, we ask the question Moses asks, “Who am I?”, and discover how that question is finally answered in encounter with the God who says, “I will be with you.” Recorded December 21, 2025.

In this sermon, we continue our series on Moses and the question of identity, focusing on one of the most relatable moments in his story—failure, exile, and deep disappointment. Moses longs for the same things we do: belonging, purpose, justice, blessing, and a life that matters, yet every attempt he makes to secure those things falls apart, yet, it’s in that place of discouragement and “not enoughness” that God meets him at the burning bush, revealing himself as a God of grace who moves toward failure, promises his presence, and still calls broken people to participate in his work. This sermon explores what changed Moses, and what his encounter with God might teach us about moving from fear and disillusionment toward faith. Recorded December 14, 2025.

In this message, we continue our exploration of the theme of justice: two weeks ago, we considered justice through the courage of the women in Exodus 1–2; today, we shift to Moses’ adult life and the tension between his deep, God-given passion for justice and the misguided, self-driven ways he first tries to pursue it. This passage leads us to a bigger question: how does an encounter with God transform our approach to injustice—from personal mission to divine calling? Join us as we look at Exodus 2 and 3 and discover what it means to join God’s work of true liberation in the world. Recorded December 7, 2025.

In Exodus 2:15–22, we meet Moses in a season of dislocation—fleeing Egypt, finding refuge in Midian, starting a family, and naming his son Gershom, “a foreigner in a foreign land.” This moment opens a deeper question the passage raises for us today: What does it mean to leave a legacy? Not a legacy of success, achievement, or family status, but a legacy shaped by the ongoing work of God in a life that is still in process. Recorded November 30, 2025.

In today’s episode, we continue our series on identity through the early life of Moses, turning to one of the most urgent themes in the Exodus story: justice—what it means to “take on Pharaoh.” Exodus 1–2 opens with God blessing Israel in a foreign land, a picture of flourishing that echoes a new garden. But that blessing provokes fear in a new Pharaoh, who twists power into oppression, slavery, and eventually genocide. In the face of this darkness, the story lifts up an unexpected group of heroes: the Hebrew midwives, Moses’ mother and sister, and even Pharaoh’s daughter—women who quietly but courageously resist injustice at great personal cost. Their actions flow from a deeper allegiance, a reverence for God that redefines justice and dethrones Pharaoh’s claims over their lives. Today we explore what their example reveals about seeing oppression truthfully, resisting the cultural temptation to center justice on our own personal fulfillment, and practicing courageous, creative faithfulness right where we already are. This is the invitation of Exodus: to worship the God who is above every Pharaoh, and to join him in the work of life, liberation, and flourishing. Recorded November 23, 2025.

This week, we look even further back in Moses’ origin story at the courage of Shiphrah and Puah, a desperate mother, Miriam’s boldness, and Pharaoh’s daughter’s compassion - and the way God responds to lament long before they see deliverance. We explore lament as a true form of worship—honest, raw, and welcomed by God—and how the Bible always pairs lament with hope. Psalm 77 becomes our guide, reminding us to anchor our questions in God’s past faithfulness and, ultimately, in the resurrection of Jesus. Recorded November 16, 2025.

In this episode, we continue exploring Moses’ origin story in Exodus and the question at the core of his life—Who am I? Today we go deeper to the longing beneath it: Who is my father? From a name shaped by rescue and rupture to a life searching for belonging, Moses carries a story many of us recognize—a "father hunger" to be known, chosen, and loved. At the burning bush, God meets Moses not just with answers, but with Himself—the Father who pursues, names, invites, and restores. It’s a story about identity, longing, and the God who comes close, calls us His own, and sends us out to love others the same way. Recorded November 9, 2025.

In this week’s message, we continue our series on Moses’ question, “Who am I?” by exploring the theme of belonging. Moses’ story reveals the tension of hybrid identity—born Hebrew, raised Egyptian, caught between race, culture, and place—and his failed attempts to resolve that tension by choosing sides and defining himself against others. But when God meets Moses in the wilderness and declares, “I AM WHO I AM,” Moses’ sense of belonging is redefined—not by ancestry or geography, but by encounter and worship. In the same way, our deepest belonging is not found in race, culture, or place, but in knowing the God who meets us where we are and sends us into the world as His people. Recorded November 2, 2025.

This week, we explore the question “Am I what I do?” and the pressure many of us feel to find meaning and identity in our work. Looking at Moses in Exodus 2–3, we see someone who longed to make a difference but discovered that vocation is not driven by personal willpower or achievement. God meets Moses in the ordinary and calls him first to be a responder, then a participant in God’s work to bring freedom and renewal. Our careers and roles will change, but our true identity is rooted in the God who calls us, equips us, and sends us to join his healing work in the world. Recorded October 26, 2025.

This week we begin a new series based on Moses' question in Exodus 3:11 - "Who am I?" While previous cultures answered this question by looking outside of ourselves, our culture answers it by inviting us to look inside of ourselves. However, in this message, we see how Moses’ encounter with God reveals a better way—our true identity is found not in who we are, but in who God is: the great I AM. Recorded October 19, 2025.