Sunday, July 20, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Philippians 3:12-14 NIV The importance of goals in life can never be underestimated. They set direction, define action and hopefully bring about a satisfied fulfillment in your life. However, true success is to lay hold of that for which God has laid hold on you. In today’s text, Paul pursued his goal with absolute determination. He gave humanity a Formula: forgetting what is behind; then focusing on the life goal avoidi...
Sunday, July 13, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Genesis 39:19-23 NRSV What do you do when everything is coming at you or you are getting hit from every side? Sooner or later we all wonder about God’s seeming inactivity. Where is God when we need Him? In the book of Genesis, Joseph faced some of the worst difficulties anyone ever encountered. In today’s message, Drawing, from insights from Joseph’s story, Pastor Wallace gives five principles you can take to heart...
Scripture Text: John 6:66-69 NIV Our passage today is preceded by a monumental miracle in Jesus’ ministry. John 6 begins, so famously, with the feeding of the Five thousand. After the miracle of feeding, Jesus withdraws from this kind of thing because He knows they have the wrong intentions, mistaken motives when the follow Him. They see Him as their baker and not Savior. Thus, He begins speaking also of things spiritual. He wants them to pay more attention to the life to come than they do ...
Scripture Text: 1 Kings 19:7-13 NRSV As Pastor Wallace continues our sermon series: “Discerning the Voice of God,” let us be mindful of what Richard Foster noted in his book, that “God speaks to people not because they have special abilities, but because they are willing to listen.” As followers of Christ, our goal is to obey the voice of God, to discern what kind of life He desires for us and heed His commands. As we will see in this text, God’s voice is, at times, a whisper in the st...
Scripture Text: Acts 16:6-12 NIV The second half of Acts is a recording of how Paul discerned the voice of the Holy Spirit. This is critical to us – how to know when God is speaking. The issue is not what God calls Paul to do but how Paul hears from God. How does God speak to us – guide our footsteps? In today’s message, Pastor Wallace highlights ways the Apostle Paul had to discern the voice of God, particularly when doors close…and when doors open. Paul was “kept,” from going west in...
On Pentecost Sunday, we tend to think of as a celebration of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the New Testament Church. However, it is much more! Theologian, Theodore Hiebert notes that Pentecost is “the church’s charter.” That means it is a definition of what the church is and what the church is to become whether we realize it or not. In today’s message, Pastor Wallace challenges us to think about whether we are a Pentecostal Church – not based on denominational affiliation...
Today, we begin a new sermon series: “Discerning the Voice of God,” with a subtitle: “How to Recognize When God is Speaking.” It is important that we as Christians learn to discern and heed the voice of God. In Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline,” he aptly notes that “God speaks to people not because they have special abilities, but because they are willing to listen.” Thus, in today’s message, Pastor Wallace draws insights from our biblical text in 1 Samuel 3, and highlig...
Sunday, May 18, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Jeremiah 29:10-14 NRSV Jeremiah 29 gives attention to those in exile, those who had been taken away, captured, kidnapped, deported from their homeland in Judah – and carried away to Babylon. A person can find themselves in exile while being geographically at home or at church. Perhaps many of you feel like those ancient Israelites felt. Perhaps you, too, feel like you’re not where you need to be. In today’s message we lea...
Sunday, April 27, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Are you running a hope deficit? Financial pressures. Family drama. Failing health. Political disenfranchisement. Will things get better? The way you imagine your future is crucial. It reveals whether or not you have hope. And it reveals where your hope lies. Misplaced hope isn’t hope at all. Hope is necessary for our well-being. In 1 Peter, we find hope that endures through every trial and can’t be taken away. It’s the hope that lies at the c...
Sunday, April 20, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Happy Easter! In today’s message we visit Mary Magdalene, the most devoted of Jesus’ followers at His tomb, grieving her catastrophic loss, three days after His horrific death. Her heartache was inconsolable. Death had taken from Mary the most important person in her life; the person she had loved. She thought she would be visiting the place where Jesus’ lifeless body lay at rest. But the wonder, the mystery, the miracle of Easter is that it ...
Sunday, April 13, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Luke 19:37-40 NRSV Today is Palm Sunday, which is the beginning of Holy Week, in which we commemorate the last week of the earthly life and ministry of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Today is called Palm Sunday because of the reference in John’s Gospel of the people of Jerusalem welcoming Jesus coming to their city by strewing palm branches on the road in front of His procession. The Gospel of Luke is able to convey to us t...
Scripture Text: Matthew 16:13-19 NRSV The world has lots of descriptions of who Jesus Christ was and is. But who do we say He is? This will determine how we deal with life and how we face the future. The question of Jesus was not simply about His identity, it was about their allegiance. Today, we are faced with the same question, and we must ask who ourselves, who will we give our allegiance to. Your greatest confession about Christ should always be your latest confession about Christ. In t...
In the Gospel of John, we learn that Lazarus was very sick, and his sisters knew that Jesus was his only hope. Therefore, they sent for Him to come and heal their brother. They were desperate. They needed the presence of the One whom they loved and on whom they depended. They expected Him to do what all friends would do: drop everything and run to their aid. We often have expectations that have nothing to do with what God is saying to us or others. We ask the Lord to bless us within our menta...
Sunday, March 23, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Luke 4:1-4 (NRSV) In this world, we face temptation all the time. Whether you are a Christian listening this morning or not you know that temptation is real. You can think of times or circumstances in your life where you have been tempted to do the wrong thing, and you have either done it or resisted it. In today’s message, we will learn how Jesus came out of the wilderness victorious and how we can live a victorious l...
Sunday, March 19, 2025 – Covenant Community Church Scripture Text: Mark 12:1-11 (NRSV) Many of us grew up hearing the overly used adage, “sticks and stones may break my bones,” but words will never hurt me.” But the truth is: words do hurt. Words can break hearts, ruin relationships, deflate confidence and self-esteem, and crush hopes and dreams. In today’s message we find examples and lessons learned from this experience from our text as Pastor Wallace continues our sermon series: “Jou...
Scripture Text: Mark 12: 1-11 (NRSV) As we start our Lenten Sermon Series: The Journey of Stones, this morning we will focus on “The Rejected Stones.” Drawing on the rich imagery of rocks and stones in Scripture, these messages center around the compelling metaphor of stones as representative of our sins. In today’s text Jesus offers a parable that speaks both of the past and of the future. The parable recounts the history of the nation of Israel and then prophesies of the judgment that...
Scripture Text: Nehemiah 8:9-10 (NRSV) Black History month is a time for us to reclaim the joy and strength of African American people’s identity. It celebrates overcoming grief, tragedy and triumphs through the power of God. One of the greatest intellectuals for the Christian Church in the 20th century aptly noted “if it had not been for the been for the black church, there would probably be no church in this country.” In today’s message Pastor Wallace shares insights from Nehemiah 8:9-10 to...
Scripture Text: Hebrews 13:15-16 (NIV) Today’s message brings us to the end of our sermon series: Making Your Life Count: “Live Life as a Sacrifice of Praise.” Our Christian aspiration, individually and collectively, is to live life as a sacrifice of praise to God. That’s what our sermon text (Hebrews 13:15-16) today is all about. It’s exhorting us to live life as a sacrifice of praise to God and that ought to be an aspiration for us. It ought to be something that we want to do, that w...
Scripture Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:17 NRSV In today’s message we draw upon insights from the apostle Paul’s writings about prayer. If you are willing, you, too can walk in the world-changing power of God’s presence as Paul did and make your life count for now and eternity. Paul’s prayers reveal the spiritual strengths and assets you need to act out divine love in all situations. His prayers empower us to fulfill “man’s chief end to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Pastor Wallace shares ...
Scripture Text: Ephesians 3:20-21 NASB We serve an awesome God – in the truest and most literal sense of that word. But we still aren’t to the limit. After that the Apostle Paul reminds us that all that God does in and through us is “according to the power that works within us.” Amazing things are possible not through our power or our abilities but rather through the power of our Almighty God. The main idea of Pastor Wallace’s message today is that the greatest ambition we as a ...