River City Church

What would it look like to give Jesus everything you have, even when you feel defined by your failures? This Sunday, Rose shared a powerful message about surrender, humility, and the courage to bring your whole self to Jesus -- just as the woman in Luke 7:36-50 brought her tears, her hair, and her most precious perfume to anoint his feet.Like a bridge, Jesus does not tell you where to go. He simply gives you access. Access to the Father, access to peace, access to a new identity that is not defined by your worst moments.Whatever you are carrying into this season -- fear, grief, shame, or simply the weight of a busy holiday calendar -- Jesus meets you there. He met that woman. He will meet you.Come as you are. Give what you have. Receive the peace only he can give.

What if the thing standing between you and a deeper relationship with God is not a lack of effort, but a fear that he might not show up? This week's message was a raw, honest look at what it means to truly know Christ, not just in our heads, but in the quiet, uncomfortable places we tend to avoid.Drawing from Philippians 3:7-11, where Paul counts everything as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, our pastor shared a personal journey into silence, solitude, and a moment that changed everything: "Be my son." Before all the doing, there is belonging.God is not hiding, waiting for you to find him. He is already there, pursuing you even more than you are pursuing him. Come experience that truth for yourself.

What does it really mean to be on Jesus' team? This week's message from our "Lose Yourself" series takes a hard look at the moment Peter went from being called the rock Jesus would build his church on to being called a stumbling block — all in the same conversation.Jesus told his disciples plainly: he would suffer, be betrayed, and die. Peter rebuked him. And Jesus responded by calling him to something deeper — deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me (Matthew 16:24-25).The truth is, following Jesus does not always look the way we expect. But only in Christ can the meaning of your hardest seasons be transformed. As Paul writes in Colossians 3:3, your life is now hidden with Christ in God. He does not just ask you to lose your life — he offers you his.If you are in a crucible right now, this message is for you. Come find life in him.

What if the key to finding your life is actually losing it? This week's message dove into the story of Gideon in Judges 7, where God deliberately shrunk an army from tens of thousands down to just 300 men — not because of weakness, but to make one thing clear: the victory belongs to God, not to human strength.Pat Riley once called it "the disease of me always results in the defeat of us." That truth applies to teams, families, workplaces — and the church. God is calling us to acknowledge our weakness, fight for what matters, and look up and look out rather than turning inward.This season is an invitation to experience something real together — shared limits, interdependence, and a faith that moves toward others rather than waiting to be served. If you missed it, come join us or catch it online.

What does it look like to truly lose your life for Jesus -- not in some dramatic, distant way, but right here, right now, in this season? This past Sunday, our first gathering in a new space, we heard from our own church family through prophetic words, visions, and testimonies about healing, treasure hidden in unexpected places, and the miraculous that comes when we follow God even into hard in-between seasons.Pastor Jared reminded us of the words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-24 -- that following Christ means denying yourself daily, and that the life you try to hold onto is the very life you will lose. The call to follow Jesus is, in the deepest sense, a call to die to yourself.As a church, we are in a new season. There is something God is preparing in and through us. The question is whether we will dig in and find it.

What if the biggest moments in your life started with a simple "wow" instead of "how"? In our final service at Belford, we reflected on 21 years of trusting God with the impossible -- a church built not on certainty, but on obedience and faith in a God who dreams bigger than we do.From Jeremiah 29:11's promise of hope and a future, to Jesus' words in John 14:12 about doing even greater things, we were reminded that God has always been pulling for River City Church. He sent the right people at the right time, answered prayers that took a decade to unfold, and is now moving us into a new chapter.As the cloud moves to DuPont, we go forward anchored in Romans 15:13 -- overflowing with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The best is still ahead.

What if your greatest spiritual blind spot is expecting God to work the way He worked before? In Luke 5, Jesus uses three vivid pictures -- a wedding celebration, a patched garment, and new wine in old wineskins -- to reveal a stunning truth: He did not come to improve the old system. He came to make everything new.New righteousness. New life. New covenant. Not earned, but received as a gift through faith.The question is whether we are open to what God is doing right now, or whether we are grumping about change, clinging to the familiar, or quietly going back to the old wine. As Isaiah 43:18-19 reminds us, God says "forget the former things -- see, I am doing a new thing." Do you perceive it?Preach the gospel to yourself today. God loves you, He is for you, and He is always at work doing something new.

Before Abraham was born, I am. Three simple words that shook the religious elite of Jerusalem to their core and changed everything. This week we explored one of the lesser-known but deeply powerful "I Am" statements of Jesus in John 8:48-59, where Jesus claims the very name God gave Moses in Exodus 3 as his own.If Jesus is the great I Am, that changes the question we ask. It is no longer "who does he think he is?" but "who do I think I am?" Pride puts us in the center where only God belongs. Humility, confession, and worship are what bring us back to our source.Join us as we dig into what it means to submit to the one who was, who is, and who always will be. He is not just a teacher or a good man. He is I Am.