Eternity Church Podcast

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. I love to walk dirt paths. Maybe because it feels like home. It feels good to walk the way we know so well. Once a year when I was a kid my family would leave our little coastal home on the second floor of the church in Malabo and go to Moka (pictured below), a little village high up the island’s small mountain range. At 4500 feet above sea level, I could feel my thin blood freezing in my veins! Surely the temperate 50 and 60 degree days weren’t sooo cold, but my tropical soul could hardly take it! Our family would pack up our warmest clothes and drive up the mountain to a little apartment with no electricity or running water. We would bring lots of D batteries for the cassette player and wood to keep us warm. At night we’d sit and sing by the fire, heavy layered. But during the days, I would venture out into the hills and fields, and walk the muddy trails between towering cane and rolling leafy greens. The movement kept me warm in my fleece jacket as my mind env

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. There is something special about spending time with the Apostle John. The more time we spend reading his letter to the church of Ephesus and remembering his years of discipleship walking and talking with Jesus, the more one word stands out clearly: love. John is the beloved disciple in the Gospel. His beloved-ness in Jesus transforms how he sees himself and how he relates to others. The more we read his letters, we see he was often very black and white in his thinking. He uses contrasting themes like love and hate, darkness and light, sin and salvation with little gray area. We would expect nothing less from someone nicknamed a son of thunder with his brother James (Mark 3.17). Years of manual labor at sea fishing probably left his heart as calloused as his hands and feet. It is amazing then to see how John’s time with Jesus transformed the way he saw those around him. He still saw things in black and white; he understood a clear contrast between right and wrong,

A Sunday sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. On the Way of St. James, the pilgrimage starts in the French Pyrenees and winds to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. For us, we started on this long obedience in the same direction mentally walking the pilgrim’s path alongside the Apostle John as our spiritual guide. Along the way, we’ve found that his first little letter is not for the faint of heart! It challenges us as much as it comforts. It spurs us on when all we want to do is rest and calls us to rest when we are anxious to hurry down the road. This week on the path we come to 1 John 4.1-6. Reading these verses, we realize we need to take our time. It talks about spirits and prophets, and some of us would much rather just press on and not stop here. When we feel like this is, it's good for us to slow down as we ascend the hill of John’s words and wrestle with their meaning. Prayerfully reading these verses will require refining in our own lives (in our own character) so that we will be ready to determine the legitima

A Sunday sermon by Brett Deal. Have you ever met someone that you immediately resonated with? It can almost feel like your lives have been lived on parallel lines; you’ve been walking through the same experiences, shared the same thoughts and, all of a sudden, your paths branched toward each other and met at the perfect moment. We all have friends like that. Those people who might have been strangers a few weeks ago and now you can’t imagine your life without them, their wisdom, their insight, their friendship. I’m often reminded of C.S. Lewis words: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Arriving at 1 John 3.19-24 in our journey may be that moment of friendship convergence. In these verses, John, our spiritual guide looks on us and sees where we are in our walk with Jesus. He knows that as we open our hearts we will feel the sting of light on those dark places. For some, our hearts will be wracked with condemnation. Surely, each of

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. I used to have three statues in my office. They were wonderful reminders that framed how I approach life and ministry. The first was of Simeon holding the baby Jesus. Simeon, with the Savior of the world swaddled in his arms rejoices that his “eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel,” (Luke 2.30-32).  The second is Jesus washing His disciples’ feet. At the height of His ministry, after three years of walking with His apostles and countless disciples, as He prepared the Table in the upper room, Jesus bent down and washed their feet. The third statue was of Jesus carrying the cross. The chiseled stone revealing thin lines of sharp whips, His arms gripping tightly to the burden on His shoulders. The artist carefully displayed a cobble street beneath His heavy feet but did not intone the work with the wailing of the women who walked behind the Lord

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. This week, back on the camino with our spiritual guide John, we find ourselves in 1 John 2.28-3.10. As we lace our shoes back up to keep walking our pilgrim path, we find ourselves facing new dimensions of ideas and themes John introduced earlier in the journey. As the children of God, we find ourselves called anew to abide in Christ. What does this mean? What does it mean to abide in Christ in such a way “that we may have confidence and not shrink from Him in shame” when Jesus draws near? Our abiding must be marked by becoming more aware of the kind of love God extends to us and the kind of righteousness He invites us to experience. We are left with questions to meditate on as we walk this week’s path:Am I abiding in Christ today? Are there things that block my communion with Jesus that the joy of confession will restore?As I find redemption through confession, how can I better understand the grandeur of God’s love? In that love, how am I experiencing transforma

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is found in John’s Gospel. In the second chapter, Jesus and His disciples were busy doing the important work of ministry. But here’s the catch. The way Jesus viewed ministry doesn’t always line up with what we think it should look like. How often when thinking about Jesus’ ministry have you consider John 2 as a perfect example?  In the first twelve verses we learn that Jesus and His disciples were invited to a party. And they showed up! And this wasn’t just a fancy brunch or a one-night festival. This was a multi-day event surrounding the celebration of a wedding. When we imagine Jesus and His disciples, most of the time we are more comfortable imagining them busy doing the ministry of healing the sick, raising the dead and sitting around looking serious. But on the third day of this wedding, Jesus is asked if he can help the keep the party going! As we’ve been on our pilgrimage through the first letter of John, it helps to see the life of the author in context. The Joh

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. Tell me if you’ve ever experienced something like this. There is a this hilariously slapstick comedy I watched as a teenager, and I found it one day. Naturally, I got a huge smile just looking at the DVD case and remembering the hijinks and vaudevillian humor. I wanted to watch it again, this time with my bride. The problem was I knew we’d never make it through the first few minutes if she wasn’t in the mood to watch a ridiculous comedy of errors. Surely her eyes would glaze over, and I’d feel horrible. So, I waited. I put the DVD on the shelf and waited. Every once and a while we would have a quiet evening and I would think, is this the night? But we’d get distracted, or the mood would shift, and I would leave it on the shelf.  That was until one day, one perfect evening when we were feeling silly, I nonchalantly suggested we watch the film. We roared with laughter as we made our way through What’s Up Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 classic starring Ryan O’Neal a

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. Often we hear that someone is following in a parent’s footsteps. Perhaps a family business is passed on to a new generation, or a young adult chooses to pursue the same kind of work of a family member. We are used to following in other’s footsteps. But following in someone’s footprints sounds a bit different. It conjures up images of hard-boiled detectives hot on the trail of a suspect or Sherlock Holmes calmly analyzing the muddy residue left at the scene of the crime. At times, reading the Bible can feel like following footprints rather than following in someone’s footsteps. The distance in culture, language, and worldview can leave us trailing far behind, scratching our heads and hoping Dr. Watson has some idea what it all means! This week we will be following in the footsteps of our spiritual guide, John, as he leads on our pilgrimage of faith (in 1 John 2.1-6). With every step along the path, we find that we are not alone. This journey with Jesus is not a so

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal. This week on our pilgrimage, we find ourselves climbing high in the mountains of faith. From a distance we see a beautiful vista of wonder and belief, but to cross the those soaring heights enveloped in cloud, we must ascend four major peaks. How often do people set out on a journey and find themselves turned away at the first sign of trouble or the continued presence of struggle? In John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian sets out sets out alone from the City of Destruction with his eyes set on Mount Zion and the Celestial City. But no sooner has he embarked on his pilgrim path than he is slowed by a bog of doubt. Whether we are in a bog of doubt or having difficulty catching our breath as we climb the slope of mental ascent, we have a decision to make: do we understand confession? Confession can wrack us with fear and burden us with condemnation when we don’t understand what it truly is. Confession is like expelling our lungs plagued by shortnes