Vista Community Church

The reality is that faith and works do not contradict each other – they compliment one another. Christian "faith" is about trusting in what God has done for us, and then "works" is the evidence of what God has done in us. Those who follow Jesus should have both: internal faith and external works.

Busyness, restlessness, and lack of Sabbath plague our culture; we struggle to truly rest well. Yet, God's invitation to us is to Sabbath – to find true rest. What if 2023 was not about hustling or accomplishing goals, but a year of Sabbath?

What’s the best gift you’ve received? For Simeon and Anna, it was meeting Jesus! Like Simeon, we realize that Jesus is the only gift that will make us whole and give us peace. As we celebrate Christmas (the arrival of the best gift ever), don’t forget to thank the giver and share the joy with everyone around you!

Jesus is born in order to make room for people who did not make room for Him, because God does not want to be without us.

John the Baptist is such an interesting, challenging character in the Bible – but what made him so great? What questions should his life cause us to ask ourselves regarding greatness?

God chooses Mary to give birth to the Messiah, because she is a person of deep, hidden faithfulness. Mary consents to God's plan and becomes the paradigm of human obedience to the will of God.

In Luke chapter 1 we are introduced to Zechariah and Elizabeth – a remarkable couple who teach us how to wait patiently on the Lord which is, in part, what the season of Advent is all about.

This generation faces many challenges amidst a rapidly changing cultural climate; yet they also have a great capacity to love, serve others, and fight for justice. We'll look at a few trends in youth culture, and what we can do to help them discover their identity in Christ.

It is not happy people who are grateful, but grateful people who are happy. Psalm 100 succinctly and joyfully expresses Scripture's assertion that our most appropriate response to God is gratitude.

Sorry is an essential prayer, because we make a lot of mistakes and commit a lot of sins. But, instead of dreading confession, we learn to embrace it when we see it as the path to wholeness.

Pray can be hard, mainly because we do not know God. As we start off our series on prayer, we see that praying and asking God for help becomes natural when we know who God is.

On All Saints Day, we celebrate the unity and diversity of Christian faith, spread out across space and time. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4, there is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

John closes his letter with a tone of urgency: the message of Jesus is for now, the message of Jesus is for all, and the message of Jesus is the purpose of the church.

Babylon is what happens when good things become evil things, because they were treated like ultimate things. Revelation 17-18 proclaims how and why Babylon must be destroyed, and how and why we must "come out" of her.

The story of Revelation ends with God's promise to make all things new. The end is not demolition and evacuation, but a redemption and restoration project; it's the consummation and celebration of all the world was meant to be.

Lydia was the first convert to Christianity in Europe. She was a founding member of the church in Philippi. She is only mentioned in a few verses in Acts, but her life teaches us how to live with open hearts, open homes, and open hands. She is a beautiful picture of a life of obedience, hospitality, and generosity.

Although he neither agrees with God's plan nor apologizes for failing to agree, Habakkuk does come to a place of acceptance. How? And how can we find a faith rooted in acceptance instead of phoniness or grumbling?

Habakkuk is frustrated and angry that God is going to use the Chaldeans of all people to judge Israel. So he brings his frustration and anger to God and God gives him a response. God's response is to tell Habakkuk that the Chaldeans will be judged as well. God also reminds Habakkuk to patiently wait on the Lord to act and have faith in his promises. This text reminds us that frustration and anger are normal human emotions that we all experience, so as believers we must figure out what it looks like to live with these emotions in a faithful way.

Questioning the wisdom of God's plans, Habakkuk the prophet shows us how to navigate the tension between protest and trust.

After unpacking how we are justified (declared righteous) before God by faith alone, Paul unpacks some of the benefits that we receive based on our justification. He reminds us that God's peace, grace, and hope are available to us and that he has given us his Holy Spirit to help us in life.