When the door you prayed for slams shut, what does that say about God? Paul and Silas found out at midnight, in a prison cell, with their feet in the stocks.In Acts 16, the Holy Spirit closes two doors in Paul’s path and then opens a third, a vision calling him to Macedonia. In Philippi, the Lord opens Lydia’s heart. Then Paul frees a young slave girl, and her owners have him beaten and thrown into prison. They had done nothing wrong. And at midnight, Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns to God (Acts 16:25). An earthquake opens the prison doors, but they stay, and a jailer and his whole family come to faith in Jesus.If you’re facing a closed door right now (a diagnosis, a slow recovery, a plan that fell through, a prayer that hasn’t been answered), this message is for you. Join Pastor Luke Heirendt as we discover that a closed door doesn’t mean an absent God. He still guides us, He walks with us, and He works through us, even at midnight.📖 Scripture: Acts 15:36-16:40 (CSB)About the series:Most of us believe the good news about Jesus is for everyone. But somewhere between Sunday and Monday, it tends to stay with us. In Word Spreads, we follow Paul from Antioch to Athens to Ephesus as ordinary people carry the message of Jesus into cities that wanted nothing to do with it. Jealous insiders, angry mobs, prison cells, and even church fights couldn’t stop it. Walk through Acts 13-20 with us and discover how the word of the Lord still spreads, and how it can spread through you.Connect with us at www.creekside.cc

“Unless you ______, you cannot be saved.” What would you put in that blank? Most of us have something, and it’s usually not Jesus.In Acts 15, the early church faces its biggest argument yet. Some sincere believers insist that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, in other words, become culturally Jewish, in order to be saved. The church gathers in Jerusalem to work it out. Peter reminds them that “we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are” (Acts 15:11), and James concludes, “we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God” (Acts 15:19). But the council doesn’t stop there. Everyone who belongs to Jesus is still called to a life of holiness.If you’ve ever wondered whether you have to clean up, dress up, or fit in before God will accept you, or if you’ve ever quietly expected that of someone else, this message is for you. Join Pastor Luke Heirendt as we discover that you don’t have to become like us. You do have to become like Jesus.📖 Scripture: Acts 15:1-35 (CSB)About the series:Most of us believe the good news about Jesus is for everyone. But somewhere between Sunday and Monday, it tends to stay with us. In Word Spreads, we follow Paul from Antioch to Athens to Ephesus as ordinary people carry the message of Jesus into cities that wanted nothing to do with it. Jealous insiders, angry mobs, prison cells, and even church fights couldn’t stop it. Walk through Acts 13-20 with us and discover how the word of the Lord still spreads, and how it can spread through you.

What do you do when the only way forward goes straight through the thing you most want to avoid? Most of us reroute. Paul walked back in.In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas keep going on their first missionary journey, and the opposition keeps getting worse. In Iconium, the city turns against them, so they stay longer. In Lystra, a crowd tries to worship them as gods, then turns on them and stones Paul, leaving him for dead. He gets up and walks right back into the city. Instead of taking the easy road home, they go back through every town that drove them out to strengthen the new believers, telling them the truth: “It is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).If there’s a hard conversation, a strained relationship, or a struggling marriage you’ve been trying to go around, this message is for you. Join Pastor Luke Heirendt as we discover that God doesn’t lead us around hard things. He leads us through them.📖 Scripture: Acts 14 (CSB)About the series:Most of us believe the good news about Jesus is for everyone. But somewhere between Sunday and Monday, it tends to stay with us. In Word Spreads, we follow Paul from Antioch to Athens to Ephesus as ordinary people carry the message of Jesus into cities that wanted nothing to do with it. Jealous insiders, angry mobs, prison cells, and even church fights couldn’t stop it. Walk through Acts 13-20 with us and discover how the word of the Lord still spreads, and how it can spread through you.For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc

Same sermon. Same city. Same week. Half the people were thrilled, and the other half ran the preacher out of town. What made the difference?This week we launch Word Spreads, a new series through Acts 13-20. In Acts 13, a praying church sends out its two best leaders, and Paul preaches a message in Pisidian Antioch that brings almost the whole city out the next week. Some are overjoyed to learn the good news about Jesus is for them too. Others, the regulars who'd been there all along, are anything but. Join Pastor Luke Heirendt as we ask an honest question: when new people show up, which side are we on?For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc

Somebody has to move first.That's usually where it stalls. Two people, one broken relationship, and both of them waiting on the other one to pick up the phone. Or one person who knows perfectly well they were the one who did the damage, and has no idea what to actually do about it now.In the final week of Forgiveness: Grace That Cost Everything, Pastor Luke Heirendt works through 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 and the other half of what we've been talking about. Forgiveness is something you can do alone. Reconciliation takes two, and it can stall at any point if one person won't do their part.Along the way: why Jesus tells both the offender and the offended to go, what separates a real confession from "I'm sorry if you were hurt," why Zacchaeus offered four times what he took when nobody asked him to, and how to tell the difference between someone who feels bad and someone who has actually changed.And if the person you'd go to will never be willing, there's a word for you too. As far as it depends on you.A repaired relationship might be the loudest sermon you ever preach.For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc

Saul had been hunting David for years. Then one afternoon he walks alone into the very cave where David and his men are hiding, and David's men tell him this is the moment God promised.What David does next is the whole sermon.In part two of Forgiveness: Grace That Cost Everything, Pastor Luke Heirendt works through 1 Samuel 24 and the question most of us get wrong about forgiving people: does it mean pretending the wrong didn't matter? David cuts off a corner of Saul's robe instead of taking his life. He follows him out of the cave and names exactly what Saul has done, in front of everyone. And then he asks the Lord to judge between them, and refuses to lift his own hand. He doesn't give up on justice. He gives up the right to carry it out himself.Then Saul weeps and apologizes, and David still goes up to the stronghold instead of going home with him.If you're carrying something from someone who hurt you, and reconciliation isn't possible or isn't safe, this one is for you.Forgiveness doesn't drop the case. It moves it to a higher court.For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc

If God forgives everything, every time, with no limit, then what's actually stopping any of us from living however we want?That question sits underneath a lot of our uneasiness about grace, and most of us are too polite to say it out loud. There's a second one we don't say either: if I really have been forgiven, why do I still feel like I owe?In part one of Forgiveness, we're in Colossians 2:9-15, and Paul takes both questions apart at once.He's careful about the idea of a certificate of debt. He doesn't say it was misplaced, or torn up, or quietly overlooked. He says it was nailed to the cross of Jesus. That's where it went, and that's what it cost.Then he says something simple economics has no category for. You were buried with Christ. You were raised with Him. God didn't just clear your account. He ended the person who ran it up.Forgiveness isn't simply a transaction. It's a burial. And if that's true, the question isn't what's stopping us from going back. The question is why anyone would want to.For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc

Nobody gets out of this body in good shape. Some of us are watching it happen slowly, in the mirror, and possibly making frantic plans to outrun it. Some of us are watching it happen to someone we love, a parent, a spouse, faster than we're ready for, and starting to wonder if the kindest thing left to hope for is that it would just be over. Both of those are ways of deciding the body is the problem. What if it isn't?In the final week of our series Embodied, Pastor Luke Heirendt closes with the passage where Paul, whose own body was being worn down by beatings and imprisonment as he wrote, refuses both of those conclusions. He calls death "the last enemy," not a doorway, not a friend, not a release, but something scheduled for destruction. And he says a strange thing at the center of it all: what feels like being worn out is actually, somehow, producing glory. Not despite the suffering. Through it. The Christian hope was never a soul floating free of its body. It's a body, this one, made new. Which means nothing done in it, not the labor, not the caregiving no one else sees, is wasted.For more info about our church community, or to connect with us, go to www.creekside.cc