Author: Tim Nguyen

The Book of Nehemiah – April 30, 2023

Nehemiah 2:11-18

Pastor Tim Nguyen

There will be times in your life, where God places such a big issue on your heart. Things that may break your heart or people you feel so much compassion towards… But oftentimes, that thing is so big that you can’t handle it by yourself.

You can only do it working together with others. Things like fighting local injustices for vulnerable peoples. Or perhaps it’s discipling new Christians, or even figuring out how to introduce your group of friends to Jesus.

Burdens like these are so important because it’s life changing for many but they’re too big to do alone. So it’s important that you are able to influence others towards things that matter. But how do we do that?

That’s our question today: How can we influence people to action? We’ll see our answer in the story of Nehemiah.

Ephesians: What’s the Plan? – April 2, 2023

Ephesians: 6:5-9

Pastor Tim Nguyen

How do we deal with injustice?

Injustice is everywhere. It seems to have seeped itself into the fabric of our world. When we think of “injustice”, we automatically imagine the big issues like world hunger, trafficking, or corrupt multi-billion dollar corporations, and we often throw up our hands and say, “It’s too big of a problem for us to handle. Why even try?”

And the answer to that is, because God calls us to stand up against such evils.

Ephesians: What’s the Plan? – March 5, 2023

Ephesians 3:14-19

Pastor Tim Nguyen

I bring up this irrational fear of being a burden because I think this is how we sometimes approach God. Think about it, God literally owns everything. The trillions and trillions of dollars in money and assets in the world, that’s his. And he can give all that without any sacrifice. But he went beyond, he gave Jesus for us which was the most costly sacrifice he could make. We know that God is for us, and able to give us all things, and yet when we come to him in prayer, what do we ask for? We ask for the tiniest requests ever.

“God, good and loving creator of the universe, please give me good grades”. No think bigger. “God, give me a house and a new car”. No, ask for more. “God, give me a partner that loves me and a good family.” No no, we’re thinking too small here! These things are good but they amount to nothing by themselves and so they cannot be the main thing we ask for. We can go much much bigger because we know that God is able to give exceedingly more than what we can ask for and what we can imagine.

Our question for today is “What is the most you can ask God for?”

The answer to our question comes from our passage today, which focuses on a prayer. It’s a prayer that apostle Paul makes as he’s in prison, and it’s one of the most powerful prayers ever prayed. What would you imagine his prayer to look like? Mine would be, “God, get me out of prison, it’s depressing”. But Paul’s prayer is 100 times more extreme.

Psalms: Poetry To Shape The Imagination – January 29, 2022

Psalm 107

Pastor Tim Nguyen

God is working in each and every one of our lives in these unique ways. Every one of us has a special story to tell and we’re meant to tell it.

There’s an interesting command here Psalm 107, for those who have experienced God’s salvation and God’s goodness, they are to tell their story. And for me, that raises a question. Why? Why can’t we just say, “God is good. His love is constant. Trust him.” and then leave it there and move on.

Psalms: Poetry To Shape The Imagination – January 8, 2023

Psalm 69

Pastor Tim Nguyen

How can we deal with our troubled thoughts?

I’m willing to bet that all of us have troubled thoughts, negative emotions, and unwanted feelings. And it is rare to find someone who deals with them well. Some people ignore it until it leads to a broken guitar. Some people cope with unhealthy addictions. Some just act out impulsively on their feelings.

But as Christians, we have a better way to deal with these and it’s to go to God. And God asks and EVEN PLEADS with us to come to him with our heaviest burdens.

My big idea today is, we need to go to God to be HEARD and we need to go to God to be HELPED. We see this in both the New Testament and in the Old Testament.

Dealing With Distractions – December 4, 2022

Matthew 4:8-10

Pastor Tim Nguyen

Our focus today is this question:

What is the most important choice we will ever make?

And from our bible passage, we see that the biggest choice is about what kingdom we want. And we got 2 choices:

We could commit to an easy counterfeit kingdom, or a costly lasting kingdom.

That is the third test of our temptation series. While the first one dealt with the physical needs of the body, and the second one dealt with the security of the mind, this one is about the heart. The core of what Jesus is really about. And as we examine Jesus’ process of fighting against the temptation of the heart, we hope to learn something as we’re faced with the same temptation.

The Adventures of Paul – November 13, 2022

Acts 28:16-31

Pastor Tim Nguyen

I think for most of us, life tends to be mundane. Life is not just one long string of Instagram highlights. We might have a few highlights each week, but for most of us the vast majority of our time is spent doing things that don’t photograph well.

On the flip side, maybe Instagram was onto something, even a Biblical idea that our life could be really great.

Maybe the truth is in the middle. Much of life LOOKS boring. But it can be great while looking boring. I believe we can thrive in the ordinary moments of life if we can appreciate the opportunities God gives us every day.

My big idea today is, in order to make the most of every circumstance, we should:

1. Look for golden opportunities

2. Look for ordinary opportunities

We’ll see this in our Bible story.

The Adventures of Paul – October 30, 2022

Acts 14:11-18

Pastor Tim Nguyen

When the Christian life is lived well, and we actually participate and take in what God is offering, it’s this super awesome and rewarding adventure. It gives us purpose. Makes us grow. Brings people together. But it’s very common for Christians to completely miss the point. You could say they lose their way. And so, we’re going to address this in hopes that we’ll have a better chance of staying on track.

Our question today is, “How do Christians lose their way?” I believe two very common mistakes we should be wary of is:

1. We can be distracted by pleasure.

2. We can be discouraged by pain.

In our story today, we get to see two outstanding Christians overcoming the temptations of pleasure and pain.

Philemon: Ethical Excellence – September 18, 2022

Philemon 1:8-14

Pastor Tim Nguyen

For Christians, one of the most important things that we can do is to teach, invest and develop the growth of other Christians. That is how deep friendships are made. How community is grown. How the goodness of Jesus is spread. How we can save others. This is called the process of discipleship. And we know it’s one of the most important things because this is the process Jesus used to grow his ministry. And it’s been booming since 2000 years ago.

But like all valuable things, discipleship is costly. It requires us to give up things for the sake of another person’s growth.

Today, we’re addressing the question; What is the cost of discipleship? The cost of discipleship is:

1. Immediate results

2. Immediate resources

Strange Stories From The Bible – August 21, 2022

Judges 4:21

Pastor Tim Nguyen

How can we build good ethics?

That’s just a fancy way of saying, how can we know what is right?

It is really important to have a strong sense of ethics, because there are so many opinions out there on what is right. If our sense of ethics is off, we could really do some damage with our actions, or we can even be crushed by unnecessary guilt. Or even worse, we can become self-righteous and think we’re better than everyone else. Our moral compass makes such a difference. But ethics is not just a black and white thing. We’ll see that in our Bible story today.