Port City Community Church Podcast

The world needs the Church because that's how Christ designed it. Therefore, we must strive to become the kind of church Christ envisions. We reside in a world that has been greatly worn down, causing us to view trustworthiness as a high standard when, in fact, it should be a fundamental aspect of our humanity. We are responsible for nurturing a sense of belonging as we support one another in love. We aim to create a safe space where individuals can hear the Gospel and contemplate its implications. A disciple is a friend and follower of Jesus, empowered by Him to love. Being a follower of Jesus means organizing your life as a learner, and that's why we need each other because you have never learned anything without someone else.

The table symbolizes both our sense of belonging and our open invitation to be a part of something greater. Here, we encounter the reality of our commonalities and receive the warm embrace of family. The Church should serve as a unique sanctuary for belonging—a community where our shared identity propels us towards collective responsibilities. This shared identity comes with a profound duty to care for, uplift, and support one another. We must cultivate a shared purpose by transcending our differences and nurturing an environment where love, understanding, and grace thrive. Our actions, or lack thereof, ripple through our community and beyond. One cannot engage in a community without leaving an imprint. The call to follow Christ is not a solitary journey but an invitation to embark on a shared path of faith. 

ntegrity isn't something we reach like a destination; instead, it's a state where our inner strength guides our thoughts and actions. It means having the character to face reality faithfully while holding onto hope. Resisting dependence is rooted in pride, while fullness comes from experiencing God's sufficient grace. Wisdom helps us integrate our soul, and humility opens the door to grace, the source that sustains us in God's Kingdom. "Consider it joy" isn't just a mental exercise to make sense of life's challenges; it's an opportunity to find something greater amid life's difficulties. Navigating chaos with faith and hope isn't merely about willpower; it's a matter of embracing our true identity. God's grace is enough to support us through every season, and developing the character to face reality is an outcome of our faith.

Life flows from our core, and it's vital to understand that the stability we yearn for cannot solely depend on the ever-changing world. True stability, unwavering in the face of life's storms, is found in integrity. By grounding ourselves in God's wisdom, we discover a kind of stability that doesn't waver with circumstances and frees us from the need for constant comparison and competition. This wisdom stems from faith, not mere certainty. As we embrace humility, recognizing God's grace and receiving it with open hearts, our souls find unity, no longer divided. In this journey, we learn that honesty and confession lead to the discovery of grace, and living in forgiveness allows us to dwell in His boundless grace.

The way of life in God’s Kingdom is governed by trust, and you have to be able to trust yourself - that begins with learning to trust Jesus in everything and with everything. The war against sin isn’t your effort to behave but learning to trust—trusting Christ for your identity, sufficiency, and life. The application of wisdom is discernment, where we sense God’s voice and His movement and trust Him enough to take a step. In Christ, you can discern what to do in the life that you live to find the life that you actually want.

A good life in our world hinges on things falling into place just right, whereas the life Christ opened up for us is rooted in who we are at our core. Nowadays, we often talk about emotional health as the key. It's all about feeling good, but what we're really after is a sense of wholeness that goes way beyond feeling good about ourselves. This wholeness is about experiencing the kind of life Jesus offered and reflecting the amazing way God made us.

During the summer months, we've learned that delight is a formative force that shapes the desires of our hearts. It requires intention and an act of our will. Without focus, our desires can run wild, and embracing these lesser things makes our hearts susceptible and vulnerable. Instead, God invites us to renew our desires in a way that makes our hearts and souls come alive. 

f we find our delight in good circumstances or safety, it will eventually fall short. In our fallen and broken world, we all experience moments where we wonder, "What is the world coming to?" Our despair can become an enemy of delight. But, amid the struggle, God's glory is put on display. We must remember that our delight is not contingent on circumstances; it is anchored in Jesus, and that God can use anything for our good. When we look at the world and say, "What is the world coming to?", maybe that's where we should go.

Our doing has become a distraction when it comes to true delight in Jesus. We most closely associate our relationship with God with the content that we consume and the things that we do. In a way, our doing has become an enemy of delight. The church has gotten preoccupied with culture and ourselves. We've done God's work without His presence and failed to realize that Jesus values people being in His presence more than He values their work. To delight in Jesus, we have to know Jesus. Finding delight in the presence of Jesus forms our hearts and desires. When we delight in the presence of Jesus, we will be forever changed. 

This week, we get to hear from two awesome women in our church, Lauren Mendoza and Sarah Badillo, who have a discussion on delighting in ordinary life. Their perspectives are relatable, and their insights are helpful.

At the top of the episode, we all get to hear from some of our middle school students and leaders about what delights them!

For more Summer Sabbath resources, you can check out www.portcity.church/sabbath.

Enjoy!

Passive delights are just the things we instinctively enjoy without effort. We live in a way where as soon as something doesn’t “delight” us anymore, we start to look for other things. But everything we instinctively enjoy isn’t always the most helpful for the kind of life we want. Our affections are formed in ways that often undermine the things we value most. We either pay the price of attention in the discipline of our eyes or the malformation of our hearts. Proactive delight requires something from us. The point of spiritual practice isn’t perfection but ordering. Delight yourself in the Lord, and the desires follow. 

Sabbath is a life-giving practice that God designed for us. He wove the rhythm of the Sabbath deeply into the fabric of the creation and embedded it intimately into the human soul. It's a time set apart to experience rest as we deliberately stop working and trust in God's provision. God modeled the Sabbath and then called us to remember and observe it. The goal of the Sabbath isn't rest; rest is a means to and a result of the Sabbath. The goal is to refresh, renew, and reorient us toward a life with God, where true rest and delight are found!

Today we get to hear from Laurelyn Shaw, our Director of Community, and Sam Noland, who is our Treasure Island Volunteer Coordinator talk about Delight and Sabbath. We also get to hear from a few of our high school students and leaders about what delights them!

We have created a Habit of Delight Experience that consists of eight practices that will help us better understand the concept of delight while experiencing it firsthand. You can learn more at www.portcity.church/delight.

Remember that this coming Sunday, July 9th, we are practicing a Sabbath Sunday. On this day, we will not gather together at our church building. Instead, we will use this time to intentionally rest and practice what we have learned through our Delight series.

To assist you in your time, we have made resources available to you, including a Sabbath Suggestions Guide for your day! For more information, you can go to www.portcity.church/sabbath.

If this episode was helpful to you, let us know by leaving a rating or review, sharing on social media, or sending us an email to creative@portcitychurch.org.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

The life we live today results from the practices we have formed along the way. Unhealthy habits bend our faith away from God and toward ourselves. Our direction stays the same when our intentions change, but our habits don’t. What we do habitually determines how we experience God relationally. The way to devotion is consistency, proactivity, and authenticity. True faith is cultivated by private discipline. When God-centered devotion becomes a habit, delight becomes a reflex.

Treating the summer like a Sabbath is not just an invitation to rest; it’s also God’s invitation to delight in Him! As we journey through summer together, we want to encourage our church to create a habit of delight by developing intentional rhythms that direct our heart’s affection and attention toward God.

We have created a Habit of Delight Experience that consists of eight practices that will help us better understand the concept of delight while experiencing it firsthand. You can learn more at portcity.church/delight. Today, we’ll hear from our Music Director, Brooks Joyce tell us about the importance of the first Habit of Delight- worship. And then we will have an opportunity to practice together with Rolin and Taya who will lead us in song. Enjoy!

How we see delight determines whether or not we indeed find it. If delight is merely a commodity, we will settle for whatever brings it quickest and sustains it the easiest. When everything is about us, we are living in the superficial. We can’t offer God our true selves or experience true delight when steeped in superficiality. Sadly, we settle for the superficial because we can control it, but faith resides outside ourselves when we loosen control. The source of your delight is found wherever your faith lies. The subject of your faith determines the durability and sustainability of our delight. How we see faith determines how we live in it, and how we see God determines our ability to experience true and lasting delight. 

Our eyes aren't lighting the world around us but rather the life within us. Deeper desires and redeemed affections require more than just a passing gaze or being enticed; we must learn how to remain, seek, and see. What catches our attention will capture our hearts, and what we treasure will ultimately drive our pursuits, so we need to pay attention to what we pay attention to.

Welcome to our new weekly Delight podcast series, where we explore what it looks like to treat this summer as a Sabbath!

This summer, we invite you to slow down, rest, and trust in the promise of Psalm 37:4 that when we delight ourselves in the Lord, the deepest desires of our hearts will be met in Him.

To kick us off, we get to have some fun with a "Questions With Caleb" segment followed by a conversation with Mike Ashcraft, Clay Everett, and Laurelyn Shaw.

For more Summer Sabbath resources, you can check out www.portcity.church/sabbath.

Enjoy!

From the beginning, God gave us a desire for delight and the means to experience it, so it’s no wonder that delight comes naturally to us. It's not a question of if we delight, but what we delight in. Every longing at its core is a longing for life. Christ is life. All around us, there are things that spark joy, spur delight, and move us deeply. We can and should enjoy these blessings, but we need to take it a step further - not just delighting in the gift itself, but taking it all the way by finding our delight in the ultimate gift giver - God Himself. We become what we want, so we have to cultivate patterns that disrupt the natural pace and appetite that we inherit. Delight is encountering something good and allowing its goodness to awaken us to what we want, and what our heart and soul ultimately want is a connection with its Creator, Sustainer, and Provider. 

Poverty isn’t first an economic problem but rather a matter of dignity. Dignity is simply the innate worth of another person. We don’t give dignity; we honor it; to honor someone’s dignity, we need to see and notice them. Listening honors dignity. Saying someone’s name demonstrates dignity. Trusting another brings dignity. Dignity is the lens through which we see redemption. We learn to bring dignity to hard things by bringing grace and dignity to despair by bringing hope. It is not about finding things worth doing but finding worth in the things we are doing. Serving is offering ourselves to others for their good and contributing to the good of the world around us.

Sometimes to understand someone else's perspective, we have to leave our "normal," leave our "routine," and enter into a different space.

On today's Midweek Meditation, Corey leads us through a contemplative reflection through Pepper's story and week six of our series, Radical.

As we continue to explore the heart of servanthood, Mike Ashcraft sat down with Laura Bullock, about serving in the city. In their conversation they discussed what it looks like to show compassion and care for others, especially those who are in need or marginalized in our society. 

Our vision for the future isn’t simply about reaching the next generation but rather about working together so that a generation yet to be born will have a view and reverence for God… a vision for His Kingdom, and to find their place in the story of His redemption.  

On today's Midweek Meditation, Mike leads us through a contemplative reflection through week five of our series, Radical.

A church is only as strong as its willingness to prioritize the next generation, so we want to be a church that invests in those who come after us - to know them, love them, and share the love and hope of Jesus Christ. God’s love involves a generational expression and generational responsibility. It requires a shared commitment displayed through personal ownership. Serving is the language of love. In the way of Jesus, the pursuit of greatness resides in answering the call to serve.

On today's Midweek Meditation, Geoff Banks leads us through a contemplative reflection through Psalm 16:1-5 and week three of our series, Radical.

During this special worship gathering, Mike Ashcraft leads our community through a reflective exercise utilizing Psalm 16. While reflecting on the words, we take a moment to breathe and fill ourselves with hope, courage, and faith. 

Today we will take a look at John 13, the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. We can learn much about God's character from this passage, but today we will focus on humility. Humility is the security that comes from a clear and accurate view of yourself.

On today's Midweek Meditation, Zack leads us through a contemplative reflection on Jesus' humility and week three of our series, Radical.

We live in a culture where we will likely be taken advantage of, so it makes sense to “keep first” and experience the need to preserve. Unfortunately, the posture to preserve finds its root in the soil of distrust. However, the gospel invites us to live differently amid a broken world filled with broken trust. If our posture isn’t self-centered, then it must be directed outward. The expression of God’s love is others-oriented and self-sacrificing. A command to serve is understandable. But having your feet washed is unforgettable.

Often, our conscious or subconscious thought is that if we give too much, there won't be enough, and we will be left wanting, needing, or without. So, we tend to withhold or ensure we have what we need first and then offer our surplus. But when we trust God, we find He is working to help us want to do what is good- and even more, He gives us the power to do it!

On today's Midweek Meditation, Laurelyn leads us through a contemplative reflection through week two of our series, Radical.

Living in a culture of distrust, we hesitate to give ourselves away fully. Having been burnt, taken advantage of, or let down, we resist getting involved and responding to the needs around us. Life without love is to live without an adequate foundation for the relationships we long for. Nothing holds us together, so we drift apart— disintegrated, distrusting, undermined. The opposite of serving is withholding. The opposite of a servant is a preserver. But, we miss out when we hold on. Amid learning to give our lives away, we discover, experience, and share the fullness of life God promises.

This past Sunday, we began a new teaching series on serving called "Radical." But what does serving have to do with "the life we are searching for?"

On today's Midweek Meditation, Clay leads us through a contemplative reflection through Mark 8:35 and week 1 of our series, Radical.

The way of Jesus stands in stark contrast to that of the world.  In God’s Kingdom, greatness doesn’t come from selfish ambition, entitlement, and making a name for ourselves but instead takes root through humility, sacrificial love, and giving ourselves away for the sake of those around us.  Christ redefined greatness by flipping its pursuit upside down. The world’s version and vision for greatness affects and shapes how we see and pursue our purpose; unfortunately, it’s rarely life-giving. The beautiful thing about the way of Jesus is the freedom it provides in its simplicity. We don’t find our purpose by obsessing about it; we step into it when we look outside ourselves. If we give our lives away, the reality is we’ll never be lacking in purpose. Serving flows from fullness and having a high view of God and ourselves - it’s not merely an activity, but a way of life.  By learning to live from this source we are able to give ourselves away fully individually, and be a beacon of hope collectively.

"Can I lose my salvation?” is the question that emerges when we view grace through a transactional model and a crime and punishment view of the Gospel. Instead of trying to figure out if we can lose our salvation, what if instead, we learned to find it? We find salvation by finding His grace sufficient in the moment for the moment. We allow the weight of our desires and emotions to rest on the foundation that promises this newness of life. The promise of resurrection is the possibility of newness. The power of the resurrection is that we live in a world where we will experience deep grief, but our hope runs deeper.

What is Holy Week? Why is it important? How do we participate? In today’s Midweek Meditation, we discuss all these things and more!

To further engage with our Holy Week resources and plans, check out portcity.church/holyweek 🕊️

We live in a world where force or threat of force ultimately gets stuff done and makes things happen. Our violent tendencies are more subdued than we might think. Yet, violence is often the most natural overflow of disappointment or threat to our way of life. Palm Sunday confronts us with two opposing ways of ordering our lives. There is a confounding and disruptive nature to the way of Jesus. He often shows up in the exact opposite way that we think He should show up. In His Kingdom, we are free from fighting, forcing, and being chronically defensive. We don’t have to go to war over every issue and aren’t measured by our outrage.  As we draw life from our reconciled relationship with our God, we are shaped and formed into His image while participating with Him in the life made available to us. 

The church is simply a community of ordinary people gathered around an extraordinary God! When we gather on a Sunday we bring with us our everyday ordinary, often messy, lives. We show up with our victories and defeats, our successes and failures, and our hopes as well as our fears. When we are courageous enough to bring both, a beautiful collision takes place where we as a community can be known, accepted, and loved. Gathering on Sunday is an opportunity to bring our past weeks in surrender and look to a new week ahead full of hope, serving as both a culmination and launching pad to life with God!

Mistakes, failures, and shortcomings are not a sign of weak faith, but rather a sign of being human. Often we evaluate the health of our life with God with a scorecard of successes and failures, when in reality we could better measure it by our readiness to return to God. There are no shortcuts for formation. We must be committed and continue. A life with God will inevitably be marked by mistakes, which can either lead to runaway from God or hide in shame. Or we can learn the beautiful rhythm of returning to God through confession and repentance! In confession we are not simply agreeing that sin is bad, but that sin is separating us from the life we most want to live— the life for which we have been made.  Repentance is a return to wholeness.  Confession is formative work that allows our everyday ordinary lives to be fertile soil for the fruit that comes from a life with God. 

Keeping in step with the Spirit is an unfamiliar way in the grind of life. The middle is where we want to speed up and get on with it or get out of it. Working for the weekend often has us walking right past Wednesday. Yet, we must create a space in the middle to pause and reflect. By finding hope in the middle, we honor the mundane. God breathes life in the little moments, where we experience a deep abiding life with Him.

Your everyday ordinary life matters extraordinarily. The small moments that make up your day matter more than you realize. Life with God is not primarily experienced in a Sunday Gathering, a midweek Small Group, or even a daily quiet time- no matter how good or how critical we believe them to be. Rather your life with God is experienced and expressed in the everyday ordinariness of your actual lived life! Your everyday, ordinary life is the very place where God wants to meet you, bless you, and grow you! Leveraging your everyday life starts with a change in perspective that helps reframe what you are looking for and allows you to see God’s extraordinary work.

The journey of faith isn't a quick fix for a good life, but rather a way of life that requires attentiveness, resolve, and stubborn faithfulness. It can be easy to let our lives drift toward apathy, but devotion to God leads us to continue pursuing God, trusting that when we draw near to God, God draws even nearer to us! Gracious resistance prioritizes God’s presence over our comfort. We pray that we will become a counter-cultural community of well-rested people who aren't prone to cynicism or apathy but rather a hope that finds its expression in how we care for the world.

Because of the way Daniel had served and been helpful in the past, he was remembered in a time of need and called upon. Despite the fact that Daniel had a different God, served the previous king, and came from a different culture, he was still valued and trusted. When we do life with God well and live as citizens of heaven in the midst of today's culture, even outsiders see value. There is a pervasiveness to the wisdom of God’s Kingdom. While it may seem foolish to some, it is distinct in its nature, leavening the culture we live in. The church today can be known for the way that we love and serve in the same way that Daniel was known for his wisdom and helpfulness.

The world's wisdom is unfulfilling and empty - we demand things from it that it will never be able to give us. The rule of fear that governs worldly wisdom is a force that operates out of deficiency, while the power of God's love works out of abundance. Disorder follows anywhere endless comparison and competition are present. Where the world's wisdom fails, God's wisdom prevails. When we learn to trust the wisdom of God's Kingdom and live in that way, it redeems us and the world around us in which we exist. Wisdom yields responsibility. Gracious resistance depends on God's wisdom rather than the self-sufficiency of worldly wisdom.

As followers of Jesus and citizens of God’s Kingdom, Daniel’s story is our story- we too live exiled in a foreign land, in a culture that is drastically different from the culture of God’s Kingdom. We can respond to this dynamic in several different ways. We can attempt to force the world’s culture to make ourselves more comfortable or we can slowly begin to assimilate into the culture we are surrounded by. Both of these are dead ends. When we try to force culture to make us more comfortable, we typically fail and leave people angry. When we assimilate into the culture around us, we lose our distinctness. Thankfully the life of Daniel shows us a third way. The faith and character we see in Daniel didn’t spring up overnight. Daniel didn’t rely on a few faith principles to get him through his circumstances. His life speaks to the power of long obedience in the same direction- how we bend culture not by fighting against it or being conformed by it, but by entering into it with humility, courage, discernment and dependence on God. By doing so, our lives too will graciously resist and quietly bend culture around us towards Jesus!

Choosing a word isn’t the finish line, but the starting point. We might not know what the new year will bring or the circumstances we will encounter, but by committing to a word, we have a lens to assess our response to them and see God at work. Mark a moment, draw a line in the sand, and gather stones to build a monument that declares your dependence on God for all He has in store for you in 2023. But, don’t keep your word to yourself, share it with others so they can encourage and challenge you to step into the person God is inviting you to become. 

In today's Midweek Meditation, we sit down with our Senior Pastor, Mike Ashcraft, to discuss the final week of our teaching series, "Created To Become," selecting our "One Word for the year," and how we commit to the journey for this year. For more information, check our portcity.church/word.

We'd love your insight if you would like to give us feedback about this series or the podcast format. You can email our team at Creative@portcitychurch.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

We are always becoming, always being formed. The question is what is shaping us? Are we going to fall into old habits and thought patterns that keep us repeating what we’ve always done? Or can we see something different? Can we develop a vision for who God wants us to become and remain with Him as He forms His heart in us? The steps we take determine the life we experience.

By choosing a word, we move in a direction that takes us a step further along the path to becoming. We might not know what the new year will bring or the circumstances we will encounter, but by committing to a word, we have a lens to assess our response to them and see God at work. There is no single way or perfect prescription to pick our words. The process is as unique as we are. Regardless of how we have arrived at our words, we know God will meet us there - that if we keep it before us and use it as a lens to respond to the world around us that God will shape our character and transform our heart.

We want to close this series by doing more than just revealing our individual words for the new year. We hope that collectively as a community, we will mark a moment, draw a line in the sand, and gather stones to build a monument that declares our dependence on God for all He has in store for us in 2023.

Change is possible, but focus is required. God created us to live in a way and at a pace that He established. He made a way for us to experience the life He has intended us to live and become the kind of person He's calling us to be. Rather than doing nothing about everything, My One Word invites us to do something about one thing.  In today's Midweek Meditation, we sit down with our College Ministry Director, Carson Goslee, to discuss week three of our teaching series, "Created To Become," narrowing down our "One Word for the year," and how we can focus in a world of disctraction. For more information, check our portcity.church/word.