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