Most of us know that following Jesus is supposed to be more than a Sunday morning thing. We just are not always sure what to do about it the other six days of the week.

In this message, Charlie walks through Oaks Chapel's definition of discipleship, an active process to know myself, know God, and make him known, and roots it in Matthew 28. But before he gets to the three parts, he makes something clear. This is not a do more, try harder message. Discipleship is not about performing for God. It is about being honestly formed by him.

Knowing yourself means being honest about how much you need God, not as a shame exercise, but as the only real starting point for any genuine growth. Knowing God is more than collecting information about him. It is a relational, lifelong process that changes how you handle the dark nights. And making him known is the natural overflow of what happens when the first two are actually working in your life.

Charlie also says something worth sitting with. You are being formed by something right now whether you chose it or not. The question is whether you are paying attention to what it is.

And the change? It is slow. Slower than we want. But the slow work of God is still the work of God.

To find out more about Oaks Chapel, visit OaksChapel.org.

We are living in one of the most hopeless moments in recent memory. Costs are rising, trust is collapsing, and for the first time in American history, a generation is less hopeful than the one before it. In 1 Peter, Peter writes a letter to a group of people who are about to face serious persecution. They feel homeless. They feel forgotten. And he starts not by giving them a pep talk or a list of things to feel better about. He starts by pointing them to something that already happened. In this message, Charlie walks through 1 Peter 1 and unpacks one of the most important distinctions most of us have never considered. Hope is not an attitude you have to conjure up inside yourself. It is a possession. Something outside of you that has already been secured. It cannot perish. It cannot be polluted. And it will never, ever lose its beauty or its power. In a world where everything eventually fades, that is a pretty remarkable claim. And Peter says it is true because of one thing. Jesus rose from the dead. And that changes everything. To find out more about Oaks Chapel, visit OaksChapel.org.

We talk about freedom a lot in this country. Freedom from control, freedom from interference, freedom from other people's expectations. And most of the time, that is where the conversation stops. But Paul has something different in mind in Galatians 6. In this message, Charlie walks through one of the most countercultural ideas in the New Testament. Biblical freedom is not just freedom from something. It is freedom for someone. For the people around you. For the community you are part of. For the ones who are carrying something they cannot lift on their own.

Charlie traces through three ideas in the passage. Fighting for the good of others when they are caught in sin, and doing it with gentleness, not judgment. Allowing yourself to be carried, which is actually the harder one for most of us because we are fiercely independent and far too proud to admit we need help. And taking honest stock of our own work and responsibility in a way that leads to gratitude instead of comparison.

This message is for anyone who has ever confused freedom with doing whatever you want. And for anyone who has ever been too proud to let someone else help carry the weight.

Reflection Questions: Whose burden has God placed close enough for me to help carry? Where am I refusing help because I do not want anyone to see that I need it? Who needs to hear what the Spirit taught me through the Scriptures today?

Most of us have done it. We have a church version of ourselves, a work version, a school version, a sports sideline version. We compartmentalize. We keep Jesus in his own little box and only bring him out when it feels safe. In this message, Nick walks through Matthew 5 and the moment Jesus tells his followers, many of whom had literally just started following him, that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Not someday, but already. The distinction Nick draws is one worth sitting with. Personal faith and private faith are not the same thing. Faith was never designed to stay invisible. Salt only works when it comes into contact with something. Light only does its job when it is not covered up. And a city on a hill, Jesus says, cannot be hidden. He does not say it should not be. He says it cannot. To find out more about Oaks Chapel, visit OaksChapel.org.

We live in a culture that has never been more focused on itself. We carry mirrors in our pockets. Algorithms show us exactly what we want to see. And somewhere along the way, the default posture of life became inward, not outward.

In this message, Charlie traces that problem all the way back to the invention of the mirror and then asks what the church is supposed to do about it. He lands in two places. Jeremiah 29, where God tells his people in exile to stop waiting to go home and start building houses, planting gardens, and seeking the welfare of the city around them. And 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul says the love of Christ compels us, not our love for Christ, but his overwhelming love for us, and that love is what frees us from living for ourselves in the first place.

The cross did not just buy us out of our sin. It bought us out of ourselves. And that changes everything about how we live in a culture that is constantly turning the mirror back toward us. This message is about what it looks like to be a selfless church in a world that is deeply, deeply selfish. And why the world actually needs to see that.

To find out more about Oaks Chapel, visit OaksChapel.org.

We live in a culture where everyone gets to decide what is true for them. Speak your truth. Follow your heart. Be true to yourself. It sounds freeing until you realize that when everyone is their own authority, nobody actually is. And a fully relative culture is not a flourishing one.

In this message, Charlie walks through 1 Timothy 3 and Paul's surprisingly simple answer to a complicated question. What is the role of the church in a world where truth has become whatever works for you? Paul calls the church the pillar and foundation of truth. Not one voice among many. The pillar.

But here is what is interesting. When Paul defines what that truth actually is, he does not give a list of facts or a set of arguments to win. He points to a person. Jesus. Revealed in the flesh. Vindicated by the Spirit. Believed on in the world. Taken up in glory. Truth, Paul says, is not just a claim. It is a life. And the job of the church is not to argue people into it but to hold it up and say, have you seen this?

In a world of competing truth claims, that might be the most powerful thing the church can do.

We live in a culture that has largely stopped trusting. Trust in institutions, government, higher education, even the church, is at an all-time low. And whether we realize it or not, we bring that skepticism with us everywhere we go, into our marriages, our friendships, and our relationship with God.

But there is a difference between doubt and skepticism. Doubt asks questions and keeps moving. Skepticism calcifies. It hardens over time until nothing can reach it anymore. And the church is not supposed to look like the culture around it.

In this first message of the Salt series, Charlie looks at the very first church in Acts 2 and asks a simple question. What did trust actually look like in that community? Not what programs they ran or what systems they had in place. What did their trust in God actually produce?

Three things show up. A willingness to be taught. Open hands that held their possessions loosely for the good of everyone around them. And praise, loud, practiced, proclaimed trust in the promises of God, even when the world around them said trust was naive.

A church that trusts God in a skeptical world is one of the most powerful witnesses the gospel has. And this message asks honestly whether that is what we are becoming.

In this final message of the summer series on David's life, Charlie looks at two things. The charge David gave his son Solomon from his deathbed in 1 Kings 2, and the last psalm David ever wrote, Psalm 145. Together they paint a picture of what a life well lived actually looks like when you get to the end of it.

David was not a perfect man. His family was a mess. His failures were real and their consequences were long. But his last words were not about any of that. They were not about Goliath or the kingdom or the victories. They were about God. His greatness. His nearness. His kindness. His glory that is inescapable and inexhaustible.

David's last words point us to the only thing worth being captivated by. And Charlie makes the case that what captivates your heart will always compel your action. The question at the end of the message is a simple one. When people look at the direction of your life, what would they conclude you value most? To find out more about Oaks Chapel, visit OaksChapel.org.