Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Well that’s not true… that’s not true at all. Words have power. They can encourage or support. They can communicate affection or appreciation. They can also wound or poison. Words carry more weight than we would like to believe. Our words impact the lives of those around us… whether that is positive or negative is up to us. Words matter… join us as we find out how.
An extra large pizza. An American girl doll. The height of a chair.
They are all 18 inches.
Most people know the story of how God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth as a baby on Christmas, died on a cross on Good Friday, and rose from the dead on Easter.
But it’s more than knowing that. It has to become personal. The message of Easter is that a personal relationship with God is only 18 inches away. 18 inches to heaven!
Imagine you’re trapped – stuck in a difficult situation or season of life. What do you do when you can’t seem to get yourself out of it? When nothing seems to fix it? You just want to get away. It can be hard to trust that God is listening to you… but He is.
The Israelites found themselves in a similar situation. God heard them. He stepped into their story in a powerful and tangible way. God rescued His people. He does the same for us.
Words have meaning… but sometimes we only scratch the surface in our understanding of them. The Bible is full of significant words. Words that look good on Instagram or stuck on the back of a car. Words that feel good when say them or hear them. But there’s often more to those words than we think. They are deeper, richer and more meaningful than we imagine. They point to a bigger, more powerful, more loving God. Those are things that we’d miss out on if we just stayed on the surface. So let’s dig in.
Christmas requires a lot of preparation. Your home needs to be decorated. You’ve got to get the presents and wrap them. You’ve got to find a tree and trim it.
But the preparations for Christmas actually began thousands of years in the past. God promised long ago that His perfect gift was coming. He repeated that promise throughout the generations and His people looked forward to its fulfillment.
Christmas is when God’s ultimate promise became a reality. When hope entered our world… at last.
Our Vision: To do whatever it takes to reach our community for Christ.
...For Their Future.
God is prompting us to look beyond ourselves and rise up and work toward reaching people in our community for Christ in a different way; to maximize The Ridge's impact in our community beyond ourselves and what we're currently doing.
"For Their Future" is doing whatever it takes for our friends and families. We want to point them to Jesus, so they can experience what we have! People matter. Our friends who don't know Jesus matter. Eternity hangs in the balance. That's what is at stake.
Jesus. You’ve probably heard that name before. People say all sorts of things about Jesus... that He is the son of God… that He was a teacher… that He was just a good man… that He’s a fairy tale. But who does Jesus say that He is? We’ll look at who Jesus is through His own words and the roles that He fulfilled. Jesus is more significant than we could possibly imagine. That’s why it matters when He says “I am Jesus”.
We all have things that shape and guide us as people. Things we care deeply about. Things that are foundational to who we are. The Ridge is no different. The ideas and principles that we hold most dear define who we are because we believe that is who God has called us to be in Columbus and beyond. Join us as we look at the things that we are most passionate about as a church – the seven values that make us The Ridge.