Park Hill Church Podcast

What does worship look like on a Monday afternoon? This week Evan Wickham opened our new series through Romans 12–13, Life in the Sanctuary, with a reframe: worship isn't a song, it's your body — your calendar, your appetites, the way you talk to your family when you're stressed. Paul calls us to stop being shaped by the world's patterns and instead be transformed from the inside out, so we can actually discern God's will instead of guessing at it. And that transformation was never meant to happen alone — Paul writes "bodies," plural, "sacrifice," singular. We don't just need each other. We are each other.

Why do the people who ignore God so often seem to be the ones getting ahead? That's the raw question Asaph brings in Psalm 73. In this sermon, Mike Forrest traces how a worship leader who nearly lost his footing to envy found his way back. The turning point isn't a change in circumstances; it's a change in presence. When Asaph enters the sanctuary, everything shifts. Continuing Park Hill's time in this psalm, Mike shows that the root of envy is really dissatisfaction with God. And the antidote is learning to be with Jesus, wherever we are, until His presence transforms us. Because the sanctuary isn't only a building anymore. If you belong to Jesus, you carry His presence within you.

What do you do when you're trying to be faithful to Jesus while others who don't give a rip about Jesus are the ones who seem "blessed"? In this profound message, Park Hill elder candidate Connie Jackson walks us through the honest struggle of a worship leader named Asaph. He's someone who almost lost his faith. Tracing Asaph's journey from struggle to restoration, Connie shares how this ancient psalm became the soundtrack of her own life as a young adult. It turns out, the path Asaph walked is the one we're meant to travel over and over as Jesus followers. This is an invitation to bring our real, honest questions to God. And then discover that repentance, as messy as it is, is the truest path into the safety of our Father's arms. 
"Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you." — Psalm 73:25–26  

Would you rather be seen or be honored? Bartimaeus, a blind beggar outside Jericho's gates, has no status, no family, nothing but a cloak and a shout. Yet Jesus stops for him and asks the same question he asked James and John just verses earlier — the ones scheming for the best seats in glory. This week, Ashley closed our summer series, Jesus Questions, with this gut-punch of a story about who Jesus actually honors. The disciples wanted power. Bartimaeus wanted mercy — and got his name written into Scripture forever. It's a searching look at God's heart for the poor, and the walls we build between ourselves and the ones Jesus calls by name.

Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour? That's the question Jesus asks his sleeping disciples in Gethsemane, hours before the cross. This week, Matthieu Rouffet walked through Matthew 26:36–41, unpacking why Jesus wanted his closest friends near him in his darkest hour, and why he warned them to watch and pray so they wouldn't fall into testing. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak — and that's still true for us. Prayer isn't a nice add-on to the Christian life; it's the weapon God gave us to stand firm when trials and unseen forces press in. The invitation this week is simple but not easy: recommit to praying, start small, and don't do it alone.

Everyone in this room is climbing something — a ladder, a status, a seat closer to the front. This week Todd Proctor continued our Jesus Questions series with the moment Jesus got up from the table, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed the feet only a slave was supposed to touch. It wasn't an accident or a nice gesture — it was a deliberate violation of every honor system his culture ran on, Roman and Jewish alike. Jesus didn't descend because he had something to prove. He descended because he already knew whose he was. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" isn't just a question about foot washing. It's a question about whether we're still trying to climb, or finally ready to get off the ladder.

Every ledger has a bottom line, and Jesus wants to know what's on yours. In Matthew 16, right after Peter makes the greatest confession in history, Jesus tells him the road ahead runs through a cross—and Peter can't stomach it. So Jesus asks the question underneath every ambition we carry: what good is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul? In a culture that measures a life by acquisition, this passage reframes the math entirely—your soul was never for sale, and Jesus proved it by refusing the world to purchase you instead. This week, Evan walks through what it looks like to stop settling for smaller trades, and to live as someone whose worth was already decided at the cross.

Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. Almost no one wants to answer for one. This week at Caesarea Philippi — pagan shrine country, standing in front of a cave locals called "the gates of Hades" — Jesus let his disciples hide behind the safe question first: who do people say I am? Then he turned it personal. Peter's answer, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God," wasn't something he figured out or inherited — it was revealed to him, in the room, in real time. That same question hasn't gone quiet in two thousand years. It's not asking whether you have doubts, or whether your life is together. It's asking one thing, and it's asking you.

Do you love me? It's a question Jesus already knows the answer to — and asks anyway. This week, Connor Anderson took us back to the charcoal fire where Peter denied Christ three times, then forward to the morning Jesus stood at another fire and rebuilt him. Jesus doesn't just know our failures ahead of time — he plans the invitation back before we ever fall. What looked like the end of Peter's story was actually the setup for his restoration: confession met not with rejection, but with breakfast and a calling. The wounds sin leaves behind don't have to stay open. Christ doesn't erase them — he fills them with gold.

What if the thing keeping you stuck isn't the absence of healing, but your own resistance to it? In John 5, Jesus walks up to a man who's been paralyzed for thirty-eight years and asks a question that sounds almost cruel: "Do you want to get well?" It's not cruel. It's the wise counselor getting deep into this man's soul. This week, we sit with a story about a man so trapped by his pain that he can't even imagine life without it — and a Savior who ignores his excuses entirely. Healing isn't something we engineer through the right plan or the right effort; it's something Jesus does, and we spend a lifetime learning to walk in it. The question Jesus asked that man by the pool is the same one He's asking you right now.