Toronto Alliance Church

While preparing this message, I thought back to individuals in my life who have experienced great hardship in the form of opposition from people, where people have come and stood in their way and made life very hard for them. And yet, the same people are joyful and thankful, and they're resilient. It's an amazing thing. Knocked down but not knocked out. That's what I want to talk about today from Psalm 129. These are Ps...

I believe that the sin of pride is destroying the lives of so many people. And this sin has taken and will take many people to Hell. I'm not only speaking about those persons who do not know Jesus Christ. But Christians too. Pride is a very dangerous sin. The Bible tells us clearly that God hates pride. He loves humility. Humility is one of the marks of a person who is a follower of Jesus Christ. What is humility? Looking at th...

You've probably never considered yourself a city builder. But the truth is that we all are, for good or for bad. We're walking through the fifteen Psalms of Ascents, meaning, they're going up. Every year the Jews went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They're going up to worship. Each of these Psalms introduces a different aspect of our journey. We're journeying through the seasons of life and each Psalm meets us in a...

We each desire that our lives be spent meaningfully. It frustrates us if it seems like our lives are pointless, if there's a season where we feel our wheels are spinning and we're not going anywhere but we're putting in a lot of effort. We desire to have focus and purpose, a meaningfulness. If there's ever a sense that we're doing something in vain, it frustrates us to the core of our being. The psalm I want to ...

There's a lot of people who like to restore things and lots of things that can be restored. You hear about people who restore phones, others who restore cars. Some like restoring houses, or leather or furniture. You can have somebody restore windows on your computer. There's all kinds of things that are sort of lost and can be restored, and some people really like to do that. But the thing is, who restores lives that have l...

In 2012, I lost my mother to cancer. And I remember being there in the hospital room with her during her last moments. I remember the look on her face. I remember the words she said to me before she passed. I had just started my 2nd year at the university back home. As I was putting the final touches on this message, I started to think about that time in my life. I asked myself this question: How was I able to process or cope with ...

What are the advantages to following God? I see a lot of people's struggle and sometimes fall away. Which is a real drag. The advantages of the world sometimes seem so great that it seems we should give up on God, but really, what are the advantages for those who trust God? If somebody were to put you in a corner and ask you that question, what would you say? There's a lot of places in the Bible we could go to answer that, but we d...

Many of our stories have big chapters where we were mistreated, experiencing harshness, cruelty, spitefulness. It is difficult to shake off those experiences. I hear of people released from prison after they've been there a long time, 20-30 years, when evidence come to light showing their innocence. At the original hearing, a false witness swayed the jury. The Bible is full of such stories. Joseph, David. In both cases, in the end,...

Put the big rocks in the jar first. That's what Stephen Covey said. The jar is our time, it's our energy, it's our capacity. We try to fill the jar with sand and pebbles first, those things that are not as important but that can very easily fill our time. Later, we try to put the big rocks, those activities that are most important to our success, that really make our life count. But if we fill the jar with sand and pebbles, those l...

In a world of drunk drivers, where people blow up airports, all the unexpected things in our lives, where do we find security and protection? When we bought our house, there were a lot of locks on the door. It really struck me. But then I learned that the woman who lived there had a son who was murdered. We have these issues that come in our hearts and we seek to fortify and protect ourselves from things that are unexpected. So the...

When I was young, one of my greatest fears was being misrepresented. If people were speaking lies about me or misrepresenting me, it hit something that was deeper in me than perhaps anything else. Then I entered pastoral ministry here in the heart of the city, only to find that I was face to face with that all the time. I want to begin from now till the end of June to walk through what's called the Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 1...

Why dare to believe in Jesus? The simple answer is because he is so worth it. But the Easter story, straightforward as it is, isn't always straightforward. Because, the disciples, who knew better than anybody, on Easter Sunday morning were full of doubt. Daring to believe takes courage because we have doubts. We have certain experiences in our life we don't know what to do with. And we have questions too. We come with our own stori...

There are times maybe we feel like our lives are going nowhere. We might not know how we got there, but it's a very frustrating place to be. We feel stuck and there's little fruit or effectiveness. Nobody feels much passion about being there, right? It's a dark place. That's the context for Palm Sunday and our text today. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the praises of people who had seen him do so much. And when he arr...

I remember growing up in a rural community seeing barn fires from time to time. You could see them from a great distance. The wood from these 200 year old structures is dry. When they catch fire, you can't hope to put them out. The firefighters focus on protecting the buildings around. People come from great distances because you can't help see the night sky lit up. They come to help, to drag livestock out of the barn. I re...

We are a people who live from the heart. Our generation is one that lives from the heart. Authenticity is very important to our culture, maybe it's the most important thing. And God teaches us to love him with our heart. But he also says to love him with all of our mind. He says to love him also with all of our soul. And to love him with all of our strength. I wanna talk about that here today.

Extra reading: Isaiah 5:1-7

Prea...

Have you heard people ask, "Why doesn't God answer my prayers? How come God answer other people's prayers but not mine?" These questions are frustrating to people. How can we be people who experience God answering our prayers? In today's passage in the book of Mark, there are two stories back to back where Jesus asks the same question: "What do you want me to do for you?" In the one story, Jesus answ...

We walk down difficult roads. We each have our own own portion of hardship. They're paths of sacrifice and almost always beyond our ability. We find ourselves stretched beyond anything that we have known or experienced. Usually in those paths, there's no turning back. Let's say it's something in our family, which is actually what we're going to be looking at here today. When trouble comes right within our family, you can't turn bac...

Some journeys that we go on are straightforward. For example, it was straightforward for me to get to church this morning. Some journeys are more complicated, like, my son is becoming married to a girl outside of Canada which poses a lot of complications. It'll happen, but the way there is complicated. Our journey with Jesus has complications in it. There are surprises along the way. In the Gospel of Mark, we come to a part whe...

Faith is not static, but a thing that grows. I don't think that's always how we think of faith. We think, "that person's got a lot of faith, and I don't have much". Or "that person has a lot of faith in this area, and I have faith in that area". But God means for our faith to grow in all the areas in our life, and for us to become more and more familiar with receiving from his hand. When I was as...