As a special bonus for subscribers to this Podcast, we are offering five classic messages from Mike Phillips on the subject of "The Bible Answers the Questions Posed by Today's Culture". These are all re-broadcasts of the most popular sermon series that Mike has ever done. Each one addresses a theme question presented by a popular Television series.

In this final message in the series, the crime drama, "Law and Order" asks the Bible a fascinating question.

As a special bonus for subscribers to this Podcast, we are offering five classic messages from Mike Phillips on the subject of "The Bible Answers the Questions Posed by Today's Culture". These are all re-broadcasts of the most popular sermon series that Mike has ever done. Each one addresses a theme question presented by a popular Television series.

The immensely popular Television series, "Survivor" asks this sermon's question: What will it take to survive this life?

As a special bonus for subscribers to this Podcast, we are offering five classic messages from Mike Phillips on the subject of "The Bible Answers the Questions Posed by Today's Culture". These are all re-broadcasts of the most popular sermon series that Mike has ever done. Each one addresses a theme question presented by a popular Television series.

This message addresses the sports world hero worship and wonders aloud, "What really makes a winner?" The Bible has some answers for this.

As a special bonus for subscribers to this Podcast, we are offering five classic messages from Mike Phillips on the subject of "The Bible Answers the Questions Posed by Today's Culture". These are all re-broadcasts of the most popular sermon series that Mike has ever done. Each one addresses a theme question presented by a popular Television series.

This second in the series is based on the popular series called "Seventh Heaven"

As a special bonus for subscribers to this Podcast, we are offering five classic messages from Mike Phillips on the subject of "The Bible Answers the Questions Posed by Today's Culture". These are all re-broadcasts of the most popular sermon series that Mike has ever done. Each one addresses a theme question presented by a popular Television series.

This particular message, the first, explores the question asked by Seinfeld: "Is Life Really about Nothing?"

All of us have moments, or even seasons, of sadness. This situation is critical depending on how we handle it. Most people waste times of sadness and do not realize how incredibly loud God can be during sadness. In this message, we explore how you can make every time of sadness a time of discovery and growth.

This past week we had the most phenomenal Men's retreat at Gateway Fellowship. It would be inappropriate for me to share the details of what God did in the lives of the individual men. But suffice to say that several marriages were completely healed (including a couple on the verge of divorce), many fathers were shown by the Lord how to take care of their kids with more diligence and spiritual fervor, etc.

I came back to preach on the "testosterone-deprived" Sunday services. As a result of not having our regular recording crew in place, I made a huge mistake and didn't replace the battery in the lapel microphone. As a result, I ended up using the handheld mike...which wasn't connected to the recording device.

All of that to say that this week we do not have a current podcast to launch here. Sorry!

On October 20, 2006, the congregation of Gateway Fellowship in Sacramento met to discuss the beginning of our new vision of Gateway 3.0. This vision is of a new way of doing church - Open Source Christianity. Just as Open Source software prepares the original computer code and then encourages others to add to it and improve it, so Gateway 3.0 proposes the basic idea of where God wants us to go, but it is up to every member of our church to improve it and work upon it. Listen to this 45 minute meeting and view the accompanying PowerPoint presentation on this podcast. At the end, please fill out the form and attach it to an email, sending it to:

mikeinsac@sbcglobal.net

One young girl told a pastor that she would be willing to sleep with a guy if it meant he would come to Jesus and go to heaven. On the other end of that spectrum, there are bible teachers who claim that God doesn't want us to have anything to do with unbelievers or to have anything to do with Christians who have anything to do with unbelievers. Somewhere between the two of them is a balanced approach. There are people with whom we should have no deep relationship. In this message, we discover who they might be and how to keep away from them.

This Powerpoint presentation goes along with the Audio congregational meeting which is posted above. If you desire, download this and then advance the slides as the presentation goes along.

Also, here is the response form that we would like you to submit as soon as you can. If you want to send it to us, email it back to:

mikeinsac@sbcglobal.net

For downloading these forms, right click on the link and click "save link as" and it will begin downloading.

You can also bring it one of the next two Sundays. Please do not sign it. We want these forms to have the strength of anonymity.

Our lives would be so much easier if people were not involved in them. Whether it is pastoring, psychiatry, teaching or working in an office, any job would be a piece of cake if people weren't central to what we have to do. In this message, we explore how others put obstacles in our way, and how we can act in the opposite spirit to not only hurdle the obstacles but represent God well in the process.

Legalism is not a love or rules or a critical spirit or a cultural habit. There is a much different answer completely that may surprise you. When you see what the real reason behind legalism is, you'll realize that any of us can enter into it.

Just as there are physical senses which keep us in touch with the physical realm, so too are there spiritual senses which help us identify spiritual things and truths. There is a spiritual sense of smell and even the person who doesn't believe in God has it. In this message, we will look at how a Christian smells like to another Christian and to those who don't believe. The real point of this is seeing what we need to do about the noxious fumes that emanate from us to others.

We tend to minimize life to sets of rules to guide us. But how do we determine the rules about relationships? If we were thorough, we would need about 1,000 chapters in the "Book of Love"...and that is just to cover Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. This message looks at how to avoid the problems that the Enemy causes in relationships, and what God wants to do to help us avoid them.

80% of the people in this country use Avoidance as their primary means of dealing with conflict. This may be because they have rarely seen conflict done properly. This message contains two key ingredients from the teachings in 2 Corinthians that show us how conflict not only can be done effectively but can actually make good relationships great

Do you know of someone who can't solve their problem...it is just too much? That is the point where not only they, but all of their friends, despair. But in this message, we will see how several friends found a way, and thereby set us an example of how to get a friend in need into a place where they can get major help

Are you overworked? At the same time, are you bored? They are actually flip sides of the same coin. In this message, we will see someone who comes up with an idea that is heroic and majestic...and downright simple.

If there is a perfect plan for each of our lives, it is unlikely most of us have walked it completely. But we try. However, some seem to lose the path completely. The hero we talk about in this message is skilled at helping others find that path again.

Often, we learn a principle by seeing the opposite in action. In this encounter between Jesus and some fuzzy thinkers, the clear differentiation between Jesus the Hero and all non-heroes is clear.

We are taught often that risk-taking is only for venture-capitalists or fools. But the Bible is full of examples of people who found risk-taking (when properly managed) is much more fulfilling and rewarding than hiding behind propriety.

People often confuse small with insignificant. But not this kind of hero. This hero is looking for those tiny moments and unforeseen opportunities that have the potential to explode once they hit the tipping point. This hero is often the one who tips it over into real importance.

It isn't easy to come to the defense of someone who is innocent. You may end up getting hurt. But can anyone imagine defending someone who is guilty and knowing that they won't credit you anything for it. This is what one hero did...and it is the right thing to do sometimes.

This is the training audio for the Gateway Fellowship Ushers and Greeters Ministry. After listening to this, email me at my main email and let me know you have finished it. Listen as many times as you need to.

This is the first message in a new Sermon Series during the summer titled "Ordinary Heroes". In this first message, we will explore the life of Lydia, a wealthy woman who uses her influence to begin something that very few others would have dreamed of.

If you could change the place you love - your home, church, town, business, school, nation - would you? Is there a way to pray that is much more effective than what we normally do? (i.e. Throw the prayers up against the wall to see which ones stick). This final message in the series "The Parallel Universe" focuses on how Daniel's prayer touched the spirit realm and then touched his world, and the place he loved, for the better.

Sanity is not primarily a mental condition as much as it is spiritual. This is part of the series on "The Parallel Universe" from the Book of Daniel. In this message we encounter someone who loses their mind and gains it back. Why he did each of these is the point of teaching and life we will explore in detail.

Our job can seem unfair; our church may seem unfair; our families certainly seem unfair at times. Daniel was a man who faced a lifetime of service in a job he never wanted, in a place he abhored living in, with a people he felt alien to. But he did his job with excellence and becomes the shining example for all of us how to win in the rat race of life.

The spirit realm and the physical realm are both real and parallel to one another, in the sense that they both affect many parts of our lives. One very real area that the spirit realm differs is that it dwells outside the normal rules of time and space. Because of this, God is able to give us glimpses into the future to ready us for the way we live in the present.

With so much going on most Christians don't rest very well.  And yet God has called us to rest in him.  In this sermon you can gain some insight into the problem of unrest and the solution God offers you.  Thousands of years ago God reserved his rest for you.  Find out what that means and how to enter that rest!  Message given by Rick Gall at Gateway.

When asked, very few people consider themselves to be leaders. But from experience, we find there are several times each week when our actions and decisions affect the lives of so many other people. At the very least, we lead in what we decide and what we do. From there, our leadership abilities and responsibilities increase. In this message, we contrast the leadership styles of Caiaphas and Jesus and see a simple truth: the alternative leadership style works better.

To most peace activists, the definition of peace includes the idea of ending war. To take the Iraq war as an example, we might ask: Did they have peace before the war started? Have they had peace during the war? Is there peace after the war? So maybe peace is not contingent upon ending war. In this message, we will explore how the average person can have peace and what really gets in the way of having peace permanently.

For the majority of people, living a life of love either means becoming a "romeo" or a sex goddess...or being an idealistic dreamer who lives on the ideal plain. But the type of love God wants to give us as a tool is eminently practical and can be lived hour by hour. In fact, this message will show that this is the best way to live in love: Hour by hour.

This series of messages is all about adding new tools to our spiritual toolbelt. If we can learn to use them, the additional strength and power that flows out of our life will open up windows of opportunity and allow the flow of God to be constant through us.

Lie-based thinking is shattering the hopes and dreams of so many people. But God can thoroughly change that and can help us to see the difference the Truth makes. Living in the Truth is much more than just believing the right things in our head...it is settling old issues in our hearts.

The continuation of the idea of the first message with some more practical applications of the concept.

"Obey" is a word that doesn't even show up in wedding vows much any more. However that may rankle some, we have to realize that we have come to see obedience as equal to slavery. But what if obedience is the path to freedom? Come and see what that could mean.

At times we complain about our family, we try to avoid them and even set very necessary but difficult boundaries. Have you tried praying for them? Perhaps you have, but did it make any difference? We look at how to pray for loved ones in a way that will assure some radical changes and God-things will happen

Friend-focused prayer is also called Intercession by some people, but in this case, is intent upon seeing changes in those we care about and know. Sometimes that knowledge gets in the way and can hinder. We'll talk about how to overcome that to pray very effectively.

Everyone has seasons in their life when they feel like building something new into their life. How does that correspond to what God is doing with your life? How does God want to build the people of God? This message explores how God has always wanted to build up His people.

Is the Bible really a message from God, or is it a collection of writings of man about God. Yes...(what does he mean, yes? Isn't that confusing...I'm not sure either...I guess we'll have to listen to find out).

This is one of the oldest questions mankind has ever asked. If there was an answer that everyone would accept, we would have discovered it by now. In answering this one, we come to the place where maybe the question is not one question at all.

This question has haunted mankind forever. Good things happening to bad people and its converse side seem to suggest that there is no justice and therefore, no God of Justice. But there is another way of looking at this (you knew there would be, didn't you?).

These two concepts...God's Love and Hell...don't seem to reconcilable in the same universe. How can one co-exist with the other? Not only can they co-exist, but they actually must exist together if God is to be consistent with Himself.

Even for those who believe in healing (as we do), there are moments when you throw up your hands in despair and ask this question. Are there principles to follow in understanding this question? Yes, there are.

In this series of messages, we will take on the toughest questions posed by those who struggle to believe in God. This first one is the most honest of the bunch and the answer is simpler than most people realize.

It is when we give up completely that the fight has been lost. But there are seasons in our lives when it is difficult to hold on. This message focuses on how to stay away from the life-draining experience of despair.

Temptation is often viewed as all our fault or all the Devil's fault. But the truth is somewhere else...as usual. Come explore how to deal with these spiritual tests and always come out the Victor.

A great way to bring joy and thanksgiving is to dwell upon the good things that God is doing. But so much of life wants to point our attention the other direction. In this message we will explore how to accomplish the kind of thought life that will defeat the nihilism of our day.

The hardest spiritual warfare is the fight you can't see. The enemy's job is to convince you he isn't there and that you're just fighting yourself.

Much of what we consider to be spiritual warfare is something else entirely. In the same light, much that is spiritual warfare is called something else. In this message, we explore the difference between the two.

The Armor of God is often taken to be definitive things that God adds to our lives. But what if it isn't? What if the Armor of God is something we already possess and need to learn how to use?

In this message, we continue the series on Ephesians, but begin a new series which encompasses the basic types of spiritual warfare that every person has to overcome.

This message is part of a series of messages in Ephesians and encompasses the strength of ministry we can have when we worship together.