Read-along
Chapter labels by Rewind AI · transcript shown verbatim. Tap any timestamp to start playing from that line — the line being spoken is highlighted as it goes.
Well, good morning, Echoes Church. How are we doing this Mother's Day? You look good out there. Hey, if you came with a mom or an aunt or a grandma or there's a lady in your row, turn to her and say, you look great today. Alright,
alright, we don't want to give we don't want to go to their heads, that's good, that's good, okay. Hey, I wanna start today by wishing my own mom a happy Mother's Day. This is my mom, Linda, and she is, man, she is a one of a kind mom. She loves Jesus more than any other person I've ever watched love Jesus.
She loves to care for people and is just so invested in living her life for Jesus and I'm just so thankful for her. She also happens to be happens to be a gangster rap fan. At one point, her favorite CD on repeat in her convertible with her top down was Nelly's Country Grammar,
and I realized that some of you might not have that on your playlist and that's okay, but maybe somewhere along the way you've heard even reference to the song, Hot in Here.
Well, that was my mom's favorite song if I was gonna have a new friend over and yes, even a few times a guy over for the first time, that was how she chose to welcome them into my house. So I
I'm just like, okay, mom, that's great. Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So anyways, hey, I realized some of you have met me before and some of you are like, hey, we don't even know you at all. And so I thought I'd take a few minutes here as we open and share a little bit about me. This is my family. I am married to an incredible man named Greg. He's been with, Mesa Fire for about fourteen years now. He's a captain,
and, I tell you, he is one incredible human. Just about every quality I'm so thankful our kids have came from that man. He is just amazing. He is the bald guy in the photo, which may or may not be a result of the four children in the photo, but those cuties we get the honor to parent are nicknamed the Crenado.
Our last name is Credel. When we go places, it's a lot like a tornado, so you put those together and that's how you get the Crenado. So let me introduce you to them. My oldest is Caleb. He's 14 and, he just recently found that he is enjoying golf, and he seems to have a natural talent for it much like his dad,
and, he's in a cool phase of life headed into his freshman year asking a lot of really fun questions about life and faith and navigating friendships, and I don't really like school, but I know it's important, and so we're just having some really awesome conversations with him.
My next son is Carter Mann, and he is 11 years old. He's gonna be a sixth grader. Think he's gonna be the big dog on campus at school, and he is my baseball kid. Now, I've often heard people talk about baseball and they say, can either watch baseball live
or I can watch it on TV if it's my favorite team. Other than that, it's too boring for me, not Mike Carter. My Carter could watch baseball from sun up to sundown. It does not matter who's playing, where they're playing, who they're playing against. He can watch baseball. He can walk to a random park and watch baseball, and one of the biggest things we're teaching Carter right now is that who we are off the field is far more important than anything we can do on the field.
And then God has blessed us with two amazing daughters. That is our Ella Marie. She is eight, almost nine. Yes. She's almost as tall as her brothers, and she is athletically
gifted like, oh my goodness, everything she does, she is good at. And so she hasn't quite figured out, like, what her thing is, but she tries them all. She's great at all of them. Right now, she's into gymnastics. She's also my girl that loves to help at home and so she will organize, she will clean, and most recently,
she is making the lunches for me in the morning. Can I get an amen? Thank you, Ella. And then our little tiny tike bringing up the rear there, that's our Emery Joy and maybe you've seen her be bopping around this campus. It's kinda like she just like floats through the air everywhere she goes.
Her middle name is Joy and she just lives that way. Like, it just oozes out of her. Every day is literally the best day of her life. Like, the first time she saw a vacuum move was like, wow, this is so cool, and she just keeps our family smiling.
A little bit about me, I have basically been raised in Arizona, been here almost my whole life, but I was born in Philadelphia, so I do hold to my East Coast roots, means hang on, I'm a Philadelphia fan, but not the kind that throws snowballs at Santa.
As Daniel said, our family has been part of Echoes for a while now since the beginning, and at first, we just came over here prelaunch, and I said, hey, we're just gonna serve. We just wanna be a family that's involved invested here. And I came over as a lead on the volunteer team and told him, hey, I have no plans of going on staff, and within three months, I was on staff. And after that conversation said, hey, this is great. I'll work part time. I have no plans on being on staff full time. A few months later, you guessed it, here I am on staff full time. But the fact that I get to call this my job, I mean, really is God's kindness. You don't have to be here long
to know that there's something special happening in this place. But when Daniel asked me to preach as he shared, I felt two things at the same exact time. I was both honored and terrified.
I'm like, God, I'm the systems girl, I'm the operations girl, I'm the keep things moving girl, I am not the preach for services in one day kind of girl, right? Pray for me next service.
And so I prayed. I took about a week and I asked God, I said, is this what you want me to step into? And I asked my husband to pray and some friends to pray and our pastors to pray, and I'm just so thankful for the people in my life that remind me that where God has called me, he will certainly
carry me. And so after about a week, I said yes, and the coolest thing happened the next day. See, I'd preached before in high school ministry, and this has never happened to me, but the next morning, I wake up and God's just talking to me, and I'm like, oh, hey, cool God.
What's up? And then a few minutes later, I think I hear him again. And a few minutes later and the thoughts just keep coming, and so I grab my phone, I get a note open, and I just start writing down everything I hear. And after about three or four hours, I go back and I read this, and it was all a unified message.
And I feel like God handed it to me, and he said, just steward it well. And so that's my hope and my goal for us today, but before we dive into the word that God has for us, I wanna help anyone out who's not quite prepared for Mother's Day today and let you know what your mom really
wants. Okay? See, you think your mom wants a nice bouquet of flowers, but what she really wants is for everyone to take their stuff off her kitchen counter.
Right? Like, why is that the dumping zone? They see a wide open space and it's like, my stuff would look great there, and your husband's like, why do we have a counter if we can't have anything on it? I'm like, I don't know. Don't ask. You just can't. It needs to be clear. Right?
Maybe you think your mom wants a box of chocolate, but what she really wants is to drink a cup of coffee or tea or an energy drink in silence.
Right? Like, that has to happen at 5AM for me or it doesn't happen at all or maybe your mom is a jewelry mom or an accessory mom and you think she wants a purse, but what I'm here to tell you is she wants everybody to sit at the dinner table. First off, sit. Anybody with me on that? Let like, let's just sit
for thirty minutes. Can we like all breathe the same air in peace with nobody fighting for thirty minutes. Right? Or maybe you think your mom wants a spa day. What I'm here to tell you is she just wants somebody else to do the dishes. Okay? And she probably does want the spa day, so run out on your way home.
But since we're talking about houses, Echoes, I have a question for you. How's your house?
And maybe some of you are like, Pam, we barely made it to church today even though it's Mother's Day. The dishes are piled up because no one else is doing them. The counters are dirty. We haven't deep cleaned in months. Is this really what we're gonna talk about today? Yes, but we're gonna go deeper.
Like, how's your house really? And more specifically, how's the foundation of your house? Because today, we're gonna talk about the fact that if Jesus is not the foundation of what you are building your life on, you're in for trouble when the storms come.
And so the big idea that we're gonna unpack today is this, the storms of life are not optional. Sorry to tell you that's the hard reality for us today, church. The storms of life are not optional, but the collapse, it most certainly is. And I don't know what you walked in with today. Maybe it's a health diagnosis,
maybe it's a marriage that's barely hanging on, maybe you feel like your storm isn't nearly as big as the other storms happening around you. I'm here to tell you that God wants to meet you in it because the storms of life are not optional, but the collapse most certainly is.
Today, we're gonna look at a portion of scripture that's gonna end four hundred years of silence. The old testament ended and God had a redemptive promise for his people and then nothing for four hundred years. You think you've been praying your prayers for a while and then Jesus emerges
in Matthew five through seven and he preaches his first public word, the sermon on the mount, and he begins and he is reorienting us around a whole new way to live. He's giving us an entirely new way to humans. See, the people sitting in that room, they would have known do not murder
and Jesus says, if you even have judgment, if you even have anger in your heart, you're subject to judgment. The people in the room would have known that adultery is a sin and he turns up the temperature and he says, if you even look at someone with lust in your eyes, you've committed sin in your heart.
And he would go on to say things like, love your neighbors, pray for your enemies. Not pray about them, but like genuinely pray for them and to treat others the way that we want to be treated. A reminder that we shouldn't store up our treasures here on earth because they're all gonna fade away.
And then he starts to close out his message and he's talking about these two roads. There's a wide road and a narrow road and it's a message all on its own, but quickly, the wide road is the world's road.
And many people are gonna walk that road and that road is going lead to destruction, but there's this narrow road and Jesus says, walk it, walk it, that's my road and it leads to eternal life. And then he ends the sermon on the mount where we're gonna be today. In Matthew seven
beginning in verse 24, he says, anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise. Like a person who builds a house on solid rock though the rains come in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse because it's built on bedrock.
But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey is foolish. Like a person who builds a house on sand, and when the rains come, and the floods come, and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash. Two builders, two houses, two wildly different outcomes.
And from the outside, they look the same, same structures, same effort, same materials, but underneath, completely different foundations. And here's what's wild, the scriptures don't tell us that one person heard the word of God
and one person didn't hear the word of God. No, the scriptures tell us that they both showed up, they both heard the word, they both had access to the truth. So, what was so different about the two builders? The key is in verse 24. Go back. It says, anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise.
Like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Other translations say it this way, who hears these words and puts them into practice, or who hears these words of mine and does them. The difference wasn't who heard Jesus, the difference was what they did with what they heard.
And this is where it gets real for us because we can all sit in a room like this. We can hear truth. We can have access to a saving faith in Jesus. We can even agree with what Jesus is saying, but Jesus isn't impressed with what we know or that we've heard. He's looking at what we do with what we've heard.
Jesus says it's the builder who follows him, who does what he asks, is the one that is wise. See, our listening is not enough. Wisdom is not in hearing the word of God, wisdom is in doing the word of God. And if we're honest, for many of us, it's not like we reject Jesus, it's more of just this like passive agreement with him.
You see, we can still like truth and ignore it. We can still show up every Sunday to church and be building our house on sand.
Everything that we do, every decision that we make, we are laying bricks.
We are building something. It's not a matter of if we are building, it's a matter of what we're building. And this is where we tend to get it backwards, especially in this cultural moment where so much seems to be about how things look and we're real focused on finishes and God, God is focused on foundations.
We are a people of finishes, we like how it looks on the outside, we like the aesthetic, how does it feel, but God's saying no, how's the foundation?
See our family, we just recently bought a home and we walked in to see it for the first time and oh my goodness, I was taken back, but oh, like, I love the kitchen, I love the counters, there's nothing on them right now. The faucet, the layout, I could envision my family there, I knew what projects we would do.
I could envision our family sitting at the dining table that we still don't have two months later. It's okay. We'll get there. But do you know what I didn't ask? Not once. How's the foundation of this house? Like, how is it underneath what I can see? The part that's hidden, the part that nobody sees, but it's what everything
is built on. Because friends, it doesn't matter how beautiful that house is, if the foundation is shaky, it's coming down. And if your life is built on anything other than Jesus, perhaps it's a reputation or it's money or it's stability. If your life is built on anything other than Jesus, you will fall when the storm comes.
And Jesus is making something really clear to us today. The storm is coming.
Here's what he says in James one, when trials come, not if. In John 16, he says, in this world, you will have trouble. So this matters to each and every one of us in this room because the storms come and often we are so disoriented. They are just like they just shake us to our core. Whether it is the diagnosis or the business
that implodes or the kid that walks away from not only their faith, but their family, and you don't know if you're gonna see them today. Or maybe it's the fact that your marriage is barely hanging on today. If our life is not built on Jesus, when those things happen, collapse will come. Researchers
say that sixty to seventy percent of late teens and early twenties walk away from their faith. And when they asked them why, one of the most consistent things they said was this, faith didn't hold up when life got hard. Faith didn't hold up when life got hard. The foundation
wasn't secure, so when something happens that starts to shake my world, I'm just gonna walk away because that Jesus thing didn't work. God's not for me. Faith isn't real And they walk away. And so this matters for all of us because the storms of life, they're going to reveal what we have built our life on. Was it Jesus
or something else? And it could be a good something else, but they make terrible foundations. The only one that will last is Jesus. And let me be clear about something today. This is not about, hey, we are doing things for God to earn salvation. No, salvation comes from Jesus and Jesus alone. We are saved by faith
through Jesus alone.
But that's not all God wants to do in your life. He doesn't just want to save you, he wants you to now join him on mission in this world. Take a look at what Ephesians two says, God saved you by his grace when you believed, and you can't take credit for this. It is a gift from God. Salvation
is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it, for we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Did you catch it? Did you catch it? Paul is reminding us that only a faith in Jesus can save us and
we are called to do good works. The order here matters a ton. We cannot earn this salvation, but a saving faith will produce a faith that does good works. So what does it look like? How do I build my life on this firm foundation that is Jesus? I've got three things for us today, church. First,
we must know God's word. We have to. We have to know what truth is because there is a wide road out there and it leads to destruction. And when the storms come, if you are walking the right wide road, you don't have a foundation of truth to stand up against the storm. So we must know God's word. Colossians
two six says it this way, and now just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down deep into him and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught and you will overflow with thankfulness.
And, don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that comes from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world rather than from Christ. We need truth,
and this can't be the version of truth that it's like you have truth, and she has truth, and he has truth, and I have truth, and we all have truth. No, there is one source of truth, and that is God's word. And we gotta know it if we wanna stand against the storms of this life. The
second way that we stand on the firm foundation that is Jesus is we have to live God's way. We have to know his word and we've got to live his way. God has told us that there is a way to live and I'm here to tell you that if you are part of this faith community, you need a smaller community around you.
When those storms come, we need people in our corners. We need people walking with us when the storms of life come. Hebrews 10 says it this way, let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works, and let us not neglect meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another especially now
that the day of his return is drawing near. Here at Echoes Church, one of the ways we live God's way is that we get into a small group called Cruz, and this is where life change happens.
If you're only coming here on Sunday and you're walking out these doors and nothing else is happening the other six days of the week, you won't experience the life change God wants to have for you. And so you need a group of people around you who will encourage you, who will support you,
who will come alongside and raise your family up when the storm does come. If you're not in a crew, man, you gotta get a group of people around you. The second way that we live God's way is that we get on mission with what God is doing. We serve his kingdom. We
gotta get off the sidelines and we gotta start participating in the mission that God has called us to. This small but mighty team cannot make Echoes Church run without the volunteers that show up and serve of their time each and every week.
To live God's way, you gotta be in community, you gotta be on mission with him serving God's people, and you gotta be trusting him with your resources. How you spend your time, how you spend your money, those are two greatest indicators of what is most important to you. And so how are you investing your time?
Because if you wanna build your life on the firm foundation, you have to know God's word, you have to live God's way, and then the third one is you gotta do what God says to do. We must do what God says to do. It is that simple and it is that hard. James one twenty two says this,
but don't just listen to God's word, you must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourself, for if you listen to the word and don't obey it, it's like glancing at your face in the mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.
But, if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. We don't need to hear another sermon at ghost church, we just need to take the last thing that God told us to do and do it.
See, our delayed disobey our delayed obedience is actually disobedience in disguise. The thing that's on your heart, the thing that keeps coming up in your marriage, the thing that you keep wrestling with with your kids might just be the thing that God is asking you to step into into obedience and your delayed obedience
is disobedience. And so what do we do? It's that simple and it's that hard to do what God says to do. It means forgiving when we wanna hold a grudge.
It means we're not gonna keep record of the wrongs of our family members. It means when that person shows up to family dinner tonight for Mother's Day that is so hard to love in our family, we're gonna welcome them in.
It means we're gonna care about the things that God cares about like widows and orphans and taking care of each other and poor and marginalized. Those matter a ton to God. And then, we're gonna do business with the sin in our own life. God just doesn't want you to come here and clean yourself up on the outside.
He wants to get to the deeper heart motive. What's underneath there? That's what needs healing. That's what needs to be rebuilt. That's what needs a firm foundation. So let me ask you, Echoes Church, how's your house? How's your house? What are you building on today? Are you building on Jesus or has something else crept in?
Maybe at some point you accepted Jesus and you show up to church, but you're realizing today that your foundation is shaky because you've built around him, you've invited him to family dinner, you pray he's even on your playlist, but you haven't actually built your life on him.
Have you just been hearing his word or are you obeying it? What are those places in your life where you know God is calling you to do something, not do something, change something, and you haven't done it? And finally, what I think is very telling for each and every one of us is what did the last storm in your life
reveal about your foundation? Maybe it's time to go back and process. Oh, I don't wanna go back there. Yeah. But maybe we need to because maybe we need to see what happened the last time the storm came so that we can do things differently this time.
Because if we're building our lives on anything other than Jesus, that storm, when it comes, so will the collapse. And I know, Echoes Church, that the collapse is optional because I've seen it in my own life.
You see, my mom grew up very sick. That photo of her there on the right was taken the same day as the photo you saw earlier when she had hair. She spent her whole life at ERs and hospitals, it was just part of our daily rhythm and we knew as a family our family could change in an instant.
I'll never forget when I was 10 years old, she had a surgery that was so uncertain and she had made a list for my dad. Here's who will help. Here's how I want you to raise the kids. Here's what I want it to look like when I'm gone. Oh, please make sure that they stay rooted.
And by God's grace, she survived that surgery, but I knew from an early age just how fragile this life is. But I also knew something else. I knew that there was a faith so strong and a foundation so secure that it did not matter what diagnosis came, what sickness came, how many times she was in the hospital, she would stand.
You see, most of the time you never even knew she was sick. Of course, the signs were there, she would proudly walk around having a no hair day, but emotionally, spiritually, you would never know her whole life was being poured out for other people when she herself needed the care. And I was so inspired and I was so angry.
How can God be so good and everything that happens to you, mom, is so bad? How can he be so loving and you just be so sick? And every time, she would gently, lovingly, and courageously point me back to the fact that there is a faith built on a foundation that is so strong that it does not matter what storms come in our lives,
we can stand against them. And now, I stand ten years this year since I've seen that face. And I believe her, and I believe God. And I know if it's true for me, Echoes, it's true for you too, that there is a hope that this world cannot shake.
We can build our lives on a foundation that is so strong that when the storms come and we have people around us and we know the truth of God's word, we can stand. And that just may be the greatest testimony of your life because the world is desperate for a hope that can save. So let's just not build our lives around Jesus.
Let's build our lives on him. I love you at Ghost Church. Let me pray for you. God, we just thank you for your word, that your word speaks every time we open it, God. We just thank you that you give us a way, a way to walk this earth with hope
and with faith and with a foundation that can stand against the storms of life, God, because we know they're inevitable. But thank you for Jesus. Because of him, we have a way to walk the storms of life and stand. Thank you for that. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.