This is King Solomon’s conclusion to his investigation of life. He started out Ecclesiastes wondering what the point of all of life was, and we’ve gone on this journey with him, seeing all the things he explored, all the rocks he uncovered. He’s laid it all out for us; all of his wisdom, his experiences, his mistakes. He’s given us all the evidence and now here’s the verdict in verse 13: “When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity.” He’s found something that’s good and right and has purpose ..read more

Reading Scripture Together As Paul wrote his final words to Timothy, he told him that tough, difficult days were here and were coming for his young friend. In response to these difficult days, Paul says this to Timothy: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, s ..read more

Bless Ewa Project Recently our church was able to launch and complete a project we called the “Bless Ewa Project” where we were able to bless and encourage 100 essential workers in our community. Our hope and prayer is that God would continue to use us, and motivate other churches to aggressively be a blessing in their communities during this time. So we wanted to share a blueprint for how we completed this project start to finish in case other churches want to replicate it. If you’re reading this, please pray about possibly doing something similar with your church family!  The following ..read more

A Time Of Uncertainty The book of Esther opens with the King of Persia, King Ahasuerus, getting all party crazy, right? King Ahasuerus, the guy who ruled the greatest empire the world had ever seen, decides to throw a party a day for 180 days for these important people in his Kingdom. And after that, he throws a 7 day long party for everyone, like open invitation to just come, party, drink away. It seemed like a good time to be in this Kingdom, right? I’m sure many thought that he was an incredible ruler. Our king is the richest, strongest, most powerful king in history!  But what they d ..read more

The Peace You Can Have Right Now Peace is so delicate. The smallest thing can disrupt it, or eliminate it completely. A single word can shatter our peace on a visit to the doctor’s office. One day in the stock market can turn our peace upside down. A virus can test every fiber of our peace. And that’s why I’m thankful for Hebrews 13:20.  Look how it starts: “Now may the God of peace…” That’s the first massive, life altering truth we read about God in this verse. The God of the universe is a GOD OF PEACE. Man does that sound like good news, right? That God isn’t war hungry, blood thirsty ..read more

7 Ways To Stay Connected There are unique times, as you know. At Harbor West, we’re looking for ways to stay connected, both to God and to each other. Here are 7 helpful recommendations for staying connected during self-isolation.  Harbor Youth Group Our middle and high schoolers will still have the opportunity to meet up once a week over Zoom. They’ll spend time studying God’s Word and praying together, and generally just checking to see how each other are doing. Please send us an email if you’d like your middle or high schooler to jump in on this: CLICK HERE. Keiki Story Time Once a we ..read more

Suffering In Community James writes his short letter to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad. So his primary audience is Jews who’ve been scattered around the world because of the persecution that we see the book of Acts. They’d given their lives to Jesus, just like James, but now they’re refugees, trying to follow Jesus and figure out what life’s about now. And James is gonna tell these individual Christians how to follow Jesus and grow in their faith. BUT everything he’s gonna tell them will need to be lived out in community with other people. James is telling them all thr ..read more

We’re All Influencers Titus is just a tiny letter that a guy named Paul wrote. In the Biblical timeline, Jesus had already lived and was crucified and was resurrected from the dead and then ascended to heaven alive but just before he did, he said this to his followers: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Go into all the world ..read more

A Life Of Influence We’re gonna look and see what the letter of Titus can teach us about being influencers. That’s a buzz word right now in our culture. And it’s a really freaky word in my opinion. Because it used to be that the influencers in the world were people like Albert Einstein, Copernicus, you know, people who gave their lives to learning and the discipline of discovery. Now you can be a 13 year old with a YouTube channel. Or like Boram, do you guys know who Boram is? Probably not, but there are 30 million people who follow her on YouTube. She just purchased an $11.5 million dol ..read more

The Key To All Of Life Have you ever looked back and realized that some of the things you thought existed weren’t really even a part of the world? Like, as a really little kid I thought that I’d be interacting with farm animals far more than I am these days. Our 1 year old knows every sound that every farm animal makes, she thinks that all of existence is about telling bigger people what sound a sheep makes. She’s gonna be very disappointed to realize that there won’t be many sheep in her life. Or like quicksand. I thought quicksand would be a massive part of life. It was on every show I ..read more