The Garden Church // Sunday Teachings

Teacher: Josh Wilson
Text: Psalm 122:1-4
In this sermon from Psalm 122, Pastor Josh makes a quiet but unsettling claim: faith is deeply personal, but it was never meant to be private. We've been trained to treat the real thing as whatever happens inside us—just me and God—and to leave community, ritual, and shared worship as optional extras. But the people of this psalm sing in the plural; they journey toward God together, and that is exactly how we get formed too. You cannot become who God is calling you to be on your own.

Teacher: Josh Wilson
Text: Psalm 139:1-6, 23-24
Psalm 139 claims that God sees and knows us completely—but is being fully seen good news, or a threat? In Josh's first sermon of the Psalms series, he holds together the tension of this psalm: that the God who searches us is the same God who delights in and treasures us. He's a loving Father rather than a hostile watcher. The invitation is to stop hiding and performing, and instead bring what's real to the God who already knows us and holds us as beloved.

Teacher: Josh Wilson
Text: Daniel 6:10–16
Pastor Josh wrapped up the Faithful in Babylon series with the story of Daniel in the lion's den. In this iconic tale, we see that small, faithful, resolute acts are what shake the foundations of empire — and the courage to do them in the moment is the fruit of a life already practiced in turning toward God, not a heroic decision in the moment of crisis. Daniel prayed "just as he had done before," and that's where this week's invitation lives: toward the small, ordinary acts of faithfulness we keep doing when the pressure is on.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek
Text: Daniel 5:13–30
In this sermon from Daniel 5, Mandi reads the fall of Belshazzar as more than a history lesson—it's a mirror. When Daniel refuses the king's offer of status, wealth, and influence, we see something the ego almost never admits: that what the world calls security has never been able to hold. From Eden to empire, the same script keeps running, and only Jesus breaks it.

Teacher: Josh Wilson
Text: Daniel 3:16–25
Empire's grip is rarely overt. It's the slow choreography of social pressure that pulls us out of integrity one step at a time. Drawing on Daniel 3, Pastor Josh offers in this sermon that one expression of faithfulness is the refusal to bow, even at a cost. We can trust that Jesus will meet us in the fire—but only after we've chosen to enter it.