We live in a world dominated by a humanistic worldview.

That means we think we can perform all of life's tasks and meet all of life's needs on our own, without any sort of divine oversight. The ultimate outcome of humanism is that it leads to belief in humanity itself being God. Humans try to control all cultural development and rationalize their reasons for doing so.

Think about it: We replace God with technology, medicine, government, economics, or any other thing that helps us feel we have control. Many of us don't even realize we're living under humanism, assuming it's a "them" problem when we are not truly trusting God as our creator and sustainer. But scripture tells us in Romans 8 that the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. When we choose to be our own governors and gods our choice leads to death, both physically and spiritually.

But there is good news! If we stop ruling our lives and depend on the savior and rescuer of our souls, Jesus Christ, we will trade death for life. Anxiety is traded for peace. Curses are traded for promises. This is an example of bearing the image of Christ. As followers of Jesus, we identify with God's Spirit rather than the spirit of this broken world.

Check out this heavy and much-needed message from Lead Pastor Rich Ryfun as he kicks off our series "You Bear the Image."

In our existence, we always have an unquenchable thirst for more.

Something deep within us knows we cannot be satisfied by anything outside of Jesus. The greatest accomplishments bring temporary relief from our insatiable desire for more. Our highest highs and lowest lows cannot define our life as Jesus can.

In John 11, Jesus reveals to his friend Martha that he has come to bring eternal life to us. When she assumes he means eternal life after death in a future resurrection, Jesus corrects her by explaining that Jesus brings true life to us now as we place our faith in him. Jesus proves this by bringing Martha's brother Lazarus back from the dead. Though everyone will die physically some day, their life is made whole and their hearts are fulfilled by the spiritual life that comes from knowing and worshiping Jesus.

We are brought to life in every sense of the word through the love and work of Jesus. The word "life" finds its ultimate definition in the ministry of Jesus in our lives. That's why he calls himself "the resurrection and the life."

Listen to the entire Easter message from Pastor Rich on what it means to go from death to life in Jesus!

Sometimes we get so focused on the dead, that we don't see life when it's right in front of us.

Israel thought Jesus was going to save them from Rome. The reality was that Jesus came to save all of humankind from sin and death, including any Roman leader who would put their faith in Him. But Israel didn't recognize that Jesus came to bring life. They were focused on the death of their current circumstances and wanted to fix it by removing Rome as the dominant power over them. The apostle Paul says, "The mind that is set on the flesh is death, but the mind that is governed by the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:6).

A man named Jairus experienced his own focus-on-death moment. When his daughter was near death, he beckoned Jesus to come and heal her, but on the way to Jairus' house a woman with a physical healing need stops Jesus' progress because she needs a miracle, and Jairus' daughter dies before Jesus can arrive. Everyone at Jairus' house loses hope. They are focused on death, but Jesus tells them that they need only to have faith.

Hosanna means "Save Us." Jesus came to save us by bringing us eternal life with him, but we need to get our focus off of the death in our circumstances and onto the life offered by Jesus!

The word of God is a light that penetrates the darkness.

How can you tell the difference between the truth and a lie? The answer is in the power of God's word. It separates truth from falsehood and pierces the darkness with its powerful light. As we begin to read and understand God's word and live our lives according to it, we become lights ourselves, transformed into beams that separate truth from falsehood. We become lights that pierce through the darkness, and Jesus warns us in the gospel of Matthew not to take a light and hide it: We have to let ourselves shine in the darkness, and as we shine, darkness cannot overcome us! The gospel of John tells us that the light of Jesus shines in the darkness, and the darkness fails to overcome it.

Darkness will try to overtake you. It will attempt to drown you in fear and falsehood, but God's word will always expose the darkness and guide your path. The world needs your light! So carry the truth of God's word close to your heart and let it beam forth out of everything you say and do. It will transform communities and set people free from darkness!

We are not called to hoard the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God has called us to walk into dark places in this world and shine the light of God's forgiveness and love. We have the hope of the world in our hearts, and the worst thing we can do is keep that hope to ourselves. As the world becomes increasingly dark and hopeless, it's easy to look on with frustration and disgust and throw up our hands, condemning everyone. But God does not respond that way: He sees those trapped in darkness and desires for them to hear the truth and be led into the light. People are not God's enemy, the devil, and his demons are.

The Bible tells us in Luke 19:10 that Jesus that the reason he came to earth was to "seek and save the lost." That means Jesus does not look at hopeless people trapped in darkness with contempt: He looks at them with hope and eagerness, because they are the very people he came to save. Jesus has prepared for us a lifetime of being saved, healed, sanctified, and made whole, and God has tasked us to share this salvation with others fervently.

Listen to our Lead Pastor Rich Ryfun expound on one the importance of sharing God as we continue in this sermon series based on our 3 purposes as a church!

The gospel of Jesus is life to those who need it.

Humans have choices. We can choose life or choose death. God in his great sovereignty has given us the ability of free will. You can choose to do good or choose to do evil. Deuteronomy chapter 30 tells us that God places before us choices of life and death, blessing and cursing. This is very closely tied to the ancient story of Adam and Eve, where God gives them the ability to choose life from the tree of life or choose death from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Think about how incredible this is! God allows us to be in a relationship with Him, the infinite and all-powerful God of the universe wants to be in a relationship with US! This instinctively means that we have a choice: We can choose to be in that relationship with God or we can walk away from it, acting within our God-given free world. Ever since Adam and Eve stepped away from their relationship with God by choosing evil, mankind has been dealing with the consequences of sin and death. But the gospel of Jesus, who takes that sin away, brings life to us, and we need it!

Check out this powerfully deep message from Lead Pastor Rich Ryfun on the significance how important it is to share the reality of the gospel.

Did you know that 70% of America's population claims to believe in God, and identifies as some sort of Christian in faith? In reality though, the number of people who claim to understand what it means to personally Know God is significantly smaller. Unfortunately, so many people misunderstand what it means to be a Christian: They don't know the joy and fulfillment of personally knowing God and having a real relationship with Him.

Perhaps you are a person who believes in God but haven't been experiencing the joy of truly knowing God. Perhaps you grew up around religion but never went deeper. Perhaps you spent years going to church, and even serving in ministries, but the church left you burned and hurt, wishing you hadn't opened yourself up to those moments of vulnerability.

Whatever your situation, God wants you to truly KNOW Him. People make mistakes, and our fallen, broken world can scar us, but none of these things should stop us from living in complete fullness and joy in knowing our God, our Creator, our Savior and Friend.

Watch this talk as Pastor Rich teaches us how to continue seeking a real relationship with a God Who fully knows us in a world that tries to break us.

In God's kingdom, you play an integral role that cannot be replaced.

The Apostle Paul uses the analogy of a human body with many parts to explain how God wants all of us to work together in Christ. No part of the body can claim it is more important than any other part, because each body part fulfills a unique function for the whole body. The eye cannot claim superiority to the ear. The hand cannot claim it does not need the foot. Every part participates for the greater good of the holistic body.

Do you know where your purpose is in God's body, which is the Church? Do you know how God has called you to meet the needs of others in the body in a way that only you can? God specifically designed you to make a difference in a way that is unique to His design for you. If you haven't discovered who you are and how God designed you, it's time to explore His plans and purposes for you and pursue them! If you know how God has designed you but you haven't been working together with the body of Christ, what are you waiting for?!

Check out this highly important and powerfully true message from Pastor Rich on the Body of Christ!

How much FOMO do you have? What are you most afraid of missing out on? We all experience FOMO at some point: We don't want to miss out on something spectacular. But have you asked yourself what God is most concerned about you missing out on?

Aside from heaven, the Bible actually tells us what God most wants us to not miss out on: It's the power and influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 tells us that no one has comprehended the deepest things of God, but now God has revealed such things by His Spirit. All of the greatest plans, truths, purposes, and adventures that God has in store for us are revealed in our lives by the Holy Spirit of God.

The Bible also tells us that our bodies are the new temple of the Holy Spirit, and that means our body and soul is sacred ground where the Holy Spirit can dwell, flow, and operate through our lives.

Check out this powerful message from Lead Pastor Rich Ryfun as he wraps up our sermon series "Flourish" by talking about thriving in the Spirit.

Happy New Year!

Ever wondered what God would tell you if you could just sit Him down and ask Him exactly what He wants you to do with this next year? Well, we're not going to tell you the answer to that, because we don't know. However, God has a powerful vision for this house, and we're excited to share with you everything God has put on Believers Chapel's heart for this ambitious upcoming year. Join us a Pastor Rich reflects on the miracles God accomplished through us over 2022, and how we are stepping into greater things by faith as we step into 2023.

Christ came as the perfect image of God; a beautiful picture of who are were designed to be.

The Bible tells us that we were created in the image of God. God's goodness is imprinted in our DNA. But our sin has made it so we cannot live up to this perfect design. Something within us always ends up distorted, imperfect, or broken. It's as if God created us as a brilliant white canvas on which we have the joy of painting our lives, but we make a mess of our art no matter how much we try to get it right. We can't remove the splotches of mistakes on our canvas.

But this is why Christ came to earth. God is the author. The original, true artist. Only God can create in us a new canvas, and model perfectly for us how to paint our lives with the beauty God intended for us.

Jesus is the perfect image of God, who became human and lived among us, a bunch of broken images and poor reflections of God. Jesus took upon himself all of our brokenness and gave to us all of his obedience and holiness.

Listen to Lead Pastor Rich's entire message on "God With Us as the son of God" as he continues our Christmas sermon series "Immanuel: God With Us!"

God promises to meet your needs when you prioritize Him.

Scripture is full of promises from God for us. But one promise we struggle with all too often is God's promise to meet our needs when we live generously. Do we have the ability to give to God without fear of having enough ourselves? In 2 Corinthians 9, the apostle Paul encourages us to share our resources in spreading God's kingdom and meeting the needs of others. God EXPECTS us to hold a posture of generosity. When we do, God promises to provide for us whatever we need and provide it abundantly. There is no dollar amount or quota in acts of kindness that God expects. Instead, God compels us to constantly meet the needs of others, to give, to serve, to share, and to love generously. Do not worry about having enough, because God promises to care for you in every way you need to be cared for.

Check out this compelling message on generosity from Pastor Rich as he shares how God has provided for us as a church over the years, and how our church has provided for so many others thanks to God's faithfulness.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Some tastes are acquired tastes. You don't understand how wonderful something is until you've experienced it for yourself. In Psalm 34:8, David writes, "taste and see that the Lord is good." David wanted to convince everyone who would one day read his words that they should experience the goodness of God for themselves, that they could understand how everything else in the world pales in comparison to the goodness of God. David wrote these words right after he barely slipped away from death: King Saul was chasing David in hopes of murdering him. But David saw his deliverance as evidence of the incredible goodness of God.

Many of us have experienced the goodness of God in our own deliverance. We've seen God save our marriage, deliver us from drugs, heal our broken bodies, and provide for us in times of destitution. David wants us to recognize how God continues to rescue, save, and provide for us until we will spend eternity with Him, enjoying our ultimate deliverance and salvation in His presence. True goodness comes from God, and there is nothing else like God's goodness. Taste and see for yourself!

Listen to the entire message from Pastor Rich on the goodness of God.

The presence of God brings dead things back to life.

Why do we find excuses to keep God at a distance and only spend marginal amounts of time with Him then? Ezekiel 47 depicts a world where God's presence flows like a river, spilling into salt water and turning it fresh. Animals, plants, and fish will thrive by this river, because God is a God Who brings life to desolate places. But when it comes to living fully alive, we're struggling, and it's because we're not living in the presence of God, we're living in our own world with our own strength and spending time everywhere else imaginable but in His presence. We're living half-lives without the fullness and fulfillment of God's presence.

Think of your own daily routine: How much time are you spending with God daily? Who gets your attention when your day starts? Who gets your attention when it ends? Where does God sit in your priority list? Who is really the closest person in your life?

Today is the day you reorient your life around God, not the other way around.

Check out this message from Pastor Rich today on the significance of spending time in the presence of God.

God wants to flood your life with His presence.

God's presence brings hope, healing, provision, and fulfillment. Everything we need and everything we want becomes truly evident in God's presence. Being with God in relationship makes us whole. We run dry when we try to force fulfillment without God being our sole source of supply. God's presence is like a river that flows, carrying every source of goodness and joy within it. When the river of God's presence flows through our lives, we are completely satisfied by it in every way. But when we depart from God and distance ourselves from Him, everything that flows from the river of His presence flows around us, and we miss out on all He has for us. Jesus tells us in John 15 that he is the vine and we are the branches, and when we remain in Him, we will bear good fruit.

Your life will overflow with all of God's goodness the more you remain in Him. God wants you to be overflowing with His goodness. He doesn't desire us to be starving for hope and purpose and provision. God's heart is to satisfy you in a relationship with Him and to meet every need you have as a result of that relationship.

Check out this much-needed message from Pastor Rich as he continues our series on Thought Pollution!

You might think you can handle carrying the opinions and values of society around you while also prioritizing God's purpose for your life, but in the end, God gets pushed aside, and life takes over.

It's a lie that we can live up to the world's expectations and still live close to the heart of God, following Jesus. There is no real relationship between the world's priorities and God's. The apostle Paul puts it this way, "What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? Come out from them and be separate says the Lord. Let us purify ourselves."

God created us to be perfectly content and fulfilled by being with Him constantly. We find ourselves bombarded with stress, anxiety, and hopeless expectations as soon as we try to compromise our proximity to God with proximity to the values of this world. It's not just busyness, it's thought pollution: We cannot live immersed in the world and continue to live close to the heart of God.

Check out this awesome message from Pastor Rich as he continues our series "Thought Pollution!"

As human beings in the 21st century, we are constantly bombarded with ideas, suggestions, political narratives, moral virtues, and entertainment. Our brains weren't designed to compound the amount of information we dive through every day. Yet here we are, trying to keep up with trends, ideas, and media. At some point, we're going to find our life empty and hollow, despite being bombarded with information. We are told by God to guard our hearts, for it is the wellspring of life.

We can try to void being too busy, but the danger is more than simply avoiding busyness: The danger lies in trying to keep all of the world's expectations and information in our heart while still keeping God the most important thing in our lives. Thought pollution is when our thoughts appear to be on the right track but are pressed by competing ideas and values of the world today.

We all like to hold on to things in this life. We seek treasures and pleasures, health and wealth, and everything else that pines for our attention. But Jesus warns us that giving ourselves away to Him is the only way to live.

In Mark chapter 8, Jesus tells his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

Jesus is asking us today to give our lives away to Him. If we try to hold on to our lives and live for ourselves, we will actually lose everything.

Jesus said these words as he was on his way to the cross, about to give his life away for us. Jesus was the perfect example for us of what it looks like to give our lives up for God, because Jesus obeyed His heavenly Father by doing the very same thing.

At the end of the day, every wordly pleasure we can wrap ourselves in will leave us empty and naked in this life, not contributing to anything we can take into eternity.

Check out this thought-provoking message from Pastor Rich as he wraps up our series, "Upside Down Kingdom."

What does it mean when Jesus says, "the first shall be last and the last shall be first?"

Jesus often made statements that seemed contradictory to how the world around us works. But Jesus understood something no one else did: The Kingdom of God operates in a manner completely different from this physical world. When Jesus' disciples get into an argument about which one of them is his greatest disciple, they try to undermine each other by asking Jesus to allow them to sit at his right hand in heaven someday. But Jesus claims that the greatest disciple is the one who serves in the most humble position. The person who is considered "least" in the world's eyes is the greatest in God's kingdom. Those who follow Jesus do not walk in the ways of this world anymore. They live by a set of principles established by heaven for eternity.

Check out this life-changing message on the realities of God's kingdom as Pastor Rich kicks off our new sermon series "Upside Down Kingdom."

We are a church that exists to see 3 things happen: To see people

1. Experience God

2. Know God

3. Share God

We experience God through worship experiences on the weekends and small gatherings like Crews throughout the week. We get to know God better through sound teaching, Bible study, academic education, and encounters with the Holy Spirit. We share God by proclaiming His love and salvation in our church, in our community, and in our world through several means, including organizations that preach across the globe and fight for social justice and human value.

Join us as Pastor Rich sits down with Pastors Phanuel and Presanna Robinson from our church in India, with Pastor Kason who oversees our gospel outreach strategies in Central New York, and with other local leaders and business owners, we partner with to further these 3 purposes for the kingdom and glory of God!