“God opened the door”… or did He?

We’ve all said things that sound spiritual: “I felt peace about it,” “I love Jesus, just not the church,” or the ever-popular “believe in yourself.” But what if Jesus Himself came to challenge those exact phrases?

On the night before His death, Jesus taught truths that flipped every feel-good cliché upside down. In this message from the Upper Room, we unpack three modern Christian myths exposed by Jesus’ Last Supper teachings, about glory in pain, real love for the church, and our desperate need for grace.

At the Last Supper, Jesus flips everything upside down—power through weakness, love in the face of betrayal, holiness offered to the unclean. He washes feet, exposes sin, and offers His Spirit to those who will receive Him. If you’ve ever felt hurt by the church, battled hidden sin, or wondered how God responds to failure, this moment shows it all: Jesus stoops low to lift us up.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, it ignited a firestorm—one so threatening to the religious elite that they plotted not only to kill Jesus but also Lazarus, the living proof of His power. Their hatred exposed the irrational blindness of sin, echoing history's darkest attempts to silence God's people. Yet Jesus wasn’t just a threat—He was a magnet. As He entered Jerusalem, crowds greeted Him like a king, waving palm branches and quoting prophecy. But Jesus defied expectations—riding a donkey, not a warhorse—offering peace, not politics. He came not to coach us up but to carry us out of death. And His name still draws the world and divides it, proving that the Lamb of God is the most powerful, controversial figure to ever walk the earth.

Imagine you’re over at at some friends house talking. It’s a great time, you’re enjoying dinner when, they bring up a controversial subject. It’s one of those awkward things you can’t avoid picking a side. Your wife shoots you a look like, “What are we supposed to say?”  But you also know: if you speak up, everything changes. The tone. The friendship. Maybe it’s their strong opinion of some political situation, maybe it’s homeschooling versus public schooling, or perhaps most divisive of all: whether pineapple belongs on pizza… In these situations you can’t avoid taking a side. There’s no middle ground. This is what Jesus does.

A lot of us like to avoid conflict. The average person wants to just kind of get along. But have you ever wondered if we’re not fired up because there’s nothing in our life really worth fighting for?

Winston Churchill: "You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

If you’ve been living without something really worth taking a stand for is there not a subtle unrest in you?  Is there, under the surface, this quiet question: “Is this it?”