Every one of us is chasing something we'd call the good life. Full. Secure. Meaningful. Lasting. We may not use those words, but we're building toward it every day — and if you scratch beneath that vision, you'll find the same thing underneath it every time: ourselves at the center.

In this week's message from Mark 13:24–37, Pastor Rob closes out three weeks in one of the most challenging chapters in the Gospel of Mark — and arrives somewhere unexpectedly tender. Jesus has just walked his disciples through loss after loss: homes abandoned, the temple in ruins, a city scattered. And then, in the middle of all that collapse, he does something surprising. He doesn't merely warn them. He shows them himself — coming in glory so bright that, by comparison, the sun and moon go dim.

This isn't a science lesson or a weather forecast. It's an invitation. Jesus is telling a story meant to capture hearts, not just convey information.

If this message meets you in a season of chasing something that keeps disappointing you, share it with someone who might need to hear it too. And we'd love for you to bring whatever you're carrying with you this Sunday. We gather at 10:00 AM at the Daniel Island Recreation Center — 160 Fairbanks Drive, Charleston, SC.

Listen to the full sermon on Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts — search Point Hope Presbyterian Church. You can also find it on our website and YouTube channel.

Most of us have a plan for our lives. And most of us, at some point, have watched that plan quietly fall apart.

In this week's message from Mark 13:1–23, Pastor Rob continues through the Olivet Discourse — Jesus' longest teaching section in the Gospel of Mark — and arrives at something deeply personal. This is not a passage about predicting the future. It is a passage about what happens to us when the life we were counting on begins to collapse. And what we do in those moments says everything about where our hearts have actually been resting.

Takeaways to carry into your week:

• When pressure builds, notice what you run to first. That is where your heart has been resting.
• The lens you see through shapes what you believe is real. Is it his word — or the noise around you?
• False saviors do not just disappoint. They form us into people who need them more. Trust the one who heals the source.

If this message meets you in a season of pressure, share it with someone who might need it. And if you are carrying something heavy right now, we would love for you to bring it on Sunday. We gather at 10:00 AM at the Daniel Island Recreation Center — 160 Fairbanks Drive, Charleston, SC.

Listen to the full sermon on Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts — search Point Hope Presbyterian Church. You can also find it on our website and YouTube channel.

There is a quiet illusion most of us carry through daily life, the belief that if we plan carefully enough, invest wisely enough, and stay intentional enough, we can keep things stable. That the life we are building is mostly under our control.

Then something shakes.

In this week's message from Mark 13:1–13, Pastor Rob opens one of the most misunderstood passages in the Gospel of Mark, the Olivet Discourse, not as a roadmap for end-times speculation, but as something far more personal and far more urgent. Jesus, walking out of the temple with his disciples just after pointing to a widow who gave everything she had, turns their attention toward something they cannot yet see. The temple they are marveling at, all those massive stones and gleaming columns, will come down. Every stone thrown. Nothing left standing.

It is a conversation ender. And it is meant to be.

Because Jesus is not just talking about a building. He is talking about everything we quietly treat as permanent. Our plans. Our futures. The assumptions we carry that we have never even named. He is asking his disciples, and he is asking us: what are you actually building your life on?

There is a difference between knowing about someone and truly knowing them. It is the difference between reading a biography and sitting across the table from a friend. And according to Jesus, that difference is everything.

In this week's message from Mark 12:28–44, Pastor Rob Hamby opens in the tension of Jerusalem — where the religious experts of Jesus' day could recite the greatest commandment word for word and still be told, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Not far. But not in.

It is a quiet, unsettling phrase — and Rob doesn't let it pass too quickly. Because the scribes didn't miss the kingdom for lack of information. They missed it because somewhere along the way, they stopped seeking. They stopped asking. They assumed they had arrived, and in that assumption, they stopped growing close to the King himself.

This is a sermon that asks us to close the gap — not between our beliefs and our behavior, but between our knowledge of Jesus and our nearness to him. The community around us is not starving for more information. They are starving to be seen, heard, loved, and pursued. And if we know the King — if we truly know and love him — that is exactly what we will do.

Takeaways to carry into your week:

• Read Mark 12:28–44 and sit with the phrase "You are not far." Where does it land for you?
• Reflect honestly: Do I possess what I profess?
• Share this episode with someone who is quietly searching — someone who has all the right answers but isn't sure they've found the right King.

There's a question most of us rarely stop long enough to ask: What is most important? What is life actually for?

In this week's sermon from Mark 12:28–34, we meet a scribe who does something quietly remarkable — he walks through a crowd of religious leaders asking trap questions and political questions, and he asks the one that actually matters: "Which commandment is the most important of all?"

Jesus answers with the Shema, the ancient confession of faith from Deuteronomy 6, and with it, He reveals the true center around which all of human life was designed to orbit: wholehearted love for God that overflows into embodied love for neighbor.

But this sermon isn't just about identifying the right answer. It's about something much deeper — the honest confession that most of us have spent enormous energy building our lives around things that are real but not ultimate. We've taken secondary things and made them central. And in doing so, we've quietly lost our way.

"He is not God of the dead but of the living." — Mark 12:27

There's a question running beneath the surface of this Sunday's passage that's worth sitting with: Why did Jesus disrupt the religious establishment so completely and why does he so rarely disrupt us?

In Mark 12:13–27, the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees come at Jesus one after another — each group more sophisticated than the last, each convinced they can trap him with a clever question. About taxes. About marriage. About resurrection. And Jesus moves through every one of them with an ease that leaves them marveling and speechless.

But Pastor Rob turns the camera on us. Because the uncomfortable truth isn't that those religious leaders opposed Jesus, rather, how casual they were about it. How comfortable. And if we're honest, we're not so different. We've learned to give Jesus just enough space to comfort us without letting him close enough to disrupt us. We've built carefully curated spiritual lives where he stays in his lane, present but managed, near but safely contained.

This sermon names that pattern plainly and pastorally. And it calls us toward something more honest — a faith that makes room for a Jesus who won't stay in a box.

There’s a difference between knowing who God is and truly knowing Him.

In Mark 12, Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard to reveal something difficult but deeply important: we often take the gifts, opportunities, relationships, and lives God has entrusted to us and begin treating them as if they belong entirely to us.

At the center of this passage is a question of ownership, surrender, and trust. Who is truly at the center of our lives? Ourselves, or God?

This sermon reminds us that the human story has always wrestled with control. We want comfort, security, and self-direction, yet Jesus lovingly confronts the reality that life was never designed to revolve around us.

And still, in the middle of humanity’s rebellion, God sends His Son.

Not because we earned Him, but because of grace.

This week’s message invites us to reflect honestly on where our hearts resist surrender, where we try to carry control, and where God may be calling us back into deeper trust and stewardship.

As you move through this week, consider:

• What has God entrusted to me?
• Where am I struggling to trust Him fully?
• What would it look like to surrender control instead of protecting it?

Listen to the full sermon from Mark 12 on your favorite podcast platform or through Point Hope Presbyterian Church channels. If this message encouraged or challenged you, share it with someone who may need the reminder today.

Our lives can look very full. All this activity, all this green foliage. And yet the thing that matters most is simply not there. In this week's message from Mark 11, Pastor Rob Hamby gets honest about the ways we organize our lives around ourselves, and what Jesus does when he walks up close and sees it.

This message is part of our ongoing Gospel of Mark series at Point Hope Presbyterian.