Most of us believe prayer matters. We just don’t live like our city depends on it.

On its 25th anniversary, Christ Alive Church invited James Aladiran to release a prophetic word — and it wasn’t really

a sermon. It was a picture. This church is called to be a watchtower over its region. Walking through Jacob’s ladder in

Genesis 28, James lays out what it costs to become a place where heaven keeps traffic moving, why the next season

won’t run on the last 25 years of prayer, and the story of a city that shifted when a people finally contended for it.

📖 Genesis 28:10-17

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #watchtower #prayer #revival #genesis28 #houseofprayer #25years

Most of us want to pray more. We just don’t feel like it. Prayer feels dry, worship feels hard, and the hunger for God we used to have has gone quiet. In “Recalibrate Your Hunger,” James Aladiran makes the case that our appetite has been feeding on everything except God. He tells the story of finding his toddler drinking from the toilet, and what it taught him about a thirsty generation. He explains why we’re called believers, not feelers, why prayer is epic when you see it from heaven’s view, and why every follower of Jesus is in full-time ministry, from the nurse to the lawyer to the mom. It’s a call to stop settling for comfort, to stop trying to know God on the run, and to give Him more of you so there’s room for more of Him.

📖 Scripture: Hebrews 11:3 · John 4:24 · 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 · Mark 1:12 · Luke 9:23 · Daniel 11:32

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God's presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #recalibrateyourhunger #prayer #fasting #hungerforgod #revival #newtonnc

Peace and joy are the number one thing people say they want. So why is it so rare to meet someone who actually has them, even in church? A lot of us are praying, serving, and showing up, and still running on empty. In “Unusual Joy,” Pastor LJ Johnson opens Philippians 4, a letter the apostle Paul wrote from a Roman prison near the end of his life and still filled with the words joy and rejoice. Joy is a gift God has already given His kids, and it doesn’t wait for life to get easier. Pastor LJ walks through five honest questions to check whether you’re set up to receive it: how you celebrate, how you handle pressure, how you pray, who is guarding your mind, and what you let grow in your thoughts. The joy of the Lord is your strength, and it’s how the people around you find out where peace comes from.

📖 Scripture: Philippians 4:4-9 · John 16:33 · Romans 12:2, 19 · 2 Corinthians 10:5 · Nehemiah 8:10

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God's presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #theunusual #unusualjoy #joy #peace #philippians4 #newtonnc

We say the name of Jesus is powerful. But how we treat that name the rest of the week shapes what it means to us

when we speak it. In Part 2 of The Unusual, Mark Ivey teaches on honoring the name of Jesus — and on the healing

power that name still carries today.

He asks a question that’s hard to shake: if we’re entertained by the very things Jesus died to forgive, what does that

do to us? When His name is common in what we watch and listen to, it becomes common and powerless when we

pray it. From there, the message turns to the miraculous: the name of Jesus was meant to spread the gospel and the

miraculous, not to be a “Jesus fix” a couple of times a month. Mark Ivey shares the true story of Dwayne Miller, a

pastor who lost his voice to a virus and had his voice restored mid-sentence while teaching Psalm 103 on healing.

Divine healing, he says, did not end in the first century. If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the same

healer is here today. And whatever pit you find yourself in — sin, emotional, physical, or the voices you can’t silence —

there is a name above every pit.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 103 · Exodus 20 · Hebrews 13 · Mark 16

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #theunusual #healing #nameofjesus #faith

What if the biggest thing keeping us from experiencing the supernatural isn’t that God stopped moving — but that

we’ve stopped expecting Him to? As we open our new series, The Unusual, Austin makes the case that we can

believe in Jesus and still carry a version of Him that’s too small.

He starts with Thomas Jefferson, who literally took scissors and a razor to his Bible and cut out every miracle — a

book that ends with a grave closed. The challenge: most of us have done something similar, not with scissors, but by

quietly removing the miraculous from what we expect. From there, Austin walks through three heart postures Scripture

shows in the people who received miracles: honor (how we see and value Jesus), faith (believing He can and that He

wants to), and hunger (how badly we want Him). Along the way — Nazareth’s familiarity that shut down the miracles,

the Roman officer whose faith moved Jesus, and four friends who dug through a roof to get their friend to Jesus. This

isn’t a formula for a miracle. It’s an invitation to stop expecting so little.

📖 Scripture: Mark 6 · Matthew 8 · Mark 2 · Hebrews 11 · John 14 · Leviticus 22

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #theunusual #faith #miracles #supernatural

Most of us treat praise as optional — something for the “hyped-up” people, a warm-up before the real thing. Guest

speaker Brian Barcelona says the opposite: praise was never optional, and boredom is the greatest tragedy of

Christianity.

Brian opens with the story that changed how he sees worship — his sister, who once encountered God and later found

herself trafficked and addicted to fentanyl, and what it looked like to hand her something more powerful than the drug.

From there he teaches straight from Scripture: heaven has a culture of praise, there’s a fragrance you can produce

that angels can’t, and there are seven Hebrew words for praise — yada, halal, shabach, zamar, todah, barak, and

tehillah — that most of us have never been taught. Along the way: why the band isn’t manipulating your emotions, why

you shout because the victory is already won, and why worship — not whining — is what shifts the atmosphere when

you walk back out into your week.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 150 · Psalm 34 · Psalm 63 · Psalm 47 · Psalm 95 · Psalm 22 · Psalm 50

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #praise #worship #brianbarcelona #hebrew

Most of us assume the reason more people aren’t coming to God is that the harvest is small — that people just aren’t

interested anymore. Sunday’s message says the opposite. The harvest was never the problem. The problem has

always been getting enough of us to actually put our hand in and do something.

Pastor Mark Ivey teaches from Jesus’ story of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20) — and grows up around real

harvest work in northern Maine to make it land. Along the way: why prayer is the engine that moves people into the

field, why coming to church and doing nothing doesn’t count, why only about 20% of church growth in America is real

conversion, and the partnership where you plant and God gives the growth. Wherever you are and whatever your age,

there’s extreme grace for the part God is asking you to do. You don’t need to have it all together — you just need to

ask, “God, what can I do?”

📖 Scripture: Matthew 20 · Matthew 9 · John 4 · 1 Corinthians 3 · Acts 2 · Galatians 6

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #theharvest #savethelost #discipleship #prayer

Most of us have someone we love who’s far from God, and we don’t know what to do about it. Sunday’s message is

about the one thing every one of us can do: get in between that person and God in prayer. The Bible calls it

intercession, and it’s simpler than it sounds — it just means standing in the gap for someone who can’t yet stand there

for themselves.

Pastor Mark Ivey teaches from Jesus’ story of the friend who shows up at midnight (Luke 11) — the man who has

nothing to give, so he goes to the One who has everything. Along the way: a true story about his own teenage son

bringing a stranger home in the middle of the night, a grandfather God woke at 3 a.m. to pray for a granddaughter on a

failing plane, and the staggering math of what happens when just one person leads one person to Jesus and shows

them how to do the same. You don’t have enough on your own — but you know the One who does.

📖 Scripture: Luke 11 · Exodus 11 · Acts 16 · Genesis 18 · Ruth 3 · Matthew 25

🎯 OUR MISSION - Make Disciples of Jesus who encounter God’s presence and bring healing to their cities.

💛 Give into what God is doing → https://www.christalive.com/give

🏠 Plan a visit → https://christalive.com

🎧 Listen on any podcast platform → https://christalive.transistor.fm/

📍 Christ Alive Church · 1549 Southwest Blvd · Newton, North Carolina

#christalive #threefriendsatmidnight #intercession #prayer #savethelost