Invited In – Pastor Sam Simoes – April 05, 2026

Pastor Sam Simoes message for Easter Sunday April 05, 2026. 

Welcome to the Northwest Church of the Nazarene podcast, where we share the heart of our church’s mission: discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ through inspired worship and intentional ministry. Each episode brings you sermons, insights, and messages that challenge and encourage spiritual growth. Whether you are part of our diverse, multicultural church family, or listening in for the first time, you’ll find a community that loves Jesus and welcomes everyone with open arms. Join us online at nwnaz.org or in person in Columbus Ohio, as we journey together toward a deeper, more meaningful relationship with Jesus and each other. 

Transcript

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Every Sunday at Northwest Church of the Desert in Columbus, Ohio, our congregation is challenged to grow spiritually. This podcast shares the sermons, insights, and messages that encourage our congregation to mature spiritually.

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Jesus is alive. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Praise God. What a wonderful time it is for us to praise Him and to be together as a family. Well, today we're going to be talking about a really interesting story. And the title for today's message is Invited In. And it's so good to belong, isn't it? Well, I read a study that says one in three people, I'm sorry, three out of ten, which is almost one out of three, but uh three out of ten people deal and suffer from loneliness. And this is something that it's very, very sad to hear. There's so many people feel lonely. But I also read the same study that they have interviewed and researched Christians, and Christians do better than that. It's one in five. I don't think is that good that we Christians that should have the sense of God's presence and should have a church family, we also struggle with loneliness. And loneliness sometimes is something that we struggle with because we just want to belong, but we don't know where to belong or how to belong. Well, today we're gonna be looking how we have been invited in, and about how Easter is God's answer to the question of loneliness, the question of not belonging, to the question of isolation. Easter is when we can be together in the presence of God with our family. We're gonna be talking about a story that started with a vision. Well, many of the stories start with a vision, and this story was a vision from Peter. Peter was one of Jesus' disciples, and Jesus had died, he rose again, and now they were going throughout the different parts of the area trying to minister about Jesus and speaking about Jesus to others. Well, Peter was in his house and he had a vision, and in this vision, there was a few animals that were considered unclean by the Jewish people. And as he saw these animals, he saw God coming in and telling him to go and eat those animals. And he's like, Whoa, I can't eat those animals, they're unclean. And God says something very powerful. He said, Don't consider anything unclean that I have made clean. So after that vision, God said, Someone's coming to look for you. I want you to go with them. Well, someone came in and said, Hey, we need you to come and meet with our leader, our boss, Cornelius. Now, Cornelius, too, had a vision. Cornelius was a good man. He was a centurion. A centurion is a Roman soldier who had a hundred or more soldiers. So he was someone who had it all together. He was someone who had wealth, who had everything anyone could ask for. But at this moment, the centurion was praying. And while he was praying, he heard a voice saying, Go send someone to Peter and ask Peter to come and speak to you. So God has given a vision to two different people, and Peter then goes against all norms of the day and speaks with this centurion, who he was not supposed to, because he's not supposed to intermingle with other people. But God has now made it clean what he thought wasn't clean. And as he entered this house of this man, of the centurion who had everything, but yet he did not have what was most important. And this is where we're going to find our passage from today. In Acts chapter 10, verses 34 to 43. If you stand with me in reverence to the word of the Lord, as we consider what he has in store for us today, and as we read this story and this passage for us today, thus saith the word of the Lord in Acts chapter 10, verses 34. Then Peter began to speak. This is at Cornelius' house. I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Christ Jesus, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee, after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on the cross. But God raised them from the dead on a third day and caused them to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen, and by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed to judge us, the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Father, we thank you for your word. And we pray that you speak to us today. Father, we pray that you open our hearts, that we may recognize what you have in store for us. So speak to us, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. What we see in this passage is that Cornelius experienced something amazing. Peter experienced something amazing. And the story speaks of something amazing. And that something amazing is a new beginning. A new beginning. And every time there's a new beginning, there's excitement. There's excitement over a new beginning of a marriage, and we're starting to have our lives together, of a child being born, and we start celebrating that. Every new beginning is something that we celebrate. And today, as we look into this passage, we will see this new beginning. I like to start things, but I have a problem. The problem is that do not always understand, research, or figure out how hard something is going to be. So when I have something broken in my house, I was like, oh, I can just fix it. I don't have to purchase a new one. And I take it all apart and then realize it is a bigger project than I anticipated. Something is wrong with my car, I do the same thing. I realize it is a harder and most difficult. And then I realize too why I sometimes rather pay a mechanic rather than having to fix myself. Because then I have to do the research. Oh, how does this work? Oh, now that I took this apart, I'm gonna need this particular part. How am I gonna find this part? So sometimes I get myself into situations in which I do not realize how difficult something or how hard something is going to be until I am well on the way. But I'm stubborn enough that I need to finish it. So I will continue until it's done. And what we see in this passage is that Cornelius didn't accept Jesus. He did not accept the words of Peter when he understood them. He accepted them before he understood them. He didn't realize how important was going to be the words of God. He just accepted. He was already someone who was good in the eyes of the world. But there was something missing, and there was something that he did not have, and that is belonging. He did not yet belong to the family of God, he did not yet belong to the family of the kingdom of God. So he was not saved into an isolation. You know, many times, and we hear this today in this passage, we in this um in this times, in this world, we hear many times people saying, Well, all you have to do is believe in Jesus and have your own uh your own beliefs, have your own religion. You know, you can't go to the nature. Anyone can go and worship whatever they want. But the problem is that we were not created to have a personal religion. We were not created to have a religion of our own. We were created to have a relationship. And this relationship is not a relationship with God and us, it's a relationship with God and his kingdom and his people. We were created not to be isolated, not to be alone, not to be lonely, but to have a family. Maybe our family that we have, a physical family with parents and brothers, sisters, cousins, whatever. But many of us need a family that is deeper than that, a family that that grows together, that laughs together, that cries together, a family that allows us to live each day, knowing that we are not alone, that we belong to something greater than ourselves, the family of God. And this is what Cornelius became saved into. He wasn't saved into a religion or into a belief system, he became a part of a family, and that's why Easter is so important, is because we are now a part of the family we have been invited in. So we were not saved into isolation, and belonging is not just a feeling, but is a truth that we step into. It is a new life, a new experience, something beautiful, something that is more important than anything else in our lives. Fanny Crosby was a writer. She wrote over 500 uh gospel songs, and some of them we we sing. And she was also blind, blind from birth. And later in her life, a minister came to her and met her and asked her, Fanny, would it be okay if I prayed that you would receive sight? Would it be okay then if I prayed that you would see again? I believe that God can heal your sighting, your sight. And she said, No. You can pray for many things, but I want these eyes to see Jesus the first time I get to see. I want him to be the first face I see. I want him to be the first person I see. So this world doesn't matter because I want to see Jesus. And this is the kind of faith that we belong, that it becomes the most important thing for us is the faith of knowing that we are not alone in our trials, in our doubts, in the suffering, in uh difficult times, in sickness. We are not alone. We have other people praying for us, joining us, laughing with us, crying with us. But the passage doesn't hint here and saying, all right, Cornelius, you're part of the family. Yay, fantastic. No, he gives us a task, he gives us an order, something for us to to pursue, a mandate, and that mandate is a witness set testify. If you have witnesses in the courtroom and they don't testify, they're worthless. They're not witnesses. Witnesses need to testify, and that's why Peter said, We have seen all these amazing things. We have seen miracles, we have seen Jesus walking, we have seen Jesus touching the blind, and they were able to see, we see we see the crippled be able to walk. We've seen so many miracles. We were hungry among 5,000 people, and he just broke bread and fish, and we saw miracles. We are witnesses of these things because we have seen them. But if we have not seen them, how can we testify? And many times we need to recognize that because of Easter, we are not just forgiven, we are adopted. This is not just so we can have access to heaven and saying, All right, my ticket is tempted. He wants so much more than that. He wants us to join him in what he's doing in the world. Can you imagine being able to see people being transformed because we are faithful? Because we say yes to God? Can you imagine the miracles we'll see when we pray for someone who's sick and we're able to see him walking? How beautiful it is to be able to be a part of what God is doing in the world. And that's why we testify of what we have seen. We were invited to belong. Now, Jesus didn't belong to a palace, even though he was a king. Jesus did not belong to a wealthy place, even though he owned all the cattle and all the world. He didn't belong with royalty, even though he was a royal. He was walking among the broken. He was walking among those who were rejected, those who were sick, those who society looked down upon. He was walking through us, people like us, like you and me, who were not worthy of his presence, but yet that's who he wanted to be with. Because he wanted us to belong, and we would never belong if he was up there in a pedestal. But because he walked with us, because he joined us in in our sorrows, in our difficulties, in our sicknesses, and in all the things we did, we were able to see that not only he wants to be with us, but he wants to journey with us. He doesn't want us to be alone, he doesn't want us to walk without a direction. He wants to hold us through our journey, our own. And those who knew him spoke about him. And then all disciples except John died a gruesome death because of him. It was worth their life. That's the kind of relationship he's calling us into that. Sister Grace was an underground missionary in a country where they monitor all the religious activities. And she was a true believer in Jesus Christ, and she loved Jesus more than anything else in the world, and she owned a sewing business, and in that business, she was able to meet a lot of people and speak with them and connect with them. And Sister Grace began having services in her own home. And then she would go to different homes and have services. And on those services, people would come to Christ and they would get to know him. And she began seven different house churches, and over 200 people were converted under her ministry until the government found her. And then they took her in and they arrested her and interrogated her. And she said, Well, all I did was sharing what I believe. And then they made the mistake of asking her, Well, what is it that you believe? Because we need to take notes. And she starts sharing. Not about the government, not about being protesting the leaders or anything. She began speaking about Jesus, about the Jesus who has come, the Jesus who died, who the Jesus who resurrected, the Jesus that made her belong. So many times we look at our lives and think, oh, if I do everything right, but he's not asking us to do everything right. And through that relationship, he's going to lead us. And yes, we're going to accomplish a lot of amazing things for God, but that is with God. That is not without Him. That is not in isolation. We were called to be a family. We were called to be a part of something greater than just a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And when we see Paul writing to the churches, all these passages that we've been reading, they were not for the individual, they are for the church. So when he says, be holy as Jesus Christ is holy, he's not telling for me or you to be holy, telling the church needs to be holy. The church needs to be holy as Jesus Christ is holy. All the mandates is for us as a people, not just individually. There's so much more to live, so much more to be with Christ than just being a Christian. So much more. So what are we to do according to this passage? Well, we have to accept the invitation. There is an invitation, and the invitation is that Jesus Christ is asking us to belong, to belong to his family, to belong to his realm, to belong to his kingdom. Cornelius had everything. In the eyes of the world, there was nothing he needed. He probably had a difficult time at Christmas. Why you give someone who already has everything? That's a Christmas conundrum. So he had everything. So why did he need Peter to come and change his world? Because everything he had made sense in the world, but he didn't realize that everything he needed was in Jesus Christ. And everything we want, we may have, but everything we need only through Jesus Christ. So belonging feels hard many times when we feel that God is distant. When we think that, you know, I have done so much, but I feel that God is so far away. Well, I usually tell people when they tell me, Well, I feel that God is far away, is like, well, one of you moved. Which one moved? Because I don't think God's moving away from you. God is seeking us, He's seeking our hearts. So when we feel that God is distant, maybe we just have to come closer to Him. Maybe we just need to say, God, I really need to feel your presence. And the best way to feel His presence is to be with God's people. It's to be in a place where we belong to one another. So belonging is something that we were created for. We were not created to be in isolation, to have a personal relationship with Jesus. We were created to have a relationship with Jesus and His family and His people and His church. So belonging to His church, to His family, to His kingdom, and to His work, because that becomes what is important for us. Martin Luther one time had someone asking him, said, Hey Martin, if we were to die today at midnight, what would you do? If you knew you were to die at midnight, what would you do? And he said, Well, I'll I'll probably go finish watering my plants. I said, That's it? Yeah, that's what I need to do before midnight. Finish watering my plants. You see, his mind is not on, oh, am I worthy? His mind was not in, oh, did I do enough? Did I leave a legacy? Did I do something that makes a difference? His mind was, I need to do what I need to do because what I do is not dependent on if I'm going or not to meet Jesus. What I do is not dependent in my faith. My faith is my relationship with Jesus and that I already have. And many times we are just so concerned that we have to do so much, that we have to accomplish so much, that we have to meet all these expectations, we have to follow all these laws, we have to just fulfill everything that we think that needs to be fulfilled before God is going to accept us. When that's not what Scripture is telling us. The scripture is telling us that we have been accepted because of grace, because we can't fulfill all the things that we think we need to fulfill. It's grace that gives us access. We don't have a chore or a list of tasks. We have a relationship that he's calling us into. So when Peter goes to Cornelius, he said, We have witnesses. We have witnessed all this that you may know that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he rose from the dead, and that he's leading us. And the final thing that we see that we are to do is to be family. I love when I visit someone and they say, Welcome, Pastor. You know, feel like you you're part of the family. And they make me feel that I'm part of the family by the way that they talk, by the way that they embrace, and sometimes by the access to the refrigerator. Because that is important. If someone gives you access to the refrigerator, you're part of their family. You want something? Just grab it in a refrigerator. You're part of the family. That's what families do, especially teenagers. They just raid your refrigerator. That's why I keep, I have teenagers, that's why I keep things that have expired in the refrigerator. They'll teach them a lesson. But this the scripture is not talking about make people uh, you know, get give them refrigerator rights. It's just saying make them feel like family. And we Christians who have lived our life with Jesus, each day we have to focus that sometimes we just don't need to attend. We need to invite. It's not just being, it's welcoming others, it's bringing others in. It's not just to belong, but to include. Because there's a lot of people that don't feel that they belong, that they're included. So we include. That's what we do as Christians. That should be our modus operandum. That should be the way we do things. We just make you a part of our family. We'll give you refrigerator rights. But if we don't have that relationship with Jesus, just remember, you don't have to have it all figure out. Cornelius didn't have it all figured out, but he took a step. He took a step to know Jesus. And we may think why? Because he had everything, but he wanted more. But if you want more, then you don't have need to have it all figured out. You already invited, you already belong to a new family, to a new life, to a new hope. And if you trust us as a church, as people of God, as people who care about you and care about others, and cares about one another, we recognize that you can belong because we include you in. A family is something that's very precious, but sometimes we need to take a stand. John Parker was a Wall Street executive, he had a$2.5 million a year salary, and one day he was walking out of his office and he saw a homeless, which there are many homelesses in Wall Street, and he saw a homeless with a sign I said, it said, I serve the country. Will you serve me? And he read that sign and kept going. But throughout his journey home to his multi-million dollar mansion, and on the way back, he kept thinking about that sign. So the next day he saw the same man with the same sign. He said, Hey, can I take you out for coffee? I've just been thinking about your sign. So they went and sat down for coffee and he asked about his life. And he heard about the life and touched him. And then he said, Hey, if you'll like to hear about my life, you probably would like to hear my friend's life. And he started meeting during his lunchtime with the different homeless in New in New York City. And as he was meeting with these homeless men, he's starting to figure out there is a common denominator. And the common denominator between this homeless and himself was circumstances. They had circumstances. Someone passed away that was very dear to them. There were some mental health issues, there was some job opportunity issues, and there were several items that he realized that's the common denominator between all of these homeless people versus myself. And the more he prayed about it, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he felt that God was calling him to that. So he decided to sell his house, leave his job, and start an organization called The Hope House in New York City, where they would help homeless with mental health, where they will help homeless with job uh preparation and training. They would have uh with rehab, with addiction, with they would help them in all different ways to get them to be in a place where they could go back to life and and just live a life that was honorable and and and a life that they felt proud of. But throughout the program, they'll talk about Jesus. A decade later, he has helped over 3,000 homeless to get out of their circumstances, and this is to say that when we make others belong to our lives, we can change their lives. It's not us, but it's the love of Christ. So when we include other people into our family, when we bring them in, when we allow them to feel that they are a part, their lives are changed. And we can journey with them, we get to know them, we get to embrace them, we can laugh with them, celebrate the celebrations, and also cry with them with the difficult news, and sit at the bedside when they are at the hospital. That's what we do, and that's why the resurrection is so important. It's because it's not about us. So I have a challenge for you this week. How will you respond? How will you respond to this invitation? Are you going to take a stand and say, you know what, I don't understand a lot of this Christianity, I don't understand a lot about this faith, but I want more from my life. Or maybe you'd be saying, you know what, I've been a Christian for so long, I really don't know what else I can I can do. Well, there's still a lot of people that could use a welcoming word, an embrace, and to belong and be included in your life. There's a lot of ways that we can today respond and answer to the invitation. Trust Jesus and may you step in a new life. I'd like to ask Shannon to come forward as we conclude with a song. But I know where you are in your journey with Jesus, but today he's calling us, he's inviting us, not just to know him, but through knowing him, being a part of something much greater, to belong, because we belong to him together, as one, as a church, as a people. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the joy of belonging, we thank you for the beauty of your Holy Spirit, we thank you that you have brought us together to celebrate you. But as we look into this passage, we pray that if we have an answer to your invitation, that you would reveal to us your love, your grace, that through your love and grace we may accept all others, welcoming them not only into our church or into our ministry, but into our lives, that we may share the joys and share life with one another. And we pray this thing, and we know we can do all things through Christ. And because you live, we know that we can face tomorrow. And we praise you for that. So lead us today, Father, and we pray this thing's in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Wouldn't you stand and sing this last song with us?

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As it is known in our community, Northwest Church is committed to discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, with inspired worship and intentional ministry. People from all walks of life are welcome and received as family members. Our family is diverse, multicultural, and although not perfect, in love with Jesus. Join us online at nwnat.org or by visiting us in Columbus, Ohio. God bless you.