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Craig Smith opens Week 1 of The Miracles No One Talks About with a Bible emoji game and a miracle most people have never heard of. In Mark 1:21-31, Jesus goes to the synagogue the way he does every week, even though he never needed it. When he moves from explaining Scripture to expecting a response, a man who may have been a regular there cries out, and Jesus silences the demon in two short commands. Right after that, Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law of a fever, a miracle so quiet it sounds boring, and she gets up and serves. Craig points out that the crowd talked and the freed man's response is never recorded, while the woman with the smallest miracle is the one who obeys. He asks where you have been coming to church with an unholy passenger like bitterness, unforgiveness, or greed. Listen now, then take one step of obedience this week. ============================= Weekend Messages: Channel Credits ============================= 🎙️Pastor: Craig Smith 📸 Instagram: @missionhillsco ▶️ YouTube: @MissionHills Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend who'd love it too 💌 A Product of the Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

When you're in the middle of something hard, everything in you wants to get to the end of it. But what if the middle is exactly where God is doing His most important work? Craig Smith opens Romans 5 to show how suffering produces more than pain. It produces perseverance, character, and a hope that doesn't disappoint.

Some things that worked in one season of life quietly stop working in the next. In this message from Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, Reza Zadeh starts with a story about running beside his five-year-old daughter on her first bike, and what it taught him about when to hold on and when to let go. He looks at the 14 pairs in the passage, makes the case that grief and trust can sit side by side, and explains why some seasons are for launching while others are for waiting. He offers three questions for sorting out your season:  • Is it right?  • Is it mine?  • Is it time?  He also takes on the phrase "everything happens for a reason" and points to Jesus as the hope we hold in any season. Take the next faithful step this week, even if you don't have the whole explanation.

Is there a spiritual gift you're supposed to find, and will an online quiz tell you what it is? Craig Smith and Colin McFarland keep talking about Sunday's message on discovering your spiritual gifts, and they get into the questions that didn't fit on the weekend stage. Craig explains why he's wary of spiritual gifts quizzes, and why the Bible's several lists of gifts aren't meant to be one complete menu. He also describes a different way to sort them: by where the Holy Spirit shows up. Is it an ability only the Spirit could give, a capacity to serve or give at a level that isn't natural, or the effect your words have on someone else? Along the way, you'll hear: Why the "boring" gifts like teaching, administration, and serving are the ones a church can't do without, How Craig now prays before writing a sermon and before hard conversations, and what happened when he told a man he might have a root of bitterness, The story of his wife Coletta asking God who to sit next to on Sunday, Why worship never shows up on the Bible's lists of spiritual gifts, even though most of us would say it clearly is one, How a college band tour in Bulgaria, and a surprise phone prayer, showed Craig he had a gift for leadership. Next week: making the most of the season you're in, from Ecclesiastes. 👉 If you've been trying to find your one gift, Craig offers a simpler place to start: say yes to serving and pay attention to where the Spirit shows up.  🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.  Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home. As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources. Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team. ============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits ============================= HOST:: Colin McFarland, Craig Smith  PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson  CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland  VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

How do you find your spiritual gifts? Craig Smith walks through 1 Corinthians 12 and explains why the Holy Spirit is the person, power, and presence of God. He shares how a college campus ministry showed him a gift he never asked for and why serving is the only reliable way to discover yours.

What do you do with what God hands you: wrap it up safe, or risk it for more? Craig Smith and Colin McFarland talk through the parable of the minas from Luke 19, and Craig admits something he hadn't fully named until Colin asked him live on air: for a few years after COVID, Mission Hills Church shifted from taking new ground to protecting what it already had. The conversation gets personal fast. Craig shares how, as a student pastor, he used to give far more unpaid time to the church than he was getting paid for, but still felt tense every summer when $25 mission trip letters came in from his students. They talk through why 'generous' might be the wrong word for a lot of what we call generosity, why 'faithful' is often more honest, and how the disciples' outrage over the woman anointing Jesus with a year's wages of perfume reveals how easy it is to be generous with someone else's money while avoiding our own discomfort. 👉 If you've wondered whether you're protecting what God gave you instead of investing it, your time, your money, your church, your gifts, this conversation gives you language for it.  🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.  Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home. As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources. Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team. ============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits ============================= HOST:: Colin McFarland, Craig Smith  PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson  CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland  VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Craig Smith teaches from Luke 19:11-27, the parable of the ten minas, and asks a question that hits close to home: Is the line between a faithful follower of Jesus and a hypocrite thinner than we think? This message breaks down why the king in the story is the most generous character in the Bible, and why your faithfulness with money, not your results, is what unleashes that generosity in your own life.

Craig Smith admits the 80/20 rule- twenty percent of people doing eighty percent of the work- made him bitter for years before it made him grateful. He and Kelly talk about why comparison is mostly an environmental problem, why he hasn't opened TikTok since summer, and a three-word filter (content, pattern, relationship) for confronting someone without making a mountain out of a molehill. Plus the word Luke actually uses for Martha, which sounds less like distraction and more like a donkey dragging a load. 👉 If you've ever felt stuck in pain that's become your whole perspective on life, this conversation is for you.  🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.  Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home. As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources. Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team. ============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits ============================= HOST:: Kelly McSparran, Craig Smith  PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson  CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland  VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

What if the difficult person in your life is more than the problem you can see? In Luke 10, Martha's frustration with her sister quickly spills over into resentment toward Jesus. But instead of treating Martha like a problem to fix, Jesus looks beyond her behavior and responds to her with both compassion and truth. He shows us that the problems we see in people can sometimes be the product of pain we don't see—and that our own pain can shape how we see others. In this message, Craig Smith explores how to approach difficult relationships without excusing harmful behavior, why our response is our responsibility, and what it looks like to combine compassion with clear boundaries. Jesus sees people to be loved, not problems to be solved. Discover how that truth can change the way you see others—and yourself. Watch or listen, reflect, and consider one relationship where God may be inviting you to respond differently this week.

Most of us have a complicated relationship with work — we pray for it, then complain about it. Pastor Craig Smith opens Genesis 1 to make a case that work isn't a curse; it's the first thing God ever called us to. When you see your job as joining God in creating, caring, organizing, and ruling, everything looks different.

In 2 Samuel 9, King David goes searching for someone — anyone — left from the house of his fallen friend Jonathan, just so he can show them kindness. What he finds is Mephibosheth: lame, hiding in a place called Lo-debar (which literally means 'nothing'), convinced the king is coming to destroy him. What David does next is one of the most stunning pictures of grace in the entire Bible. This message from Scott Ridout unpacks the Hebrew word hesed — the unconditional, action-oriented, asymmetrical love of God — and why the table is where that love has always shown up.

You had the best intentions. You picked your words carefully. So why did it still go sideways? In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Colin McFarland dig into one of the most practically useful ideas from Sunday's message in the Proverbs series — the difference between knowing a truth and knowing when and how to speak it. They unpack a framework of three Ms: motive, manner, and moment. Get one wrong and even the most important truth can land like a grenade. Craig shares a real and surprisingly difficult example — what should a pastor's wife say when her husband genuinely isn't a strong preacher? — to show just how layered these situations get in real life. Colin pushes back with a great observation: most of us check one or two boxes and convince ourselves that's enough. It's not. All three have to be in place. This episode also goes behind the scenes of sermon prep — including the rare week Craig had to trash a nearly finished message and start over days before Sunday, and why single-verse preaching makes him more anxious than almost anything else.  👉 Whether you're navigating a tough conversation at work, at home, or in your small group, this one gives you a practical grid for thinking it through before you open your mouth.  🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.  Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home. As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources. Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team. ============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits ============================= HOST:: Colin McFarland, Craig Smith  PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson  CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland  VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

You meant well. So why did that conversation make everything worse? Pastor Craig Smith unpacks Proverbs 27:14 — a proverb about a guy who loudly blesses his neighbor at sunrise and gets cursed for it — to reveal three things that determine whether a hard conversation heals a relationship or damages it: motive, manner, and moment. If you have a conversation you've been dreading, or one you regret, this message is for you.

Bitterness doesn't usually announce itself. It grows quietly, often dressed up in the language of boundaries, self-protection, or just being realistic about people. But what happens when it's already taken root — and what if some of the things we think are helping are actually keeping us stuck? In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, host Kelly McSpearin and Lead Pastor Craig Smith dig into what guarding your heart actually requires — and it's more than just clearing out the bad stuff. Craig walks through why loving God and loving people isn't just a spiritual posture; it's an act of guarding your heart by keeping it full. They also get honest about why echo chambers — from social media algorithms to therapy that only validates — can quietly deepen bitterness without us noticing. Craig shares a personal story about being called out by his own team, and why his first reaction wasn't defensiveness but gratitude. That kind of accountability doesn't come from a program — it comes from friendships built over years where the truth can actually land. 👉 If you've ever felt stuck in pain that's become your whole perspective on life, this conversation is for you.  🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.  Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home. As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources. Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team. ============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits ============================= HOST:: Kelly McSparran, Craig Smith  PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson  CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland  VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

You've probably said it before: 'I don't know what came over me.' But what if that's not actually true? In this episode, Pastor Craig Smith unpacks Proverbs 4:23 — 'Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it' — and makes the case that the words you say, the choices you make, and the conflict in your relationships all trace back to one place: your heart. The filter you put in place (or don't) shapes your future more than you realize.