Cities Church Exhortations

Anything worth seeking takes time. We all used to understand this, but with todays access to information, there is a massive temptation to skim. We only have time for the cliff notes, not the content. Have you found yourself like me, scrolling Youtube looking for an update on the news, but only clicking on videos under 5 minutes long? Or you get drawn in by articles that say “3-minute read”, vs. t...

In 2 Kings Chapter 5, a man named Naaman is the commander of the Syrian army, and he has leprosy, so he comes to Israel, looking for the prophet Elisha, because he wants to be healed. And by this time God has established his work through Elisha, and people all around recognized that. Elisha has already performed a catalog of miracles, and so Naaman comes to him with a whole entourage of treasure —...

The exhortation this morning is a little unusual. Normally we seek to move toward confession by reminding ourselves of our obligations before God. Remembering his commands and our responsibility reminds us of our failures, and leads us to confess our sins. But this morning, I want to lead us to confession with a simple phrase that struck me in my Bible reading in the gospel of Matthew a week ago....

In the summer of 2015, in that first year of Cities Church, I realized that in the progress and transitions of young-adult life I had lost a handle on something basic. I had no regular pattern of exercise. Somewhere in getting married in 2007, and having twin boys in 2010, and having a daughter in November 2014, and planting in 2015, exercise had fallen by the wayside. I thought I didn’t have any...

It was a relatively mild morning on January 24, 2012. I remember the day well. It was a morning I got angry. Though this was a new kind of anger; I hadn’t been angry like this before. You see, one author simply describes anger’s logic, “That matters, and it’s wrong.”[1] You get angry at whatever the issue may be when you make the value judgment that something matters and the moral judgment that so...

We want our congregation to be a tight-knit community. We want our members to spend time together, to actually hangout on a regular basis, to do life together, to do ministry together. To come up with all sorts of creative initiatives together, for the good of the Twin Cities. We want our congregants to really get to know each other, and to constantly be encouraging and challenging one another, an...

Humans were made to be expectant creatures. God designed us to be hopeful. There's a growing body of scientific knowledge indicating the benefits of hope, and it’s called The Optimism bias. People who expect good things have slightly better outcomes in many areas of life, from lower stress to even a slightly better response to some cancer treatment.  Being hopeful seems to provide a survival benef...

Look to the poets to find that the onset of winter has long evoked in the soul of man the imagery of death and loss and longing. Consider these two stanzas: The Autumn leaves fall to the ground, Soon all the trees will barren be; And all that is so dear to me, Will soon have ended with no sound. The Darkened landscape wrapt in frost, And all the flowers wilt and lie; Dead in their spot under the s...

This Sunday is the first Sunday of the Advent Season. For the next 4 Sundays as a church, we will anticipate the coming of Christ. We will sing songs, that really are good all year round, but especially leading up to Christmas, we will put our faith and hope in Christ, like we should do always, but especially as we anticipate Christ’s incarnate birth. So for the next 4 Sundays, the exhortations wi...

Time and time again in God’s word there are examples and commands to give thanks to God for who he is and what he has done. With Thanksgiving coming soon this next week the exhortation this morning to us is let us be thankful to our God not just during Thanksgiving but also throughout the whole year. Here are some verses to help reorient us. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by...

So, most of us have heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas. But I bring it up because this morning my exhortation to you is to celebrate all Twelve Days of Christmas this year. Some of you hear that and perk up, while others of you are tempted right now to check out. Which, I get, because typically I’d be in that latter group. I hear “Twelve Days of Christmas” and “marking them” and think, yeah, th...

In 1988, a former Air Force pilot-turned-art-dealer named Forrest Fenn was diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis looked grim, and Forrest began to dream up some ways that he could leave behind a “legacy” of sorts. He decided to take some of his favorite & most valuable artifacts and hide them in a literal bronze treasure chest, which he proceeded to bury somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Sa...

Suffering is not a foreign concept to the Bible. We have been studying the book of Exodus here at Cities Church and we have seen that the Israelites have suffered under intense slavery in Egypt. They have had no freedom. They have been forced to labor in terrible conditions. And yet in their suffering, they turned to God. They groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help, and God heard...

Church, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider hi...

My family and I just returned from a week-long trip to Great Britain. The primary reason we were there was so that I could defend my dissertation. But since I was traveling there anyway, we took the opportunity to take the older boys and tour London, Oxford, and Ireland. When you’re in England (or Europe in general), you’re reminded just how young a country America is. We visited the Tower of Lond...

One of the truths that has radically changed my life is that in Jesus, nothing can separate us from the love of God. There are hundreds of stories all around us. Every person here has a story. You might not know any stories in this room or maybe you know quite a few. But God knows every story of every person in here. One of the themes emerging from Exodus is that God, the God that we worship, the...

I can be forgetful. Not about important stuff—I’ve never forgotten my wife’s birthday or our anniversary. But I’m forgetful enough that a family friend enjoys laughing about it. I chalk it up to her freakish memory and my keen ability to … delegate and stuff. But I think there are two ditches of forgetfulness that we can fall into as Christians. On the one side is forgetting how sinful I really am...

In John, Jesus prayed: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” I want to focus on this last part- where Jesus says to God the Father- “You loved me before the creation of the world.” Press pause in your mind, and think about that. Before the world was created. Let your...

At the beginning of the book of Galatians, Paul abbreviates his normal introduction in his letters and dives right in. He does this because he has a great concern for the Galatians, and he is even astonished by their actions. In Gal 1:6-7 Pauls says: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting HIM who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — 7 not that there...

Reminders are important. Usually, when we need to remember something, a reminder shows the value and importance of whatever that thing is that we’re trying to remember. We all need reminders to help us remember the value of certain things in our lives because we can be so easily caught in the drift of life and like a leaf in the wind or something out in sea we can get pushed and pulled in all sort...

The young man’s eyes blinked awake as the sun’s early morning rays began to break through the trees outside of the cave. It was warm on his face, the golden-orange beams dancing off the dust sprinkled in his unkempt beard. He could smell the remnants of last night’s fire, mixed with the freshness of the stream bubbling nearby. Squinting and pressing himself up to lean back on the wall of the cave,...

If you’re here as part of the Redeemer Church founding membership, would you raise your hand really high. So in just a few minutes I’m going to ask you to stand, and our pastors are going to gather around you and I’m going to lead us in a prayer of commissioning, but before I do that, since this is your last Sunday with us as covenant members of Cities Church, I want to send you out with an short...

As a church, when it comes to ministering to children and their families, our primary aim is to help parents to raise their children to become mature followers of Jesus. Underneath this primary aim are three ways that we that accomplish this. We seek to teach children the whole counsel of God. We seek to help parents be the smile of God to their children. We seek to create a church culture that we...