Cities Church Exhortations

Less than a month ago, I had the great joy of baptizing my twin sons, who are almost nine years old. We celebrated the moment as a family and sought to make memories. We invited family to town. We took all sorts of pictures. Multiple friends captured video for us. We went out to lunch afterwards. But most memorable of all for my sons was not any of the accompanying aspects. The most memorable part...

There’s this story of the early church father, Augustine, and he was taking a walk along the beach, and he was getting stuck in his mind as he was trying to meditate on God. And as he’s walking, he sees a boy playing with a shell, splashing around on the shore, and so he asks the boy what he was doing? And the boy says that he’s putting the ocean inside his shell. And Augustine keeps walking and r...

As a church we are working through 1st Timothy, and I was given the privilege to give an exhortation on 1 Timothy 4:7, 8 "Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." Like many of you here, I have a competi...

In last week’s exhortation, Pastor Jonathan talked about how baptism makes faith — which is invisible — visible by publicly identifying with Jesus through the act of being baptized. This week, I’m picking up on his language of baptism being “a visible symbol of a spiritual reality,” but coming at it from another angle. Yesterday, I attended a wedding ceremony. One of the highlights of every Christ...

Okay, imagine for a minute that two people are standing up here side by side. There is one person here, and one person here. This one person believes the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this other person does not. Imagine that. It means that this one person believes that God created us but that we have been separated from God because our sin, and no matter how hard we try, we can never make it back to...

What do you do when God doesn’t feel near? Recognizing that there are external life circumstances that contribute to this — trauma, broken relationships, moving to a new location — I think that most of us would admit to experiencing persistent bouts of the absence of God’s felt presence; that this is something common to following Jesus. That it is normal. Why is this the case? I think because for...

In 1833, the British Parliament voted decisively to abolish the practice of slavery throughout the empire. It was a momentous feat cultivated and championed primarily by a few influential friends who responded to the call of God on their lives. Today, many of us have heard the name William Wilberforce, the politician typically credited with the eventual defeat of the evil of slavery across the Eng...

God is God, and he is good. Psalm 100:5 says “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever….” Our circumstances and feelings don’t change who he is. Circumstances and feelings might try and tell us about God but we need to make sure we see God for who he really is in Scripture and through Jesus. And yet we are embodied, emotion filled beings—that’s how we were created. Emotions aren’t...

I’m sure that at some point you’ve been asked to describe yourself in two or three words. Or maybe you’ve tried to describe a friend of yours that way. Let’s say we’re having a conversation and I’m telling you about my friend Matthew. You ask me what he’s like and expect me to say something like, “Matthew is average height… he’s funny… and he works at a coffee shop.” Instead, after you ask me what...

This is Isaiah 46 … God has planned all of history and purposed all of the created order to one end; that he would be most glorified. And this glory is most uniquely revealed in the form of a people who love God together and make him the focal point of their attention and affection. And the means by which God raises up this people is through salvation. Or, as we see it on this side of the New Test...

Racism in America, at one level, is complex. The racial evils that have been committed in this country over the last 300 years are vast, and for a large part of that history, some Christians have been at worst proponents and at least complicit with the racism, whether that meant endorsing chattel slavery in the 1800s, or segregation in the 1950s, or apathy in the present day. Racism in America, at...

Last Tuesday in the state of Virginia an abortion bill was presented that would remove all restrictions to abortion in the third trimester. This was the same as the bill that was passed in New York, which means that up until the point of actual delivery, the child could be aborted. Then on Wednesday last week, the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, commented on this bill and gave an example of a...

We’ve mentioned before that in this series we want to talk about the relationship between nature, Scripture, and culture. Nature refers to God’s design and purpose embedded in the creatures that he has made, the built-in tendencies and trajectories that make us what we are as human beings. Scripture refers to the declarations, promises, and commands of God in the Bible. Culture is the expression a...

To redeem something is to do whatever is necessary to bring that thing you treasure back into your possession; that is, to buy it back at whatever cost. And the act of redemption includes finding that sought-after possession. It means that the treasure, which was once in darkness, is illuminated. Here is some illumination for you, which should benefit your lives greatly. In the foyer at the entran...

You can fool yourself, you might be able to fool other people but you can’t fool God. In an interview, Bob Cousy, a former NBA player in the hall of fame, was recalling his religious experience, and he said something that caught my attention, he said “We used to go to confession. Why did we go? We did something wrong and needed to get it off our conscience. The priest listened and said, ‘Don't do...

So in this moment everybody in this room has some kind of soul-posture toward God. And ultimately there are just two kinds: we either have a soul-posture of faith or a soul-posture of unbelief. You are either wanting to move toward God or you are trying to avoid him. And I’m going to assume that because we are here, at least in a broad sense, we all have a posture of faith. We have not given up. O...

In the Book of Revelation, the very last book of the Bible, the resurrected Jesus comes to the apostle John and he gives him seven messages for seven local churches in Asia, and each message is tailored for each church. And what’s fascinating about the messages is that we see that Jesus has real thoughts about local churches. Jesus has opinions on how these local churches are doing. He says that:...

A redeemer is someone who, at a cost, frees a captive from all that stands between the two. Zechariah tells us that in Jesus God has visited and redeemed his people. And he likens this visitation from God to the arrival of the sunrise. The Sunrise Just this last week a friend of mine, who is not from these parts, said, “I feel like I haven’t seen the sun in weeks”, which is pretty typical of winte...

All of us are waiting for something. Most immediately, I think of the kids in this room who are eagerly waiting for Christmas morning to finally come. I also think of you students, who are waiting for finals week to end and, more ultimately, for your graduation day to arrive. For the rest of us, you may be waiting on a vacation, a visit from an old friend, or — like my wife — the big reveal of Joa...

So next month in January we will officially be four years old as a church, and if you’ve been around Cities Church for any length of time, one of things that you’ve probably noticed — or not noticed — is that we don’t really talk about giving. We don’t pass an offering basket; we don’t email you about it; every now and then we mention the boxes in the back, but overall we just don’t really talk ab...

Satan must love the night. He tries to make it his accomplice at every turn. Thieves and wrongdoers conceal their evil deeds in the darkness. Good judgment, wearied by a long day, erodes into unsteady choices that slide toward deep regret by the morning. The stillness and isolation create a void in our thoughts that quickly fill with anxiety and depression. The night feels dangerous in many ways....

With Thanksgiving and Christmas falling so close to one another on the calendar, the days and weeks of November and December tend to be filled with activity. Parties need to be scheduled, work needs to be taken off, presents need to be purchased, cards need to be written, pictures need to be taken, food needs to be cooked, conversations need to take place, decisions need to be made — and all of th...

Life can be so hard... because of sin the human experience is so broken. It can be so difficult to navigate through life when you’re feeling the painful ache deep in the soul when you’re in the middle of suffering or when you’re going through trials and affliction. There’s this lie that we can be tempted to believe and it’s that when we go through some real hard stuff that God doesn’t love us. Or...

Just for a moment, I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine yourself in heaven. Perhaps you’re walking the golden streets of the new Jerusalem, and beside fellow saints, you stroll together along the crystal shores of the river of life. As you ascend the steps, nearing the throne of God, you are greeted by thousands, millions of people singing the most beautiful song you’ve e...

In any season of life it is easy to forget about God our creator. Our lives are busy and hectic and stressful, and we feel as if we need to figure this out on our own and we don’t have time to trust God as we do life. This morning is a good time to hit pause and reflect on who God is. In the Bible we often see that God is referred to as Lord. The exhortation today is that we would remember the Lor...