Citizens Weekly

How do we relate to persecution? We don’t face the threat of being beaten or losing our lives for following Jesus in our modern American context. However, following Jesus will and should bring opposition. And if it doesn’t, what does that say about the good news we believe? 

We live in a divided culture where everything is split into two categories with opposing narratives. How do children of God make peace, and why does Jesus say that peacemakers and children of God are connected? 

From the Series, “Sermon on the Mount”. When Jesus announces the arrival of God's Kingdom in Matthew 5, he starts with a list of "God sees you" to those who feel unseen – the poor in spirit, the mourning, those who feel run over and taken advantage of, and those hungering for justice. Next, Jesus announces "God sees you" to the pure in heart and says that they will see him...

From the Series, “Sermon on the Mount”. God reveals His character through His actions and through His Word and through His Son. Mercy is one of God’s characteristics that reveals His heart and purposes for us. God’s ways (His character) often can be overlooked by our fascination with His works. Similarly, we can become enamored with our own works while never truly allowing God to change our charac...

From the Series, “Sermon on the Mount.” Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Matthew 5:6 The question is ‘What do you want for your life?’ not ‘What is acceptable for my life?’ … we naturally defend what we hunger after. May we, God's church, be people that passionately hunger after holiness and purity of heart which will lead to true content...

From the Series, “Sermon on the Mount.” What if the American Dream and The Way of Jesus are incompatible? Why is the power grab, hustle culture the expected norm if it is a pointless path to nowhere? How would we react if the assertive, the aggressive, and the overachievers ended up empty-handed and the meek inherited the earth? And, who are the meek and why in the world do they inherit anything,...

From the Series “Sermon on the Mount”. In His longest recording teaching, Jesus spoke to a rag-tag group of miscreants about the Kingdom He had come to establish inside their hearts. Most of these degenerates were people He’d healed, who followed Him to the point of this teaching. For those who Mourn, the world may offer a plethora of options for “feeling better” that come with no promise of actua...

From the Series “Sermon on the Mount.” What is the good life? The blessed life? The happy life? The life of meaning, depth, and purpose? What is that like, and who gets it? Is it the one who does everything right always? The disciplined and hardworking? Jesus steps into the middle of humanity and defines who receives God's blessing in an ironic, counterintuitive, upside-down, paradoxical way...

From the Series “Sermon on the Mount.” We’re all becoming somebody, consciously or subconsciously. Voices pull us in every direction, telling us who we should be. So how do we determine the voice that matters most? We need the voice of Jesus to reshape us, now more than ever before. 

As believers, our hope should cause us to walk and talk and live with an obvious difference- no matter our circumstances.  So what exactly is our hope? Tonight we look forward by looking backward at the birth of our Savior. The man who has had the greatest impact in the history of the human race.  The man whose life, death, and resurrection accomplished so much for us.  The man who enables us to h...

For those who dread the Christmas season, be encouraged. The grief, angst, disappointment, loneliness many of us sense this season speaks precisely to why Jesus came -- to bring light to the darkness we know too well. As an American church, we falter at lamenting. If this season is difficult for you, do not hold your breath until the New Year. Lean in. Share your ache with the church. Even Father...

The word itself causes us to pause and consider what God may be saying even when we don’t fully understand. Individually and collectively exhaling and leaning into the arms of our Father will help prepare us to enter the Advent season. SELAH isn’t working, it’s pausing. It’s intentionally taking a deep breath to consider. Treasure, be in the moment, present and aware of God, of ourselves and those...

From the Series “Acts.” The Teaching team hosted a panel discussion overviewing questions submitted by Citizens on the book of Acts. 

From the Series “Acts.” Despite the way things feel and seem at times, and against all odds, we can have hope in hopeless situations. We can have hope when things look horrible. Faith isn’t measured in our ability to work up some emotional or mental power to believe, but in our ability to surrender to the faithfulness of Jesus.

From the series "Acts."  Evangelism  has become a dirty word. Our generation believes that sharing one's faith in Jesus is antiquated at best; at worst, it is wrong. So how do we obey the Great Commission of Jesus while recognizing the current cultural climate? Is there a way to reconstruct evangelism?

Despite being hunted, beaten up, and locked up, Paul is at peace and unshaken because he has rooted his hope in the resurrection of Jesus, which lit the flame of God's redemption of all of creation and history. Despite being at the mercy of his circumstances and a corrupt empire, Paul knows that both he and that broken world are caught up in the growing fire of justice and a world-made-right...

God gave us our five senses to help us experience Him, His world and His scriptures. The Lord uses our prayerful imaginations to energize scripture reading and to help us to remember that much of what was real is left out; the voices of the main characters, the people in the crowd, the silence, the volume, the smells in the room or city, the architecture, the onlookers holding hands or leaning on...

From the Series “Vision v.2021.” It isn’t enough to have a correct mindset or orthodoxy of the church. We need a proper orthopraxy of what it means to live as the church in the Way of Jesus, in 2021, in Bryan/College Station. If we are dead to sin and alive in Christ, how does this drive our wants, loves, and longings? What would it look like if transformation happened in Bryan/College Station, no...

From the Series “Vision v.2021.” We all know what community looks like at its worst, but what does it look like at its best? The good news of Jesus is that we can be reconciled to God, but it doesn’t stop there. The full gospel reconciles us to one another in the context of community. But what is a community, exactly? Most of us long for it, some think we know what it is, but how do we know when w...

From the Series “Vision v.2021.” When you think about church, what are some of the things that come to your mind? Jesus and the writers of the New Testament had very specific things to say about church. How is Citizens defined, and what are some of the core elements of our culture, and how will we saturate Bryan/College Station with the love of Jesus?

From the Series, “Acts.” After arriving in Jerusalem, Paul quickly finds his life mirroring Jesus’ own in ways most of us prefer to ignore or disregard for ourselves. Paul has entered, as he references in Ephesians 6, “the evil day” when life reveals aspects of a Holy God that offend mortal humans. Paul stands firm. How might we also? The very structure of Acts reveals how we might stand with Chri...

Speaker: Ben Rush From the Series, “Acts.” With tens of thousands of denominations across the world, representing thousands of different opinions about thousands of subjects - why in the world would anyone want to be associated with the church? Why in the world would anyone want to follow Jesus and become part of the family of God when this family looks more divided than their own? Division in the...

Speaker: Ben Rush From the Series, “Acts.” We all know someone who claimed to hear from God to justify an action that God clearly couldn’t have instructed them to do. But, injustices cloaked in spirituality aside, what do we do when we are rooted in God’s word and prayer, seek counsel, analyze the circumstances and have peace, but still someone tries to stop us? What do you do when someone tries t...