New City Church | Teachings

There is Help & Hope wherever you are.

We need to be honest about mental health. A whole lot of us are struggling. We may be showing roses, but we all have weeds in our garden. We’re going to talk about loneliness, depression, anxiety, burnout, and the heavy emotional stuff we feel in our chests. Everybody is either struggling with mental health or knows someone who is. Jesus cares and gets us. By turning to Jesus, we will open a door...

There is Help & Hope wherever you are.

We need to be honest about mental health. A whole lot of us are struggling. We may be showing roses, but we all have weeds in our garden. We’re going to talk about loneliness, depression, anxiety, burnout, and the heavy emotional stuff we feel in our chests. Everybody is either struggling with mental health or knows someone who is. Jesus cares and gets us. By turning to Jesus, we will open a door...

There is Help & Hope wherever you are.

We need to be honest about mental health. A whole lot of us are struggling. We may be showing roses, but we all have weeds in our garden. We’re going to talk about loneliness, depression, anxiety, burnout, and the heavy emotional stuff we feel in our chests. Everybody is either struggling with mental health or knows someone who is. Jesus cares and gets us. By turning to Jesus, we will open a door...

There is Help & Hope wherever you are.

We need to be honest about mental health. A whole lot of us are struggling. We may be showing roses, but we all have weeds in our garden. We’re going to talk about loneliness, depression, anxiety, burnout, and the heavy emotional stuff we feel in our chests. Everybody is either struggling with mental health or knows someone who is. Jesus cares and gets us. By turning to Jesus, we will open a door...

Coming soon, a podcast about deeper conversations on help and hope with Mental Health.

As the pilgrimage and journey come to a close, we are sent back into the world to bless and praise God. But what does it mean to bless? And what does it look like to return home?

The pilgrimage is not just a grind, but a journey of joy. On the journey, we are invited to choose the path of happiness, reform our systems to embrace happiness, and center our world on God. And in doing so, we are invited to enter into God’s road to happiness. 

Psalm 127 breaks into our regularly scheduled programming to do something new. It functions as a transition point on the pilgrimage home, moving us from navigating our context to embracing God’s joy in our everyday, including our work.

In Psalm 122, the pilgrimage and our home come into view, and we begin to worship. Worship in the pilgrimage is a communal experience. We come to share the most beautiful truth we have ever experienced. We gather to expect God to work in only the ways God can. We come to be sent out by God’s power on mission. But all of this begins with worshiping God in glad and joyful being as his people. 

As our pilgrimage begins, we start by observing the landscape. As we look around, we can see the dangers and temptations of the hills. But the good news is that we have help. We have overwhelming help from the God of the cosmos, who promises to keep watch over us through all of life for forever.

In order to start the journey home, we need to first understand where we are. We must understand the world's pains and hard things and cry out to God. And as we do so, we are reminded of the God who leads us from the places of pain and sorrow to our true home.

In our final week in James, we discuss prayer's power. How prayer helps us to orient our eyes not on the things of the world, but rather to trust God and his work in all of life. It helps us to lift our eyes up to see what God is doing in the world, and to trust him with our plans and our pains.

James notes that words have incredible power, the tongue has massive potential, and we need practices to help us embrace wisdom. Because the tongue is difficult to tame, but bears consequences on the direction of our lives. It is an outpouring of the lives we have built. That is why we need the presence of God to help us tame the tongue. 

Our rhythms are not just for ourselves or our own betterment but also affect those around us. How do we think about our neighbors and those who are "other" than us when it comes to habits? James takes this question and challenges our perspective and questions what we should be boasting about as we follow Jesus.

When it comes to building new rhythms, it starts with asking what we want. What are the small things that will transform us? James shows us the rhythms that God invites us into, and what that means for our heads, hearts, and hands.

Over the next few weeks, we want to talk about building habits that help us follow Jesus. But what does building a rhythm or a rule of life mean for us? Why should we do it? As followers of Jesus, we build a rule of life, filled with disciplines and practices, to become more like our King.