Shelbyville Community Church

God calls us to love Him with ALL we are. We’ll see that in Deuteronomy 6:1-9. But He doesn’t just leave us hanging. He shows us HOW to live that out. And in HOW we live that out is through the family. The beauty is we each have a family, but even bigger we have each other as the family of God. No matter what you call family, you are a part of THE family and can help each other live out HOW to lov...

We live in a broken world. The book of Malachi was written in such a world. And the people of Malachi’s day, well, they noticed. As a result, they aired some very serious complaints against God, which He answered in no uncertain terms.

When someone robs you, you never forget it, and in Malachi 3, God actually says that his people are guilty of robbing him. The word “rob” in Malachi is a rare and violent word. It literally means to “plunder of pillage.” How can human beings “pillage” God?

To break faith with someone is to fail to support them. In fact, when Jesus came to bring a new covenant, he brought a new command. He said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Jesus didn’t ask us to love others as we would want to be loved, but as He loved us.

The beginning of Malachi will set the pace for the rest of the book. At the beginning, the first topic is God’s love for His people. If that comes into question, that affects the rest of who we are and how we respond to Him. We’ll see that He does love us, and we can see that throughout the Bible. We’ll also see how others were responding and how that affected them and their relationship to God.

When God created in Genesis we're introduced to Adam and Eve in the garden. God gives them a command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Through their disobedience, sin enters the world. When Jesus is crucified He is nailed to a tree for the forgiveness for our disobedience. Today we live between the trees.

Without Jesus, who is the light of the world, our world would simply be a dark and dangerous place. But because His light shines in the darkness, the world is a far brighter and more colorful place. Make no mistake friends, the darker the darkness, the brighter the light.

Most of us have things or memories in our past that are so humiliating, so painful, things of which we are so ashamed, that not only do we never laugh about it, we never speak of it. We don’t even like to think about it. Because when we do, we are just overwhelmed with feelings of intense shame and regret. The good news is the power of the gospel can cancel out shame and regret. It’s good news ind...

When people try to approach God out of a contract or their performance, it becomes toxic to their soul, resulting in things like pride, superiority, complaint, and resentment. But Jesus has come to offer a new and better way to approach God. This approach is not based on a contract or performance, but grace, and grace makes all the difference.

Jesus has made a habit of embracing people who face rejection. The invitation to follow Him is quickly extended to the weak, wounded, and marginalized who easily get overlooked by the broader swath of society. The healing that He offers paves the way for us to recognize Him as the healer who’s in the business of rescuing the world from sin one life at a time.

Excuses can be toxic for anyone who would follow Jesus. The unfortunate reality is that we can be very good at explaining to God why we can’t live in His presence, or why we can’t do the thing that He is asking us to do. Excuses are toxic to the spiritual life because they keep us from life with God, the joy of obedience, the freedom of forgiveness, the blessing of generosity, and the deeper journ...

In His most famous sermon, Jesus said “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...” in other words, treasures that actually matter and will last. Notice that He doesn’t say ‘stop desiring’ ‘stop seeking,’ ‘stop planning’ or ‘stop investing’. Quite the contrary, He is encouraging us to invest more wisely, to seek safer and better returns. Jesus is not calling us to settle for less but rather to...

In John 5, before Jesus heals an invalid of 38 years, He asks him an odd question: “Do you want to get well?” In essence, when Jesus asks this man if he wants to be made well, He is asking him if he is willing to change. Sometimes people desperately want their situation to change, but they don’t want to change. As we engage our community, not everyone will want hope and healing, but we must contin...

The message of Christianity is unique among the religions of the world. You won’t hear it anywhere else. It is also counterintuitive. Why Fish? Because God wants everyone to be saved, and because we must love others enough to want for them the same grace, mercy, and love that we’ve already found in Jesus.

In Matthew 14:22-33, we’ll see the disciples in a tough situation. Some will decide to stay in the boat, and one will decide to get out. For many of us, we want to be Peter and truly trust Jesus and follow Him. Yet, circumstances happen which distract us from Him. Many times, these distractions can cause fear.

It’s amazing what we’ll do when we see the true value of something. When we see that something is priceless, we're willing to sacrifice for it. And the Kingdom of God is no exception to this. When we follow Jesus, we’re called to surrender absolutely everything to him.

The last person in the room to know he or she is greedy is the one consumed by it. This is why Jesus warns against greed like nothing else. Greed, by its very nature, blinds us to its presence. Greed almost never exists for itself, but exists instead to feed our idols.

In John 6, many of Jesus’ followers decide to unfollow Jesus. The reason? Jesus was saying some things that were hard to hear. There will be seasons for all of us when we, like them, will be tempted to unfollow Jesus.

In Matthew 7, at the end of his most famous sermon, Jesus told a story about two kinds of builders. One was wise and one was foolish. Both faced a storm, but only one of them built their home on the right foundation, which was obedience to Jesus. What is most striking, is that Jesus didn’t call one “good” and the other “evil.” The call to follow Jesus is not simply a moral decision, but a smart on...

When Jesus spoke in parables, He challenged His listeners to really hear what He was communicating to them. He wanted His followers to ponder His deeper meaning, to reflect on the condition of their hearts, and to respond accordingly.

The idea is that we are to be so convinced of God’s goodness, so certain of His love, that no matter what life throws at us, He and I can handle it together. We are to be so sure that He is with us, that we know that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate from His love.

Jesus' call to his disciples was a call to become fishers of men. That was it. But, how often do we follow Jesus with our agenda of what Jesus should do for us when we follow Him.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to community. It’s never been a solitary deal. Matthew the Tax Collector was called to follow Jesus alongside other disciples. They disagreed. They argued. They couldn’t get along, and that was the point. Through all that friction, they learned how to forgive. They learned how to really love one another.

Have you ever wondered how you fit into God’s story? We all fit in God’s story! And…He has given each of us talents and gifts to live out who we are in His story. Together we'll learn more about how God can use you to reach our Nineveh through how He has created you and gifted you.

When we read stories in the Bible it's pretty easy to read them through our eyes. We read stories through our culture, our experiences, and our circumstances. But what happens when we read these same stories through the eyes of the characters involved? What happens when we read this story from the perspective of Nineveh? How does that change things?