Shelbyville Community Church

The desire to control is at the root of almost all anxiety, fear, and worry. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. There are things that you and I can do to reduce or eliminate sleepless nights and stressful days.

We all have and make plans. We all do, but God does not say, "For I know the plans you have for you." He says, "I know the plans I have for you."

When it comes to living in a world where things can seem random, out of control, and people have to endure unfair and even evil things, sometimes we want to know, “Is anyone piloting this thing?” Is there someone in charge and in control? Is He good? Is He powerful? If He exists, does He love me or hate me? These are the kinds of questions that the book of Daniel answers definitively.

We have strong feelings at times about how we love or hate certain things. It can be easy to love... especially when we have others agreeing with us. We try to justify why we don’t like THOSE people, or THAT team, or THAT place. Hate does that. It turns people, places, and things into THEM. But Jesus has a call that jerks our hearts around quite a bit. It’s something I wish Jesus never said: To lo...

Jesus has a lot to say about waiting. In the last sermon Jesus gives before his crucifixion He tells his disciples that He’s going to return at some point. He then uses parables and lessons on watching, waiting, and being prepared for his second coming. In his parable about the sheep and the goats Jesus makes a statement I wish He never said.

Jesus tells a parable about someone building a tower and not completing the job. He goes on to tell about a king that underestimates his enemy. He then lays out a warning... what kingdoms are you investing in? Because those will fail and mine will come.

Jesus shared a lot of difficult teachings during his ministry here on earth. We kick off the series by looking at a statement that caused many of his disciples to completely walk away from following Him.

If you’ve ever been to more than one wedding, you’ve probably heard 1 Corinthians 13 read aloud. It’s often called “The Love Chapter.” While it sounds poetic and beautiful, it’s actually gritty and oh, so challenging to our culture’s view of love.

Sometimes when a couple files for divorce, they do on the grounds of something called “irreconcilable differences.” The idea is that no one, in particular, is at fault in the marriage, but there are fundamental compatibility issues that will prevent that marriage from being successful. Make no mistake, behind every divorce is a series of refusals on the part of at least one spouse to forgive.

We all enter into marriage with hopes, dreams, and desires. The only way to keep them from becoming expectations is to decide that your spouse doesn’t owe you. As long as you think your spouse owes you, your marriage is transactional. It’s all about relational debt & keeping score. That destroys intimacy. It destroys love.

Simply put, Christian marriage is meant to be a submission competition. It is meant to be a race to the back of the line. Every single day. Healthy marriages aren’t built on keeping score, but instead on serving and loving one another by putting our partner's needs above our own.

This week we’ll note that when it comes to any relationship, we each bring a box, an invisible box of hopes, dreams, and desires that we carry into that relationship. This is usually healthy and normal. But what happens when those desires become demands?

The things that we speak aren’t so much a word problem but rather a heart problem. Jesus calls us to look beyond the symptoms of our words in order to focus on the source that causes our words to dishonor him.

The words we speak to our family members during this quarantine will stick. They will stay stuck in our relationships, whether it be with a spouse, a son, or a daughter. The good news is that you can make your words work FOR you and your family during a quarantine.

We will stay centered on God’s Word by holding the Bible above us as our authority as we help everyone understand and apply it.

The Christian life isn’t just difficult to live. It’s impossible to live. The Christian life is a supernatural life, which means you can’t live it alone. We must live the Christian life out of the power & guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Worry is what happens when you meditate on your problems. Anxiety is what happens when you meditate on the things that threaten peace. Worship is what happens when you meditate on God and enter into His presence and the residue of His glory. As God gets bigger in worship, our worries and anxiety get smaller and lose their hold on us.

“When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).

In this value, we are saying that we will be a church that will serve with a reckless generosity that only makes sense in light of the generosity of God’s grace.

Spiritual growth is a partnership between us and God where He brings all the resources and I intentionally tap into and live out of those resources. It’s the difference between “Training” and “Trying.”

A disciple is a student, apprentice, or pupil. Because Jesus was known as a Rabbi (teacher), He had disciples. It was the goal of every disciple to become like their teacher. To become a disciple, we must accept Jesus as our teacher. We must believe that He is right, not just about heaven, but about everything.

The vision of Shelbyville Community Church is to be a disciple-making church that brings hope and healing to our community.

From the Trinity to the 10 commandments, to the fruit of the spirit, over and over again we see the importance of relationships throughout God’s story. Our prayer is that Jesus will use relational environments at SCC to set the stage for the Holy Spirit to do some of his best work in our lives.

Jesus has not given us a mission that we can accomplish alone or in our own strength. It takes a disciple to make another disciple, as programs alone will never be enough. It’s so vital that we each become people that radically love and lead like Jesus.

Everyone you know and love desperately needs Jesus. Even those you dislike and avoid have a deep need for your Savior. But for a variety of reasons, it’s possible to go through life blind and distracted from that need. This is one of the reasons everyone needs to be plugged into a church that reminds us often how vital it is to bring the people in our lives to Jesus.