Shelbyville Community Church

Paul states that when we put our faith in Christ we become a new creation. He goes further in the book of Colossians by saying that Christ is in us, that we are in him, and that we are hidden with him in God. Far too many of us identify as sinners saved by grace. Paul challenges this thinking by saying you're a new creation! The old has passed the new has come.

Most of your friends think the message of Christianity is ‘Be good! Here’s the bar, now measure up to it.” They couldn’t be more wrong. The message of the Christian faith isn’t that we have done anything, but that we believe that someone ELSE has. This is what separates Christianity from every other world religion.

You reap what you sow. This is a spiritual law that is as real and measurable as the law of gravity. If we sow to the spiritual nature, we will reap the good fruit that comes from that nature. But if we sow to the flesh we will reap the whirlwind that comes from that nature.

It’s easy for us to compare ourselves to others in order to feel like we measure up. We feel the need to justify our weaknesses or to make ourselves appear to have it all together when we’re actually a train wreck inside. But when we’re willing to see ourselves as God sees us, that all starts to change. The need to compare ourselves to others in order to find our worth begins to fade, and we find...

The holidays typically mean time with family. And family has a way of driving us nuts in ways that no one else can. It’s so easy to look at everyone else and judge how they act, what they say, and what they believe. Jesus gives us a good reminder to worry about the plank in our own eye before looking at the speck of dust in someone else’s eyes.

Burdens aren’t something that we’re called to carry alone. In the life of the Church, burdens aren’t so much a “you” or a “me” thing as they are an “us” thing. In fact, when we follow the Holy Spirit’s lead & bear each other’s burdens, those are some of the times where God is most honored.

When it comes to people, God is in the restoration business. It’s what He does. It’s who He is, and He invites us into that work. We are commanded in the name of love to “restore” one another.

Like an apple tree, we can't produce fruit unless we have outside help. Trees need good soil, water, and sunlight. Christians produce fruit because of the spirit, not their own efforts. In Galatians 5:16-26, Paul tells us to walk by the spirit, look at the obvious, and remember the good news.

The “one-anothers” of the New Testament are simply specific applications of Jesus’ command to love one another. In other words, it’s unloving to refuse to forgive someone. It’s unloving to refuse to submit to the needs of another. It’s unloving to refuse to carry someone else's burden. Imagine a world where people were skeptical of what we believed but envious of how well we treated one anoth...

In Galatians 5:6, the Apostle Paul makes an astounding and clarifying statement. He says, “The ONLY thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.” Why would Paul say that? Did He REALLY mean that faith and love were the ONLY things that count in this life? The short answer is: yes.

Up until this point, Paul has been a bit aggressive in his approach with the recipients of his letter. Paul admits it in 4:20, saying "I wish i could change my tone with you, but I'm perplexed by you." Paul then takes a different approach by looking at the ancestry fo the Jewish people. He uses it to remind them that they are people of promise and that they're people that are f...

One of the many hopes held out by the gospel is that as God’s children, we are His heirs. But what exactly is it that we will inherit? Join us this weekend as we tease out some of what it means for us to be heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

Our culture has lots of different barriers that threaten to divide different groups of people from one another. But when the gospel comes into the picture? Everything changes! The good news of Jesus doesn’t just maintain the status quo. It compels us to bring those barriers down.

For God’s people, the Old Covenant law functioned kind of like a set of training wheels, preparing them for the day when Jesus would come to set them free from the old way of life & give them a new way to live. It can be tempting to live as if we’re simply keeping to a set of rules rather than pursuing a relationship with a Lord & savior who created us to live freely. Join us on Sunday as...

Jesus once likened life in the Spirit to the flow of a river, calling out… “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flowing from within.’ By this, He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39). In other words, let anybody who is dissatisfied, unhappy, discontent, who hasn’t had a real good life, let them come...

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Hypocrisy = Wrong behavior + Right belief. But what if the "hypocrite" label isn't reserved for a specific group of people? What is hypocrisy is a struggle that's way more widespread than we might assume? This week, we'll be looking into how one of the leaders in the early Church started behaving hypocritically and how another leader decided to step up & call him on it...

Anytime we add to the Gospel, we rob it of the freedom it's meant to bring. Even adding great things can easily make the good news of Jesus about us and not Jesus. The gospel plus anything means we're still trying to earn God's love, favor, and forgiveness. In the book of Galatians, Paul is addressing this issue head-on and pleading with them to be a unified church that believes the...

The hope held out by the good news of Jesus is that you can have a former life. The offer of the gospel is that no matter what you are dealing with today that God will help you grow past that tomorrow. Often people will say, “If God loves me just the way I am, why would He ask me to change?” The call to change is actually rooted in and flows out of the Love of God.

Why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn’t God have just forgiven us? The answer is: Death is the engine of life. When Jesus died on the cross, He was acting in accordance with the way things are and with the way our world already works.

The Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Sistine Chapel are all masterpieces, created with intentionality. They are intimate pieces refined by the artist until completion. Created with a plan and a purpose. God uses prayer in the same way! When we have an intentional prayer life with our heavenly Father He uses it to refine us into the Masterpieces that He planned long before we were born.

It's pretty easy to look at mountain range or a waterfall or a beautiful sunset and be in awe of God's creation. But what if God's greatest creation, his masterpiece, wasn't found in nature, but in you? The video shown in the service can be seen here.