So don’t forget that you were not born as Jews and were uncircumcised (circumcision itself is just a work of man’s hands); you had none of the Jewish covenants and laws; you were foreigners to Israel’s incredible heritage; you were without the covenants and prophetic promises of the Messiah, the promised hope, and without God. 13 Yet look at you now! Everything is new! Although you were once distant and far away from God, now you have been brought delightfully close to him through the sacred blood of Jesus—you have actually been united to Christ! 14 Our reconciling “Peace” is Jesus! He has made Jew and non-Jew one in Christ. By dying as our sacrifice, he has broken down every wall of prejudice that separated us and has now made us equal through our union with Christ. 15 Ethnic hatred has been dissolved by the crucifixion of his precious body on the cross. The legal code that stood condemning every one of us has now been repealed by his command. His triune essence has made peace between us by starting over—forming one new race of humanity, Jews and non-Jews fused together in himself! 16 Two have now become one, and we live restored to God and reconciled in the body of Christ. Through his crucifixion, hatred died. 17 For the Messiah has come to preach this sweet message of peace to you,[l] the ones who were distant, and to those who are near. 18 And now, because we are united to Christ, we both have equal and direct access in the realm of the Holy Spirit to come before the Father!
Ephesians 2:11-17 (The Passion Translation)
Author: BrandonShanks
God’s Poem
We have become his poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works[b] we would do to fulfill it!
Ephesians 2:10 (The Passion Translation)
But God…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:1-9
The Password to God’s Presence
It’s Sunday morning! As we prepared to worship together I want to share what Psalm 100 says about worship:
On your feet now—applaud GOD! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: GOD is God, and God, GOD. He made us; we didn’t make him. We’re his people, his well-tended sheep. Enter with the password: “Thank you!” Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank him. Worship him. For GOD is sheer beauty, all-generous in love, loyal always and ever.
Psalm 100 (The Message paraphrase)
There is nothing more frustrating than needing to log into a site and you can’t remember your password. I have to click the “I forgot my password” button often!
There are times in life when I get spiritually dry and loose perspective. I don’t feel God’s presence and wonder where He is in my life. I can’t log in. In my pain and in my fear I forget my password.
What is the password to God’s presence? God could have made it anything.
He could have made the password “Perfection.”
If perfection was needed to be in the presence of God then we would never be good enough! That may be the case for people. There may be people that have given up on you because of your imperfection and they have rejected you because of past mistakes. God does not reject you! God has a plan and purpose for your life.
We can wait to enter God’s presence because things are not perfect in our lives. We have our own idea of what things should be like. When things are not going our way we miss the presence and power of Jesus.
What is the password? Psalm 100 says:
Enter with the password: “Thank You.”
The password is praise. When we focus on everything in our lives having to be perfect and to go our way we get so frustrated. However, when we just decide to praise the Lord we enter His presence and find the fullness of joy!
As we worship today, let’s lay aside all of our mistakes and the mistakes of others. Let’s lay aside our hurts and fears. Let’s enter God’s presence with the password: “Thank You.” Let’s thank God that even when things are not going good, He is good! Let’s thank God that He is sovereign even in the storms of life. Let’s thank God for the blessings. Let’s thank God for the battles.
Lord, as we come to worship you today, we give you all of our imperfections. We give you all of our doubts and fears. We give you the hurt and the pain and we choose to praise. We praise you for Your goodness in every season. We worship You today with all of our hearts. We enter into your presence, not with demands, but by simply saying, "Thank You." In Jesus Name. Amen.
See you this morning at City Hills! Join us at 8:30am / 10:00am / 11:30am in person or live online at www.cityhills.com!
How Many Sundays Are In 30 Years?
“If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. Part of leadership (a big part of it, actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. Long enough that the critics realize that you’re going to get there one way or another…so they follow.”
Seth Godin, (Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us)
I love this quote about leadership because so many times when pursuing God’s purpose we wait to fully commit. We wait to see how things are going to turn out before trusting God with everything. We stop too soon. We fail to remember that we are living for an audience of one.
When my wife and I moved our family to Knoxville from Florida to start City Hills in 2015 we were doing so because the Lord give us a big vision. However, when we moved here there was no evidence most days that the vision was going to come to pass. A few months after the church launched I distinctly remember the Sunday when we had our lowest attendance ever. There were about 30 adults there that morning and one of the Kids Serve Teamers came to me asking if they have to stay in the kids rooms because no kids were there. I remember feeling so low. I did my best to preach an encouraging Word and afterwards I went home and slept from that Sunday afternoon until the next morning. The next day when I woke up I had a word in my mind that another local pastor had said to me. He said, “Don’t forget, one bad Sunday does not define your future.” I thought to myself, “How many Sundays are in 30 years?” I made up my mind that day that I was not going to focus on that one Sunday when there were still over 1500 Sundays left in 30 years. We were here for the long-haul and were not going to wait to go all in until things were going better. I was following a calling God gave me and was committing to leave the results up to God. That day I went to a local store and bought 1500 pieces of candy and put them in a big glass jar. Each Sunday for the next few months I would eat a piece of candy and be reminded to stay faithful and enjoy the journey. Then my kids knocked the jar off the counter and broke it. But that’s another story. #DadLife 🙂
What has God called you to do? Don’t let the circumstances you are seeing right now discourage you from following God’s purpose for your life! Don’t quit! Don’t give up! God is not finished with you yet. Go buy you a big jar of candy and keep trusting the plan and purpose of God for your life 🙂
Father, I pray for anyone who is discouraged right now. I pray that they would sense your love and grace in their lives. I pray that they would have the courage to keep trusting you. I pray for anyone who has been knocked down my circumstances in life. Give them the strength to get up again and trust you! I thank you that You are a God of second chances. We fully commit our lives to you Jesus! Have your way. We trust your plan and purpose. We give this day to you. In Jesus Name! Amen.
I can’t wait to see you this Sunday at City Hills! Join us in-person at 8:30am / 10:00am / 11:30 am and live online at www.cityhills.com
A Leader’s Team
Sunday I shared about the reality that we are all leaders. God has given all of us influence. Many times we do not see ourselves this way. I believe God wants to raise our level of leadership so that we can shine bright for Christ in the city of Knoxville and beyond!
“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.
Matthew 5:14
I believe that the followers of Jesus should be the best leaders on the planet because Jesus is the greatest leader of all time!
A leadership lesson from Jesus:
I want to look at one of the biggest leadership decisions that Jesus ever made. It was such a big decision that he spent all night praying about it. As a matter of fact, this is the only time that we see Jesus staying up all night to pray. What could have been so important that he would need to pray all night about it?
“One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names: Simon (whom he named Peter), Andrew (Peter’s brother), James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus), Simon (who was called the zealot), Judas (son of James), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).”
Luke 6:12-16
“Very few things are as important as the team you surround yourself with.”
Jesus stayed up all night to pray before he chose his team! He took time to pray about who he was going to choose to be on his team. I have a question: “Who is on your team? Who have you choose to walk with you and help you achieve the task of leadership that God has given you. If you are a parent, you need a team of people to help lead your children. What team have you put around you at work? What team do you have around you to lead your family? You may think, I don’t know about that. Many of these tasks that you are describing are just for me. I don’t need anyone else helping me lead my family. That is simply not true. We need to be intentional about putting people around us that will help us. We can’t do it all!
MYTH: Individuals accomplish great things.
TRUTH: Teams accomplish great things.
This is something that has been hard to learn for me. I naturally am a doer and I used to feel bad to ask for others to help me. But I quickly learned that I can’t do it all. I do not have all of the leadership giftings needed to lead City Hills Church on my own as an individual. That may surprise you. You may think, “They why are you leading Brandon?” Hang with me. 🙂
If I led on my own here is an example of things that I would need to be good at on my own: I have to be a vision caster, theologian, preacher, manager, team builder, creative, writer, conflict arbitrator, musician, and counselor. I have to know everything about real estate, audio/visual, graphic design, kids students, college, adults, seniors, food serve, funerals, weddings, social media, marketing, outreach, international missions, crisis management, Human Resources, legal, web design, app development, security, and so much more! And on top of all of that I have to be an amazing husband, a great dad, a good friend, and a body builder. 🙂
No one is great at all of these things! Yet, somehow we think that if we read enough books or attend enough conferences that we will be able to do it all. I am so thankful for the team of world-class leaders that God has surrounded me with at City Hills. I know I cannot lead alone. We we are going to accomplish what God has called us to we have to surround ourselves with amazing teams.
God’s dreams for you will be determined by the strength of the TEAM around you.
God has called you to lead! Your leadership is more important than you could ever realize. However, you can’t do it all alone. We need each other. A lot of times we surround ourselves with anyone that will accept us instead of being intentional about the people we put in our inner circle of leadership. Let’s be like Jesus and be intentional about the people we place around us. Let’s take time to pray about it. If Jesus needed to pray about the leaders He was going to surround himself with you better believe you and I will need to pray about this as well.
Maybe you think: “You’re right, I need to surround myself with Godly people who will help me fulfill God’s calling on my life… but I don’t have those relationships.” This is another reason why getting in a SUMMER SMALL GROUP is so important! In a small group you will get connected with other people that can walk with you on the journey. You may even find one of the people that you feel called to invite to help you lead! You never know! If you are a parent, this is why it is UNSPEAKABLY IMPORTANT that you get your kids and teens involved with City Hills Kids and City Hills Students. We need other Godly voices on our team speaking into the lives of our kids. I am so thankful for the Next Gen leadership at City Hills and how they speak into the lives of my three kids!
If there was ever anyone who could have decided to do his calling all alone without a team it would have been Jesus.
Jesus was God in the flesh! However, he chose to change the world by surrounding himself with a hand-selected team of twelve ordinary people.
"Lord, I pray that you help us realize that we cannot do what you have called us to do alone. Help us as a church family to be the most dynamic group of leaders in the City of Knoxville for Your glory! We ask that You would give us wisdom and insight about who who surround ourselves with as we lead. I pray you would take away the wrong relationships and bring closer the right relationships. Help us to be on the teams of others around us helping them fulfill the calling on their lives. We need you today Holy Spirit! Make us into the leaders you have called us to be! In Jesus Name!
Have an amazing day!
Don’t forget SERVE SATURDAY is this Saturday at 8:30am! No need to sign up, you can just show up at the church and we will go out to the various serve projects from there.
A Leader’s Prayer
Ephesians 1:15-23
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,
Thank God for those you lead
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,
Pray that those you lead would know God
18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened,
Pray that those you lead would find freedom
that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you,
Pray that those you lead would discover their purpose
what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,
Pray that those you lead would make a difference
according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
It’s all about Jesus!
Let’s make a difference together today.
Serve Saturday is this Saturday! We are going to be serving our city together. Meet at the church at 8:30am. Click here for more information:
Don’t Forget the Benefits
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. 6 So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.
Ephesians 1:3-6