This week, Nick began our short series on the vision for Citizens Church in BCS. What does Jesus say about the church and the Kingdom and what does that mean for us today?

This Sunday, Kathryn continued our study of the Gospel of John in our season of prayer and fasting. We pause this week in John 14. Why did Jesus mention the Holy Spirit (at length) twice during the Last Supper before his death and resurrection? Because the Holy Spirit is an essential part of the life of a believer. Who is he? What does he do? And what does that mean for each of us today? Let’s find out together. 

God’s glory is the manifestation of His radiance and power. We cannot look directly upon God, so God makes Himself perceivable in His glory. As a church body currently in a season of fasting and reading the Gospel of John, God’s glory is a pertinent theme. How can we better recognize God’s glory? And, in doing so, how might we more fully receive His grace?

Our Citizens leadership team joins together for a panel discussion about the practice of fasting.

God offers one thing to those that choose a life and path saturated with humility: grace. Jesus went against the grain of His culture by choosing this path and so can we. 

As believers, we know that happiness is a reaction to something great, but Joy is the product of someone great. To know the Gospel creates the greatest possible joy in the human heart. Advent contains within itself the crucial balance of the now and not-yet that our faith requires: the disappointment, brokenness, suffering and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life. Because we live in this age, we feel sorrow; but because we also live with a foot in the age to come, we feel joy. 

Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s plan for true peace, Shalom. Now, as sons and daughters, wholeness and true peace is ours for the taking. Let’s live our lives undivided and whole as we agree with God’s perfect plan of Shalom!

Biblical Hope finds rest in God’s promises. Therefore, we must know the promises of God found richly in His Word. We also can look to certain Biblical figures, such as the Virgin Mary, as models who cultivated Hope in habit and in prayer, doing so in ways that caught God’s attention and earned His treasured descriptor of “highly favored”.

The Name of the Lord literally cannot be lifted higher. His is already the Name above all names. Yet Jesus tells us to “hallow”, or honor, the Father’s name. The Psalmist also consistently blesses the name of the Lord. What happens when we do the same? What changes in us and in our environment when we bless the Lord? It’s worth finding out and practicing often.