Citizens Weekly

In 1 Samuel, King David is described as the man after God’s own heart. Although his life was marked by very high-high’s and even lower-low’s, he never wavered from his desire to know the Lord. Psalm 63 provides a framework for what it means to seek God and how we should pursue him. As a result, we can become a church whose faith can carry us through any storm. 

This week we look at Psalm 23 and how it offers a broad snapshot of what it looks like to trust the Lord while walking through every season of life. The hope of this message is that we would recognize his love and his faithfulness. May this teaching stir up within you a passion to know him more. 

From the Summer Psalms Series. As carnal beings in a carnal-centric world, we may easily obsess over our bodies, minds, and emotions – how we “feel”. Psalm 19 rightly reorients self-obsession to awe and humility before the Lord. For this reason, we need the Bible more than “biblical supplements”, although we often remain content with just supplements. But can we ever truly experience the Bible as more precious than gold, as sweeter than honey? The answer: absolutely yes.

From the Summer Psalms Series. In a chaotic world where even those outside the church report humanity’s relational crisis, the Psalms anchor us front and center before a God whose covenantal blessings to Abraham have not yet exceeded the promised inheritance of a thousand generations. But how do we meet with this historically faithful God when so much vies for our current attention? The Psalms instruct us how to shift attention rightly to God so He might receive our greatest adoration and we might find our greatest contentment in Him.

From the Summer Psalms Series. As God’s people, we are not meant to fit the Bible into the narrative of our lives like more good advice; rather, we should strive to center our lives within God’s ongoing Biblical narrative of establishing and advancing His Kingdom on the earth. From the outset, the poetry and prayers of Psalms help us enter God’s story.

From the Series “Sermon on the Mount”. We live in the juxtaposition of the true self and the false self, what others have called the eulogy virtues and the resume virtues. In Matthew 6, Jesus shifts his focus from bad things that get in the way of following him to good things that get in the way of following him. In this text, Jesus takes his disciples through four shifts to transition from the false self to the true self, rooted and established in him.

From the Series “Sermon on the Mount”. Eugene Peterson writes, “It is easy to be honest with God with our hallelujahs; it is somewhat more difficult to be honest with our hurts; it is nearly impossible to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate”. Jesus confronts a socially accepted style of hatred – entrenched more in jealousy than rage – and declares it unacceptable in the Kingdom of God. What does this hate look like? Where have it previously appeared in scripture? How do we recognize it in ourselves?