The Hills Church Live | August 29, 2021 | 10:00am

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] me [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] we are here for you [Music] we are [Music] here our hearts are open [Music] you are [Music] is [Music] [Music] fall down [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] almighty god [Music] is [Music] [Music] we welcome you be welcomed in his place [Music] let trace be a weapon that conquers all anxiety let it run [Music] the darkness changes everything we sing with all we are we claim your victory [Music] [Music] creation cry god we praise you we praise you [Music] and let it rise [Music] [Applause] [Applause] we praise you this is what living looks like this is what freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds like we praise you we praise you this is one living looks like this is what freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds like we praise you we praise you this is what freedom looks like this is what freedom feels like this is what heaven sounds like we praise you we praise you this is what living looks like this is what freedom feels like this is with all creation cry god we crave [Applause] [Music] breakthroughs on our site [Music] [Music] we [Applause] fear cannot survive when we praise him so this morning i want to continue our praise by just reading some scripture over you we're going to read all of psalm 29 this is 11 verses so it's a while so as i'm just reading these these are praises that were written thousands of years ago just let the beauty of how this author is describing god just wash over you let's praise god as we read his word ascribe to the lord you heavenly beings ascribe to the lord glory and strength ascribe to the lord the glory do his name worship the lord in in the splendor of his holiness the voice of the lord is over the waters the god of glory thunders the lord thunders over the mighty waters the voice of the lord is powerful the voice of the lord is majestic the voice of the lord breaks the cedars the lord breaks in pieces the cedars of lebanon he makes lebanon leap like a calf syrian like a young wild ox the voice of the lord strikes with flashes of light the voice of the lord shakes the desert the lord shakes the desert of cadish the voice of the lord twists the oaks and strips the forest bare and all in his temple cry glory the lord sits enthroned over the flood the lord is enthroned as king forever the lord gives strength to his people the lord blesses his people with peace and the church says amen amen i love i love that scripture and one of the phrases in there said that the lord sits enthroned over the flood you know you may be going through some sort of flood in your life right now you just feel overwhelmed with the torrent god sits enthroned above that let's praise [Music] to the darkness [Music] it's [Music] you give life [Music] every heart that is [Music] [Applause] [Music] in our loves [Music] [Music] so we pour out our grace [Music] [Music] our hearts will cry these bones will sing [Music] you will shout [Music] our hearts will cry these words [Music] [Music] [Applause] our hearts will cry [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] see you all it's your best [Applause] foreign [Applause] yes [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we pour out our prey [Music] how great is i'm gone sing with me is [Music] sing that again lift it up how great is [Music] is [Music] you are worthy of all praise [Music] all right we're going to keep singing this we're going to do something a little bit different so guys you stay on the chorus women you sing name of the ball names here we go how great [Applause] [Music] guys on the bridge foreign [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] one last course how great how great is [Music] let's praise our great god [Music] [Applause] i'll go and be seated please i just love moments like that it's just so beautiful to hear us all praise together we encourage one another as we do that it's a together moment of the church and so as we um as we commune together this morning let's do another together moment this is meant to be personal reflection but also a communal experience that we do as a family so if you're a guest here with us with the communion supplies the top top layer you pull off for the bread the next layer is for the cup that remind us of the body and the blood of jesus so let's all let me pray let's all continue to praise our great god oh god we just honor you right now there is no one like you we want to live lives of praise to where it's the the fruit of our lips but it's also through our actions and god not out of duty but out of love god is a response to what you have done for us and it's so so much but maybe the greatest is you sent your son here to die for us to pay for our sins and we thank you god so we take this bread and this cup as a family and we remember you in jesus name amen [Music] jesus keep me near the cross they're oppressed a healing stream flows from calvary's mountains in the cross in the cross be my glory ever till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river [Music] near the cross of lamb of god bringing his sins before [Music] in the cross be my glory ever [Music] my raptured souls shall find rest beyond [Music] that calls me from a world of care and bids me at my father's throne make all my wants and wishes in seasons of distress and grief my soul has often [Music] i [Music] in the cross in the cross [Music] till my raptured soul shall find resting [Music] shall find [Music] beyond the river [Music] well good morning everybody how we doing hills family wow we're asleep how we doing hills family there we go there we go i want to welcome all of you that are joining us online at home as well thank you so much for being with us you know this month we're in a series called essential church and we've leveraged that to also for this to be a time of honoring and we're going to continue that this morning but i just need to let you to know i need to let you know that from a staff perspective man it is an honor to serve you we love this church and love what we see god doing through you and god doing in you and it's been a great time to be together some of you that's helping you grow in your relationship with the lord and it's an honor for you to take those next steps and what that can look like and how you look more and more like jesus and we've been honored to walk with some of you in introducing you to jesus and your life being completely transformed in life coming out of the brokenness of what was before and there are others that are here this morning whether you're joining us online or whether you're here in person that there's something more that you want you're just not quite sure what it is or who it is and we're honored to be able to introduce you to jesus as well thank you for being here we're also honored for our kids and students that have joined us this morning as well and so i need you to listen a little bit differently because we're doing something differently starting into this school year but we're gonna dismiss kindergarten through seventh grade so excuse me first through seventh grade so first through fifth grade you're going to stand up and head to your volunteers and your green t-shirts and then all of you sixth and seventh graders are gonna stand up and you're gonna head back to the corner where they're waving you down and you're gonna go learn more about god's promises for you and what he has in store for you so all of our first through seventh graders if you will head to your study groups and as they're doing that i'm reminded as we talk about giving this morning whether it's historical even if it's present day but when people would come and visit a king or even today as they visit world leaders they bring something to them especially if they've come from a far off place and they bring a gift to them and we believe that jesus is the king of kings and so each week we bring our tithe we bring our offerings to him and we say lord we honor you honor that you have provided for us we honor that you're going to continue to provide for us and the amazing thing too is as you do that not only are you surrendering to the lord and being obedient to him but you honor the mission of this church to make and grow followers of jesus you honor the vision of this church to ask for nations and generations so you can give online you can give through the app you can text to give or you can give at the generosity boxes at each of our campuses as well but thank you as you bring honor to the lord in doing that we also want to honor the women of our church and that is going to happen in part the first weekend of october so just a little bit over a month away we're going to have our women's conference and so women i want to let you know that the early bird pricing ends august 31st so make sure you go online and register you can go to thehills.org forward slash women's con and that is where you can register you can get your tickets you can learn about the the lineup of speakers or if you want to volunteer for that you can do that there as well but make sure you are coming and joining women from all over this metroplex and even beyond and it's going to be a powerful time together we also want to honor those of you that are engaged right now or you have eyes towards marriage it is proven out that if you invest in your marriage before you get married it results in greater marital joy and satisfaction and longevity and that's why it's important for us that twice a year we offer a nearly wed seminar you'll come and you'll learn communication skills conflict resolution we'll talk about intimacy and finance but it's a great time for you to come together and invest in your marriage because here's the deal we want to invite god to the wedding but more importantly we want him to lead throughout the entirety of our marriages so that'll be september 18th from 9 to 3 30. you can go online to register for that as well what we are going to continue our theme and our activity of honoring folks so i'm going to ask all of the elders if they would come and join me up on stage because we're going to honor mike bell and his wife linda and we're also going to honor cliff crumpler and his wife mary kay and if you're also an elder here who isn't serving now but you served with either of these two would you come and join us up on stage as well as we honor these two mike and cliff are not done with ministry they're not done with serving but just as they faithfully accepted the role of elder they also realized that god has now asked them to surrender that and so they have stepped into elder retirement if you will and so this morning we're going to have an opportunity to be able to love on them and bless them and so i'm going to turn things over to rick work who is the chairman of our shepherding elders and church this is going to be a powerful moment so rick all yours buddy so good morning church this is a sweet time where we get to give honor to whom honor is due today we're going to give honor to two extraordinary men of god who have faithfully led the hills church as elders for decades mike bell and cliff crumpler they along with their amazing wives linda and mary kay have lovingly served this church with dedication and perseverance always pointing people to jesus mike began serving as an elder here in 1992 and cliff began in the year 2000 these men have prayerfully led our church through incredible times of growth and change always giving god the glory for all that he was doing here at our church mike when i think about words to describe you i think of steadfast humble discerning faithful teacher mentor mike and linda have faithfully taught mentored counseled and influenced countless numbers of individuals and couples and families here at the hills always directing them to the unchanging word of god mike has served longer than any other elder at this church 29 years currently and for cliff and mary kay what vibrant faithful servants of the lord you've been at here at the hills for so many years cliff you served this church 14 years as a youth minister and you took a lot of young our young people on mission trips to the us into mexico and jamaica instilling them in them a passion for loving and serving others in jesus name you've also served as a worship leader a teacher and a community group leader words that i think describe you cliff are bold fearless worshipful faithful prayerful and always mission focused to move us forward to what the lord was calling us to do next and you've done some hard things i think hebrews 13 7 speaks to how the bells and the crumplers steadfast walk with the lord should both encourage and challenge us hebrews 13 says and i love this verse remember your leaders those who spoke to you the word of god consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith may we all be challenged to imitate the faithful lives of mike and linda bell and cliff and mary k crumpler as they follow jesus this morning as a church then we'd like to present you with these crystal crosses and say thank you for your many years of faithful service to the lord at the hills church we are confident the lord will continue to use you mightily in his kingdom in the days ahead i've asked don box who served with you for quite a while to pray a blessing over you at this time would you lift your hands towards them as we pray for them so heavenly father we come here this morning to praise you to worship you and thank you for uh your grace your mercy and your love for this church and father we um we come also to thank you for jesus who through his blood and his sacrifice gave us redemption and purpose and newness of life and father uh we honor these two men who have served you have the holy spirit have called them to be oversight seers of this church and to shepherd them through so many years and father we just uh thank you for each one of them father i want to lift up cliff crumpler to you and thank you for my friend and the work that he's done just about all of his life what a testimony we thank you for the the impact that he had on so many of the young people those years ago who are now leaders and and members of this church and blessed by father we thank you for the time that he uh was a missionary himself he and mary kay as they went to the west coast and started a church there and and blessed so many there and then the call to be a shepherd of this church what greater thing could you bless them with and so father i pray for cliff and for mary kay that their life together will be continue to be a great blessing not only to the people here but to themselves i pray that you'll grant them all the the good health and the love of their family and love this church we thank you for that and father for my bud i just thank you for the life that he has uh led here in leading uh this flock through some challenging times father mike you know his name you know the prayers that he's lifted up so many times for so many people and the service that he's had and we thank you for that faithfulness and so many people that have been blessed by his leadership and his passion for teaching what a teacher of the word so father i pray that mike and linda will continue to have good health that their family will surround them this family will surround them with the love that you have for them again we thank you for jesus we thank you for what he's done and what an honor it is to serve him we pray through jesus name amen [Applause] church i'll be talking to you at the end of service of how you can honor them with uh with a blessing or thank you notes and as there's a reception that's going out in the atrium i also want to let you know that we're going to have an opportunity to honor dave riddle on september 9th if you hadn't heard dave riddle passed away earlier this week one of our elders and on september 9th we're going to celebrate his life at two o'clock in this room at one o'clock visitation but be praying for marva his sweet bride of 58 years be praying for their children david junior and stacy in just the entirety of their family but it'll be a great time to come together and celebrate a great life well grab your bibles open up your technology if you would and let's prepare our hearts for what the lord wants to say to us this morning through the words of rick ashley [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] wow oh welcome to the hills if you're on campus west fort worth campus or watching online thank you for joining us uh you're hearing the last of a short series i've done in the month of august entitled essential church and the premise of this series is that it is essential for us as christians to gather together regularly as the community of faith when the pandemic began and churches suspended in-person gatherings for a season they began to offer online experiences of worship and some began to wonder well how essential is it for us to get together if i can do all this worshiping at my own home and i'm contending that it is very essential now i completely understand that we are still in a season where many people do not need to be in large gatherings yet we completely understand we support your decision for a time to stay home but what i'm suggesting is that when the time comes that we all can get back together we all should get back together we said it's essential to our faith it's essential to our growth and i want to share with you today why i think our coming together is essential to our mission so a woman named mary wrote into a magazine to tell a story about her four-year-old daughter or granddaughter dawn and don locked herself in the bathroom and panicked and began screaming frantically for granny to rescue her and so mary showed up at the door and said don i'm going to have to go and find the key and it may take a little while but you be patient i'll be back and i'll let you out and just remember god is in there with you and don replied yes i know and god wants to get out too oh god does want to get out it is essential for god to get out into our community and the world and many good things happened among churches during the pandemic but one of the most negative impacts of the pandemic was the evangelistic impact of the global church that reaching people for christ seemed to shut down when christians were shut in i've talked to over a hundred pastors in the last year across the world and we all acknowledge a lot of good things were done by christian people during the pandemic but nobody has said we had our best year of evangelism ever we had our most baptisms we had our most decisions for christ now maybe it happened somewhere but i'm telling you as a general rule when we stopped coming together people stopped coming to jesus or to put it another way christians who gather more consistently seem to scatter more intentionally they seem to understand that you don't join a church just so the church will provide you worship offerings you join a church to commit to a mission a mission that is essential to [Music] jesus and here's the mission mark 16. go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation the church's mission is to preach the gospel to take it to the whole world because people need the gospel if they didn't need the gospel jesus wouldn't have told us to take it to everybody now with this commission of jesus comes two very critical assumptions and the first is that the world needs saving jesus thinks the world needs saving that people don't just need to be repaired they need to be redeemed and that's why jesus would consistently refer to his coming as a rescue operation he said luke 19 for the son of man came to seek and save those who are lost that's jesus word he did not call people far from god unchurched or seekers or searchers he said they are lost it's a sobering word he told a parable about a shepherd that lost a sheep and went to find it why because in their culture everybody understood a lost sheep is about to be a dead sheep in uh mark four the disciples are on a boat with jesus in a storm it's scary and jesus is asleep and they wake him up master don't you care that we're about to perish that's the word jesus used a word to describe people far from god that said they're about to die they're about to die eternally now when the church loses this theology of lostness that jesus had the church loses her urgency and we begin to experience mission drift to jesus the gospel is not just good news it is essential news people need the gospel because people need to be saved and there's a second critical assumption then that jesus said not only do people need to be saved but he is essential to that salvation he said i'm the way in the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through me jesus did not present himself as a way to god but as the way to god jesus said in john 8 for unless you believe that i am who i claim to be you will die in your sins so understand that when the early church lived on mission they preached the gospel to the world and the gospel they preached proclaimed that the imputed righteousness of jesus was essential if you want to be right with god peter said there is no other name under heaven given to men by which they can be saved but the name of jesus john said he who has the son has life he who does not have the son does not have life paul said there is one mediator between god and man and that is the man jesus christ and so the early church did not preach the gospel as charity but as necessity people need the gospel but there's a second half that's just as critical people need the gospel and the gospel needs a people the gospel needs a community that will take it to the world we've already seen that jesus said i intend to build a church upon the confession that i am the son of god and through this church he intends to pursue a global agenda through the church jesus intends to take back the world that satan has ill-legitimately claimed for himself you may not think you need the church jesus does jesus needs his church because the gospel needs a people that will take it to the world jesus needs a church that will stay on mission a church that will knock down walls instead of hide behind walls he needs a church that will take the gospel to the world he needs a church that will gather so that we can scatter and he needs a church that will scatter so that we can gather the church is essential to the mission of jesus the last time i was in new york city i got to see this church saint paul's chapel built in the 1700s a lot of famous americans have worshipped there in fact george washington worshipped at that church on the day he was inaugurated to be the first president of our country that church is right across the street from the twin towers that collapsed on 9 11 and amazingly the church was unharmed not one single window was even broken and that day the church received a new mission you see as the first responders rushed in to try to rescue people they became exhausted tired and hungry so saint paul's chapel became their place of refuge it's where they could go and get food where they could go and sleep where they could go and clean up where they could just go and grieve and they would go there and get restored so that they could go back to the mission of trying to rescue people this is what jesus asked his church to do and what i want to do is share with you now a look at my favorite local church in the new testament the church i hope the hills becomes like more than any other church in the new testament it's the church in antioch a church on mission read we've been starting first in chapter 11 of acts meanwhile the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after stephen's death traveled as far as phoenicia cyprus and antioch of syria they preached the word of god but only to jews however some of the believers who went to antioch from cyprus and serene began preaching to the gentiles about the lord jesus the power of the lord was with them and a large number of these gentiles believed and turned to the lord when the church at jerusalem heard what had happened they sent barnabas to antioch when he arrived and saw this evidence of god's blessing he was filled with joy and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the lord barnabas was a good man full of the holy spirit and strong in faith and many people were brought to the lord and then barnabas went on to tarsus to look for salt when he found him he brought him back to antioch both of them stayed there with the church for a full year teaching large crowds of people it was at antioch that the believers were first called christians and then two chapters later we learn more among the prophets and teachers of the church at antioch of syria were barnabas simeon called the black men lucius from cyrene manaean the childhood companion of king herod antipas and saul and one day as these men were worshipping the lord in fasting the holy spirit said appoint barnabas and saw for the special work to which i've called them and so after more fasting and prayer the men laid their hands on them and sent them on their way now you probably noticed there were a number of firsts at this special church it was the first church where believers were called christians it was the first church to cross cross-ethnic boundaries and include gentiles it was the first church to intentionally pursue missionary church planting and it's significant to me that god chose antioch as the kind of church he wanted planted across the world he chose leaders from antioch and said you go and take this gospel to all the nations because antioch was a church on mission and let me just share with you a couple of things that means for a church and the first is and we learned this from antioch a church on mission preaches a gospel that can save anyone the christians in antioch believed that people needed jesus it says a large number of gentiles believed and turned to the lord it said many people were brought to the lord now here's the point they're not just preaching to ethic they're not just going into the city saying we don't care what you believe just as long as you're nice to your neighbor they were just preaching a philosophy they were specifically calling on people to follow jesus to turn their lives and their hearts over and surrender to jesus and it did so by preaching the gospel that could call anyone it was an antioch that the gospel was freed from its jewish cultural trappings to become a message any culture could embrace up to this point people had only preached to jews up to this point they just thought that you have to be a jew to be a christian you have to know moses to know jesus it was in antioch that they took those jewish trappings off and just preached pure jesus they preached a gospel that any culture could receive the church in jerusalem heard about this this was a new thing they sent barnabas up to check it out he saw the evidence of god's blessing and grace and he loved it but not everybody in jerusalem did if you read in acts 15 some other guys came up from jerusalem and said to the church and yeah you've got to stop this right now you've got to tell people they have to get circumcised before they can get baptized and there was a sharp debate and everybody trucked on down to jerusalem to have a church conference most important church conference ever because what's on the table is what's necessary for salvation now imagine if that conference had decided you have to get circumcised before you can be baptized you don't have a gospel that can go into all the world but it was at that conference that peter made one of the most important statements in all of scripture in chapter 11 of acts 15. we believe that we are all saved the same way by the undeserved grace of the lord jesus now that's a gospel that you can take to the world that's a gospel that can be embraced by every culture and transcend every culture we're all saved the same way by the undeserved grace of jesus is a gospel of a church on mission and nobody championed this gospel of undeserved grace more than paul did because no one knew it was true more than paul did now i don't know what you've done in your past but i bet you don't have i used to kill christians on your resume paul did paul knew it is the undeserved grace of jesus that can save anyone and an antioch god prepared paul to release the gospel that had released him he would write to timothy this is a trustworthy saying and everyone should accept it christ jesus came into the world to save sinners and i'm the worst of them all but god had mercy on me so that christ jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners listen the church is at her best when she believes the gospel can save even the worst this gospel can save anyone now over 400 years ago a man lived in italy named antonio stradivarius he made violins you may have heard of them they're the most desired in all the world no one knew it at the time see he was a poor man he couldn't afford the best wood he had to go down to the harbor and get waterlogged wood that had been thrown away to use for his violins what no one at that time knew is that the microbes in the water ate the uh fibrous infrastructure of the wood and created these chambers that the music could resonate in he took what nobody wanted and it became what everybody wanted that's what the gospel does it takes the broken and the ruined and the wicked and it claims them for jesus because the gospel can save anyone now a week and a half ago at the north richmond hills campus we had a prayer service for haiti in afghanistan it was a powerful night and my brother david meyer got up he started talking about saul the man who used to kill christians do you think in his day if you were a christian you were praying for saul you probably hoped he would die and he did die he died in jesus christ he was crucified and raised again and then david turned it over and started talking about the taliban and asked us if we were praying for the taliban and i was convicted i do not have good feelings about the taliban i don't think good thoughts about the taliban it wouldn't bother me if i heard that bad things happened to the taliban and then the spirit said god wants them to die too he wants them to die into jesus christ and ever since i've been praying for the taliban and i'm going to tell you something it's not easy but i've been praying every day since that jesus will show up just like he did to saul on the road to damascus and they will have supernatural encounters with the risen christ and god will bring out a revival in afghanistan because i believe in a gospel that can save anyone and i ought to know because i preach to a church full of people that just a few years ago no one thought would ever be a follower of jesus including you but somebody was praying for you because they believed in the gospel and this is the message of a church on mission but here's the thing the church doesn't just preach this grace the church puts this grace on display it's a gospel that can save anyone and it's a gospel that can reconcile everyone and a church on mission practices that kind of gospel and by the way this is why i think it is so essential that christian people regular regularly get together and here's what i mean it's just so hard to overemphasize how critical and radical it was when as luke said some christians started preaching to the gentiles that had never happened antioch was the first church to intentionally cross racial boundaries with the gospel antioch was a bigoted city like most cities are it was a very segregated city with each race having its own part of town they stayed in and along comes this group of people and they start crossing racial boundaries and they start meeting together regularly and they seem to like it and no one has ever seen this before which might have explained why the believers in antioch were given a label no one had ever used before who are those people getting together the way they are and loving on each other oh those are the christ people you know they're the christians that's who they are from membership all the way to leadership the church in antioch modeled a reconciliation among men that gave evidence to the possibility of reconciliation with god and this is the message god wanted to get out it's why he chose anyone not jerusalem but antioch to be the church that would send out the missionaries that would change the world because that's the church he wants in all the world and it's significant that paul goes out from antioch and not one time does paul plant a mono ethnic church which would have been so much easier because multi-ethnic church is messy the reason we have the book of galatians and the book of ephesians and the book of romans is because multi-ethnic church is messy but paul understood if you're going to preach the full gospel if you're going to convince people that anyone can be reconciled to god you've got to put that grace on display by the way it's reconciled us to each other a gospel that only makes people right with god is incomplete notice how he put it in the book of ephesians for christ himself has brought peace to us he united jews and gentiles into one people who went in his own body on the cross he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us together as one body christ reconciled both groups to god by means of his death on the cross and our hostility toward each other was put to death it would have been so much easier if paul said all you people that look and talk and like this go to this house for church and all you people that look and talk like that go to this house for church and paul knew if he did that it would be easy the problem is it wouldn't be gospel that walls come down when the cross is lifted up and know this god hates separate but equal [Applause] and that's why [Applause] jesus is building a church that models what only the spirit of god can do jesus needs a church on mission he needs a church that will preach and practice the gospel so does the world in 1984 a film was distributed called places in the heart the lead actress sally field won an oscar for best actress for that movie and the movie had one of the strangest endings of any movie hollywood's ever made i want to show you a clip from that movie while i talk over it she was married to a young man they raised cotton and in the beginning of the movie her husband is accidentally shot by a young black man who is lynched for a crime that wasn't a crime now she's a widow she's got to try to survive there's a banker about to foreclose on the farm this unemployed black man named moses shows up and teaches her how to raise cotton now there's some other drama going on in the town there's a young couple that you see on the screen now that have been had their marriage attacked by infidelity there's the clan in town that ran moses out of town and at the end of the movie they're in church the preacher has read from first corinthians 13 about love and they start to take communion and all of a sudden you see moses who has run out of town earlier he's there taking communion and you see the clan and you see black tenant farmers and you see the banker and you see that couple whose marriage had blown up and then you see the young widow taking communion with her children and then she takes the tray and she turns and gives it to her husband who had died early in the movie who takes the tray and gives it to the young black man who accidentally shot him and was lynched and the movie ends what on earth was the filmmaker trying to say one thing i appreciate about the film is he doesn't pretend that that problems like racism and poverty and marital unfaithfulness are easy to fix maybe he's saying that there's a coming a day when we'll finally have the community we've always wanted but the thing that was so striking is it all happened in a church it happened while the church was taking communion well the church was celebrating the death and the resurrection of jesus as if he was trying to say the only message that we'll ever create the kind of community we all want is the message the church alone has the message of jesus and that's why i believe church is essential and that's why i believe we can't get this message to the world as long as we're all staying in our homes we have to come together it's not about drawing a crowd it's about putting the kingdom of god on display for the world and so we commit to this rhythm of gathering and scattering because we know that if we get grace right in here it helps get god out there pray with me i pray god that this message will bear fruit beginning with this would you give us all the desire to want to be the church jesus wanted the church jesus wanted the church that preaches undeserved grace and puts it on display every time they get together i pray the day will come when if people ask well what is the hills church like is it full of mainly white people or black people or brown people the answer will be i don't know but it's full of christians it's full of people sold out to jesus help us be a church that makes jesus look good for his glory and in his name we ask him amen please stand to my right and your left along this wall we have some prayer warriors who would love to lift you up it's one of the ways that we practice grace as a church we pray for each other if you're ready to give your life to jesus christ you need to be baptized you don't need to do anything else you just need to be baptized because this gospel is for everybody and it can save anybody jesus turns graves into gardens so we're going to sing about that invite you to come [Music] i searched the world but it couldn't fill me a man's empty praise and treasures the faith are never enough that you came along and put me back together and every desire is now satisfied here in your love [Music] oh there's nothing better than you there's nothing better than you lord there's nothing nothing is [Music] to show you my weakness [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you there's nothing better [Applause] than me oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you turn shame into glory [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're the only one [Applause] [Music] there's nothing better than you lord there's love [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] than you there's nothing better than you the more there's none [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Music] you're the only one here [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're the only one you care [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right church got a challenge for you gotta listen to that sermon again it's amazing we gotta take that to heart what does it mean for us what does it mean for how it is that we're going to live our lives it changes everything hey for those of you that have just you know for some these last 18 months have been the hardest months of your life and grief is something that just has you ensnared right now and it's understandable but we want to help you we will help you grow and heal and so we're starting the grief recovery group that will start on september 7th and run until october 12th and so you can see the information on the screen but it's an opportunity for you to process your grief to look at it but then also to realize that there is life afterwards and that peace and hope can be a part of your life again will you please check that out church we've gotten into a rhythm the rhythm is is that as we see folks we start to categorize them we're being led in so many different ways of how do we find people that how are they different than us how do they think different than us how do they look different than us and we start putting us all into these different camps and the reality is is we just sing a song that says there's nothing better than you lord and when are we going to get back to when we see people we realize they're a reflection of the one who made us their reflection of the one that we say there is nothing better than him and when we will live that kind of life and we realize that we are coming together and we have an opportunity regardless of how great their life looks or regardless of how broken their life looks they need jesus every single person you know needs jesus you don't ever have to ask the question they may not know that but you do because you know them and so as you go this week and as you live life don't look at the differences but look at the image of your father and realize that you have a chance to introduce them to jesus be bold and be courageous this week we love you god bless you we'll see you soon [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Hills Church

Views: 721

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: hmApgEE8cRw

Length: 80min 41sec (4841 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021