JOIN THE MIRACLE

Dear Friend of Cedar Hills,

As this year winds to a close, I simply wanted to share a miracle that happened in our congregation in the past two weeks. This miracle happened because God’s people responded in a time of need. This miracle happened because of you!

A couple of weeks ago we shared our dire financial need and we called people to invest in the mission of Cedar Hills. We believe in the call God has for us as His church and we see fruit, even in these challenging times.

• Our children and families made a special connection this season with the Nativity Escape Room. This creative and meaningful opportunity added joy to our Christmas season this year!
• Our youth ministry has served so many students this season. Your giving has enabled us to reach students with both online engagement and in-person gatherings. It’s exciting to see so many young people connecting with each other AND with Jesus!
• Our Christmas Eve services made a real impact. Especially online. I’ve heard about meaningful engagement stretching from Vancouver British Columbia to south Florida. The total number of people reached when we add in-person and online participation actually tops last year’s attendance!
• Our growing online ministry was the most unexpected fruit of 2020. In the month of December we will reach over 5,400 people with over 4,000 individual engagements of our various online postings. God works in wondrous ways! Your gifts helped us develop this essential ministry this year.

God worked and you responded. In the days after we made our financial need known to the congregation, we received over $150,000 in donations. Thank you! God’s faithfulness and your generosity blew me away! Thank you – your generosity made a difference. It made a miracle!

God will do something even more amazing through you and our congregation in 2021. Your giving today moves us into the new year ready for more miracles in our lives and in our community.

The best is yet to come!

Pastor Kent

P.S. Gifts given to our church, whether given online, dropped at the office, or postmarked by December 31, are eligible for a tax deduction on your 2020 taxes. To give online, click here.

LAUGHTER, SMILES, AND COMMUNITY

Here you see some of the youth wearing their festive Christmas sweaters. Some of them, mine chiefly, seem to be as messy as 2020. In December, Journey Youth Group continued to build Christian community with youth who need connection more than ever. We have been celebrating Christmas most of the month with special events. We sang Christmas carols outside The Views assisted living facility. This was a fantastic opportunity for our teens to share the joy of the season by caring for others well.

Next, we laughed together during a Christmas movie night complete with Christmas PJ’s dress-up. Finally, we celebrated with a Christmas party including a Christmas escape room, Christmas games, small group discussions about the real meaning of the season, and a white elephant gift exchange. Our students have been challenged to invite others to join us in Christian fellowship, experience the gospel in community, and hear the gospel. God has blessed their efforts with many new faces joining us.

Our God, the triune God, is a God of community. It is part of His identity. He has created us in His own image. Therefore, Joy has been overflowing to see students who have been quarantined with their families for months experience the community they have been missing. The laughter and smiles are contagious. This is the Christmas present Journey youth group is celebrating this December!

Steve Poole
Director of Youth & Young Adults

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Authenticity

Brene Brown, who has become our modern day “evangelist” for authenticity and vulnerability states, “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” In other words, authenticity occurs when the relationship between who we are inwardly and how we act and appear outwardly are in harmony.

There is nothing wrong with our quest for harmony between our inner person and outer personage, it’s just not enough. Even if we succeed and express perfectly what we are within, our deepest longing for authenticity will not be satisfied.

There is a deeper level where authenticity is missing. We long to have a genuine, permanent identity, by virtue of being rooted in and formed by some ultimate reality. Jesus alone can satisfy our longing for authenticity. He not only gives the freedom to be outwardly what we are inwardly, but he also, and more importantly, enables us to be inwardly what we were designed to be by God.

Ultimately, Jesus is the standard for authenticity. He defines what it means to be an individual, to be loved in God’s own community, and to offer real hope to the world. Every day, we need to let go of ourselves more and more, that Christ might be displayed in us increasingly and endlessly.

With that in mind, let’s consider a few steps to possessing authenticity, using Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23 – “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” as a guide.

Deny yourself daily:

Jesus reveals that the ultimate purpose of God for humans is that we bow under Christ’s lordship—that we yield to be his possession, depend on his provision, and aim at his honor. We are to repent of our rebellion and submit to Christ’s Lordship. God’s purpose in sending Christ to die for our sins and rise again was to purchase us out of slavery to the lordship of sin and bring us over as servants under the lordship of Christ (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23; 1 Peter 1:18).

Take up your cross daily:

Accept that this journey is a painful process, and cooperate with God as He initiates and carries out change in your life. As surely as you experience the death and burial of your broken self, you’ll also experience the resurrection of it.

Matthew 16:24-26 says, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Follow Jesus daily:

After you’ve denied yourself and have stayed at the cross, receive God’s Word, letting it be what covers you. Jesus’ story is yours, like a new garment to cover your nakedness.  One passage that sums it up well is Ephesians 4:22-24, in which believers are called, “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Authenticity Occurs in Community:

All of us need redemption and renewal in all of life, and so we must be intentional to communicate that every day “right now” need to others regularly. How did you need Jesus yesterday? How do you need Him today? How do you need Him tomorrow? Tell that story to God, yourself, and to others.

What is true about you because of Jesus? What is true about the others in your church because of Jesus? What does that mean for your life with others? That is your new reality, and it’s theirs too, and it’s how we should see and treat ourselves and one another.

Authenticity in the Church is the quality of our exposure of brokenness and adornment in God’s grace. An authentic person is one who is both privately and publicly putting off the old self and, by God’s grace, putting on the renewed self.

Gary Sager
Ambassador of Care

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Real Church

Yesterday somebody shared a silver lining he experienced in his pandemic quarantine. The losses he felt created a deeper appreciation for the things lost. He now enjoys getting out for a cup of coffee, meeting up with friends, connecting with co-workers even more. He said, “Digital connection bridged a gap but there is no replacing the real thing.”

This struck me because earlier in the day I started to read the book Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age. The author, Jay Kim, expresses the idea better than I could: “True human connection is fueled by empathy – the God-given ability to step into another’s shoes and open ourselves to another’s story, not to compare and contrast, but to be overwhelmed by compassion to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn’ (Romans 12:15). This requires patience, depth, and the risk of stepping into real community with real people and their real lives in real time and in real space.”

“At their best, social media and other digital spaces can be wonderful initiating spaces that lead to true human connection, but they can never become home for those connections. They’ll always fall short and leave us wanting. When I Facetime with my wife and kids (our digital gathering space when I’m away) it’s a wonderful benefit of technology – but ultimately it only makes me eager to get home and give them real hugs. That’s digital at its best – increasing our appetite for the real thing.”

My prayer for 2021 is that we will all grow in our appetite for real connection, with real people, in their real lives, in real time, and in real space. Real church.

Kent Landhuis
Pastor of Teaching & Leadership

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