Love & Respect: Building Blocks – a small group study for couples starts Feb 9 at 6 PM in the Worship Center, 6-week program. Contact Andrew and Shelbie Moen to sign up. The cost is $10 per couple. Child care provided.
Enjoy this short promo video from class leaders, Andrew and Shelbie Moen, below:
“I am confident of this, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion…” (Philippians 1:6).
Last night I heard a testimony about God’s faithfulness in a time of personal crisis. When this individual encountered trauma, she discovered that God provided comfort, support, and hope through the community around her. Friends at Cedar Hills acted like family, wrapping their arms of love around someone in need. Thanks be to God!
While this testimony was one person’s story, it could be repeated countless times. God’s goodness, experienced through the hands and feet of a loving community, becomes real as we live out our lives of faith together. This is one of the many “goods” that God is growing in us and through us.
God is good and God’s faithfulness endures forever. God makes and keeps promises. God finishes what God starts.
For 60 years our congregation has experienced God’s goodness in times of joy and trauma. Thanks be to God!
As we plan for the future, we do so with confidence knowing that God’s love never changes. The truth and certainty of God’s unchanging character provides stability in times of change.
This is the foundation of our faith. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
The Lord be with you,
Pastor Kent
(Continued from “I want to be a runner… pt. 1)
So what is the turning point of identity? When does one’s brain go from not identifying with something to embracing the identity?
I’ve had another month and many, many miles of training to ponder my running dilemma, meanwhile still wearing my runner’s clothes, reading my runner’s blogs, studying my runner’s strides. Doing all the things I know to do to look like a runner and blend in with the running crowd.
This last Friday, I set a personal distance record of 16.11 miles! And somewhere along that long, lonely road in the middle of a rain shower the mystery of my much-desired-running-identity hit me.
I can’t be a runner
until I give up my former
‘not-a-runner’ identity.
That’s it.
The realization hit me like a ton of bricks and I began to weep. What is my former identify? (and I type this gently, because it sounds so harsh…)
Slow. Non-Athletic. Fat. Girl.
I can’t be both. I must choose.
I’ve spent ten years working on my health (physical, spiritual, emotional) after a lifetime of obesity that started in childhood. I’ve shed almost 100 lbs, but thirty years of being that girl was going to be hard to shake. Words, realities, capabilities, activities… a whole lifetime of things tied to an identity needed to be ripped out of my brain and replaced with the new.
Where is Jesus in all this craziness?
More to come next month.
Leah
Director of Worship & Media
I’ve been pondering a lot lately about identity and how one comes to identify with a group or a title. What got me started on thinking about this was a desire to begin training for a half marathon this Fall.
Though I may not look like someone who might frequently run, this will be my 6th half marathon. That’s part of my problem. I want to be runner but am somewhat convinced that because I don’t look like one, I am not. So I began listing the things I’m trying to do in order to become a “runner” (beyond the obvious thing of ‘running’).
So I am a runner, right??? Why can’t my brain accept this list and identify with a runner’s identify?
Because I’m slow. And I look wimpy and kind of sloppy when I run. And I’m chunky. And I’ve only been in active training for seven weeks.
So what is the turning point of identity? When does one’s brain go from not identifying with something to embracing the identity? This is my question! There are soooo many parallels to our spiritual walks I don’t even know where to start! But I will keep pondering this and come back with more next month.
Leah
Director of Worship & Media
Join us for a pre-Summit worship gathering Wednesday, August 7 at 7pm. The worship service is part of the Global Leadership Summit kick-off, and is free and open to the public. You do not need to be registered for the Summit to attend.
The worship will be streaming live out of Willow Creek church in Chicago, IL. Cedar Hills is blessed and excited to be a host site for this year’s Global Leadership Summit – August 8-9.
If you’d like to attend the Summit at Cedar Hills, you can register online. Cedar Hills attendees are encouraged to contact the office for a special promo code.
On Sunday, June 30 the students and sponsors who attended Dare to Share gave an awesome update on their trip, what they learned and how evangelizing in Chicago challenged them in their faith.
This Sunday, May 19 will be Jeremy Van Genderen’s final day preaching at Cedar Hills. He has accepted the Senior Pastor position at Trinity Reformed Church in Allison, Iowa. So we are celebrating he and his family! The service will have a few surprises, but another one that requires your help! (If you are part of the Van Genderen family… stop reading at this point!!!)
Dear Church,
There’s a lot of construction happening around the church building! Stoney Point road will be closed from 1st Ave to Granite Ridge Ct. starting at 7:00 AM Monday, April 1, thus closing access to the church on Stoney Point Road. Our only access for about 5 weeks will be E Ave entrance. Those from the south will need to go around. There will be no access from Cherry Hill Park entrance to Granite Ridge.
After that it should be open again.
On June 6, they will be closing off the Stoney Point and E Ave intersection (putting in a roundabout) , but it sounds like we should be able to access both driveways of the church parking lot.
Not only do we get to look forward to the coming Spring, April will also be Family Adventure’s outing to see the Harlem Globetrotters! Join us on April 12th, with the game starting at 7pm in the U.S. Cellular Center! Want to go? Each ticket is only $10 a person, and includes going down on the court to high-five the Globetrotters coming back out after the halftime intermission.
If your planning on making it out, please RSVP by April 10th with Kyle French and payment can be collected at the time of the event.