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Come join us at 6:00pm for a family-friendly service that re-lives the Last Supper that includes experiences that help us understand Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and the first communion that Jesus explained during His Passover meal with His disciples. All of this is to help us fulfill the New Command Jesus gave us: love one another. All of our campuses are meeting for this service at our Cypress campus (6143 Ball Road, Cypress, CA).

Happy 2nd Birthday to the Branch!!

The Branch Church at Los Alamitos & Rossmoor celebrated its second year anniversary meeting at the Los Alamitos Community Center. It has been another eventful year. We have seen new families connect and become a vital part of the Branch family. We have seen people grow in their faith as they have sought new opportunities to serve. We have seen the church family bond together as people have joined Life Groups. We have seen people grow as disciples of Jesus. We have continued engaging the community through different service opportunities in the city.

We look forward to another great season of blessing this community and seeing others learn to thrive in their relationship with God as we do the same. Please continue praying that God would draw people to Himself through the Branch.

Happy 1st Birthday to the Branch!!

The Branch Church at Los Alamitos & Rossmoor celebrated its first year anniversary meeting at the Los Alamitos Community Center. It has been an eventful year. We have seen new families connect and become a vital part of the Branch family. We have seen people grow in their faith as they have sought new opportunities to serve. We have seen the church family bond together as people have joined Life Groups. We have seen people grown as disciples of Jesus as these groups have gone through the Rooted discipleship study. We have continued engaging the community through different service opportunities in the city – check out the pictures of the Branch serving at Race on the Base.

We look forward to another great season of blessing this community and seeing others learn to thrive in their relationship with God as we do the same. Please continue praying that God would draw people to Himself through the Branch.

Join us at 6:30 pm for an evening of experiencing Jesus’ humiliation and suffering for our sin on the cross. With multiple experiential stations and a time of worship and teaching, we will feel the weight of the crucifixion – and the hope that God brings through the New Sacrifice of Jesus. All of our campuses are meeting for this service at our Cypress campus (6143 Ball Road, Cypress, CA).

Come to any of our campuses and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. He is alive and He wants to empower us to experience Life Anew. Join us for an inspiring morning of singing and testimonies and challenging teaching from the Bible. Los Al service time at 10:00 am.

What a week!

Vacation Bible School (VBS) at the Cypress campus was amazing this week. It was a sight to behold as the Branch and Cypress campuses worked as one to pull off a great week of ministry. Sixteen kids made first time decisions to follow Jesus and many more were spurred on in their faith. Continue to pray for God to work in these young lives and to bless those workers with rest and satisfaction in a job well done for God’s glory.

Speaking of prayer, we’re continuing on our prayer series tomorrow and it’s going to be fun! We’re going to keep the VBS energy going. We’re talking about expressing ourselves in worship and prayer – clapping, shouting, and blowing trumpets! Did I mention it’s a family service? Don’t worry, we’ll have ear plugs available. Seriously.

The point of all this noise-making in prayer is that we are physical beings and God wants us to use these bodies He’s given us to glorify Him, including in how we pray. I’m going to share a few things that have helped my prayer life, but I want to encourage you to write in the blog comments what helps your personal prayer life. I had so much to share tomorrow I needed to cut a ton so I thought I’d share some great prayer helps for me … and I hope you share some as well.

• Pray with people who know how to pray. Sometimes we don’t quite know how to approach God, but praying with people who know how to approach Him well is a valuable way to learn. Join the prayer team on Tuesday night at 7:00 at the Cypress campus for a good place to start (6143 Ball Road, Cypress).
• Another way to learn from others is through prayer books. I found Phyllis Tickle’s Divine Hours to be immensely helpful. It actually gives you words to pray. It’s no substitute for your spontaneous prayer life, but it helped keep me praying throughout the day and served as a good jump-start to my prayer life.
• Small rituals are also helpful. In his book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster describes praying with your palms up when you’re seeking to receive something from God. And turn them palms down when you are turning something over to God in your life. There’s nothing mystical to it, but it helps us focus.
• Another ritual that I think great (though I don’t do it myself) is when people remove their shoes to pray. Sounds weird, but it’s a reminder that wherever they happen to be at the moment, if they are praying, they’re on holy ground (see Exodus 3.5).

There are tons of great ideas and I know you have some … so go ahead and share them!

I hope you’ve had a great week to give thanks. Last week’s message has helped focus me on opportunities to give thanks. I’ve written a couple notes to thank people for how God has used them in my life and in the lives of others. Of course, just one week ago we were giving thanks for the wonderful nation we live in. As we learned last Sunday, a life of gratitude changes us and moves us to engaging in the mission God has for us that they might be grateful to God as well.

Tomorrow we’re going to look at what cultivating a sense of awe can do to our prayer lives. So we’re shifting from giving thanks to being awestruck. There’s a distinction many make – and it’s legitimate – between giving thanks and praising or worshiping God’s character. One is about what He has done and the other is praising Him for who He is. Both are vital and knowing the distinction is good, but not necessary.

CS Lewis, as he often does, gives some good insight into how thanks and adoration work together:

 I have tried to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration.  I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it.  One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…  Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’  Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’  One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.”   –Reflections in a Toolshed, Letters to Malcolm

So, keep giving thanks, but tomorrow we’re going to follow the sunbeam up and ask, “What must be the quality of that Being!?” I hope you’ll be there. We have some fun changes afoot for tomorrow!

See you in the morning,

Pastor Justin

 

Reminders

• We’d love to have a baptism later this summer some time. Let me know if you’re interested in baptism!

I hope you’re enjoying your 4^th of July festivities – whether that’s with friends or hitting some of the larger fireworks shows in the area. I pray amid all the revelry that we remember the reason for the holiday. We live in an amazing country. God has, indeed, blessed America.

As important as it is to celebrate our freedom as a nation, it should point us to something even deeper. Specifically, we should be reminded of our freedom in Christ. Galatians 5.1 tells us: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

This is something worth celebrating. Tomorrow’s going to be a great opportunity to do just that. As we continue on our series, “Wrestling with God in Prayer,” we’re going to look at offering prayers of thanksgiving to God. And be ready, we might even do it in church! It’ll be a family service so it’s going to be fun!

I hope to see you tomorrow – with all your fingers! – so be safe and sane tonight.

Do you ever get really excited about something and then, halfway through it, you wish you could back out? That’s how I visualize jumping out of an airplane with my brother. (He’s a skydive instructor.) I was thrilled with what we’re covering for this week’s message initially, but as I’m trying to craft this amazing passage into a message, I found myself stuck at every turn. I know, I know. I’m not exactly selling tomorrow’s message very well.

But that’s OK. I don’t need to sell it. It sells itself. Let me give you a peek at the passage.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. – Ephesians 3.14-21

My challenge is taking this wonderful prayer and trying to distill it into a coherent 30 minutes. The bulk of this is one sentence in Greek! It’s a beautiful passage that I leapt at the opportunity to teach upon, but halfway through I thought I wasn’t equal to the task.

I’ll give it my best shot, but if I’m really going to take this passage seriously, preaching isn’t the biggest issue anyways. It’s prayer; praying for God to strengthen you in your inner being and to help you grasp the amazing and endless love of God. Talk about praying big! I’m praying this for you – feel free to do the same for me!

And pray for those around you. There are discouraged believers in your life who need this strengthening in their hearts (inner being) and to be overwhelmed by God’s love. Pray that God would get through to them.

There are also those who don’t yet know Jesus in your life. Pray that His love would break through and they would come to know His amazing love. Pray that He would use us to share it!

See you in the morning,

Pastor Justin

 

Reminders

• Father’s Day is next week. The Holy Grill is going to feed us a great breakfast at 9:00 and we’ll have a car show – we need entrants! – as well. We love classic cars, but we also like unique cars so, if you love your car, contact christine@cypresschurch.net and let her know you want in the show!