The City Singapore

Happy Monday, !

In this new week, we pray that we will be reminded of God’s covenantal love for us. For the couples, may you learn to operate as one in prayer and in the Spirit through God’s covenantal blessing.

Have a blessed week ahead!

“When we are covenanted in marriage, we are to die to our old selves, taking on the new identity of “we”, where all that we have and all that we are now belong to each other. And as we begin to operate as one in prayer, there is power and synergy because we are one in the Spirit.” - Tim & Patsy

Continuing on with our series on ‘Family’, Tim & Patsy spoke on the topic of “Unleashing the Power of Marriage” this morning. They reminded us that when God wants to bless us, He cuts a covenant, and the covenantal love of God is a love that is unconditional, that never fails, and never leaves us. In covenant, couples are yoked together, to walk together in humility and work together to fulfil God’s purpose that does not just bless the couple themselves, but for the generations to come.

As we go through different seasons & roles in life, we develop different identities related to them. These identities can deepen our core identity as a child of God when we intentionally seek after Him & His voice in the season we’re in, and are disciplined to see it through.

If you’re in a new season, take some time to go through the 4 questions in the 2nd slide and process with God what He wants to show you in the new season. You can also listen to the full sermon by Ps. Jenni, available on our YouTube & Spotify page.

Happy Monday, ! We hope you were refreshed in service yesterday and had a wonderful start to your week.

As Ps. Jenni shared yesterday, in order to know how God sees us, we need to protect, nurture and uphold our identity as God’s beloved. May we take some time this week to reflect on where we can find time away from the distractions of life to attend to our soul and be in solitude with God, and with whom we can form a community that would come alongside us in this journey.

“God’s view over our lives is the most important and critical because unlike other people’s views that change based on different factors, His view is stable, accurate and life-giving. if we want to know the truth of our lives, we need to know His perspective of us.” -

We had the honour of having Ps. Jenni share God’s word with us this morning, talking about the importance of knowing our core identity as God’s beloved children, because His perspective is the most powerful perspective. With each season that we step into and each role that we take on in our lives, we develop identities related to them, which God uses to grow deeper roots of security, confidence and purpose in us.

Speaking from Exodus 25:31-40, Ps. Jenni shared how God revealed two important truths about who we are through the detailed instructions of how Moses was to build the lampstand. The first is that like the lampstand God has designed each of us to display His glorious beauty, and the second is that God has a purpose for each of us - to shine forth His truth.

May we learn to rest in our core identity as God’s beloved and embrace our season, and allow God’s vision to transform how we feel and act so that we may know how to carry and conduct ourselves in our daily lives.

What is the aim of spiritual leadership and how should we respond to spiritual leadership in our community? Swipe through the slides, and listen to Ps. Andre’s latest sermon, now available on our YouTube & Spotify pages.

“The truth is that we desperately need others to lead us closer to Christ. The call to honour leaders isn’t about inflating their pride, but diminishing our own.” -

Today, Ps. Andre shared on Rediscovering Spiritual Leadership, and unpacked what the Bible intended for spiritual leadership, as well as how we should respond as a community.

The prevailing culture of our day resists and rejects the concept of submission, especially given widespread disillusionment concerning church leadership. Yet, Ps. Andre reminded us that the response to failures in leadership shouldn’t be to dismantle the entire structure or for the people of God to be left to their own devices. Instead, we are to pray for our leaders as they are given a charge to shepherd God’s people, and are accountable to God to see souls prosper under their care.

Let us continue to pray for the leaders of our church, including the new Elders we commissioned as a community today. May our testimony as a faith community be that of joy, as leaders and as a congregation.

Happy Friday, City Fam!

Some of us attended an Evangelism 101 workshop with Dr.Lion Soegiharto from Evangelism Equipping Mission Singapore, where we learned how to share the gospel with our friends and loved ones. Swipe through for our key takeaways, and how we can incorporate the Hand presentation in our sharing.

Here’s some reflections from one of our participants, - “As I was doing the role-play and reciting a prayer of acknowledging my salvation, I felt my heart ‘grow strangely warm’ as I remembered and reflected on the lengths of God’s great love anew”.

We are excited for upcoming opportunities where we can grow in our culture of evangelism as a community. Stay tuned for more details about Alpha, starting on 20 July!

What does an undivided heart look like? Swipe through the slides to find out more and listen to Jonathan’s sermon, now available on our YouTube & Spotify pages.

Happy Monday, ! We hope you had a great start to the new week. Here are some snaps from our time together yesterday 📸

As we reflect on Jonathan’s sharing about being a people with an undivided heart, may we pray for God to help us fully surrender to Him, that we may know His voice and His will for our lives.

Be blessed and we’ll see you next Sunday! 👋🏻

“Our hearts should be the source of our expression of our love for God and not the source of what leads us. We can’t depend or be led by our feelings.” -

Jonathan shared about having An Undivided Heart at service today and how this is God’s ultimate desire for our lives.

Oftentimes we find ourselves with a divided heart because we are led by our feelings, and our affections and desires are not wholly toward God, but toward self gratifying goals and aims apart from God alone.

By consciously choosing and desiring to walk in the Spirit, God can reorient our lives that our affections towards Him may be whole, we truly desire Him, and our spirit is sensitive to His leading.

As we reflect on this morning’s sermon, may we prayerfully Invite God to examine the condition of our hearts, especially the areas in our affections and desires that we need to surrender before Him, that He may be our sole pursuit.

What can we do to build one another up in love? Swipe through the slides to read through 2 ways we can do so, and tune in to Tim’s sermon to find out more, now available on our YouTube & Spotify pages.

Happy Monday,  !

Just as Tim prayed Ephesians 3:14-32 over us yesterday, let us start this new week with this prayer:
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Have a blessed week ahead, and we’ll see you next Sunday! A quick reminder that we will be having our Annual General Meeting right after service.

 

“In the face of rampant immaturity, God calls us to conduct ourselves for unity and serve one another with our gifts — building up the Body in Love, unto the fullness of Christ” -

Speaking from Ephesians 4:1-13, Tim brought us a word today titled “Built Up In Love”, encouraging us to walk in the manner worthy of God’s calling on our lives to fulfil His mission. In Ephesians 4:7, Paul mentions that each one of us has been given grace, as Christ apportioned it, which refers to the ways that God has gifted each of us unique callings and abilities for His mission.

What is the unique grace or gifting that God has gifted you for His mission through the church? As we discover what our giftings are, we pray that God will also reveal how you can come fully alive in the way you serve with your gifts, allowing God to mature it so that as a church and a community, we can build one another up in love and help others mature too.

True intimacy with God is to know Him, when we come to a place of obedience, desperation and surrender. Swipe through the slides for our reflection questions of the week, and listen to David’s sermon, now available on our YouTube and Spotify pages.

Happy Monday, ! We hope you’re enjoying the long weekend.
Here are some snaps from our time together at service yesterday where we honoured the fathers in our midst, worshipped and spent time in community 📸

In the new week, may we prayerfully desire a deeper level of intimacy with God and a greater awareness of His nearness to us.

“Life was always meant to be walked with God, close to God and where we regard Him in everything. Life was meant to be in Christ.” - David Tan

David shared the word today, and asked us to consider how we view success as Christians. He reminded us that the goal of our lives is knowing God intimately, and for our lives to reflect our closeness to God, in our work, worship, and service.

As followers of Christ, everything that we do can be an opportunity for intimacy with Him, even the times of disappointment and anxiety that we face.

We hope that you were blessed by the word. May we enter this new week with a renewed awareness of God’s presence and desire to abide in Him, even as He longs to meet us in the moments we are in.

To become a mature bride of Christ, we have to learn how to speak and hear the truth in love like Jesus does. How can we do that? Swipe through the slides to find out more, and listen to Xianyi’s sermon that is now available on our YouTube and Spotify pages.

Hi  ! We hope you had a blessed time at service yesterday. It’s always a wonderful time getting to worship, listen to God’s word and spend time with community. This week, we are sending a team to Iloilo to help with a children’s camp - join us in praying for them, for God to cover the team and grant them journey mercies as they travel, and for the camp attendees to have open hearts and minds as the team shares God’s love and His word with them.

We pray that this new week will be filled with God’s truth and love, and from that place of being transformed into His likeness, we will be a people that speak and hear the truth in love in our conversations with the people around us.

“Speaking the truth in love to one another, while difficult to do, is essential for our growth as individuals and collectively as the body of Christ, as we grow to become the mature church under the headship of Christ.” -

This morning, Xianyi shared on “Speaking (and Hearing) the Truth in Love”, focusing on the verses in Ephesians 4:1-6 and 11-16. It’s important for us to speak the truth with love, because if either one is missing, we could fall into being too critical or being condoning. The most loving thing we can do for others is not to prescribe our opinions or to use our human wisdom, but to point them to the truth that is in Christ Jesus.

In order for us to speak the truth in love, we have to start with letting the Lord speak the truth in love into our hearts first - that He would heal our hurts and our brokenness, and that we would be transformed into His likeness.

In a world where everyone is searching for something to tell them who they are, where they belong and how they relate to the world, how may we grow in awareness that we belong to Him, chosen by Him, and deepen our identities as children of God?

Take some time to meditate on God’s intimate knowledge of us and listen to Janice’s sermon, “Known by God” available now on our Youtube and Spotify pages.

Happy Monday, ! We hope you were blessed by the worship, the Word, and the fellowship during service yesterday.

As we begin a new week, let us spend time meditating on scripture and incline our ears towards the Father in prayer to hear what is He speaking over us.

“Understanding that we are known deepens our grasp of our identity. Only God satisfies the innate desire we all have to be known.” -

This morning, Janice brought a sermon titled “Known by God” where she spoke life into the area of identity as children of God. In a time of much uncertainty and instability concerning this matter, there is utmost importance for the revelation that we are deeply loved and known by God. She illustrated with the faith accounts woven throughout the bible that God knows us personally and intimately and how paramount that is for our spiritual formation.

She invited us to gently ponder “Would we allow ourselves to be known?” As we contemplate and reflect on His relentless love for us that is not contingent on what we can or cannot do, may we be deeply rooted in our identities as children of God and confident that He shall surely be faithful to perfect what He started in us.

Be blessed and we will see you next week!

Where love wants a person, lust only wants an experience. In our s*x-saturated society where it’s so easy to give in to the temptation of lust, God wants to use our s*xuality as a tool for spiritual formation to make us more like Christ and for us to be a people of love instead.

So how can we fight and overcome the temptation to lust over someone else? Learn more via Ps. Andre’s sermon, now available on our YouTube and Spotify pages.

Happy Monday, !

Yesterday, we announced that a new pastor would be joining our pastoral team. Please join us in welcoming to our family and to the team!

As we have concluded our series on “The Freedom We Long For”, let us spend some time looking back at the 8 topics we explored. If there are any areas of our lives that are not in alignment with being a follower of Christ, we pray that we will lift them up to God, and take active steps to live in the vision and freedom that Christ has for us. If you are seeking pastoral care and support, please check out www.thecity.sg/resources for more information.

Have a blessed week ahead!

“God’s heart is for us to become a people of love in a world of lust.” -

In the final week of our series “The Freedom We Long For”, Ps. Andre spoke on a heavy yet relevant topic of Lust & Love. In a culture where lust is prevalent, causing us to dehumanise and objectify others for our s*xual pleasure, how can we cultivate a community that promotes healthy s*xuality?

In the New Testament, by the grace of God, we are enabled to live in the freedom that Christ has to offer. By asking for a new heart, capturing a biblical vision of s*x, and taking active steps to fight lust, we can be spiritually transformed to be more like Christ.

Ultimately, the freedom we long for is the vision that Christ has for our lives. More than a depth of conviction, this freedom is now a possibility because of Christ’s redeeming work on the cross.

While anger may seem like a natural and instinctive response to irritation and injustice, it inhibits our walk with God, isolates us from community, and can result in destruction in our lives. How then can we address our anger as followers of Christ?

Listen to Pst Andre’s sermon, “Anger & Patience” available now on our YouTube and Spotify pages, and reflect on three key takeaways in the slides above, on responding to anger with patience.

Happy Monday, !

Here’s a look back at our time at service yesterday, when we prayed, worshipped and gathered to seek God together 📸

As we start a new week, may we be encouraged to respond to situations of irritability and anger with patience, trusting that God can transform us into a people of love as we surrender to Him.

“Anger is not the problem; it tells us something is wrong under the emotional, spiritual, or relational hood of our lives. We use anger to express our hurt or frustration, and to protect and preserve ourselves.” -

In week seven of our sermon series, The Freedom You Long For, Pastor Andre shared about Anger and Patience. A common fallacy in our approach to anger is thinking that we should never ever be angry as Christians, and that it is an emotion that we should repress. Yet, to be human is to feel, just as Jesus Himself felt the full extent of human emotions. While the feelings of anger are not a sin, what we do with anger can become dysfunctional and destructive.

Where then can we take our anger? When we go to God in repentance, He restores us, and we can seek His strength for divine patience as we abide in His love.

As we go about the new week, may we seek God’s grace for the areas of unresolved anger and bitterness in our lives, and trust that He can transform us as we surrender to Him.

Be blessed, and we’ll see you in the new week!

It is innate in all of us to desire approval. Yet, being concerned with the approval of others often leads us down a path of disappointment and disillusionment. How then can we bring these desires to God, and live our lives desiring God’s reward?

Listen to Janice’s sermon, “Approval Addiction & Secure Identity” available now on our YouTube and Spotify pages.