The New Normal

One of the saddest and very unfortunately, most common things that I have heard through counseling is how people have been hurt by the church. I've heard story after story of people who felt like they were never good enough, who never measured up to the standard of the Christian they were supposed to be. Sometimes even sadder are the “successful” Christians, the ones who have some kind of leadership position and are looked up to and respected as a godly role model. They are often the most insecure, constantly working to keep up their image of what they “should be”. It’s as if church is the place where you have to keep up appearances – having the perfect career and family, while serving at church, all while keeping up a cheery smile and thankfulness for everything. Church becomes this exhausting list of “should’s “and “should not’s”.

Let’s face it. None of us can measure up to standards like that. And the consequences of this kind of thinking are awful. People are isolated, feeling like they are the only ones with problems, while life for everyone else is so much easier. People hide their hurts, hide their sins, and slowly drown in shame and insecurities. Instead of sharing with one another, people compare, feeling bitter when a person changes or gains something that they want. In our church, we are so blessed to be in a place that reminds us every single week, and even throughout the week, that we are all people who are worse than we think and are only saved because our God decided to take all of our sin and suffering on Himself. Even then, we still go back to that kind of thinking. We still think that our problems, our past, our thoughts are worse than everyone else. Or we feel this need to keep it all together and take care of our own problems independently. We make assumption that other people have it all, while we just keep screwing up. We can’t seem to understand why things are so hard for us, while we assume that things come so easily to others.

This thinking is against everything the gospel says! In fact, this is the very reason Jesus came! We can’t measure up, and we need someone outside of ourselves to redeem us. In fact, there is no one else but God Himself who could save someone like you or me. Since we have been shown such undeserved x 1,000,000,000,000,000 mercy, through God sacrificing His only Son for our curse, we must change this standard. We have to make a new normal. Instead of normal being the people who are “doing well”, the normal should be people who are struggling in some way or another. We are all imperfect people being re-created into a new creation, so we shouldn’t expect it to be painless. We don’t have to know how to be perfect friends or care about people the right way. We don’t have to have the perfect career that gives us purpose and satisfaction, while bringing home bank. And even more than that, there will be hard times. There will be “plagues” or circumstances that may seem devastating at first, but God’s Word is perfectly true. And He has promised,

“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.” Exodus 7:6-8

Although we may not be in slavery to Pharaoh, we act like we are slaves to the standards, expectations, and idols that we have set up in our lives. God is working to strip away all those things that hold us in slavery in our lives. So all the more, let us make a new normal where we can share these things with one another, and it’s not the end of the world. In our church, let’s lay down our pride and work to build a culture where we do not face these struggles alone. 

36

Today, I am thankful. These past few weeks, I’ve been having a hard time. So naturally, a lot of my thinking has gone toward suffering and hope for the future and how things are supposed to be uncomfortable because we are waiting for Jesus to come back, which are all great things to think about. But, I forgot how much that God has already given me right now.  So here are 36 things that I am thankful for from the past 36 hours (originally was going to do 24 but there are too many):

1. Phone conversations
2. Sunshine
3. God’s consistent faithfulness day after day after day
4. It’s Katy’s birthday today!!! The best sister to put up with me and Nathan :)
5. Car rides to think
6. Seeing Christ transform lives in front of my face
7. Pastors that fix cars
8. Being able to complain to the right person
9. Friends with big teeth (hi Euna)
10. Friends that are trolls
11. Friends that are bullies
12. Friends that listen and talk
13. Seeing how the church practically provides
14. Hot showers
15. Brushing my teeth
16. Roommates to love
17. A practical education
18. Books by people with big brains
19. Meeting new people
20. My church family
21. Crunchy leaves to step on
22. My baker friends
23. Relationships with a lot of forgiveness embedded in
24. A place to call home
25. Parents that still surprise me with how much they care
26. God hooking up our church with the exact right people
27. Outside nighttime talks
28. Coffee
29. People that challenge me
30. People to laugh at me
31. That the bible is right and I am wrong
32. Serving the church
33. Working with people I love and respect
34. Being known (as scary as it is to not be able to hide)
35. My failures that force me to stop trusting in myself
36. Sundays!

The Real Relationship

I was flipping through the CCEF website the other day and came across a blog post about their upcoming conference, titled “Not Alone.” This quote in particular caught my attention:

"One of our core goals,” my colleague suggested, “is to move people toward a relationship with God that is every bit as real as their relationships with other people."

My heart skipped a beat as I processed the magnitude of the hope he was holding out. I am yearning for a deep experience of that but not feeling it right now, I thought, and I bet I’m not the only one.¹

As I read that, I realized… that’s my yearning too. I’ve been trying so hard to “fill up” on good teaching, intimacy in relationships with people, and working hard toward changing to how I think God wants me to change. And all I feel is tired. I’m working so hard for these tangible “results” that I want to hold on to, but after each insight, each hang-out the feeling of dissatisfaction creeps back in. I’ve been looking for something that can only be found in God. I’ve been running so hard after the work of God that I disregarded God Himself. Reading those few sentences started to turn the tide of my weariness into a thirst for the Living God.

 

The fact is our relationship with God is THE most real relationship in our lives. However, this is not the way we naturally live our lives. We get so consumed in our own lives – our responsibilities, our concerns, our wants, our purposes, that we tunnel vision into our own reality that has us as the main character in our little world. It’s exhausting. And it is often in those times we feel like God is very far away. We can recall biblical truths, but it just doesn’t feel like God hears, much less cares.

God remembers. God sees. God knows. Jesus came and became a friend of sinners. And now we have the very Spirit of God living in us. This is an intimacy beyond what our brains can comprehend. In Jesus’ last prayer for us he prays, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23).” God our Father’s purpose for us is for our relationship with Him to be as intimate as the love between the Father and the Son.  I don’t think we really believe how real our relationship with God is. God is holding out an intimate, daily, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” relationship.

If you are feeling tired, weary, or purposeless, maybe, just maybe, you are looking more at what God is doing in your life than loving God Himself. God invites us to come. He invites us to come and have rest. He invites us to drink living water. He invites us to have a relationship with Him that will make our closest relationships pale in comparison.

Dear church, we talk about our relationship with God all the time, but I don’t think we realize the fireworks-going-off-in-my-brain hope that we’re talking about. We worship a living God. He is real. Do you want to know Him?

1.       Groves, Alasdair. http://www.ccef.org/blog/hungry-friendship-god-me-too

Under Construction

Do you ever feel stuck? On one hand, you know God’s word is true, and He’s God after all. But on the other hand, His word and your life seem to exist on separate planes. You learn great truths about God, feel convicted, go home, and nothing changes. You wake up the next day and the same problems, same escapes, same expectations are waiting for you.

The word around our church seems to be that God is poking into uncomfortable places in people’s lives. These are people that have been transformed by God, who would swear up and down that they love Jesus, but God is exposing parts of us that do not want to be changed. Unfortunately (but really wonderfully and graciously), God does not want a quick-fix makeover. God is after all of us – the good, the bad, the things we used to take pride in, our anger issues,  the secrets we keep, the hurts that have long been buried. Some of our insecurities have gone so deep that they almost seem a part of us. When those things are touched, it’s so easy to get defensive and say “that’s just who I am” or “that’s my personality”.  It’s all so … messy.

As I have been more and more exposed for the sinner I am, I find myself uncomfortably grasping for solutions. I go to bible studies, listen and read (couldn’t resist a plug for our transcription ministry here) sermons, try to pray, and the same struggle and feelings persist. But through this, I realized a very great promise – God is more persistent. So no matter how stubborn, near-sighted, self-deceptive, cold-hearted, uncaring person I am, I am never out of God’s reach. In fact, one reason it may seem like God is “slow” to answer prayers is because He is eager to cultivate faith in our lives. He wants to give us a faith that is not dependent on us getting our way every time, but a faith that trusts in God’s Word over our own experiences. God is not out to simply cut out the bad parts of our lives to build a bigger, better Christian, but He wants to teach us to depend on His goodness that cannot, will not fail.

The greatest security is found in how Jesus loves us. John wrote, “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” God is not surprised by how messed up you are. He knows exactly who you are and the price it takes to save you. Knowing that, Jesus deliberately gives up his life to ransom ours. Because of Jesus’ love we can have the confidence to know that no matter how difficult it is to change, Jesus will never leave us. Jesus loves his people to the end. He did not just come to give us a new chance to get it right. Step by step, decision by decision, day by day, God is in the process of restoring us. So even though right now it may seem impossible to change, we can trust God’s promise that one day Jesus is coming back and every sin that we struggle with will disintegrate in His presence. In that day, we will be able to fully love God and love others. Jesus loves us to the end. 

Prayer (Part 3)

Yesterday, Pastor Kenny really challenged our church to pray, and in light of that, I wanted to share a prayer that has really encouraged me in the past few weeks:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Sprit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:14 – 21

I know that many of us have been struggling through insecurities, sins that won’t seem to go away, or on the opposite end, being consumed with things that we want. Although these are things that need to be addressed, we can lay these things aside and look to our Beautiful Savior, who has already defeated our sins. God himself is the one who has already granted us every good thing (flashback to 2 Peter and Psalm 84!!!). Knowing that this is our God, we have the confidence to come to him in prayer. Paul’s prayer for the church was not for numbers or success or even to be good, disciplined Christians. It is simply that we would know more of who Christ is and rely on the Holy Spirit who is already in us and to understand more of God’s love with the church.

I’m excited to pray with everyone tomorrow!

So Why is Prayer so Hard? (Part 2)

Last time, we discussed how prayer is part of having a relationship with God. But if you’re anything like me, you might ask, “Why is it so much harder to pray to God than to talk to other people?”

Let’s look at four reasons that make it hard to pray. (Disclaimer: These are not all-encompassing. They’re just the ones that have been on my mind the past few weeks!)

1.    You can’t see Him. It’s easier to talk to someone who is right in front of you that can audibly talk back to you. We have to depend on what we believe and not what we see. God is with us, and He does hear our prayers.

2.     We are so determined to do things on our own. Admitting that I need help, not just any help but supernatural intervention, grates against the grain of my independence. The act of praying says, “I am dependent on God.” During prayer, you are not doing anything about your situation. You are simply asking God to move. Other “Christian deeds” involve doing something. When you read the bible, you’re learning more about God and His word. When you fellowship with other Christians you’re actively getting to know, care, and serve them. They all involve actions, and we get to feel a sense of doing and accomplishment for completing them. With prayer, there is no doing. There are no tangible results unless you believe that God moves. In our I-can-determine-my-own-destiny-and-make-a-difference culture, prayer admits inadequacy. Prayer says, “God, I want to love other people, but I have no idea how and need you to pick me up out of my selfishness and change me to care.”  Prayer says, “I’m feeling overwhelmed with financial worries and find myself looking for monetary security instead of God as my refuge. Help me remember that You are faithful and that the whole world is already Yours to give.” Pausing our to-do list and stopping our work to pray is no small feat, but it is one that is essential to the Christian life. We constantly need to be reminded that we can’t do it on our own, and we need our God to work.

3.     That’s just sitting down to pray. Actually praying is hard, because you are standing in the presence of the Holy, Almighty God-King. You can’t hide before Him. Our Father created us and knows every bit of us. He reads hearts and minds and is not fooled by our smiles or carefully crafted words. We have to face our sin and face the One we are ultimately sinning against. It’s here where we often put our human ideas of love onto God. We think that God is out to punish us for what we’ve done wrong. We think that God will get so tired of us repeating the same sin and will one day have enough and disown us. We act like we’ll come before Him in prayer, and He will reject us. But this is not our God. John reminds us, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18). Don’t let fear or doubt stop you from going to God. God knows us down to the dirtiest depths of our hearts, but that doesn’t change his love for us. In fact, it is for our failures that Jesus willingly lay down his life to completely pay for our sins – past, present, and future. And now, God shines his face on us, seeing us for who we honestly are, and it is never too late for us to turn to Him.

4.     What happens when we pray to God, and it does not seem like He’s listening? We often come to God with certain prayers that we continue to pray for again and again. God, please save my beloved family member. God, help me to do well in school (for your glory). God, my family member is sick. God, I’ve been struggling with the same sin, and I’m not changing. And with each unanswered prayer, our faith wears down, bit by bit. Before we know it, we pray without expecting any answer. We pray, but we don’t believe God hears or cares.  We feel like God isn’t listening because He doesn’t give us what we want. If this is where our prayer lives end, we’ve missed out on the life-changing purpose of prayer. When we pray, our desires, hopes, worries meet God, and He prunes our desires to be more like His. God does hear, and He does care. James 4 explains this more (click here). If prayer is merely a litany of our wants, of course it’s going to feel impersonal! Listen to God – He does have answers for the difficult questions. And He always has a grander, deeper plan than we can imagine.

Let’s come before God knowing that we need Him, knowing that He loves us and answers our prayers. 

Prayer (Part 1)

Last Sunday, Pastor Brendon ended his message with a challenge from John 14:13-14:

“Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Instead of making prayer an obligation or duty, Pastor Brendon implored us to believe how generous God is to us. If we really believed that God would give us anything we ask in his name, we would pray. If we realized that our redemption is found in Christ alone, we would pray. Prayer was never meant to be a moral obligation for every Christian. Jesus saved us to have a relationship with God, so prayer is part of that joy.

You might be wondering what in the world does prayer have to do with counseling. But I think it’s on this very challenge to pray that our church will be able to effectively counsel one another. However, this means we need to change how we ask for prayer and how we pray. Since it is a lot to tackle at once, this blog post will focus on changing how we ask for prayer.

We've been learning that having close relationships with one another does not simply mean talking to one another or knowing things about each other. Just because we know a lot about each other, it doesn’t automatically make us care for one another. The best conversations are not ones where you tell me about the events of your day or week; they happen when I get to know how those events affected you – the thoughts, emotions, hopes, and fears. A close relationship means that what you say and do affects my life. It doesn’t matter very much to me if you can recite my schedule backwards and forwards or even if you know my secrets; I want to know you care.

However, this thinking seems to go out the window when we ask for prayer. (David Powlison writes a great article about asking for prayer requests here.) We ask for prayer for topics like “health, travel mercies, finances, doing well on a test, finding a job, or the salvation of unsaved relatives”. If it is not for those things, we often make our prayer requests very general like “pray that I know God better” or “pray for my future spouse”. God does care about these things, but his main focus is for us to know HIM. Prayer is where we meet God. Just like our close relationships don’t consist of an exchange of facts about each other, prayer deals with how God is affecting your life, right now. How is God challenging you? How is God reassuring you? How is God changing you? How is God showing his overflowing love and mercy for you? And on your side: how are you responding to God in your life? How are you grateful for Him? Are you angry that He has not given what you expected? Where are you stuck and need his help? How are you responding to other people? This is the arena where we meet God. This is where the most important issues in life are played out.

Dear Church, let’s meet with God. When we meet with each other, let’s ask for prayer and pray for each other in the things that matter. 

Weakest Link

I hate being sick. The past two weeks, I’ve been infected with a medley of lingering illnesses. More than the actual symptoms of my illnesses, I was so frustrated at the imposition of my plans. I hate being unable to complete my work and meet with people. I hate not being in control. Thinking about my own violent reaction to being sick and appearing weak and incapable made me realize how much I prize being capable and self-reliant. Words like weakness, disability, handicapped, pity, and dysfunctional stick like barbs under my skin. I equate weakness with worthlessness, and I react so violently because I am scared that I actually am those things. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), I am not alone in my messed up thinking. Our culture holds wealth, beauty, and hard work so highly.

In most churches and especially in Asian American churches, there is a blatant stigma against those who go into counseling. Our culture prides people who are strong and capable, and the church is not much different. In fact, many churches take that same thinking one step further and press expectations of put-together, always cheerful, talented, and capable members, while disregarding or ignoring those that seem less useful. Like Pastor Kenny often says, “We mistake knowledge for godliness and talent for character.” This mindset leaves everyone feeling inadequate, shamed, and afraid to ask for help. This is NOT how God intended his church to be! Let’s look at what Paul writes about the church:

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”  On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together, if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

I Corinthians 12:18-26

Beloved CCC, let’s change our church culture. Instead of valuing the people we think can do the most for our church, we have to recognize that we need those weaker parts more than the seemingly stronger parts. And if this doesn’t make sense to you, here are two good reasons why you should think about it again:

1.       We are saved in weakness. As the sermon and bible study this week have so pointedly explained, we need to be washed by Jesus. The only thing we bring to our salvation is our sin and brokenness. And we never leave from this spot. The Christian life is not for someone to better themselves and become stronger and independent. Instead, for the rest of eternity, we are completely and utterly dependent on Jesus for every single moment. So, when you or I look around at the people in our church, know that we are more alike than different. We can let go of thinking of people as so much worse or even so much better than us. We are all weak and pitiable but rescued and honored because of Christ.

2.       And here is an even better reason: Jesus Christ became handicapped for our sake¹. I think we often forget that Jesus is the same God as God in Isaiah 6. He is holy, holy, holy and so incomparable to anything or anyone in this world. Jesus’ “normal” is to sit on a throne and be worshipped by a fleet of angels day and night. He speaks and galaxies come out of nothing. He whistles and nations and empires rise and fall. And then, out of the ridiculous love he has for us, Jesus lays that all aside and chooses to handicap himself. He goes from God of the universe to nothing. Jesus goes from breathing life and creating planets and stars to whittling wood as a carpenter. He became a man who feels hunger and exhaustion, who can only care for so many people in a day, who got sick, who was rejected, judged, and shunned. Because Jesus knew we couldn’t do it on our own, Jesus lived this menial life, and at the end, he gets on his knees to wash our feet and dies a humiliating death to save you and me.

Since we have been given this mind-blowing, humbling love, let’s love and serve one another AND allow others to love and serve you. Whether you have a physical disability, an emotional disability, a mental disability, have anger issues, if you have a hard time caring about people or anything, come from a dysfunctional family, or if you’re just plain lost, let’s share in it together.

1. Joni Eareckson Tada, Diamonds in the Dust, March 2. 

Jesus & Mary & Counseling

When I tell people that I want to go into biblical counseling, the usual response is a wide eyed, polite stare that says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” There are a good number of people who think of biblical counseling like a Biblegateway keyword search. You’re feeling anxious? Read Matthew 6 about not worrying, Psalm 23 about how God is with you, and top it off with Proverbs 3 to trust in God and not yourself. Now you’re all set to live victoriously, and I’ll call you later to see how it’s going.

As we have been learning, Jesus works very differently. He is not in the business of quick-fixes and patch jobs; He’s after a relationship. As our church has been going through John 11 and 12, I’ve been really struck by the way Jesus cares for (and counsels!) Mary.

***

From Mary’s perspective, her brother was really sick. So sick that Mary and Martha knew that unless a miracle happened, Lazarus was not going to make it. Not only are they faced with losing their brother, but they most likely depend on him for the way they live. With his death, their futures would be very uncertain. So, they send for Jesus, but he doesn’t come. Their worst fears come true, and Lazarus dies with no word from Jesus.

How could Jesus do this? We sent for him; we prayed to him. There are so many times we get upset/disappointed/angry when Jesus does not love us the way we want him to love us.

Mary is no different. Four long, tortuous days pass, and Jesus finally comes. Mary doesn’t even go see him. She stays in the house, surrounded by people who were trying to console her. But Jesus calls for her. Mary hurries to Jesus and just falls at his feet. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus is deeply moved and weeps, asking to be brought to Lazarus’ tomb. He prays and raises Lazarus from the dead.

We live in a world with very real problems.  Jesus does not dismiss Mary’s. He does not tell her that she did not trust Him enough, to pray harder, or to get her understanding of Him right. Instead Jesus weeps with her. And although Mary’s grief over her brother is something terrible and devastating, Jesus is in the process of healing something much more broken than a rotting corpse. He is preparing to pay for all of our brokenness, sin, and the death we deserved by sacrificing his perfect life. Jesus sees our sinfulness and selfishness fully, and He chose to come down to us, die a humiliating death, and pay the debt of our sin.  Facing death is scary. Facing an uncertain future is scary. Facing broken relationships is scary. Facing how deep our sinfulness goes is terrifying.

Jesus cares deeply about the situations and circumstances that we go through, and his main priority is to save us to know Him. Jesus showed his love to Mary not because he raised her brother from the dead, but through raising Lazarus, Mary got to see and understand who Jesus is. In the John 12 we see Mary’s response to the way Jesus cared for her. In an undignified display, she pours out her perfume to anoint Jesus, which is worth a year’s income, and wipes his feet with her hair. Mary gives shamelessly to Jesus.

***

Biblical counseling isn’t about fixing your issues or the circumstances in your life. It’s getting to know Jesus, the only one who can save, and seeing where your life fits with Him, instead of how God can better your life. God’s intention for Mary and for us is not to simply give us what we want; it’s to give us Himself.

A Beginning

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he stands in the synagogue and reads from the Isaiah scroll.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Isaiah 61: 1-2a

Growing up, I loved this passage, thinking that this was God’s plan for my life. I especially grabbed on to the words “bind up the brokenhearted”. In my mind, this meant going to Afghanistan or Sudan to open a hospital or clinic that would physically heal their ailments and somehow restore hope in these war-torn countries. I thought of myself as a savior to the afflicted and brokenhearted. Little did I realize that I was the blind and trapped one.  Thankfully, Jesus saved me from trying to live life on my own strength and day by day has shown me that I am needy for more and more and more of God’s mercy. God has also shown me that I do not need to cross oceans to meet hopeless and hurting people. Right in front of me are people who are paralyzed by insecurity, drowning in expectations, and simply worn down by their circumstances.

Jesus uses this passage to begin his ministry, because He is the one that this passage is talking about. Jesus is the good news that each of us needs to hear. God used this passage in my life as a beginning to reveal that the Bible directly speaks to my life. At CCC, we do not want the teaching and preaching to end as a nice concept. God’s word needs to impact your life. Keep reading Isaiah and you will see a God who takes the down and out, the ugly, the outcast, and the broken and makes them into something new. God brings his people to himself and calls them “mine”, beloved and redeemed.  In this Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Brendon emphasized how God’s priority is not providing materially for the poor; it’s about Jesus. If as a church we only focus on physical needs of people, we missed the good news.

My hope is that these words, prophesied by Isaiah and proclaimed by Jesus, will be the beginning of our counseling ministry at CCC. We are all the poor, the captive, and the brokenhearted. The reason why we are at church is because we desperately need a Savior. Let’s partner together to see the miracles that God is working out in your life. Come and see how He personally transforms insecurity and grief in your life to freedom and joy