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Grace and peace to you this week. Sunday we start Reconnect, and I have been waiting on this one for weeks. One church, two campuses, one family. RECONNECT, Week 1: NO BARS. Starts Sunday.You have not missed church in months. You also cannot remember the last time you talked to God about something real. Your phone shows five bars in every room you walk into. Your connection to God shows one, and you stopped noticing because everything else in your life still runs fine without it. That is exactly why it went quiet. Nothing broke loudly. Sunday we open John 15 and look at a vine that stops drawing from the root. It does not die today. It just stops bearing anything worth picking. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” (John 15:4, NLT) Write this down: Remaining connected is a decision you make before you feel like it. This is week one of six. Six wires that came loose one at a time, and nobody decided to cut any of them: ⓵ October 11: No Bars. Prayer and worship went quiet and nobody noticed. Your practice this week: ten quiet minutes with God, on three days. Phone face down until the ten minutes are done. Pick the three days now, before Sunday picks them for you. Go deeper: The RECONNECT PlaylistBetween this Sunday and the next sits a Tuesday commute, a Wednesday meeting, and a Thursday night you will spend scrolling. Put something better in your ears. Twenty tracks of gospel and worship, sequenced to the six weeks. Start with the Week 1 set, including Fred Hammond’s Running Back to You and Israel and New Breed’s Your Presence Is Heaven.
Save the Date: Reconnect Life Groups, October 11 to November 15Sunday gives you the message. By Tuesday lunch, it is gone. A Life Group is how it stays. Reconnect is six weeks. The Sunday message sets the theme. Your group talks it through, practices it together, and every person leaves with one challenge small enough to finish before Friday. Nobody in the room is teaching a second sermon. It is a table where the truth gets said out loud and nobody flinches. In person. A real room, real people, one table. Two ways to get placed: ⓵ Text LIFEGROUP to 33777. Do it before Sunday, so Week 1 is not your first day behind. Already in a group? Stay right where you are. Your group runs this material starting Week 1. And to every Life Group leader who said yes: you ask the questions and you make room. That is the whole job, and it matters more than you know. This Sunday: Our Monthly In-Person GatheringSunday, October 11, 10:30 AM Central. In person at 7941 47th Street, McCook, Illinois, and online at the same time. Same service, same family, wherever you sit. Can’t be there live? The replay goes up on YouTube after service. Pick your screen: 👉 Website: marshillchicago.org Thank you for holding this house upThis is a hybrid church with two campuses: the room in McCook and the campus that’s wherever you’re sitting right now. Your prayers and your giving keep both of them open. Give at marshillchicago.org/giving, or text MHGIVE to 33777. Here’s where I’ll leave you. The signal never dropped on His end. See you Sunday at 10:30. Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr. P.S. Open your calendar right now and block three mornings for the ten quiet minutes. If it is not scheduled, your phone will eat it before you notice. A word from this week’s sponsor This week’s sponsor is my own podcast, Still Standing. It is for the person who carries other people and has not been carried in a while. No theory. I teach from survival, and every episode says the hard thing plainly. Press play on one this week.
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You have one bar with God and you know it.
