Frequency | Endure. Resist. Remain. Jesus Is Worthy of It All.

 

It's Your breath

in our lungs, so

we pour out our praise

to You only.

The lyrics above are what we were singing in the picture above during one of the many powerful moments when the Spirit of God was moving during the 2025 Frequency Conference in Philadelphia.

On the night of Friday, November 7 around 8 p.m., Pastor Phillip Anthony Mitchell felt a groaning in his heart before he preached as he invited the 700+ people in the room to join him in worship singing:

All the earth will shout Your praise,

our hearts will cry, 

these bones will sing,

"Great are You, Lord!"

It's Your breath in our lungs,

so we pour out our praise

to You only!

+ Great Are You Lord

The greatness of God in the grief of living in a world in need of redemption and renewal was the focus for both Friday and Saturday in midst of the songs, sermons, and communion of saints who came together from across the world (ex. one sister, Bethlehem, flew from Dubai to join with us this past weekend) to remind each other to:

Endure,

Resist, and

Remain

as a Remnant of

humble and faithful 

Jesus followers

for such a time as this.

This post will include a stream of consciousness collection of Scriptures, songs, and notes from the communion of saints who poured into us the 36+ hours we were together (including some from Redemption City Church where I had the privilege to preach on "Nehemiah 9: The Lord Who Writes Our Stories" on Sunday morning). May anyone reading these words of encouragement receive an exhortation to walk with King Jesus and see Him as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of your story, the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 

And after reading some of these words, my hope is you will join the choir singing this chorus that potently punctuated a praise break:

You're worthy of it all!

You're worthy of it all!

For from You are all things

and to You are all things,

You deserve the glory.

+ Worthy Of It All

Main Session | Vision

w/ Rev. Dr. Eric Mason

+ Matthew 24:4

It's a privilege to be a Kingdom participant. 

Jesus wants living sacrifices, 

people who are committed 

no matter what. 

Are we building our lives 

around what's best for the Kingdom 

and our spiritual growth? 

There's no microwaving discipleship. 

Go through the battle. 

Vintage beauty gets its character 

from being cut and washed 

over and over. 

Through suffering with the Savior, 

God produces:

+ Substance

+ Stability

+ Structure

+ Sense of belonging

so we can be Jesus' people 

sent out as His incarnational missionaries 

in the spaces we live and dwell.

+ What a God

" ... If the highest place I reach

Is at Your feet,

Then I've done it all.

If the best thing that I've seen

Is Your glory,

Then I've seen it all.

Your love has changed my life,

Forever satisfied,

God, You are my everything.

If one Word is the only thing

You speak,

Then I've heard it all.

If I feel Your heart

And never see Your hand,

I still have it all.

No treasure of this life

Could ever satisfy.

God, You are my everything. ... "

(This song is a powerful "dayenu"

that brought me to tears.)

Fireside Chat | Enduring

We need to be broken,

as jars of clay in the Potter's hand

so people can see Christ through us.

You need people around you

that aren't impressed.

They value you, but they remind you

it all (i.e. your gifts) comes from God.

You participated,

but you didn't make it happen.

You need people in your life

who protect the glory of God

that rests on you.

+ You've Been So Faithful

" ... I can never repay You, Lord,

For what You've done for me,

How You loosed my shackles

And You set me free.

How You made a way out of no way,

Turned my darkness into day,

You've been my joy in the time of sorrow,

Hope for my tomorrow,

Peace in the time of storm,

Strength when I'm weak and worn,

You've been so faithful ... "

Main Session | Conviction

w/ Pastor Phillip Anthony Mitchell
+ Jude 1:1-3

Are you a servant of Christ

or is He your butler or genie?

Have you given Him 

your complete "Yes"?

May

mercy,

peace, and

love be multiplied to you ... 

I found it necessary

to write to you to

contend for the faith

that was once for all

delivered to the saints.

This is for the called.

This is for the beloved.

This is for the kept.

Salvation is enough

to give Him praise

for the rest of your life.

Fight for the faith,

for the salvation of Christ,

for the teachings of Christ,

for the family of Christ.

Contend in your prayer room

against the principalities and powers.

Contend from your knees 

and rise for Christ.

Wherever you show up, 

His light shows up.

If being a servant is below you,

being a leader is above you.

This is us caring about the Kingdom

more than our comfort.

God is holy, holy, holy.

Panel | Remnant Discipleship

It's hard to take up my cross

when I'm offended.

+ Megan Ashley

Life in community 

is a glorious mess. 

Everything is a part 

of your discipleship.

+ Phillip Anthony Mitchell 

& Eric Mason

Feel your emotions,

but remember that

they're still tainted with sin.

Feel them with Jesus.

Submit them to Him.

Work them through filters.

Filter them with Him.

Filter them with trusted friends.

Filter them in the Word.

Filter them in prayer.

+ Phillip Anthony Mitchell

How do you know you're called? 

Going anywhere else,

doing anything else, 

would be disobedience.

+ Eric Mason

Discipleship is a lifelong apprenticeship 

with Jesus 

in which you are transformed 

from the imago Dei 

to the imago Christi. 

+ Pastor Vernon Mobley &

Rev. Dr. Eric Mason

People will be more amazed

by your intimacy than your intellect.

Be personable and knowledgeable.

+ Preston Perry

God didn't ask us to be impressive,

He called us to impact.

+ Rev. Dr. Eric Mason

Suffering and weariness 

are means by which God 

will bring you to the end of yourself 

so you can understand 

your dependence on Jesus. 

+ Pastor Aaron Campbell

Final Main Session | Encouragement

w/ Jackie Hill Perry

Hebrews 3:12-14

God uses encouragement

and exhortation to keep us.

Keep going. 

Encouragement and exhortation:

+ Help us to stay protected

+ Remind us of His promises & presence

+ Inform our perspective

+ Keep us being faithful today

Discouragement can turn into lies 

that you decide 

you want to believe. 

But discouragement is not the enemy, 

per se, unbelief is.

Today if you hear His voice,

do not harden your hearts.

(see Exodus 17:1-7)

Do you let your temporary discomfort

reveal your distrust in God,

or do you let it

reveal your trust in God?

We have expectations that the places God leads us will have no depravation. If we are our own resources, we will be discouraged in those spaces. We can be so discouraged that we think God rescued us to then kill us. That the God who loves you doesn't like you. The devil is a liar. But in the LORD, where it seems there is no way, God can make a way. 

Is the LORD among us, or not? 

Are we posturing ourselves as someone 

God has to prove Himself to? 

Or do we trust He's with us?

To one God gives courage.

To another God gives patience.

Both are needed for endurance.

Are we exhorting each other every day?

Are we encouraging each other every day?

Are we edifying each other every day?

" ... As long as it is called today ... "

Weariness is 

a consequence of faithfulness.

We can be tired of what comes 

when being useful and faithful.

Encourage each other 

every day 

while it is still called today.

There is manna for every morning.

But you got to get up and take it in.

His mercies are new every morning.

Some races can't be finished by yourself.

"I finished last. But I finished."

+ Derek (& Jim) Redmond '92 Olympics

God will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. He has not given you a spirit of fear, but the Spirit of power, and love, and a sound mind. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. When you don't know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for you with groans that are too deep for words. If God is for you, who can be against you? In the temptation, He will provide a way of escape so you can endure.

Frequency Blessing + Benediction

May God Himself,
the God of peace,
sanctify you through and through.
May your whole spirit,
soul and body be kept blameless
at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The One who calls you is faithful,
and He will do it. 

+ 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

Bonus Frequency Speaker Videos:

+ Rev. Dr. Eric Mason 

w/ the Perrys

+ Phillip Anthony Mitchell Part 1 & 2 

w/ the Perrys

+ Blameless 2025 Album

w/ Jackie Hill Perry

+ Preston Perry

w/ Lecrae

+ Jackie Hill Perry

w/ Lecrae

+ Pastor Aaron Campbell

w/ Rev. Dr. Eric Mason

+ Megan Ashley

w/ Lecrae

Life is hard. God is good. Let's dance.

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

My Honest Advent | Broken Candles & Humbling Illumination

 

If we hide the brokenness, the beauty will not be discovered; nor will it be shared with others as a source of hope. + J.R. Briggs, Fail

COVID came to our house this December like an unwanted guest.

I've had it. So has most of my family this past month during Advent. My precious wife has had it the worst, God bless her and heal her. 

Quarantine. Cancelled family visits. Unperformed musical performances that had been sacrificed for and practiced for months. Loss of taste and smell. Cabin fever. Days that run into weeks like the snot slowly and surely running from noses. Family life, work, school, and fun-snapping fidgets to get out of the house, all tangled in a funky ball of holiday twine. And multiple missed Advent masses with our beloved Emmaus City Church that help reset and reorient us back to the bigger Story in the midst of our claustrophobic little one.

Waiting and hoping. Waiting and hurting. Waiting and harming ...

To be honest, though I have been embodying some of the practices of Advent, I haven't been receiving and resting very well in the grace of what God so generously gives us during this hard and holy season. 

My head and heart have been a bit clogged. And not just with what COVID coagulates. Needless to say, I haven't had the poise and presence of peace pictured above. As much as I want to be a personal cathedral that the Light of the world breaks in to illuminate and shine through to others, it hasn't been faithfully true of me in my wrestling with current circumstances, internal and external.

Reflecting on Advent during our quarantine together as a family through The Gospel of Advent (big "Thank you!"s to Marlena Graves and Rich Villodas, especially) has been hope-reminding. And lighting candles and singing beloved Advent songs, old and new, together (like versions of "O Come O Come Emmmanuel" via for KING & COUNTRY and Tomme Profitt, or "Light Has Come" by Future of Forestry, or "Light of the World" by We the Kingdom) after we receive meals from family, friends, and neighbors who have been feeding us (you all are amazing!) has been heart-warming. 

And yet, I've still had times of being impatient, unkind, and distant with those I've wanted to love and serve in my own house, sometimes due to setbacks, often because of my own selfishness. When the darkness comes at the end of the day and we light the candle wreath again, the limp candle that broke weeks ago and keeps falling out of its holder is a bit like this little light of mine that keeps falling over and singeing those around me.

A Broken Advent: Broken Candles & the Tension of Advent

And then I read Kate Kooyman's hilarious and piercing "A Broken Advent" and immediately responded, "Preach, sister!" 

Here are Kate's thoughts in all their glory so you don't even have to click the link above:

I have a really pathetic Advent candle situation happening in my house this season. It’s because the taper candles I bought are too big on the bottom, so I crammed them in the candle holders and hoped they’d stay anyway. They didn’t. The little wreath gets moved on and off our kitchen table several times a day (a high-traffic zone for homework, eating, and collecting clutter), and so every poor candle has now hit the floor at least once. They’re all cracked in the center, and each angles in a different direction.

But I’m sticking with my little motley candles, because of Fleming Rutledge. She is one of my favorite theological follows on Twitter (@flemingrut), and she wrote something recently about Advent candles that helped me make peace with mine: “A leading blogger is promoting the idea of giving names to Advent wreath candles: love, peace, etc. This ‘tradition’ is about 20 years old with zero liturgical background. The ancient Advent words are Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. I did not make that up.”

I had to laugh. But if you’ve been following the Lectionary texts assigned during Advent (or if you’ve been a human person in the Year of our Lord 2021), maybe this also feels spot-on to you. Here, for example, is a gem from Luke’s Gospel last week: “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” The Psalm 80 option doesn’t brighten things up much either: “O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.”

Tears to drink in full measure. That feels about right. During this Advent season, I have friends who are sick and friends who are grieving. Friends who work in hospitals, exhausted by death after death. Friends who show up every day in understaffed and underfunded schools, trying to smile and teach and carry on, like squeezing water from a rock. I have friends who are holding on by a thread. With Omicron, tornadoes, kids with guns, migrants in Hungary, a human rights crisis in Afghanistan… the whole world seems to be doing the same.

Death, judgement, heaven and hell.

Advent is hard. Not only do we live in a culture that has turned it, like everything, into an opportunity to swipe our cards (Lego Advent calendar for the kids? Or wine Advent calendar for mom?), we also live in a world that tells us every problem can be solved. Everything broken can be replaced. Everything frightening can be controlled. Everything sad has a reason. Everything hard has a purpose.

But I don’t think this is the same story that Advent prepares us to tell. That is a story that refuses to skip over the suffering, or deny darkness — but enters it instead. A woman’s vulnerable body. A town tired of outsiders. A threatening, violent government. A broken, weeping world.

Rutledge, who literally wrote the book Advent, says this: “The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the Church lives its life.”

And so we prepare to welcome the Christ child yet again. We live in the tension that hope requires; not denying our grief, our doubts, our fears. But opening ourselves to the possibility of a God who will make all things new.

With just one click I could have some pristine candles for my table, I’m not going to do it. Toppled, cracked, and precarious, they still shine in the darkness. 

So, I pray, do we.

+ Kate Kooyman, "A Broken Advent"

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Light of the world, shine on me, shine in me, and shine through me again. I'm a broken Advent candle. Light me up anyways.

Fail: Broken Stained Glass & the Discovery of Beauty 

I confess and repent again: I'm not the Light of the world. Nothing too serene or peaceful here. Just shards of broken Advent expectations for this season and myself. 

But despite my pile of broken expectations and emotions that have cut and injured, God still had one more word of grace to share with me, and perhaps you as well, through a book on failure I finished this past weekend:

As I walked by (the broken stained glass), the angle was just right to catch a magnificent view of the sun glimmering through the jagged shards of glass still attached to the windows. Despite its brokenness, its beauty was stunning. It was beautiful because of its brokenness. When we are broken, we have the potential to be beautiful because of what works through us. 

We have a hauntingly large capacity to make colossal mistakes. When we demand perfection in ourselves and others, we have set ourselves up for eventual disillusionment. In many ways our failure intersects our lives and forces us to make a decision: we can become bitter or recognize it as a place of growth and maturity. 

We are broken stained glass. Will we be repulsed by that fact, or will we embrace it and see the beauty for what it is? If we hide the brokenness, the beauty will not be discovered; nor will it be shared with others as a source of hope ... 

The gospel proclaims that we need help, and by accepting it we declare unabashedly, "I cannot do this life on my own." It is an acknowledgment that I cannot create a future for myself more meaningful or purposeful than God can. The first line of the Beatitude reads, "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there's more of God and His rule" (Matthew 5:3 The Message). 

+ J.R. Briggs, Fail 

Amen to that. Here's to less of me and more of God and His rule and reign shining in me, around me, and through me to close this special season of Advent.

" ... the story that brought us here ain't the thing that changed, 
I want to see that light shining brighter than the pain! ... 

We sing these broken prayers where the light shines through,
The wound is where the light shines through ... " 

+ "Where the Light Shines Through" by Switchfoot 

Next post: Honest Advent | "Be Not Afraid" Means "Merry Christmas"

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Longing for Revival | Unfettered in Seemingly Small Things

 

Not only was I learning to be less ashamed of small things, I was beginning to imagine that small things might save us all. But we might have to be like children, comfortable in our own smallness, to receive that salvation (Matthew 18:1-4). + Mandy Smith, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture

Along with We Died Before We Came Here and A Time to Heal, Unfettered (What a fantastic word! Unfettered means "unrestrained" or "uninhibited"; "unfettered artistic genius") and Longing for Revival are important books and stories that continue to fuel my thoughts, prayers, and meditations during 2021 as I get to walk with unhinged resurrection hope and wonder in light of what Jesus is up to in the days ahead.

Unfettered: All the Small Things that Save and Renew Us

I knew revival meant a change in the hearts of human beings to draw us back to God and his mission. I knew revival meant that in times that seem desperate, when we feel our cultural power slipping, we finally stop grasping for it and turn to our true source of power. And revival does not mean more of the same adultish maneuvering, but rather the revival of our ability to receive the kingdom as children ... 

What if we were to let the desperation change us? Romans 8:15 says, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (NRSV). ...

What would it look like to feel the desperation, not as slaves but as children? If you're a slave and you feel overburdened, you resent your master and work harder for fear of ramifications. If you're a child and you feel overburdened, you do the only thing a child can do: you cry out to your father. Children often don't even know what to ask for; they just know whom to turn to. So, maybe what we most need is simply to cry, "Abba! Father!""Abba" is found only three times in the New Testament, but in every case it is not a word said about God but a word said to God. It is cried out by those who know their dependence on him, who know how to trust his goodness and provision. We need to say "Abba!" because things are getting desperate.

Our most pressing problem right now is not to "fix" our brokenness on issues of sexuality or the shrinking church or even racism and poverty (as important as all those are). Our most pressing problem is our belief that the burden of fixing is entirely ours. This is not a belief we often admit but a belief we regularly live. What if we stopped our slavish, fearful striving long enough to remember we're not slaves and to cry out like children to our Father? It may not provide an instant, obvious fix to the pressing problems of the church and the world, but it could bring a different, better solution – even renewal. 

Marva Dawn proposes a hopeful possibility: "I believe this could be a time of revival if we let weakness be the agent for God's tabernacling."

When we cry, "Abba! Father!" his Spirit testifies to our spirits that we are indeed his children. His Spirit reminds us that we are not alone, that our world is his, our work is his, that his Spirit is striving with our spirits, longing with our spirits. ... Revival is measured in hearts turned to him. And so, as humbling and uncomfortable but surprisingly simply as this may seem:

 

+ Revival begins when God's people acknowledge their need for him. 

+ Revival begins when human hearts remember how to cry, "Abba! Father!" 

+ Revival is inevitable when we learn to receive the kingdom like children.

There's a wonderful possibility hidden in this very desperation that we fear is our undoing. But only if we let it teach us our need for him ...

God gives me a tiny seed – a hope, a whisper, a glimpse, a sense, a promise.  

He asks me to take it and steward it. 

The beauty of its hidden potential overwhelms me. 

The questions it raises awake my curiosity. 

I want to see, to understand. 

Why has he given me this seed? 

So I can tell others? But I don't know enough. 

So I can make it grow? 

So I can celebrate when it grows? 

I hold the seed but I hunger for the fruit. 

The closest way to get fruit from a seed is to suck the seed – try to taste any remnant. 

But seeds don't grow in mouths. 

Shall I dissect the seed? But wouldn't that kill it? 

Give me the patience to sow the seed – even in soil that seems rotting – what fertile soil it will become! 

Mine is not to be the sun or the rain, to burst the germ or bring forth the shoot. 

Mine is to tend, to watch, to wait, to be ready when it breaks through! 

The Roman Empire would have made front page news. Its political, economic, and military power were unsurpassed. The generals could be named, the walled cities could be measured, the riches could be weighed, the centurions could be numbered. But where is that empire now? 

Meanwhile, the early church was virtually invisible. It is hard to measure a ragtag bunch of misfits, meeting in homes, eating and praying and serving their neighbors together. Such an immeasurable thing seems impotent. And yet such a relational, human-scale thing is almost impossible to overthrow or contain. This seemingly insignificant movement has outlived that immense Roman Empire. We long to have institutions, power, measurable effects – to be able to name the leader, see the building, count the resources, report the outcomes – but perhaps it's our organic nature that makes the kingdom truly transformative and unstoppable.

Alan Kreider calls this the patient ferment of the early Christian movement:

It was brewing, but not under anyone's control. It was uncoordinated, it was unpredictable, and it seemed unstoppable. The ferment was spontaneous, and it involved ordinary ingredients that at times synergized into a heady brew. The churches grew in many places, taking varied forms. They proliferated because the faith that these fishers and hunters embodied was attractive to people who were dissatisfied with their old cultural and religious habits, who felt pushed to explore new possibilities, and who then encountered Christians who embodied a new manner of life that pulled them toward what the Christians called "rebirth" into a new life. Surprisingly, this happened in a patient manner. 

+ Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire

... I wrote in my journal, "When I chose to be a farmhand it was because I’d tasted the fruit. I wanted to make more, enough for everyone. I had visions of fields, crammed with plants, laden with fruit. I had no idea I’d be farming the desert. I want to believe this ground is fertile. I want to believe these seeds are good. I have to ask, “Am I doing it wrong?” I ask the Farmer every morning and as I do, he fills my hands with tiny, bright seeds. His eyes shine with what he knows they’ll be and to my questions he just smiles and says, 'Sow.'"

Longing for Revival: One Story of a Small Thing that Became a Bigger Thing (Hebrides Revival)

When we cry out to God, we're putting ourselves in a position to wait on his timing and perspective.

Crying out to God means persistent, whole-hearted praying, where we unload the full freight of our hope onto him, withholding none of it for our plans and strategies. God's promise to those who cry out to him is that they will not be overlooked (Luke 18:1-8).

The enemy of our souls wants to keep us quiet and keep the struggle locked deep inside. It can feel foolish, or worse yet, forced. Or it just makes some of us uncomfortable. But the Spirit will often inspire us to cry out, to release the burden in order to find strength in him. And this kind of whole-hearted praying is recorded throughout the book of Psalms:

All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. ... 

Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice ... 

LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.

Off the coast of Scotland lies a diverse archipelago called the Hebrides. It contains some of the oldest rocks in Europe, and consists of more than 136 islands – of which fifteen are inhabited. Although high in latitude, the Gulf Stream keeps those islands rather temperate, and from 1948 to 1952, they played host to the Hebrides Revival.

In November 1949, on the island of Lewis, two women in their 80s – one of them blind – were burdened by the spiritual state of their church. Not a single young person was a part of their parish, so the women started to pray twice a week, often from ten o'clock at night to three or four o'clock in the morning. As they prayed, one of them received a vision of their church packed with young people. They called their parish minister about it and challenged him to host his own prayer meeting at the same times – Tuesday and Friday nights. He accepted and started to pray with seven men.

After a month and a half, a young deacon in the church read Psalm 24 while they prayed in the barn: "He that has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul into vanity or sworn deceitfully, He shall receive the blessing (not a blessing, but the blessing) of the Lord." Then he closed his Bible, and looking down, he said words straight from his heart: "It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God." Then he lifted his two hands. It would be hard not to hear the tremble in his voice, as he cried out, 

"God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" ... Conviction hit the room. "A God-sent revival must ever be related to holiness." And the power of God swept in.

Later, at a nearby dance hall, the presence of God would move in so dramatically that the music stopped, and in minutes the hall emptied of its one hundred or so young people, and they all went to church. Soon after, 800 – with many young people – poured into the church and prayed until four in the morning. And the revival would last for three more years.

Revivals, both personally and corporately, depend on this kind of praying, because revivals depend on God's power, not our own.

+ The content above includes excerpts from Chapter 3: Receive and Chapter 5: Respond in Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture by Mandy Smith along with excerpts from Chapter 6: Contending in Longing for Revival: From Holy Discontent to Breakthrough Faith by James Choung and Ryan Pfeiffer.

Next post: Reappearing Church | Presence + Prayer for Renewal

Here are links to some other previous City Notes books: Tattoos on the Heart; Drop the Stones; Glorious Weakness; Discovering the Freedom of Limitations; How to Be a Saint in the Darkness; An Exercise in Hope; Prayer in the Night; A Time to Heal

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us