Two testimonies before the message

This second Revive Us Again Sunday service opened with two men of the church preaching before Pastor Devon Ortiz closed the night. Brother Chris preached briefly from Matthew 18:21-22 on forgiving not seven times but seventy times seven, sharing candidly that he still has to return to God some days and ask forgiveness for remembering an old hurt he thought he had already released. Brother Jason, a dentist in the church, built his message around the SOAP note format doctors use to chart a patient (subjective, objective, assessment, plan), walking it through as a picture of how God deals with a person honestly, from the things we finally admit out loud to the finished plan of salvation completed at the cross. Pastor Ortiz built his own message directly on both of theirs, then turned to Colossians 3 to close the series on the tongue with a challenge about what actually comes out of a Christian's mouth.

Position comes before performance

The pastor opened in Colossians 3:1-4, where Paul tells believers who are risen with Christ to set their affection on things above, since their life is now hidden with Christ in God. He was specific about the order here: Paul establishes who a believer already is before ever addressing how they should speak. Everything that follows in the chapter, he said, only works from that starting point.

From there he pressed a direct question on the church, continuing the month's series on the tongue. How often do people actually speak of Christ compared to how quickly they'll pass along an old wives' tale about essential oils or onions taped to the feet, or how easily conversation turns to celebrity gossip and political news that ultimately changes nothing. The point was not to shame small talk but to notice how rarely the one thing that actually changed a person's life gets mentioned out loud. He was also clear that speaking Christ does not mean copying anyone else's style or voice. Each person in the church, he said by name, has their own way of carrying it, and the church needs more of each of them being themselves rather than more imitations of the pastor.

Put off the old man, put on the new

Verses 5 through 9 list what Paul says must be killed: sensual sin first, then sins of speech specifically, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, and lying. The pastor was direct that revival cannot happen while a person is still holding onto sin, since verse 6 ties that same list to what brings God's wrath. Most of what Paul lists in the second half, he pointed out, comes out through the mouth.

He then told the story of an orphan boy adopted into wealth, who every morning secretly puts his old, tattered clothes back on in front of the mirror before anyone sees him, not because he has to, but because some part of him is still waiting to be sent back to the life he came from and does not want to get too attached to the new one. The application was pointed: many Christians live the same way, quietly keeping the old identity close at hand because the new one, hidden with Christ, feels too good to be permanent. Verse 9 says plainly that the old man has already been put off. The pastor's point was that living like it is still on is a choice, not a fact.

Verse 12 lists what gets put on instead: mercy, kindness, humbleness, meekness, longsuffering. Verse 14 puts one thing above all the others, charity, which is love. The pastor connected this straight back to Brother Chris and Brother Jason, since it was Brother Chris speaking Christ into an ordinary dentist visit, with no plan of evangelizing anyone, that became the friendship leading Brother Jason to salvation and, that same night, to the pulpit. Love, the pastor said, is what makes speaking Christ effortless instead of forced.

Let peace rule, and let the word live richly

Verse 15 calls believers to let the peace of God rule in their hearts, and the pastor was unusually candid about his own morning. He had told a friend at church he did not want to be there that day, revival Sunday or not, and admitted his feelings had nothing encouraging to offer him at the start of the service. What changed it was the same thing verse 15 points to: the unity of the body itself, a cup of coffee brought by a friend, a handshake, being sharpened simply by showing up and staying. Feelings, he said, are not meant to dictate actions.

Verse 16 calls for the word of Christ to dwell richly, and the pastor described what that actually looks like using an ordinary comparison, the way a person who just started a new hobby or a new relationship cannot stop bringing it up in conversation. When scripture reaches that same depth in a life, talking about it stops being an effort and becomes contagious to the people around it, which he illustrated with a recent report of how effectively a member of the church had impacted a guest congregation simply by how present scripture was in him. He also connected the passage's call to teach and admonish one another to a point he had raised with his own staff, that every person in a position to lead should already be preparing whoever comes after them, whether that is a pastor, a deacon, or a parent.

Whatever you do, in word or deed

The pastor closed on verse 17, whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, applying it to the most ordinary settings a person moves through in a week: the dentist's chair, a hardware store, a grocery checkout line, the dry cleaner. Speaking Christ, in his summary, is not a separate activity added onto a normal life. It is what an ordinary life sounds like once Christ is genuinely first in it. He closed by saying he would rather hear a church talk too much about Christ than too little, since what actually fills a heart is always, eventually, what comes out of the mouth.