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Worship
The phrase “one another” occurs over 100 times in the New Testament, and these serve as guidelines for authentic Christian community. They also have a direct impact on our witness to the world. These words and phrases are our instructions of how to relate to one another.
Before you help someone, do you first consider if they are worthy of it? Do you look at their lives and their actions and declare it is worth your time, energy, and resources? I, for one, am glad that Jesus did not consider my wrongs before He did what had to be done to make me right.
I have a cup that sits on my desk at work that gets used for coffee or tea. On the cup there are about 30 names of women who have made history worth remembering because they were willing to stand up for something they believed in. It might not have looked as glamorous at the time as history tells it. They might not have even realized what they were achieving when they made the choice to stand. But none the less, they stood.
What exactly should I say? Will people even listen? Is it going to start a fight? These might be questions you ask yourself before you post something on social media or speak up against an injustice you see taking place. These also can be the very same questions that put enough doubt in your mind to keep you silent.
It goes without saying at this point that we have been faced with challenging times over the year 2020. Not everyone is unfamiliar with challenging times, but this past year has strained the economy, our communities, our relationships, and our sanity. The question that I have loved to hear from so many is, “How do we help others through this time?” This shows that no matter how tough times get, our focus on serving as Christ does not change.
The pastor is only a part of the church. The church is made up of many parts. You are a part of the church. We each have a calling that God has put on our lives to serve the Kingdom of God in a way that witnesses to who Christ Jesus is. The difficult part is figuring out what that call is. Though all our calls might look different, they all have the same starting point. First and foremost, we must believe in who God says we are: beloved, royalty, forgiven, redeemed, God’s!
If I were to sum up my life shaking, chain breaking experience with God, it would be to simply say, “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” I believe in God, not because of what others have told me, but because of what I have experienced to be true in my own life. God has pulled me out of the grave and then in God’s crazy ways, decided to call me into service for His church. This is my call…
Church: a dwelling place for God. Over this period of Covid-19, for some of us, our dwelling place has taken on a whole new meaning. It has become our working place, our teaching place, our living, eating, breathing, sleeping, our everything place. To dwell is not to just be in one place, but to completely utilize, maximize, and inhabit that place. That is who the church is. The dwelling place of God, the body of Christ, where God’s functions on earth are worked out through you and me.
The Bible is simply pages with ink upon it until it is written onto our hearts by the Holy Spirit and lived out as a witness to the world of who God is. The Bible is both powerful and powerless.
“Ruah” is one of my favorite Hebrew words. It means breath, life. You see this word, or variations of it, anytime you see God’s life-giving breath in the Old Testament. Then, as we move into the New Testament where Greek is largely used, we see “pneuma” as the word for Spirit, wind, or breath. Again, anytime we see pneuma in scripture, we see something that is life-sustaining and life-giving.
Huge sigh of relief… When you spend time talking about the Trinity, it always seems like, once we get to Jesus, we can breath a sigh of relief. Jesus is the person of Trinity that people most often connect with the easiest. Why? Because Jesus was an actual person.
It is impossible to begin the conversation about God without also acknowledging the Trinity. It is impossible to acknowledge and begin to understand the Trinity without first recognizing our own limits on language and human understanding.
I believe prayer is often treated like a last ditch effort. Something has gone wrong, I’ve tried everything else, maybe I should throw up a prayer. Or prayer is treated as a good thought or a well wish. Prayer is so much more than all of that. Prayer is a conversation with the Creator. There is power and there is relationship building in prayer. I believe fully and completely in prayer. It is essential to our well being and our lives.
It is important before you build anything to first build a good foundation. Without a solid foundation, whatever you are building will just fall apart. I believe at Sewickley United Methodist Church, you have a good foundation and a good building for that matter. As I get to know those foundations this community is built upon, I believe it is important for you to know the foundations I am built upon. I look forward to this journey ahead with you!
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.
God has called on many servants throughout history. Many of them are documented in the Bible, but that particular record ends quite a long time ago. Is God still calling his servants today? Would you know it if he called your name? Would you be brave enough to answer?
Jack Moffett will be bringing the message this Sunday, and Leap of Faith will debut their new song: Call My Name.
After 2,000 years of history, it’s become easy for the church to get complacent, to expect people to come to us, to prefer safety and the security of counting butts in pews and bucks in the offering plates. And then we count this as “following Jesus.”
Have you ever been scared? I mean really scared? Lock yourself behind closed doors kind of scared?
If you have done any traveling at all, you know that the local people can always—always—spot a foreigner. They look different, smell different, talk different, dress different, and think different. If you’re a foreigner, you’re going to stick out and stand out. There’s no hiding.