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(First of the Month Family Service, then Worship and Sunday School)
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Dear Friends:With New Church Day around the corner and a period of transition in front of us as a congregation, I thought it would be good this month to talk about how we can invite the Lord into the challenges we face in our lives. When we're in the midst of temptation is often the time we feel most distant from God, and yet its when He's the closest. How do we connect to that sense of His presence, draw strength from it, and move forward?
In a portion of this sermon, I explore what it takes to have a truly intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that we can reflect in the lives of those around us:
'And repent [of the evil] against Your people' means having mercy on them. This is clear from the meaning of 'repenting,' when it has reference to Jehovah, as having mercy. The reason why 'repenting' means having mercy is that Jehovah does not ever repent, since He foresees and makes provision for all things from eternity. Repentance is a reaction that can only take place in someone who has no knowledge of the future and who sees, as events unfold, that he has made a mistake. (AC 10441: 2)
If we are to be receptive of the mercy of God, we have to being with honest examination of our own lives - not in order to demonstrate how worthless and evil we are (since evil doesn't come from us but from hell), but to recognize our mistakes, acknowledge them as sins - and ask God to inspire in our hearts a new beginning where we have sinned. We need to ask Him to allow our repentance and good decision making to redefine what we care about and move aside past mistakes, instead of allowing them to define our future. This is the beginning of true intimacy - the beginning of a true relationship to the Lord.
And we can apply these same behaviors wherever we're facing a fear of intimacy in our lives. In our relationships with friends and family, or with our spouse for that matter - are we using our relationships as leverage, threatenting a lack of intimacy where there isn't complete agreement? If God did that, we wouldn't have anything left to lean on in life, would we? Where we're willing to admit mistakes with our friends and neighbors (and most of all with our Lord), beginning again from a living acknowledgement of God, true intimacy becomes a deeper possibility. Not that we'll achieve the same kind of intimacy with others that we do with God - but an intimacy that does seek to reflect His relationship to us from love.
The Israelitish church wasn't, because they didn't get that what builds a church isn't rules and regulations, but relationships. Instead of our Lord - a God we can know and love - a God we can know and love - they had only the most remote and general presence of God to interact with on a daily basis. A God they didn't know or love, but obeyed largely out of fear - a fear of intimacy based on their worldly perspective.
Rather than an intimate relationship with God, the Children of Israel chose an introspective and selfish life that distanced them from Jehovah. So Jehovah took on our struggles and overcame them as Jesus Christ. This is a lesson to us. How are we thinking of the Lord in everyday life? Are we asking Him to lift us up in our daily struggles? Are we inviting Him into our secret battles against sin that seem overwhelming? Are we believing that its really possible for Him to change our perspective, reorder our priorities, and change our lives?
May we, through a living approach to the Lord in His Word open our minds to His truth, our hearts to His love, and dedicate our steps to faith in Him and the life that leads to heaven.
Wishing you a peaceful and happy Spring!
Your Friend,
Pastor Ethan
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