Worship and Brunch today! Come worship, fellowship and feast on His Word and with a great 2 Peas in A Pod brunch! It's a day to be fed physically and spiritually as our Bishop brings the Word this morning. Come! Join us! brings some friends!
Good Morning Purposeful, Waiting on the Lord, Good News Delivery Co! We are created in God's image for His custom made purposes. We matter and have purpose! As we seek first His Kingdom, He will lead us to His perfect plans in His perfect timing. Amen! And so we wait on Him in prayer and yoke to Jesus as we travel at His pace. Amen! We are gathered and sent to bring His Love and Good News alive. We are His, loved, saved, forgiven, prepared and sent to transform the world as we live and love more and more like Jesus who is with us always! What joy as we work on becoming who we are created to be and doing the things we are created to do more and more. That is Jesus' easy yoke and a true joy that produces much good fruit! We are His ambassadors of grace, mercy and love and as we step more fully into that we will become a dynamic movement of God that brings revival and changes the world! Amen!
Today, I expect the Bishop to teach us more about how to do this well. I know God is moving St. Matts. in the same direction as the Bishop is being led to lead us. We are on our way to becoming a dynamic movement of God that loves Him well and reaches excitedly to those who He is drawing from the fires of Hell. Friday night we made some new connection points to neighbors. Pray that God works in some of them and draws them and waters and fertilizes the seeds we planted. Pray we begin some new relationships with young families and 30-50 year olds and lead them to God and Jesus' way. Pray for us to become a house of prayer for the nations and a disciple making hub for the area. He does have great plans for you and us and He is sending us into the harvest field. Praise Him for the harvest that is coming and pray He raises up harvest workers from this harvest. Pray that we would live and love more and more like Jesus everyday and teach others how to live our His way well as we live it out better. Yes, He is bringing alive some great things and I am so excited to see where He leads us! Come, Jesus Come! Lead us to Your perfect plans in Your perfect timing. Amen!
It's pretty cool how God has threaded this word through our devotionals for today. Check them out below and prepare your hearts to receive His instructions and your feet to follow Jesus well. God has some amazing things in store for you and us that will flow from our prayers, time with God and willingness to earnestly follow Jesus. PTL! and Amen! We begin, as God has ordered our devos, with The Word for You Today and their teaching about God's custom made plans just for you first. Meditate on this and talk to God about it. What's He leading you to do? Who are your partners? Sarah Young reminds us about the importance of keeping our focus on God and allowing Him to direct our steps for what's now and what's next. She reminds us to travel at the speed of Jesus as we plow with Him. Charles Stanley reminds us and continues her train of thought with the call to expectant waiting. God is speaking, teaching, preparing and wants us to move with Him. That is really the only way to be productive for His Kingdom that produces good fruit. Pray for our Vision Team that will be meeting in two weeks to seek God, discern His plans and to steward well as we sow lavishly into all He has for us and begin the budgeting process for God's plans for us for next year.. May we pursue Him as He pursues us and follow as He leads, well. Amen! Today we gather, like the Acts 2:42 church to study His Word, worship, fellowship, eat together and pray. I love how God keeps leading us to and through our table ministries! We need each other and the Upper Room discusses and reminds that we are made for community and unity. We are not to be Lone Rangers. We practice some of this every week as we gather on Wednesdays to eat, fellowship, study and pray. And guess what? God keeps sending some new people to taste and see that Jesus is good and we are genuine in our love and obedience to Him and His ways. May we continue these ministries well. Pray for God to expand them to new opportunities to connect to neighbors and connect them to Him. Pray for me to mentor and train some leaders to lead others to God's plans too. And this flows to Our Daily Bread teaching about being born again. Who do you know that needs Jesus' love, forgiveness and new life in Christ? What will you do about that? Who are your partners? Who needs to hear the stories of God's faithfulness to you and us and how He is using us to transform the world with his love and care one soul at a time?
Really pray into these things. Allow these teachings and what the Bishop will share today from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 (below) to inform your prayers and actions. Cry out for revival and for God to use you to do your part in His Good News Delivery Co. He really does have some custom, age and circumstance appropriate things for you to do. Let us commit to be about His business together in His ways and spur each other on in prayer and actions as God leads. Revival is coming! This is the year of the Lord's favor and He wants us to step into that and our anointing! Come, et us seek and follow well together for His glory alone. Amen! We are His Purposeful, Waiting on the Lord, Good News Delivery Co! PTL! and Amen!
2 Corinthians 5:11-21
We Are God’s Ambassadors
11 Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too. 12 Are we commending ourselves to you again? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us, so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart. 13 If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. 14 Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. 15 He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
TWFYT:
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UR: Community of Faith
Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.” - Exodus 18:17-18 (NIV)
Soon after the Israelites’ deliverance, Jethro — Moses’ father-in-law — came to visit and observed Moses in his daily responsibility of judging disputes between the people. Jethro told Moses that continuing to do all the work alone would be too much. He advised Moses to set wise men as leaders over groups of people. In following this advice, Moses relied on his community for help, thus preventing his own burnout.
God designed us to need community. It can be uncomfortable and hard to accept that we need others, especially when we realize that our church is made up of imperfect people. But when we downplay the collective nature of our faith, we do ourselves a disservice.
Wonderful things can happen when we rely on one another: our bonds of relationship are strengthened, and we give others the opportunity to show God’s love to us. In big and small moments, let’s commit to loving those around us and letting others love us in return. In doing so, we can be a part of ushering in God’s kingdom.
Today's Prayer
Dear Lord, thank you for the community of believers. Help us to reach out to others who may need our love, and help us to accept love in return. Amen.
ODB:
Born Again?
Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. John 3:5
READ John 3:1-9
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“Born again? What does that mean?” asked the funeral director. “I’ve never heard of that term before.” Grasping the opportunity, the son of the deceased father explained what it meant through the words of John chapter 3.
“It comes down to the fact that we are all born once into this world,” he said. “God doesn’t have a magic scale where He weighs our good deeds against the bad. God requires us to be born of the Spirit,” he continued. “That’s why Jesus died on the cross—He paid for our sins and made it possible for us to possess eternal life with Him. We can’t make it on our own.”
In John 3, Nicodemus began to doubt if he truly had it all figured out. A trained teacher in the Scriptures (v. 1), he recognized that Jesus was different and that His teaching had authority (v. 2). He wanted to find out for himself, so he approached Christ one night to get the matter settled. Nicodemus must have accepted Jesus’ statement “You must be born again” (v. 7) and believed, because he helped prepare the Savior’s body for burial after He was crucified (19:39).
The funeral director agreed to go home and read the third chapter of John’s gospel. Like the son who talked with the director, let’s take Jesus’ words to heart and share them with others as He helps us.
By Brent Hackett
REFLECT & PRAY
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What does it mean for you to be born again? How can you share what it means with others?
Dear Father, thank You for allowing me to be born again. May Your Spirit move in the hearts of those to whom I share the need to be born again.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Jesus told Nicodemus, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). Christ’s claim that a person needs to be born “again” confused Nicodemus: “How can someone be born when they are old?” (v. 4). The Greek word anōthen, translated “again” (vv. 3, 7), has several meanings and can indicate either time or location. It can mean “from above” (heaven), “from the beginning,” “for a long time,” or “again.” Both “you must be born again” (niv) or “you must be born from above” (nrsv) are accurate translations of verse 7. Christ is telling Nicodemus that to enter heaven, a person must be made new. We can’t do this through our own efforts but only through the Spirit (v. 8).
J.R. Hudberg |
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