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Saturday, January 18 2025
Good Morning Friends! I love you and so does God. He loves better than me but I try to love as commanded by Jesus, "Love as I have loved you..." That is agape love, sacrificial love, putting others first love, dying to self love and I think we can all struggle with that. The Greatest Commandment as identified by Jesus is our goal in life: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself." We say we love God and others and often do so pretty well, but, do we love ourselves? And I don't mean in a vain way but in the way that God loves us. This is a word from God to some of you today: "Be still in my presence and know how much I love you always and no matter what! I have created you for my love and to love and be in relationship with Me and others. I have and am calling you by name. You are mine! I have redeemed you and will continue to as you come to me in humility and repentance. Nothing will ever separate you from my love--NOTHING! I am Love and I love you and my love lives in you. Be still and know. Come to me weary child and find rest for your soul. You are mine and I have and will forgive you and not remember and my love never ends. You can't fully fathom or measure my love for you but I would have sent my Son to save you even of you were the only one on earth. Come and abide in my love today and know my peace beyond understanding. Come! And know this, you are created for such a time as this, just as you are to go love as I have loved you. Receive my love and go share it as I love you and love through you. I am with you always. I really love you!" WOW! Meditate on that! I asked God to write this blog and He used my fingers to speak to your and my heart. What Love!
This morning has been an amazing and deep time for me dwelling in God's love and wisdom. Thanks Lord! There's so much I want to share and yet, maybe, what I have shared is enough. Dwell in His love this morning (always too). Receive His forgiving, healing, restoring love today and know His peace. Some help to focus on God and begin your day abiding in His love come from our devotionals below. As I finished my quiet time I encountered Harvest Prayer's Kim's blog. Please engage God with praying through that. She summarized what I have been feeling and praying for me, you and us. We are very loved and sent to love. We are gathered as God's Good News Delivery Company and we all have our parts to play. That all comes to life as we abide in His love and allow Him to lead us always. May this be so Lord! Come! Inhabit our praises. Refocus us as we count our many blessings and help us to love as we have been loved--even ourselves! Thank You for loving, healing and using me! Thank You for Your patient love! Come! Fill me to overflowing with Your love. Amen!
I'm putting Our Daily Bread at the end and asking you to pray through this and maybe read and prepare Matthew 2 for Sunday. Yesterday I went deep in with the part where Herod had all the babies killed in Bethlehem in hopes of eliminating Jesus. He failed in that but not in causing deep grief for many. Job and His loss came to mind as I pondered and am preparing to share God's heart in response to what many non-believers and atheist's often ask, "How could a loving God allow evil or kill people?" This is a question we all need to wrestle through and overcome to stay rooted deep in Jesus and God's love. God is Love. He loves you. And yes evil is in this world and filtered through His hands. Yet He is Love. Contemplate His response to Job and ask for wisdom and His heart to minister to those who are devastated by loss. And determine in your heart to always keep your heart fixed on the God, who is love, no matter what evil you may face in the future. Also ask God to redeem your loss and use you to go love as you have been loved. Someone needs you and God's love. Help Lord! Amen! And pray for me as I wrestle with this and prepare for Sunday. Thanks! Check out the link in ODB about suffering: https://odbu.org/topic/ca211-01-lecture/?utm_source=Digital&utm_medium=ODB+Email%2C+app%2C+website&utm_campaign=2025+Jan+7th+ODB+Insight+-+Ten+Reasons+Suffering
But start first with praise and worship and abiding in Love! I'm praying for you right now!
Sarah Young
TWFYT:
UR: Garden of Grace
Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” - John 15:5 (NRSVUE)
One of my favorite memories is of my dad sitting on a fresh bed of pine straw in the middle of his rose garden. With an unlit pipe in his mouth, he would spend hours clipping, spraying, and caring for his rose bushes. He grew the most beautiful fragrant roses imaginable. Dad loved to take them to work and put them on all the office desks. He also spread them throughout our house. I remember the rich fragrance of roses throughout our home, and every time I smell a rose, I think of Dad.
The problem with rose gardening is that rose stems have thorns. Every now and then Dad got pricked, and then he might say something I won’t repeat here. Still, he continued to love and care for his roses.
Through our scripture passage I understand Christ as the gardener in our lives. For me, the fruit is God’s grace growing within us and also allowing us to make a difference in the lives of others. Yet, like rose stems, our lives have thorns. Sometimes thorns prick me pretty good, and sometimes my thorns prick others as well. I find I need some time each day to focus on God’s grace in Christ. Jesus invites us to abide in his love, and I hope we can all find our own unique ways to do that each and every day.
Today's Prayer
Dear God, thank you for caring for us with the attentiveness of a gardener. Help us to abide in your love so that we may show grace to others. Amen.
Harvest Kim's Blog
PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR by Kim Butts
I have been prayerfully reflecting upon this past year and looking ahead to what God is holding in His heart for me in this new year. His faithfulness emerges so clearly out of the difficult places of the past season of my life. Psalm 86:11 begins, “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness…” The way of Christ was to rely fully upon His Father for all things…nothing He did or said was apart from His Father. I’ve done plenty of things apart from God over the past few months, relying on my own ideas, strengths and wits rather than yielding myself fully and completely to the purposes of God so that He can show Himself faithful in the midst of all of my everyday circumstances. Fortunately for me…and I imagine for all of us, God is not only faithful, but also forgiving! “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you” (Psalm 130:3-4).
Our Father is faithful and forgiving. His faithfulness can be fully relied upon as we seek to learn His ways, as Jesus did. In the midst of difficulty, struggle, pain, loss, grief, joy, victory, transition or celebration – God is present. As I mentioned, there have been multiple times this past year when my record of wrongs – things done or left undone – needed to be submitted to God so that I could once again serve Him with reverence. How grateful I am that God is faithful to forgive me when I confess things that must grieve His heart. Renewed determination to be more like Christ this year has gripped me anew. I am focused on walking more carefully in the steps of Jesus day by day, keeping my eyes fixed upon the Faithful One.
Here is my prayer as I head into this New Year with a new resolve to be the person He has called me to be, the servant He desires me to be, and the child He loves no matter how many times I mess up: Teach me Your way, Lord, so that I may continually rely on Your faithfulness from moment to moment. Help me to keep short accounts with You whenever I fail to extend the love of Jesus to others, or when I find myself in weak moments that cause my heart to turn away from complete obedience to Your word and Your ways. Give me the strength to press into Your heart for lost people and nations, and to cry out to You for spiritual awakening, beginning in my own heart! Thank You, Father, for Your faithful, loving-kindness towards me so that I may serve You with reverence. May I be more faithful in this New Year to be Jesus to those I encounter, so that nothing I do or say strays from Your kingdom purposes. I ask this in the Name above ALL Names! Amen!
ODB:
Kenny stood before the congregation he’d left years before after he’d lost faith in God. He shared that his belief had been restored. How? God had touched his heart through the beauty and design he saw in creation. Kenny was in awe of Him once more through the witness of God’s general revelation seen in the natural world, and he now embraced the wisdom found in the special revelation of Scripture. After sharing his story, Kenny stepped into the tank of water at the front of the sanctuary. His father, tears of joy in his eyes, baptized him based on his faith in Jesus.
After he’d lost much in life, Job’s faith had also been shaken. He said, “I cry to you, O God, but you don’t answer. I stand before you, but you don’t even look” (Job 30:20 nlt). God “spoke to Job out of the storm” (38:1), declaring that it wasn’t about Him not seeing Job but that Job’s vision needed to be expanded as he considered God’s amazing, intricate creation. The “earth’s foundation” and the “morning stars” (vv. 4, 7) and all the creatures, plants, and waters found between (vv. 8-41), pointed to the one whom Job could trust—the God of amazing love and power. Job responded by saying, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5).
When doubts threaten your faith in Christ, consider the magnificence of God’s creation. He reveals Himself in it if we only have eyes to see.
By Tom Felten
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How has God revealed Himself in creation? How are awe of God and faith in Him linked?
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Job’s friends insisted that his suffering was caused by his sins (Job 3-37). Job relentlessly defended his innocence and sought his vindication from God (23:1-7). Instead of answering his questions, however, God asked Job a series of questions pertaining to His creation (chs. 38-41). Instead of providing an explanation as to why He permitted evil and suffering in this world, God revealed His character.
Job didn’t need to fully understand God’s ways, for no man can (Isaiah 55:8-9). He only needed to humble himself, seek to know God deeply, and trust Him wholeheartedly. His suffering taught him to run to God as the only sure place of refuge—the safest place to go for comfort, sustenance, and strength (Job 42:2-6). Job wasn’t given a reason for suffering, but he discovered that when life comes out short, God is enough (see Psalm 23:1, 4).
Find out more about why we believe in a God who allows suffering.
K. T. Sim |
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Don 
Rev. Don Kerns
72 Sunset Hill Rd
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