Sermon - LWML Sunday - 1 Peter 1:22 - Big Hearts, Loving Earnestly
/Coming together in worship, God makes us a big-hearted church that extends His hand of love to everyone. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.
Coming together in worship, God makes us a big-hearted church that extends His hand of love to everyone. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.
God wants us to say with the most famous of all doubters made into believers "Come and see for yourself, God loves you."
One day, if we persevere in this “catholic faith” – the veil of our sin will be completely removed from our eyes and we too will “see Him as He is” – no longer incomprehensible – every Creed made obsolete – we will know God fully even as He fully knows us.
The really amazing thing about Pentecost was not the show. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit: the Comforter in each of us that believes. He was given then, and remains with us right up to the present moment, that God's people may be filled to overflow with faith and hope and love.
This is not the end. We have merely come to the close of Act 2 in God’s salvation story.
Struggle always has a purpose…and that purpose is typically beyond the eyes of the one enduring it. The bigger view beyond the suffering that you endure for the faith is God at work in a world to reveal the reign and rule of God.
These scenes from the life of Stephen, then, invite us not to sit in front of a movie but rather to enter into the world, knowing that God is at work in the mundane and the marvelous in our lives.
Know His voice and you know the One who “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4. That is the abundant life!
Until then, we listen to His voice, we eat His food, and we follow Him as He leads us through this valley of the shadow of death into His paradise, His heaven, and experience the fullness of this ABUNDANT LIFE that has been ours all along.
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A time has arrived for the Church of our Savior to be refined by the fire of COVID-19. “I have tried you in the furnace of affliction” Isaiah 48:10. The peripheral things are going to fall away during this time, because they are weak and can’t withstand the fire. What will remain will be pure. This things that we cling to will prove to be the most important to us. Through this time, the Lord will refine us, His people, for service to His glory.
“And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight” Luke 24:31, He vanished from their sight, but not from their hearing: for Paul says in Romans 10:17“faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”.
Long before there was a Siri, Alexa, or Google, there was the risen Lord Jesus, speaking to and through people like you and me, so that all who are locked behind doors of fear, sin, sickness, and even death itself might hear his word: “Peace be with you.”
What does it look like for the Christian today to hear Jesus words and “go to Galilee” themselves? Did you notice that Jesus still refers to His disciples as family? Even after their betrayals and lack of faith. He calls them “brothers.” Easter is about welcoming others into the family of resurrection!
May God grant you true saving faith to see and hear the whole story of His almighty and ongoing presence in your daily life.
What we do every day is confess to God that we need a new heart and He does this every day, by His grace, He gives us a heart transplant.
Seeing His good work, hidden in the shame and scandal of the cross, give glory to our Father in heaven for our life – purified, preserved and glorified by the salt and the light of His Son who has called us and blessed us to point others to His good work, that they too might “give glory to your Father in heaven.”
The very hand of God that paints the picture of you lifting up Jesus to the world is the very hand that is holding you up, giving you the words to speak, lifting your arms, directing your steps, and giving you the courage to reveal the King to His Kingdom.
This is the light at the end. No more colds and allergies, now more pain or disease, no handicaps, no more cancer. This is the joy that we have to look forward to in the resurrection on the last day. There it is, that’s why it is not crazy to follow Jesus, because already as we begin to follow Him we See the Light at the end.
We have an echo of this invitation that comes to us everyday, but especially right here! Where the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is staying. And if you will, you will discover what it is that you are seeking.
On the final day all of humanity will stand before Christ. On that day, the Book will be opened. But you don’t have any reason to fear. Your name is written in that Book, the Book of Life. Then, you will be eternally, as you are today, connected to Christ.
Let Jesus' words to His mother be His words to us. "Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49. This is where Jesus may be located by us. He is here doing His Father's business of saving you by washing your sins away in your baptism, declaring you totally forgiven by His Word, giving you the assurance of His presence with you by putting His body into your hands and His blood to your lips.
The picture on Christmas Eve is of God speaking to the person who is on the edge of giving up and God says, “You’re not on your own. You’re not forgotten. You’re not abandoned. In fact, I will send an army to seek you out and then I’ll rescue you.” We don’t just celebrate that this Promised Child is here. We celebrate that God’s rescue plan, that has reached you, has arrived.