We will have prayer and blessing of all teachers@ worship this Sunday, 10 a.m. Starting the new school year knowing God is with you and your friends in Christ are supporting you and praying for you is a powerful testimony of community.
If you are a teacher/administrator/school staff, come and be blessed. If you know of any teachers, invite them, as well!
Last Sunday, we blessed preschool-graduate school students as they prepare for the new school year.
Here is the blessing:
Friends,
Jesus is the most brilliant person who ever walked the earth. He is the creator of everything that exists. Know that he walks with you into your classrooms, and he guides your learning as you open yourself to him and ask him in.
We your parents, grandparents and other adults love you and seek your good, praying for you and supporting you at this time in your journey of faith and life,
Preschool and Elementary students, we pray for you and ask for the blessing of Jesus-
Lay hands of blessings
We ask you, Lord Jesus, as our children begin a new school year, to bless them. Fill them with excitement as they think about all the adventures you have in store for them. Keep them safe and guide their learning. Help them to be examples of your love for their teachers and classmates. Help them always remember they belong to you.
And Lord Jesus, you choose teenagers and young adults to learn from you what you learned from the Father. You sent them out to bring God’s hope and blessing into their daily life with others who didn’t know your love, yet. Now our young people do the same. In our high schools, universities and beyond, most of the people they meet will not know of the hope they have in you. May our students of Jesus be a model of joy and confidence, especially for those you have specifically chosen them to individually reach with your good news and adventure of an amazing life with God.
Amen.
Our congregational meeting will take place immediately after worship on Sunday, June 23.
The Impact! Confirmation Ministry youth will lead worship this Sunday for Mother’s Day. Come and see how God blesses us through our relationships across the generations!
Here are some photos from our recent lock in!
John 14
21 Those who truly love me are those who obey my commands. Whoever passionately loves me will be passionately loved by my Father. And I will passionately love you in return and will manifest my life within you.”
22 Then one of the disciples named Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “Lord, why is it you will only reveal your identity to us and not to everyone?”
23 Jesus replied, “Loving me empowers you to obey my word. And my Father will love you so deeply that we will come to you and make you our dwelling place.”
In my Ash Wednesday message I invited the LIFEhouse community to try out an experiment during Lent. Let’s take Jesus at his word in John 14 and show our love to him by obeying his commandments. Each week we will look at two commandments from the Ten Commandments. We will practice those for the week. Each Sunday we will get two new commandments. I include Luther’s explanation as a helpful guide. Let’s see how we can connect with Jesus in this way.
Following Jesus-
Pastor Dana
What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, to be sure. But, as Martin Luther says:
“We see here how Christ, as it were, takes our birth from us and absorbs it in his birth, and grants us his, that in it we might become pure and holy, as if it were our own, so that every Christian may rejoice and glory in Christ’s birth as much as if we were born of Mary as was Jesus.”
So, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!
Sunday@ worship we shared a cross + generational Christmas! LIFEhouse Sunday School and IMPACT youth join other generations of friends as we see what Christmas really means…
Dear LIFEhouse Friends,
Some of my friends and people I love the most are Jewish…You know what happens when someone says something like this…
“O, no, here it comes…”
But, in my case I say this accurately because one of my closest friends is Scott Friedman, a Jew, and I also have daily conversations with a whole cohort of Jewish friends at my gym. Occasionally, we go to lunch and dinner together. As I have taught you, when you eat together you are more than an acquaintance. Then, there is one of my favorite women in the world, my sister-in-law, Shari, and my beloved nephew, Avi, and my amazing niece, Emma…All Jewish.
I mention all of this because I am a human being. I am naturally impacted when slaughter and murder affect those I am connected to one way or another. Just like, it is close to home for me and I pray for God’s mercy for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted and murdered in many parts of the world.
But, right now, we are all thinking one way or another about Jewish people after the recent despicable and malevolent slaughter of the innocent in Pittsburgh. We are grieved and, yes, puzzled, because something like this is so rare in the United States. Rare too, because other than Israel, the most welcoming country in the world for Jewish people to live in is the United States.
But, there are always people who do evil and dastardly things in life, including in our own country, and even more close to home, including in our own lives. In fact, at times, the evidence there is a devil can seem to cast a strong shadow over evidence in a loving God. But, if you are honest and observant, you will see that God always shows up in remarkably powerful ways.
So, what do we do? Well there is no “we.” We are all individuals and each has a story. My story includes being your pastor, your shepherd. I have the joy of being a shepherd of people who value me, people who are precious to me, whom I value. My friends, here are some observations I trust will be helpful.
How are we expected to live together spreading good? We all have moral values. Even when people say they have no moral values, that, in itself, is a moral value. So what are good moral values?
Here is what I know.
Here are my moral values.
I follow Jesus.
Frequently you have heard me give a definition of love from the biblical sense. Love is “to seek the good of another within your range of influence.”
We love something when we are devoted to its good or well-being.
It starts with God. Jesus said to love God with everything we have. That comes first. Then he said to love our neighbor as ourself. When we are obedient to our loving Father it is possible to love our neighbor as ourself.
Who do we love? For Christians, Jesus tells us to love each other. This becomes a model for the rest of the world.
Then he expands this when he says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s brothers and sisters in the faith and others who aren’t followers of Jesus.
More specifically, your neighbors are those you connect with on a regular basis; those closest to you, beginning in your own household.
And, according to Jesus, before you love your neighbors, created in God’s image, you have to love yourself.
This starts with working for the good of another person who is created in God’s image. In other words, you. Working for your own good. Treating yourself with respect. Being responsible for caring for yourself.
To start with loving yourself means defending yourself against others taking inappropriate advantage over you. You are God’s precious sons and daughters, worthy of love and respect, and God is using you to change the world. You sacrifice your needs for the sake of others, but you also must learn to bargain for yourself so that you don’t end up being stepped on. In the long run this will only make you resentful, vengeful and cruel.
You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become, and to stay, a good person. It is good for you to be good to yourself to make the world a better place. It is good for you to treat yourself like God wants to treat you. As his precious son or daughter.
A major step in becoming one of those who love their neighbors as themselves is to decide to live compassion. This is made possible by loving God first and seeking his Kingdom.
As we are filled with the power of love that comes from the Holy Spirit, we go beyond anything humanly possible.
Jesus tells us we can love those who hate us and he expects that out of us. Work for the good of those who work against us. You see, how different this is, than what is considered the way of the world?
Jesus makes it clear by saying these very things.
“Love your enemy.”
‘Ask God to bring good into the lives of those who persecute you.’
Now the world around us doesn’t necessarily understand what I have just written. For many today, everything is politicized. The way “politicized” works, is those who disagree with you are demonized and the enemy. This is clearly against the teaching of Jesus.
Lord have mercy on those who politicize everything.
The wisdom of Jesus is so much greater than anything anyone else could possibly teach you, especially if it is politicized. There is a vast difference between teaching wisdom and indoctrination. It doesn’t have to be that way and I know you, as my brothers and sisters, are working hard at not being that way.
Lord have mercy on those who seek to indoctrinate rather than seek wisdom.
Another challenge many people have in our society relates to Judaism. Though you know much of the history of the Jewish people from your studies and what I have taught you, many people have no idea what the Jewish people have gone through for about 4000 years. The history of the Jewish people is not well known.
Anti-semitism has always been a way of life for many, as it is today. In fact it is so accepted all over the world that in many places you can openly hate Jews, and you will not be called on it. For some of you, in your own lifetime, people could openly slaughter Jews and not be called on it.
Lord have mercy on those who hate Jews.
Continue to practice loving your neighbor; those who are near. Live out the ways of Jesus by working for the good of others within your range of influence. As you love, start close to home and personal. And pray for God’s continued presence as he expands that love more and more
Lord have mercy on us all,
Pastor Dana
Recently I wrote about what it means to “love yourself” as this relates to “loving your neighbor has yourself.” So, I have learned to love myself, now what?
The first major step in becoming one of those who love their neighbors as themselves is to decide to live compassion. This can only be done if we love God first and seek his Kingdom.
This explains why neighbor-love is not the first, but the second, commandment. Actually, two separate commandments, but one with two aspects. Love God (primary) and love your neighbor as yourself (can only follow loving God first)
What is compassion?
Compassion is to feel the needs of others.
Dallas Willard says this about compassion.
“Compassion is not something that can be turned on and off like a water faucet. It is always on. It is a constant burden of life, which many people reject. It requires resources of personal strength and it requires wisdom in action. Loving your neighbor as yourself is a matter of who you are, not, primarily, of what you decide to do. You can “afford” to be compassionate only if you know there is abundant compassion for you, toward you, by persons who have appropriate means. This is primarily God. “We love because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19)”
So, through intentionally receiving the love of God first, you can become the kind of person who can be compassionate.
Now, suppose, you are this person who has received compassion and can, therefore, afford to be compassionate. What’s next?
This Sunday we will look at what the good news means for us and what it means for the world!
The gospel is not just about my individual happiness or God’s plan for my life; It is about God’s plan for the world! In other words:
Jesus is too amazing to keep to ourselves…
