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Dear Friends in Christ,

Eighteen years ago, stories of searching and rescuing began pouring out of New York City and Washington D.C. as brave men and women selflessly responded to cries for help from those trapped in the fallen Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Men like Jason Thomas and Dave Karnes rushed to the scene saying, “Somebody needed help!” So, they went in search of those in need.  Among those they rescued were William Jimeno and John McLoughlin, Port Authority police officers hiding safely in the South Tower freight elevator before the tower collapsed, leaving them buried. Because Thomas and Karnes actively searched out survivors, these two were found and rescued from almost certain death.

Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin and tried to hide from God, God’s been on a “search and rescue” mission to save His people from sin and death. Through His prophet Ezekiel, God cries out to His people, “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out … I will rescue them.” (Ezekiel 34:11-12) The acts of searching and rescuing are “active.” God doesn’t sit back and wait, He actively goes out … seeking high and low, searching far and wide … to find His people. But His action doesn’t end there. Once He finds, He rescues. Again, through Ezekiel, God says, “I will bring them into their own land.” (Ezekiel 34:13) These words are fulfilled when Jesus, the Son of God, comes down from heaven into creation. God Himself enters into the world He created to search out and rescue His fallen people.

Knowing we’re hopelessly and helplessly trapped under the debris of our sin and the sin of a fallen world; Jesus goes out into the world to find us. The Pharisees and scribes complain aloud, “This man (Jesus) receives sinners and eats with them!” (Luke 15:2) Imagine that! Jesus, the pure and perfect Man-God, goes to where sinners are … He finds them … He sits in their presence … He shares meals with them. But, His purpose in going out to find and come into the presence of sinners isn’t to simply have a good time. Powerless to save ourselves, Jesus’ mission is to dig us out from underneath the rubble of sin that has buried us alive, leaving us for dead.

By His death and resurrection, He lifts the refuse and clears the debris from our sin-filled lives away. Then, like a shepherd, He lays us on His shoulders and carries us joyfully back to His flock, His church, where we dwell with Him now in this place … and, one day, in the eternal kingdom of heaven. By His action of searching and rescuing alone, we are saved.

Today Jesus is still searching for and rescuing the lost. How? St. Paul writes, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me … Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:16) He saves us, so He might save others through the work He calls us to do in His creation. Let us rejoice with Paul and the angels of God for this amazing privilege God has granted to each of us.

                                                                        In Christ’s Love,

                                                                        Pastor Jim

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Dear Fellow Children of God,

This past month I drove with some friends to New England. Choosing to trust and follow our GPS, we found our way to hotels, restaurants, and many interesting sites. However, one day while headed to downtown Boston … in the rain … at rush hour … we didn’t like the directions we received. We chose instead to ignore the GPS and find our own way. We were sure we knew a better way … until we got terribly lost. Following our own way, we ended up further and further from our destination. We decided to return to the GPS. Eventually, it got us back on track to a nice little Italian place in Boston’s North End.

As Moses was preparing the Israelites to enter the Promised Land, he relayed God’s Word to them about the direction they should follow. Moses, by the power of the Holy Spirit, had led Israel through the desert to the Promised Land. He knew he wouldn’t be joining them though, so he gave them some direction on the way they should go. He said, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God … you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.” (Deuteronomy 30:15-16) However, Moses also warned the Israelites saying, “But, if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, … you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.” (Deuteronomy 30:17-18) The Israelites didn’t have GPS, but they did have very clear guidance from God on how to get to where they wanted to be … follow God and His Word. If they chose their own direction, they would get hopelessly lost and perish.

Of course, God did not want His people to get lost and perish so He inspired Moses to add to the end of his guidance, “Therefore choose life … (by) loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him.” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Unfortunately, the Israelites didn’t like the directions God was giving them. They chose to follow the directions of the Canaanites and others … they ended up hopelessly lost, evicted from the Promised Land into exile … some scattered throughout Assyria … others carted away to Babylon. Still God so loved His people that He continued giving them directions to find their way back to Him.

God’s Word to Israel over 3400 years ago, still applies to us today. God longs for us to “choose life” … by loving Him, obeying His voice found in His Word, and holding fast to Him in regular worship, prayer, and study of His Word. And thankfully, when we decide to follow our own way, instead of His way … God our Father calls us back to Himself through the Holy Spirit. Then, as we return to Him, because of the death and resurrection of His Son, He forgives us and leads us back to life with Him, now and in eternity.

                                                                        In Christ’s Love,

                                                                        Pastor Jim

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Dear Fellow Children of God,

No doubt you’ve heard the old saying, “No pain, no gain.” More modern minds would argue that pain is not a sign of weakness leaving the body, but rather injury. But the idea behind the aphorism is that working out to gain strength … or making changes to our lives to break bad habits … can be painful in a literal sense or a figurative sense. Nevertheless, if we desire to improve our health, our minds, or many other aspects of life, it often requires us to go through some discomfort to make the desired change.

Hebrews 12 begins using the analogy of running an endurance race to help us understand the Christian life (Hebrews 12:1-3). It’s from this analogy that the writer goes on to discuss discipline. Just like athletes need to discipline themselves to endure hours of training … stretching, lifting, running, and otherwise pushing their body to the limit and maybe a little beyond … to improve their endurance, we also undergo discipline to grow in faith. God’s Word encourages us, “My (child), do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as His (child).” (Hebrews 12:5b-6) This is the discipline of training, learning, studying and then paying attention so that we, through the knowledge God’s Word gives us, can apply it to the life God calls us to live as His children.

The story of a young man named Derek, who for years was entangled in substance abuse, is a good example of how this discipline works in our lives. He struggled for years to kick his bad habits on his own, but kept regressing back into abuse. Then, a Christian family took him under their wing. He was subjected to the discipline of God’s Word and was baptized. The discipline continued as he saw how his sinful behavior ran counter to God’s will. It was painful to kick his old habits, but empowered by the Holy Spirit, seeing the love of God for him, Derek made the changes needed to overcome a lifetime of substance abuse. It was difficult, but Derek endured.

Jesus endured the discipline of the cross and the abuse of the world as He shed His blood to rescue us from the grip of the devil and the power of sin and death we’re all entrapped in. As a result of His endurance and rising to new life, we’ve been given new lives as God’s own children. God’s Word nowhere promises a life of ease. Hebrews 12:4-11 reminds us with words like “struggle … hardship … painful” that it’s hard to live in the world as a child of God. But, like the discipline of exercise strengthens an athlete for competition, the discipline found in the regular study of God’s Word, prayer, and worship strengthens our faith for the struggles and temptations Satan throws our way as we run the race of Christian life in the world we live in each day. This discipline enables us to grow in “His holiness … (and) produces a harvest of righteousness and peace” (Hebrews 12:10-11) in our lives, both now and in eternity.

                                                                        In Christ’s Love,

                                                                        Pastor Jim

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Faith,

C.S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, is one of my favorite writers. He also wrote a number of essays on various aspects of Christianity. In my opinion, he’s one of the great thinkers on theology in recent times. A famous quote on “integrity” is often attributed to him, “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.” It reminds me of a story I read in one of my devotions, where a young boy rushed out of the house for school. His mom asked if he brushed his teeth. His response, “You should get a video camera for the bathroom so you can check for yourself … and I wouldn’t be tempted to lie.” The camera might remind us to follow the rules. But we can still fool ourselves into thinking that just because nobody saw it … it’s okay.

God works through HIS prophet Jeremiah to warn His people about false prophets running rampant in their midst. God warns that just because someone says they’re a prophet, doesn’t mean they’re HIS God’s prophet. They may say, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” (Jeremiah 23:25) but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He also says, “Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.” (Jeremiah 23:28) Nevertheless, these false prophets were inspiring people to turn away from God. They, and the people, were hiding behind what they imagined was truth. But God asks rhetorically, “Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:24)

While a person may think they can hide their sinful deeds from other people … what others don’t know won’t hurt them … they can’t hide from God. God is, among other things, “omnipresent” and “omniscient.” He is everywhere and knows everything (Jeremiah 16:17, Psalm 139:1-4).

On the one hand, this is terrifying … there’s no place I can run, there’s no darkness I can act in, there’s no rock I can hide behind where God cannot see what I do or find me. I may be able to hide from my mom, but I can’t hide from God. That’s terrifying.

But … it’s also comforting. First, God doesn’t hide from us. He can be found anytime, anywhere. Where? He tells us, “But let him who has my Word speak my Word faithfully.” (Jeremiah 23:28) If we want to know what God wants from us … and more importantly, what He does for us … go to the source. Go to His Word! Second, our Father knows it’s hard to turn away from false prophets who get in our face and tell us what we want to hear … what makes us feel good. That’s why He warns us with His Word and sent His Son, Jesus to suffer and die for us and rise to new life – freed from sin and death. Just as God is always present when we’re running from Him … He’s also always present, patiently waiting for us to repent and confess our sins, to forgive us unconditionally. Thank God we cannot hide ourselves from Him!

                                                                        In Faith,

                                                                        Pastor Jim

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Faith,

One of the things I like about baseball, is how it uses statistics to determine who’s the best. The very best make it into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY. Those enshrined are called “baseball immortals” …Clemente, Jackie, Frank, and Brooks Robinson, The Babe and Hammerin’ Hank, the Splendid Splinter and Joltin’ Joe, and Satchel Paige. But, in the end, the “immortality” exists in lifeless bronze busts with some words celebrating the person’s achievements. True immortality … eternal life … doesn’t exist in any earthly Hall of Fame.

However, there’s one Hall of Fame where true immortality does exist. In Hebrews 11 God’s Word immortalizes those who lived lives of exemplary faith in the one true God … the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrews lists out some of those who, by faith, “received their commendation” (Hebrews 11:2) from God, who rewarded them with admission into the “Hall of Faith.”

“Faith” is defined here as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) This means that one must believe based on a promise alone … there is no proof, no concrete evidence, no scientific explanation behind the promise. The only thing supporting the promise is … the Word of the one, true God. Noah didn’t build the Ark because God showed him a 40-day forecast of any kind … he did it because he took God at His Word. He trusted God and did what God told him to do … as crazy as it seemed. Abraham didn’t pack up the family fortune in livestock and move thousands of miles to Canaan in his 70s because God showed him pictures of this beautiful land … he did it because he took God at His Word. He trusted God. And the “Hall of Faith” goes on … from Abel to David, Samuel and the prophets. These people of faith are enshrined in the “Hall of Faith.” But their enshrinement isn’t based on what they did … it’s based on what God did. They simply believed Him.

God sent Jesus … fully God, fully man … into the world to live like everyone noted above, except for sin. Jesus the perfectly sinless God-Man was God’s answer to the promise He made to all dating back to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15). Because Jesus lived perfectly, died on the cross, and then rose from the dead three days later, the effects of sin, death, and the devil have been destroyed. And all who live by faith, will be enshrined in the “Hall of Faith” … the eternal kingdom of heaven. You and I, baptized children of our Father believe … our faith in the work of His only Son is our ticket into the “Hall of Faith.” There, we won’t see lifeless bronze statues commemorating the faithful … we’ll actually join with and see men and women from across the ages living exactly as our Father, the creator of all things, intended. Rejoice in God’s promises to you … men and women of faith … you’re in the ultimate “Hall of Fame” the “Hall of Faith” … the kingdom of heaven.

                                                                        In Faith,

                                                                        Pastor Jim

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Dear Saints,

I’m thankful for a lot of things. One – I’m not part of the Royal Family. They’re expected to get dressed up … all the time! Not just for fancy dinners or dances or church, but all the time. Recently Meghan, Duchess of Sussex made some unflattering headlines because she wore blue jeans into the Royal Box at Wimbledon. However, I will admit there are times when I don’t mind dressing up. It’s a process, but when it’s all finished, someone might compliment me saying, “Wow! You clean up pretty nice!”

St. Paul often uses “getting dressed up” imagery to make a point about Christian life. He says, “(Don’t act like you used to), seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator.” (Colossians 3:9-10) As Christians, sometimes we might have a tendency to look at our lives and think not much has changed. How come I’m still falling into sin … still get angry … still have bad thoughts? How come I can’t seem to “put to death what is earthly in (me)?” (Colossians 3:5) Well, God has some words of comfort for you … read carefully Colossians 3:9-10.

Unlike the process of getting ready for the Prom … or a Wedding … or some other big, fancy occasion, we “put on the new self” instantly when God clothes us in His righteousness in baptism. In that instant, we become a new creation, a child of God … but that’s only the beginning of our new life. Paul’s grammar reflects this fact for us. The “putting on” has been completed. It’s a finished action. However, the result of the “putting on” … “is being renewed.” Renewal is a constantly on-going process, it takes time. And, what’s more, we’re not the one’s doing the renewing. The Holy Spirit, dwelling in us since the time of our baptisms, when the new self was put on us, is the one renewing us. By the power of the Holy Spirit, as we hear God’s Word, knowledge from above – not from other men and the world – transforms us over time into the image of God, our creator (Colossians 3:1-2,10).

It’s hard to see this renewal taking place in the moment. However, if we take an honest look back at our lives and compare where we were at one time and where we are today in our walks of faith, I’m willing to bet we can see this renewal taking shape. As we look back, we can see “earthly” things we have, by power of the Holy Spirit, “put to death” (Colossians 3:5) which no longer animate us, excite us, move us. Are there still earthly things that do move us? Yes, but the Holy Spirit dwelling in us also moves us to ask God for forgiveness … and God forgives us … at the same time the Holy Spirit is putting those things to death too. Then, one day, we’ll become the image of our creator in fullness. “(We) will appear with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:4) That’s a promise from our Father in heaven to each of us who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ.

                                                               In Christ’s Love,

                                                               Pastor Jim

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Many of us have experienced “going under the knife.” It hurts to remove something causing pain, injury, or worse. A while back I had skin cancer cut from my nose. It hurt. But, now it’s gone. However, if I want to keep it away, I need to change some of my behavior. So, each day, no matter what, I put the SPF 100 on my face to ward off further damage.

In God’s Word, we hear about divine surgery God does to His people eHe He . “Circumcision” wasn’t done to remove a harmful growth … rather God commanded it to mark His chosen people as His own. But, like my surgery, the circumcision, a visible reminder of God’s grace, also required action to remain God’s child. Being circumcised wasn’t an end … rather, it was the beginning of a lifelong commitment to living, in thanks to God for His grace, as a child of God by fearing, loving, and trusting Him in all things … over and above all things.

Unfortunately, people came to see their “circumcision” and other actions they did as good works needed to earn God’s grace. By their logic, those who didn’t do these things weren’t worthy to receive God’s grace. This type of belief, formed in the minds of man by their own logic, is called “works righteousness” … being made right with God through personal effort. God told His people, through the Apostle Paul, this belief is wrong. Paul wrote, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy … human tradition … the spirits of the world …” rather hear God’s Word through His Son, Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:8).

Paul continued, “In (Christ) also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.” (Colossians 2:11) Today, we’re still circumcised, however, it’s not a visible, physical circumcision. Rather, we’re spiritually circumcised in our baptisms. In baptism, the Spirit circumcises our hearts. The deadly disease we call “sin,” is rendered helpless against us through faith in Christ. In God’s promise to hear our confession of sins, the effects of the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) are cut away. God’s Word says we’re “dead in our sins” … but through His Son Jesus’ sacrifice, He’s made us alive, “having forgiven us all our sins.” (Colossians 2:13)

However, this circumcision of the heart in our baptisms does more than simply give us faith and forgiveness of sin. The Holy Spirit begins to change our behavior – turning us away from sin and turning us toward God. Like a surgeon removes deadly cancer, God performs divine surgery, through the Holy Spirit, to cleanse us from sin and its effects. Then, compelled by the Spirit, we begin to hear God’s Word, allowing it guide and direct us. Guided and directed by the Holy Spirit, our desire to do God’s will grows and enlarges … as our desire to sin shrinks. Through this process, called “sanctification,” the Spirit gradually makes us holy children of God. The cancer of sin is removed and new life takes hold as never before. In faith, we let God do His divine surgery that we may live as He intended for us to live.

                                                                                    In Christ,

                                                                                    Pastor Jim