MY PERSONAL IMAGE OF JESUS           

 

Jeremiah 29: 13 “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.”

 

When I was a child, my mother hung a picture of Jesus standing by a heavy wooden door with a little lamb cradled in his arms. I would sit on the back of the sofa so I could look Jesus in the eye, and talk to him. I told him everything and I had complete confidence that he heard me and understood how I felt.  I had three brothers who often didn’t want to play with me and being a farm family other children were not close. So I made Jesus my best friend.  However, my father was hurt in a farm accident and we sold the farm and moved to Salida, Colorado. Here father healed and after four years we moved to a ranch in southeastern Colorado.  It was twenty-five miles to town so at the age of 13, I again felt alone. My oldest brother started dating a Baptist girl who took him to church each Sunday.  Mother insisted that he take his siblings, too.  The Jesus I met at the Baptist church was very stern and had very strict rules to follow if one were to ever see heaven.  Then graduation came and I was off to college. I left the Baptist Jesus behind and did not attend any church.  After college, I accepted a job at the hospital where I had trained as a Med Tech.  There I met Noel who was serving a year-long internship with the hospital chaplain.  The Jesus Noel worshiped was like the Jesus I knew as a child, warm and loving. However, it took almost ten years for my image of Jesus to become a reality.  That happened when I finally understood the role of the Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus was born human but he always knew God had called him to be the person who would bring about God’s new covenant with mankind, i.e. he was to be the sacrificial lamb, without sin, who that would offer himself to God for the sins of each of us.  Yes, I see Jesus as the person who died so that when I die I will take a seat behind Him and enjoy his fellowship forever.  I see Jesus as my traveling companion through life. Jesus is the father who kept me safe as a child and the mother who taught me the meaning of life and how to live it. I am his willing servant.

 

PRAYER: Thank you for giving us a “thirst” for you and setting us on our journey to claim the prize you made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We recognize that the prize of salvation and companionship was given at a great cost we cannot repay even if required of us.  We know and willingly accept our responsibilities as your children.  Help us to remain committed to this relationship throughout life.  When we stray bring us back for the only life we want is a life shared with you.   Amen.

 

Contributed by Noel and Jane DeKalb

 

 

Section C. The Communion of the Holy Spirit            

9.20 God the Holy Spirit fulfills the work of reconciliation in human life. The Holy Spirit creates and renews the church as the community in which people are reconciled to God and to one another. The Spirit enables people to receive forgiveness as they forgive one another and to enjoy the peace of God as they make peace among themselves. In spite of their sin, the Spirit gives people power to become representatives of Jesus Christ and his gospel of reconciliation to all.

1. The New Life

9.21  The reconciling work of Jesus was the supreme crisis in the life

of humankind. His cross and resurrection become personal crisis and present hope for women and men when the gospel is proclaimed and believed. In this experience, the Spirit brings God’s forgiveness to all, moves people to respond in faith, repentance, and obedience, and initiates the new life in Christ.

9.22  The new life takes shape in a community in which people know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand, except God’s grace.

9.23  The new life does not release people from conflict with unbelief, pride, lust, and fear. They still have to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as they mature in love and faithfulness in their life with Christ, they live in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful to others.

9.24  The new life finds its direction in the life of Jesus, his deeds and words, his struggles against temptation, his compassion, his anger, and his willingness to suffer death. The teaching of apostles and prophets guides men and women in living this life, and the Christian community nurtures and equips them for their ministries.

9.25  The members of the church are emissaries of peace and seek the good of all in cooperation with powers and authorities in politics, culture, and economics. But they have to fight against pretensions and injustices when these same powers endanger human welfare. Their strength is in their confidence that God’s purpose rather than human schemes will finally prevail.

9.26  Life in Christ is life eternal. The resurrection of Jesus is the sign that God will consummate the work of creation and reconciliation beyond death and bring to fulfillment the new life begun in Christ.

9.31  To be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as God’s reconciling community. This community, the church universal, is entrusted with God’s message of reconciliation and shares God’s labor of healing the enmities which separate people from God and from each other. Christ has called the church to this mission and given it the gift of the Holy Spirit. The church maintains continuity with the apostles and with Israel by faithful obedience to his call.

9.32  The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission. His human life involves the church in the common life of all people. His service to men and women commits the church to work for every form of human well-being. His suffering makes the church sensitive to all human suffering so that it sees the face of Christ in the faces of persons in every kind of need. His crucifixion discloses to the church God’s judgment on the inhumanity that marks human relations, and the awful consequences of the church’s own complicity in injustice. In the power of the risen Christ and the hope of his coming, the church sees the promise of God’s renewal of human life in society and of God’s victory over all wrong.

9.33  The church follows this pattern in the form of its life and in the method of its action. So to live and serve is to confess Christ as Lord.

Section B. The Love of God         

9.15  God’s sovereign love is a mystery beyond the reach of the human mind. Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and goodness. But God reveals divine love in Jesus Christ by showing power in the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in receiving sinful men and women. The power of God’s love in Christ to transform the world discloses that the Redeemer is the Lord and Creator who made all things to serve the purpose of God’s love.

9.16  God has created the world of space and time to be the sphere of God’s dealings with humankind. In its beauty and vastness, sublimity and awfulness, order and disorder, the world reflects to the eye of faith the majesty and mystery of its Creator.

9.17  God has created human beings for a personal relation with himself that they may respond to the love of the Creator. God has created male and female and given them a life which proceeds from birth to death in a succession of generations and in a wide complex of social relations. God has endowed humans with capacities to make the world serve their needs and to enjoy its good things. Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage. People are free to seek life within the purpose of God: to develop and protect the resources of nature for the common welfare, to work for justice and peace in society, and in other ways to use their creative powers for the fulfillment of human life.

9.18 God expressed love for all humankind through Israel, whom God chose to be a covenant people to serve him in love and faithfulness. When Israel was unfaithful, God disciplined the nation with judgment and maintained the covenant through prophets, priests, teachers, and true believers. These witnesses called all Israelites to a destiny in which they would serve God faithfully and become a light to the nations. The same witnesses proclaimed the coming of a new age, and a true servant of God in whom God’s purpose of Israel and for humanity would be realized.

9.19  Out of Israel, God in due time raised up Jesus. His faith and obedience were the response of the perfect child of God. He was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel, the beginning of the new creation, and the pioneer of the new humanity. He gave history its meaning and direction and called the church to be his servant for the reconciliation of the world.

 

 

2. Human Sin    

9.12  The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in

people as sin in the sight of God. In sin, people13 claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and each other, and become exploiters and despoilers of the world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation.

9.13  Wise and virtuous men and women through the ages have sought the highest good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty. Yet all human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility. All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without God’s   forgiveness. Thus everyone falls under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than those who assume  that they are guiltless before God or morally superior to others.

9.14 God’s love never changes. Against all who oppose the divine will, God expresses love in wrath. In the same love, God bore judgment and shameful death in Jesus Christ, to bring all people to repentance and new life.

PART I    

GOD’S WORK OF RECONCILIATION

Section A. The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ

1. Jesus Christ

9.08  In Jesus of Nazareth, true humanity was realized once for all. Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, lived among his own people and shared their needs, temptations, joys, and sorrows. He expressed the love of God in word and deed and became a brother to all kinds of sinful men and women. But his complete obedience led him into conflict with his people. His life and teaching judged their goodness, religious aspirations, and national hopes. Many rejected him and demanded his death. In giving himself freely for them, he took upon himself the judgment under which everyone stands convicted. God raised him from the dead, vindicating him as Messiah and Lord. The victim of sin became victor, and won the victory over sin and death for all.

9.09  God’s reconciling act in Jesus Christ is a mystery which the Scriptures describe in various ways. It is called the sacrifice of a lamb, a shepherd’s life given for his sheep, atonement by a priest; again it is ransom of a slave, payment of debt, vicarious satisfaction of a legal penalty, and victory over the powers of evil. These are expressions of a truth which remains beyond the reach of all theory in the depths of God’s love for humankind. They reveal the gravity, cost, and sure achievement of God’s reconciling work.

9.10  The risen Christ is the savior of all people. Those joined to him by faith are set right with God and commissioned to serve as God’s reconciling community. Christ is head of this community, the church, which began with the apostles and continues through all generations.

9.11  The same Jesus Christ is the judge of all people. His judgment discloses the ultimate seriousness of life and gives promise of God’s final victory over the power of sin and death. To receive life from the risen Lord is to have life eternal; to refuse life from him is to choose the death which is separation from God. All who put their trust in Christ face divine judgment without fear, for the judge is their redeemer.

 

 

The Confession of 1967

Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith

Reconciliation

"God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any age. Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ. Accordingly this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme."

Thus ends the Preface to the Confession of 1967, giving the rationale and setting the scene for what is to follow. Reconciliations is at the heart of the Christian message, and it was what Americans most needed to hear in the mid-sixties.

GOSSIP    

 

Ephesians 4:29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

 

I’ve been reading a book called “The Happiness Project”, in which one woman decided to consciously try activities to bring happiness. Month by month, she made goals & lists in order to experience greater satisfaction in her life. Many of her ideas are principles that I believe have a Christian basis, and, one in particular, resonated with me. It was “eliminate gossip”.

 

Gossip is something I think many of us struggle with…I know I do. The author of "The Happiness Project" tells us that one of the reasons those of us in smaller communities tend to gossip is to “reinforce community values: it makes people feel closer to each other, it unifies people who play by the rules, it helps people get a sense of the values of their community, and it exposes the misbehavior” of those who don’t necessarily follow the “rules”. You may think, well, that makes sense, so is gossip really that bad?

 

Gossip is harmful to not only ourselves, but those we gossip about. This may seem

like a no-brainer, but, studies show that something called “spontaneous trait transference” causes people to unintentionally transfer to me (or you) the traits we ascribe to other people. In other words, if I tell you that Bob is arrogant, unconsciously you associate that quality with me.

 

Proverbs, that tome of wisdom in the Bible, is full of verses that condemn gossip.

 

A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret. Proverbs 11:12-14

 

A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends.

Proverbs 16:27-29.

 

The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man's inmost parts.

Proverbs 18:7-9 .

 

Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.

Proverbs 26:19-21.

 

Dear Lord: When I am tempted to gossip, help me to say something positive instead. When I forget to do this, forgive me. Help me become more like you in every way. Amen.

 

 

Reprinted from “Daily Devotional Guide March 2010 By Members and Friends of the Congregation

Of Sheldon United Methodist Church”