Hello New Life,
I hope this email finds you well. I missed you all this past Sunday. I hope you all had a blessed worship. Jenny, girls and I were vacationing in Seattle for their spring break. Most of you probably know that I don’t like to travel. I would much rather stay home and just sleep and rest. However, I did have a good time, it was actually really awesome. From a natural scenery perspective, I love both ocean and mountain scenes, but I prefer mountain scenery over oceans slightly. Seattle is amazing in that it has both. It even has a 14er in plain sight, Mount Rainier. It was nice to enjoy both mountains and ocean in one spectacular view and from the Space Needle it was moving. Enough about me…
This morning we sent off our mission team to help in the disaster recovery/relief of Hurricane Michael. It was awesome to see them go and represent Jesus and our church in such a humble way. Please, bless them and send them your regards. More importantly please pray for them.
This past Sunday Pastor Tim preached on John 4:16-26. This is the focus paragraph on larger passage of the Woman at the Well. Like I normally do, I will concentrate on one of Pastor Tim’s points in his sermon. Here in this paragraph we see Jesus explaining to the woman what true worship is. As Pastor Tim pointed out, the Samaritans did not worship God properly. And what does it mean to worship Him? I believe it is acknowledging Him for who He truly is. Honoring and praising Him for who He truly is. He is God, the creator and redeemer. Worship is a means for us to express our adoration for Him. To be true to who we are in relation to Him. So, if we know who we are and we know who He is, we ought to surrender to him in complete obedience, which is the only way to truly honor Him and if we do not honor him properly then we certainly cannot praise Him properly. Therefore, as P. Tim pointed out in His sermon we cannot properly and truly worship Him without confessing our sins to Him. He knows all things but that is not the reason why we should confess. He wants our heart to worship Him. He wants us to have hearts of worship, not for His benefit, but for our blessing and through that, for His glory. Because part of His glory is His graciousness to us. So, we must confess, we must be completely honest and truthful to him, not of ourselves, but only through Jesus. Jesus is the Truth, the way and the life…no one goes to the Father except through Him.
So, New Life, let us confess to him all of our sins, so that we may lay them down at the foot of the cross and know who Jesus, the Word, the Truth, for who He truly is.
A gentle reminder that we have family topical this Friday at 7:30. If I don’t see you then, see you this coming Sunday. In the meantime confess your sins to Jesus so that we may worship Him in spirit and in truth. Have a blessed week!
Sincerely,
E. Jimmy
Photo Credit: Here