Image of God!

For Wednesday, March 18, 2026:

Genesis 1:27 NLT: “God created human beings [adam] in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’”

In this context, adam refers to mankind or human beings, not Adam the man. We have temporary bodies because we live on earth. God, a spirit being, doesn’t need a body, so don’t start telling people that you look a lot like God!

When we leave this earth, believer’s bodies will remain. We won’t need them. Our soul and our spirit, our eternal essence, will meet Jesus in the hereafter, in heaven. Temporarily. God will remodel our planet to be the New Earth, removing sin and putting things back to his original intent. Then, forgiven and thereby sinless, mankind can move back in. God and his Son will walk alongside us!

Right now, we should think of our planet as a “fixer-upper!” Needs a lot of work! So trust in the Lord. He has a plan; He knows what he’s doing!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

The Father’s House

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Truth & Freedom Church

God's Gracious Gift!

For Saturday, December 13, 2025:

Romans 5:15 NLT: “There is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.”

Which is greater – Mankind’s sin or God’s wonderful gift of grace and forgiveness? Given who God is, anything from him will be greater, more important, more significant than anything mankind could implement.

God has a commodity to which we should aspire – greatness! God’s Son was great and obedient to his Father. People were dying left and right, God wanted the problem solved and sent his Son to put the plan in motion.

Jesus took the sins of the world to the place of the dead, making mankind once again eligible to join the throng in God’s eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Forever is a long time, and God’s desire is that we join him in that reality.

Sounds good to me!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

The Father’s House

Truth and Freedom Church

Messiah Prophesy!

For Wednesday, November 12, 2025:

Hebrews 11:26 NLT: “Moses thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.”

A few people had questions about yesterday’s message, so let’s take another look. The question was, “How could Moses suffer for the sake of Christ since Jesus was born about 1,400 years later.” The scripture (above) was taken straight from the New Living Translation of the Bible’s New Testament.

The Message (Bible) tells the story like this: “By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going.”

The Classic Amplified Bible explains it this way: “[Aroused] by faith, Moses, when he had grown to maturity and become great, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Because he preferred to share the oppression [suffer the hardships] and bear the shame of the people of God rather than to have the fleeting enjoyment of a sinful life. He considered the contempt and abuse and shame [borne for] the Christ (the Messiah Who was to come) to be greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt, for he looked forward and away to the reward (recompense).”

On the Gregorian Calendar, Jesus was born about year 4-6 BC. The birth of Jesus should be the dividing line between BC and AD, but Pope Gregory was off by a few years. Moses was born 1,400-1,600 years earlier, or counting from Creation, year 2,439.

Adam and Eve knew God. He walked with them in the Garden of Eden, along the stream. God sewed clothes for them after they sinned and realized they were naked. So mankind had known about God since their beginning. God gave them a list of “thou shalts,” and “thou shalt nots,” and filled their minds with many prophesies, including the fact that a messiah would soon be arriving. So God’s people watched and waited. They had faith. They trusted that God would do what he promised. Remember the Christmas Carol, “Come Thou long-expected Jesus?” Even though they hadn’t yet met the savior, their faith that he would be arriving soon was all that was needed.

The Hebrew people believed in a heretofore unseen Messiah! Again, the necessity of faith rears its head!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Helper!

For Wednesday, June 19, 2024:

Genesis 2:18 NLT: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.’”

When my wife and I were expecting our third child, our firstborn wasn’t sure we needed another. “We already have a perfect family: one mother, one father, one brother, one sister.” But what does God consider the ‘perfect’ family?

God saw that it was not good for the man, Adam, to be alone, so the Creator gave him Eve. Adam already had plants and trees, wild animals, livestock and birds of the sky. He was free to name them whatever he chose. But none of these fit the job description of a ‘helper who is just right for him.’

So using one of Adam’s ribs as a model, God created Eve. I suspect Adam was grinning from ear to ear when he saw her! “This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from ‘man.’” Eve is the helper who is 'just right’ for Adam.

God explained how this all was to work: “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and those two are united into one.”

Now go forth and multiply!

Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

New Clothes!

June 14, 2021 Monday Message

Genesis 3:21 NLT: “The Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.”

It’s important to consider this in context. Adam and his wife had really messed up. God had provided everything they needed. He would walk with them in the garden. There was just one rule: Don’t eat from that one tree in the middle of the garden, the one giving knowledge of good and evil. But with a little tempting from the serpent, the humans did the exact thing God told them to not do!

Prior to this, the couple couldn’t do anything wrong, because they didn’t have knowledge of right and wrong! But disobeying God this once gave them that knowledge and opened the door to all kinds of sin. Now they had to make correct choices. Now that they knew about sin, there were thousands of things to avoid. God was not pleased with the direction this had taken!

Looking back, we have to admit that the train had left the tracks! This was a disaster, and God had every right to be upset. Q: What did He do? A: Our compassionate God still loved them, still cared for them. After all, mankind was God’s premier creation! Now that the couple had knowledge, they knew they were naked and made shoddy clothing out of fig leaves. God loved them so much that he made them much sturdier clothes out of animal skins.

Of course the lesson here is that no matter how we’ve messed up our lives, God has offered us new clothing. Our sin goes to the place of the dead, and believers in Jesus are clothed in garments of white, pure and innocent, ready to return to the Father! It’s called The Great Exchange! See – I told you God was good!

Blessings to all this week!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship, 3249 30th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55406

Walking WITH God

March 23, 2020 Monday Message:

“Adam and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.” from Gen. 3:8

They knew that sound! Apparently God had walked in the garden before, perhaps even alongside Adam and Eve. Their creator was stirring about in the garden, and if I were Adam, this would have been something that I looked forward to. If God were walking in MY garden, I’d want to hurry up and join Him. And that’s what the couple usually did, “pre-sin.”

But not this time. The verse continues, “So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.” The difference: this is “post-sin” behavior.

So the question for us is, ‘Are you walking alongside the Lord, or is your sin keeping you separated from Him?’ Common sense would tell us that we’d be better off living in harmony with God, not hiding from Him. Fortunately God has provided a solution for our sin-problem.

Jesus is the answer. God’s Son conquered sin and death on the same day, and if we confess our sin to him and claim Jesus as Lord and Savior, we can once again live in the presence of God.

God did not design mankind to live in perpetual fear and anxiety. Rather, God gives us an open-arms invitation to come back home and walk alongside Him. I think God enjoyed his time in the garden as much as Adam and Eve did!

Norton Lawellin, Worship Pastor

Jesus in the City Fellowship.

3249 30^th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55406

Repent and Return

Feb. 18, 2019 Monday Message

David thought he could cover up his affair with Bathsheba, going so far as to arrange the death of her husband Uriah. But God wanted no part of David’s scheme and deception. That’s the character of God; He NEVER goes along with any scheme or deception. The prophet Nathan called David on his misdeeds. David repented and returned to God, and you can read all about it in Psalm 51. We should learn from David’s example, that when we err, we need to repent and return to the Lord.

Paul thought he was doing the right thing by persecuting followers of “The Way,” the new Christian sect that was dividing Synagogue congregations. But Paul had it backwards. Jesus personally called Paul on his actions on the road to Damascus, and IMMEDIATELY Paul was baptized and started telling everyone the redeeming Good News of Jesus the Christ. Jesus spoke directly to Paul, and that’s hard to ignore!

Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden after he was told not to. When God called him on it, Adam tried to shift the blame, first to God, and then to Eve. “The woman YOU gave me – SHE gave me the fruit!!” Again, God wants no part of scheme and deception. God’s pretty inflexible on this – he’s not about to change his mind.

What if God had called Adam on the misdeed, and Adam had replied, “Sorry, my bad. What could I have been thinking? I know better. Please forgive me, and give me another chance.”

We know our God always shows love and forgiveness – He is a God of second-chances. Do you think he might have forgiven Adam if Adam had been more contrite?

If repent and return was good for David, it’s good for us too!

Norton Lawellin

Let’s worship together! Jesus in the City Fellowship meets at 10:30 Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019. We continue our “Basics of Christianity” series. This week I’ll look at Paul’s response to God’s grace. See you at church!

God's Plan

Aug. 05, 2013 Monday Message:

“God said, “Let us make human beings.” (Gen 1:26a)

When God made animals, he saw to it that they could produce offspring of the same kind. (Gen. 1:24-25)

Now it was time to make human beings, and God created them in His image. (Gen. 1:27) The first human was Adam – Adam means soil or earth, so call him dirt-boy. God breathed life into the dirt.

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone – I will make him a helper who is just right for him.” (Gen 2:18)

The helper God created was Chava, which means life. Today we call her Eve.

“Life” is a good name for Adam’s perfect mate, because now, just like the animals, they could produce offspring – new life, made in God’s image. That was God’s plan.

Then God looked over all that he had made, and saw that it was very good! (Gen. 1:31a)

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) gathers every Sunday at 10:30am in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. Sunday, Aug. 11, Jesus talks about the Lord’s coming, and how following Jesus can cause division. Pastor Michael Pilla returns to the pulpit with Luke 12:35-59. We welcome our guests from New Hope Center this week! See U @ church!

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