Family Business!

 

For Saturday, January 6, 2024:

Mark 3:35 NLT, Jesus speaking: “Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Would you like to have Jesus as your brother? You could wake up in the same house and sit at the same breakfast table. You could learn a lot about God and heaven from listening to him, things that could guide the rest of your life. The icing on the cake is that you’d both report to the same Father!

We all know about the families into which we were born, but Jesus is giving us a second family, our church family. In many ways it’s much more important than your natural family. There are good people at my church who would give the shirt off their back if it was helpful. Outside of your natural family, your best friends in the world should be your church friends. Make it a point to bond with them.

A natural family is sometimes a part of your church family, sometimes not. You might be the one appointed to evangelize, to teach your natural family about Jesus! Following him, you could be the one to lead your entire family into the hereafter!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

Fill Me Up!

For Thursday, November 19, 2020 

Philippians 4:8 NLT: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Here are a couple of my favorite sayings:

#1 “If you’re doing THIS, you’re not doing THAT!” Oftentimes the answer to getting one’s life in order is not to concentrate on all the bad stuff you want to eliminate. A better solution is to fill up your life with good stuff! If your calendar is 100% full of loving the Lord and loving others, you’ll no longer have time for the things that were problems. 

#2 is similar: “If you’re in HERE, you’re not out THERE!” If you’re in good places – helping out at church, the food bank, the youth center, etc. – you’re surrounded with good people doing good things, and avoiding situations that used to be problematic.

So fill your life up with good stuff and surround yourself with good friends. It’s a choice you can make every day to add hope to your life! 

Blessings and safety today!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

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

Christian Unity!

For Sunday, September 6, 2020. 

Psalm 133:1 NIV: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”

This Psalm actually begins byasking the reader to “behold” or “notice” what follows, because it’s important! The followers of Yahweh had not always been unified. They disagreed and sometimes fought with each other, and that was wrong. In this song sung to the Lord, David is encouraging everyone to get on the same page! 

If our priority is worship of the Lord, there should be little disagreement. That is good because it reflects God’s purpose for our hearts, and it is pleasant to be among the Lord’s people, avoiding the constant bickering and conflict from the past.

Not everything that is good is pleasant, and not everything that is pleasant is good. Unity among God’s people is a remarkable blessing because it is BOTH good and pleasant! That’s why we worship together – that’s why we have “church” friends! That’s why we share hope! 

Have a blessed Sabbath!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

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

Thank God!

For Saturday, July 11, 2020.

Ephesians 5:20 NLT: “Give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It seems like people want to pray more when things go wrong. But today, let’s pray for things that have gone right! Think about it – there are only a few things wrong, but millions of things go right every single day, things we may not even see if we’re on autopilot.

God keeps us alive until it’s time to call us home. Our heart keeps on thumping, and our blood keeps on pumping, and we don’t do that on our own – it’s Intelligent Design! Every day we get something to eat. Granted, some people have fancy dinners, and some go to the food shelf, but God looks after us. We have a place to live, we have clothes, we have freedom to worship our God in our country. We have friends, we have family, we have a church!

Today, let’s give thanks for the colossal number of things that have gone right!

Blessings,

Pastor Norton

Jesus in the City Fellowship

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

Psalms 68 - The Family of God

October 31, 2016 Monday Message:

“God sets the lonely in families.” Psalms 68:6a NIV

Your church should be like your second home, and your “church family” should be your new extended family. Some of us have earthly families; some of us do not. But God welcomes us ALL into HIS family with open arms. When you’ve been adopted into the Holy Family, that’s your forever home. Your best friends are there. It’s your sanctuary when the world around you is dishing out tribulation.

“From your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.” Psalms 68:10b

Jesus taught us to love each other, to care for each other, and to share. If someone in God’s family has been blessed with abundance, that’s so they can help fellow family members and others.

“Our God is a God who saves.” Psalms 68:20a

When we pass from this life to the next life, the whole family will get to see heaven from the inside. Jesus has made it so that we can spend eternity in the presence of the Almighty, and that’s really Good News!

Norton Lawellin

Let’s worship together! Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets at the Akina Church, 3249 30^th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55406, 10:30am. This Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016, Paul deals with sin in the Corinthian church. See you there!

Psalm 1

June 01, 2015 Monday Message:

“The Lord protects everyone who follows him, but the wicked follow a road that leads to ruin.” Psalm 1:6 CEV

Let’s spend some time in Psalms. King David wrote a lot of Psalms, his worship team authored several, and still others wrote a few. But David is the one who had mastered the new “alphabetic script,” where a letter represents a sound, and the sounds in any word could be represented by a series of letters. Now they could write about concepts such as love, honesty, forgiveness, compassion, grace, mercy and compound interest – subjects difficult to represent with picture-writing!

Psalm 1 counsels the believer to be like a tree planted near a riverbank, with deep roots that draw from a never-ending source of life. Verse 3 says followers of the Lord will prosper and bear fruit for the kingdom.

But not so the wicked! The worthless will be condemned at the time of judgment. Verse 5 warns us that sinners will have no place among the godly.

Therefore believers would do well to spend time with other believers. Become a member of a church family. Attend Christian events. Of course the person with whom you share the Good News about Jesus won’t be a believer, but you bring to them the Gospel FROM your solid home base where you have deep roots.

Oh the joy of those who delight in the law of the Lord!

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) gathers at 10 a.m. every Sunday in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. This week, June 7, Pastor Dale Rader – “EKG of the Heart.”

Community of Believers

May 11, 2015 Monday Message:

“They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. Acts 2:42

We attend churches, and those people become our church family. We meet in our home church, and home is where when you go there, they have to let you in. When the church is working right, all the people are doing life together.

Police, judges, courts, governments and legislators are “reactive.” They can react when there’s a problem, but they do little to prevent the problem in the first place, and their actions are a stopgap measure, not a long-term solution.

But the Church can be “proactive,” setting standards that keep people away from life’s problems, BEFORE they get in trouble. Church comes with a built-in value system.

The Bible teaches that church members should love each other as Jesus loves us. It’s “everlasting lovingkindness,” compassion and total forgiveness.

Anyone is welcome to join the voluntary Christian Community, and the greatest gift we can give someone is to include them in our Church family. We welcome others out of gratitude for what Jesus did for us.

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) gathers at 10 a.m. every Sunday in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. This week, May 17, Pastor Michael Pilla continues in Acts 20.