Jehovah-jireh!

For Saturday, December 6, 2025:

Romans 5:6 NLT: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.”

There’s a lot in this scripture. Let me review a couple of basic Christian principles, and then we’ll have a look.

1. God and sin are incompatible. God is perfect, and everything around him is perfect. Sin is hugely imperfect and is not tolerated in God’s presence.

2. When God formed mankind, the final step of creation, he looked at everything and declared it “very good!” He loves us, so his desire is that everyone would repent and return to his dwelling place, Heaven. God is willing to forgive repentant sinners if we’re willing to discard our errant ways and if our desire is to come home.

Mankind had no way to obtain forgiveness on our own. Helpless. So God sent his Son, Jesus, our redeemer, to rescue us. As Jesus died, he took the sins of the world to the place of the dead. And mankind, suddenly without sin, found ourselves eligible to take up eternal residence in the Lord’s presence.

God-the-provider, Jehovah-jireh, sent exactly what we needed, forgiveness and redemption, exactly when we needed it. God is good beyond measure!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

The Father’s House

Truth and Freedom Church

Better Life!

 

For Tuesday, December 2, 2025:

Hebrews 12:1a NLT: “Since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.”

Just one simple point today. God didn’t accept believers because we suddenly became perfect. God welcomes us because we’re friends of his Son. Jesus opened the door for believers to spend eternity with the Heavenly Father. And out of gratitude for what Jesus did for us, we do our best to live His way, to not sin, to conform to God’s directions for our lives.

There’s a fishing joke about new believers. “You catch ‘em and we’ll clean ‘em!” Devotion to Jesus comes first. Clean-up may be gradual, may take a little more time. We will nonetheless get cleaned. And because of that, our lives will be better.

With Jesus, everything is better!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

The Father’s House

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Truth & Freedom Church

Paid In Full!

September 15, 2025, Monday Message:

Hebrews 10:12 NLT: “Our High Priest (Jesus) offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand.”

Jesus fully understood his primary mission. He was the final sacrifice atoning for the sins of the world. That includes your sin and my sin, and past, present and future sins. Yes, even future sins not yet committed are covered by Jesus’ sacrifice. If we repent and return to the Lord and acknowledge Jesus as our Savior, He will confirm our heavenly reservation. We will be seated at the wedding banquet in the Kingdom, thereby confirming our relationship with the Son.

Jesus did it right the first time. We don’t need another sacrifice. Nothing could be greater than the offering of God’s Son’s life to atone for the sins of the world. One and done!

By that one offering, Jesus made perfect all those lined up behind him. None of us are perfect. All who walk on the earth have fallen short of God’s glory. And yet when we fall in behind Jesus, he renders us sinless, forgiven and in a way, “perfect,” eligible for residence in the Kingdom!

So my advice is to repent and return, and to then follow Jesus into the hereafter! Eternity can be awesome! Our transition to eternity fulfills God’s vast eternal plan for believers! Believers are “IN!”

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Perfection!

For Wednesday, September 10, 2025:

Hebrews 10:7 NLT: “Jesus said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God—as is written about me in the Scriptures.’”

Obedience is what’s required. King Saul offered sacrifices to God, but failed to obey. His successor, David, also had shortcomings, but he prophesied the perfectly obedient one: Jesus! One way we can identify Jesus as the Messiah is in how he fulfills prophesies.

Some people didn’t do too well on the “Obedience-to-God” test, but Jesus scored 100%! When it’s time for us to enter the life after this life, loyal believers can count Jesus’ score as their own. Although we could never be perfect, Jesus has wiped away the sin-record of the faithful. He’s doing FOR us what we could never do on our own. So when it’s time to enter heaven, thank God we signed up for the Jesus team! He has already prepared a place for us!

Jesus cancelled the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. God’s will is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time! No need for us to do anything further. The work has been done FOR us! Thank you, Jesus!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Resurrection!

For Saturday, July 5, 2025:

Mark 12:27a NLT, Jesus speaking: “So our God is the God of the living, not the dead.”

Jesus is answering the Sadducees’ questions about resurrection. They were not believers in resurrection.

Jesus reassured them, saying that there is a resurrection, a life after this life. God said so. “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” But those saints had all died some time ago. The point being that our God is the God of the living. Being God over the dead would serve no purpose. So Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must have been resurrected and live in the next reality alongside the Almighty.

In the resurrected life, we will recognize our families and our fellows. But no one marries in heaven. Children are not born in the hereafter. Just like the angels, believers will live in the life after this life, but no one will procreate. We’ll be too busy worshiping the God who is better to us than we deserve!

Jesus will prepare your place in the hereafter. If that were not so, surely he would have told us! I can’t wait to see the New Heaven and the New Earth, where everything will be perfect, just the way God first intended!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

High Priest!

For Wednesday, July 2, 2025:

Hebrews 5:1 NLT: “Every high priest is a man chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God. He presents their gifts to God and offers sacrifices for their sins.”

The high priest stood between God and the Hebrew people. Since God called him, Jews believed their priest possessed holy authority. They could confess sins to their priest and present gifts of atonement. The gifts were actually for God.

On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the priest would symbolically place the sins of the people onto the back of a goat, and shoo the goat into the wilderness, thereby separating the populace from their sins. That’s where we get the term “scapegoat.”

Jesus was endowed with that “high priest authority” by God. “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” But Jesus was eventually crucified and ascended back to the Father. So, where does that leave us?

When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom, destroying the separation between God and mankind. God did the tearing. Believers no longer need or desire a high priest. If we need to pray to the Lord, we can pray directly to him. If we need to confess and repent, we can speak with the Almighty. We pray to God “in Jesus’ name,” since Jesus is now our intercessor, the one who opened the gateway, clearing the path between God and mankind.

Unlike his predecessors, our high priest was perfect!

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