Lies!

For Tuesday, April 7, 2026:

Matthew 28:11 NLT: “As the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and told the leading priests what had happened.”

The tomb was discovered open, and the body of Jesus was missing. This is exactly what the Jews didn’t want to happen. That’s why guards were placed at the tomb. But what happened next is even more unbelievable.

The leading priests met with the elders and agreed to pay a large bribe, asking the guards to lie. They told the soldiers, “You must say, ‘Jesus’ disciples came during the night while we were sleeping, and they stole his body.’’’ Religious leaders without truth have no platform on which to stand. Lying violates every commandment that they teach.

Verse 15 concludes this section: “So the guards accepted the bribe and said what they were told to say. Their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today.”

Question: Why would anyone stick with a religion predicated on a lie? This is one more example of religion getting seriously off-track. God rescued his people from Egypt and gave them the Promised Land. Then God’s Son came to Earth to rectify mankind’s sin problem. Forgiven, the people should reconcile with the Lord, not be fighting over the authenticity of the Son. God had everything worked out until mankind lied. It’s like the Garden of Eden all over again!

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Love all three and love your neighbor, and the Lord will smile on you!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

The Father’s House

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Truth & Freedom Church

Trust in Jesus!

March 2, 2026, Monday Message:

John 14:1 NLT, Jesus speaking: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.“

Followers of Jesus were worried. First off, all the Hebrews were living under Roman rule, and while the Romans tolerated religion, they really didn’t like it. They believed in all their false gods, like a god for rain, for a bountiful harvest, for the sun and moon and stars. Some Romans even claimed that Caesar was God. Of course, he wasn’t.

Next problem, the followers of Jesus found themselves at odds with the Temple leaders. The Temple wanted to be in charge of Hebrew religion, and didn’t like this relative newcomer Jesus pulling worshipers out of the Temple, which also pulled their tithes out of the Temple. As with many things in life, if you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong, just follow the money! Also, when Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, they considered it blasphemy. The Temple attitude was, “We’ve always done things this way, and we’re not about to change.”

Jesus wants to comfort the loyal believers, put them at ease, have them not worry. Rest assured knowing that Jesus and his Father are in charge. Since they’re the creators of everything, we know their power. We can securely leave everything in their hands. Trust God, and trust his Son.

So friends, don’t worry about the future, in this life or the next. Don’t let your heart be troubled. Don’t give defeat a second thought. Put a smile on your face, a Bible in your hand, Jesus in your heart and optimism in your head. With Jesus at the helm, everything will be A-OK. He said so himself! He promised!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

The Father’s House

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Truth & Freedom Church

Corrupt Tax Collectors!

For Saturday, February 28, 2026:

Luke 3:12-13 NLT: “Even corrupt tax collectors came to be baptized and asked, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ John the Baptist replied, ‘Collect no more taxes than the government requires.’”

A lone Roman didn’t feel safe amongst the Jewish population. The Jews were angry, having been mistreated, persecuted and over-taxed. So Rome lined up others to do their dirty work. They arranged for Jews to do the tax collecting from other Jews. This meant that the tax collector would have to have abandon his fellows, his family and probably his religion. Consequently, he had no friends and was known as a scoundrel, a traitor. But he got paid well for his misery.

Our scripture today calls them “corrupt tax collectors.” That’s almost a redundancy! Tax collectors were known for assessing a little extra to put in their own pockets, so most tax collectors were wealthy. Now, they may have put religion on the back burner, but it never entirely left them. So here we find them listening intently to John the Baptist. He stops their sinful, corrupt nature in its tracks. “Collect no more taxes than the government requires!”

A few listened to John, many vowed to change their life and stop the skimming. This is an example of the radical transformation we talk about as people come to know the Messiah. Each of us has habits in our lives that we’ve put off changing. It’s never too soon to change direction, to leave the sin behind and follow the right path. Don’t put it off! Cause God to smile down on you! Do the right thing!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

The Father’s House

Truth and Freedom Church

Father Knows Best!

For Saturday, October 18, 2025:

John 14:24b NLT, Jesus speaking: “Remember, my words are not my own. What I am telling you is from the Father who sent me.”

We have grown accustomed to Jesus speaking this way. Most of us, one way or another, have some sort of Christian education, so Jesus’ words don’t sound strange to us. But 2K years ago, people were still trying to figure out religion. If Jesus had told them everything straight away, they might not have believed him. So he keeps feeding them pieces of the theology puzzle that they can assemble as the Holy Spirit leads.

In today’s scripture, Jesus tells us that the words he teaches are not his own. They originate from God the Father. From this we can assume that Jesus and the Father know each other well and are on the same page. They believe the same things, and both want mankind to behave the same way. Their commandments are identical. And apparently, Jesus knew the Father long before he came to Earth. Apparently, Jesus has already seen heaven from the inside! When he says, “The Earth is not my home,” there’s another place, Heaven, God’s Kingdom, their eternal residence. Jesus is right there alongside his Father.

We would be wise to cherish all of Jesus’ hints, the theology puzzle-pieces. Pray that the Holy Spirit would show you the big picture, the truth about who Jesus is, who sent him to visit the Earth, and his mission. I believe his primary mission is the redemption of mankind by forgiving our sins. Once forgiven (and therefore sinless,) we can join God in his eternal Kingdom.

The Lord’s desire is that none would perish, and all would repent and return. Jesus is the Captain of the team, bringing God’s desires to fruition!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Wars and Rumors of War!

For Friday, October 17, 2025:

Luke 21:8 NLT: Jesus replied, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and saying, ‘The time has come!’ But don’t believe them.”

We have all heard rumors that the world would soon be ending, that Jesus would be returning on a certain date. The predictions are always wrong. Don’t believe anyone who tells you such things. Jesus said that even he doesn’t know the exact date, that only the Father knows. If someone says they know, they’re lying!

Jesus did give us signs that we’re getting closer to the second coming, and a major sign is the proliferation of wars and insurrections. In case you haven’t heard the news lately, our world currently has wars in spades! The one conflict with Biblical overtones started about two years ago when Hamas attacked Israel, killing over 1,000 and taking 251 hostages. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, a radical terrorist organization that had taken over Gaza. Hamas would not release the captured Israelis, even as Gaza was reduced to rubble.

Today, two years later, the hostages that were still alive were finally released, and a peace agreement was signed. Israel is still complaining that all the bones of the deceased were not returned. My advice would be just to let it go. When someone has died, their soul no longer occupies a human body. Their eternal essence has (hopefully) gone to be with the Lord. The body is no longer relevant. (That’s the Christian view, not necessarily the Jewish view.)

I said the current conflict started two years ago, but the overall disagreement goes back 3,000 years. After wandering on the desert, God set the Hebrew people down in the Promised Land. A Rabbi once told me, “It’s our land – God gave it to us!” However, those who had previously lived there were displaced. Hence the conflict.

(Just my opinion:) I don’t believe this peace treaty will last, because at its roots, this is a religious war. We can fight over territory, over governments, over countries, but people cannot be forced to change their beliefs. Historically, people will rot in prison while hanging on to their religion.

Jesus is the only one who can straighten out this mess. Our prayer for peace should include, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Father and I = One!

For Friday, June 27, 2025:

John 10:31 NLT: “Once again the people picked up stones to kill Jesus.”

People often get confused, belligerent and a little frightened when confronted with something new. God taking on the personage of a human and walking the earth alongside mankind was unheard of. It didn’t fit their model of what God should be or of what religion should be. The crowd called Jesus’ claim, “I and the Father are one,” blasphemy, and the Law says blasphemy is punishable by death. So they gathered stones to hurl at Jesus, not understanding that he was the promised Messiah.

Jesus had previously performed many good works, healings and miracles. “For which of those works do you stone me?” he asked. Interestingly, for this crowd, Jesus’ good works didn’t outweigh the blasphemy of Jesus claiming to be God. There was no trial. There was no judge or jury. This crowd wanted to settle the matter on the spot! “Bring me more rocks!” Spurgeon wrote, “If they cannot answer holy arguments with fair reasonings, they can give hard answers with stones!”

Jesus somehow escaped and wound up near the Jordan, where John had baptized. Many followed him that day, and many did not. But those who followed believed in Jesus, Son of the Most High!

The crowd dissing Jesus was only considering that one moment in time. But nowadays our Bibles are complete. We can read eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ ministry from start to finish. We have been blessed with convincing evidence that Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah. We can easily believe that Jesus and the Father are one!

Welcome to the family!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Children of God!

For Friday, May 9, 2025:

Luke 10:21 NLT, Jesus, praying: “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.”

Nobody likes a know-it-all, especially God. If we are to learn from Jesus, we must be in “learning” mode, open-minded, not thinking we have everything already figured out. As we study the Bible and learn more about Jesus, we’ll be presented a lot of new information. We’ll see things we’ve never seen before. An open mind can take on that new information!

That’s why Jesus chose fishermen as disciples. When it came to religious matters, their minds were malleable. Nowadays, we might call them “seekers.” They wanted to learn about God, but their minds were not yet settled.

On the other hand, the Pharisees thought they had religion all figured out. They were wrong! They had memorized God’s commandments, and their mission had become to catch someone doing something wrong. Gotcha! But they had overlooked grace, forgiveness and loving their neighbor. Jesus was about to change all that. Loving the Lord is in first place, while loving our neighbors walks hand in hand with it! Jesus never said this was optional! He wants us all to be nice, kind and helpful. He wants us to do the next right thing.

Jesus says that our minds need to be like little children’s, a slate on which he can write. If we’re seeking truth, Jesus will fill in the blanks!

Remember, the first will be last and the last will be first! In the hereafter, some fishermen outrank Pharisees!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Trick Question!

For Thursday, February 15, 2024:

Mark 12:13 NLT: “They sent to Him (Jesus) some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words.”

Public opinion favored Jesus. People had seen the miracles and witnessed the healings. His popularity was unquestioned, which angered the Pharisees, the muckety-mucks of the Jewish religion, and the Herodians, the muckety-mucks of the government. These two groups formed an unlikely alliance for the sole purpose of quashing Jesus’ progress. They questioned Jesus, hoping for a slip of the tongue that would convict him either of blasphemy or disloyalty to Herod. The test question was, “Shall we pay, or shall we not pay taxes to Caesar?”

Jesus examined a denarius and inquired as to the image on the coin. It was Caesar. He answered. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” The critics marveled at Jesus’ answer!

Jesus is saying that it takes both. There are practical needs for life on earth like roads, police and armies – things totally separate from any religious obligation. And our tithing to God is separate from any government, as it should be.

Trying to catch Jesus in a misstatement is always a bad idea. He always has a perfect answer!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

God's Unending Love!

For Saturday, September 23, 2023:

Romans 8:38a NLT: “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.”

Before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no religion in the world. There was only God the Creator. But the couple had been promised by the devil himself that they too could be like God. Regrettably, they took the bait. Suddenly there was unworthy competition for heaven’s throne, and sin had entered the world. Now God needed to make his laws and his value system known, so now we have religion.

Like any proud parent, God was disappointed when his children let him down, but the incident did not extinguish his love for us. God went so far as to send his own Son to pay the price for the sins of the world, so that we could join him in the hereafter. That’s how much God loves us! Paul goes on to say, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” His list is extensive but not exhaustive. In fact, nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Paul concludes v39: “No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship

Psalms 59 - God's Way, the Right Way

August 29, 2016 Monday Message:

“Do not kill them, Sovereign Lord, or the people will forget.” Psalms 59:11

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. Saul had sent an entire army to kill David, so David’s response might rightly have been to want them all dead, so that he’d be spared.

But David wants God remembered as kind, merciful and loving. So he prays for God to help him, but to NOT kill his oppressors. Options might be for them to turn, to reverse their behavior; or at least back off a little. It’s as if David was thinking, “Protect me, stop them, but you don’t have to kill them.”

Interestingly, Saul was a Jew, David was a Jew, and the men pursuing David were Jews. You’d think they would have all been on the same page. But their religion had become a series of rules, traditions and ceremonies. They had lost the essence of God’s call, which is to love the Lord and to love your neighbor. That’s why we sometimes say, “Lose the religion,” meaning, get back to the basics.

Jesus would arrive a thousand years later to re-teach these principles. And two thousand years after that, we’re still talking about what Jesus taught, and still struggling to put His plan into action.

“Lord, in the morning I will sing of your love.” from Psalms 59:16

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets at the Akina Church, 3249 30^th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55406, 10:30am. This Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, Pastor Michael Pilla returns to the pulpit.

Spritually Blind

May 27, 2013 Monday Message:

“Was blind, but now I see.” from the hymn “Amazing Grace”

Paul was a “type A” get-‘er-done kind of a guy. His persecution of Christians was legendary, and the Pharisees held Paul up as a prime example of someone who would go the extra mile for the sake of his religion.

But Paul’s religion had distorted Biblical facts over the years, and put ceremonies and rituals into practice that had no heavenly basis. These people had seen Jesus with their own eyes, and totally missed the fact that it was the Son of God standing right before them. And remember, God wants more than just religion. God desires a relationship with us – a relationship, not repetitious religion.

Understand that Paul was spiritually blind – God had not yet opened his spiritual eyes. It’s not that Paul wouldn’t see the light (didn’t want to,) or that he didn’t see the light (somehow missed it) – no, he was spiritually blind. He could not see the light.

Paul being struck blind on the road to Damascus is the perfect visualization of spiritual darkness, of not yet being enlightened. And as God eventually lifted the scales from Paul’s eyes, so he also lifted the veil from Paul’s spiritual eyes, so that Paul was no longer blind – now he could see!

God first chose Paul, Paul answered, “Yes, Lord,” and then God called him into ministry. Paul could not find God on his own, because at the time he was spiritually blind. Besides, God knows where God is; it was Paul who was lost, so God had to do the seeking.

Next week – Are you chosen, and what’s the deal with the dead burying their dead?

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets at 10:30am every Sunday. We’ll open up Luke Ch. 10, Jesus sending out disciples. We gather in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. See you at church!

Repent and Return, America!

May 13, 2013 Monday Message:

God: “Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you.” Malachi 3:7a

God isn’t just speaking to the ancient Hebrews! What God describes seems to become increasingly applicable with each generation.

Consider this: When the US was founded, the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention contained this assortment of religions:

28 Church of England (Episcopal), 8 Presbyterian, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, and 2 Roman Catholics. Others, notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson followed Jesus but not within an organized religion, and Thomas Paine believed in a “God-the-Creator.”

While their worship styles were diverse, the desire for “freedom to worship” was universal. Our founding fathers intended for all to have the freedom to worship and to follow the traditions of their denomination. Note that it’s freedom TO worship, not freedom FROM worship – they never anticipated that Americans wouldn’t worship, or that some people would be offended by worship.

Today, if you survey the US, 40% will claim they’re “regular attenders” on Sunday. But if you actually count heads in churches, it’s more like 18%. Either way, churchgoers are now a declining minority in our country.

But remember that it’s God’s desire that no one would perish. (2 Peter 3:9) God is more faithful than mankind, when he promises, “Return to me, and I will return to you.” We know God’s promise is still good when He says, “I the Lord do not change. So you … are not destroyed.” Mal. 3:6

Repent and return, America!

Norton Lawellin

Friday, May 17, 7pm, I’ll be teaching David’s Psalm 5 for Chapel at New Hope Center, 28^th & Cedar, Minneapolis.

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets at 10:30am Sunday, May 19. We’ll look at Luke 9:46-50, who is the greatest, and how we can use the name of Jesus. We gather in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. See you at church!

NL