Character & Trends!

For Thursday, June 20, 2024:

Luke 16:10 NLT: “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.”

This goes to character, and we would all do well to listen to our Bibles! We all have a picture in our minds of how a person of good character should look and act, and the Bible says that if you’re not honorable concerning small things, you’ll most likely come up short on the larger things as well. Like I said, your behavior is a trend that comes down to character.

If you’re trending toward the lake of fire, there’s still time to repent and return. God and his Son Jesus offer unconditional love and forgiveness to those who return to the Lord. If you’ve been playing for the wrong team, you can undergo that radical transformation I talk about. That’s the amazing grace we sing about!

The Hebrew language has some unique twists you might not expect. For example, the word for ‘repent’ also means to turn or re-turn. If you were going north, you need to about-face and head south! In other words, change the direction of your life. And sinning equates to being ‘far from God,’ while repenting means returning, getting closer to God. Your life is continually critiqued since you are now a member of the Holy Family. Believers are Children of God!

Trend toward being faithful! Blessings as you go about His work today!

Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Turn, turn, (re)turn...

For Sunday, February 11, 2024:

Psalm 88:14 NIV: “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?”

As Christians we believe everything in the Bible is true, and that events happened just as the Bible reports. Where this gets tricky is if someone in the Bible misstates a belief or has a convoluted perception of a situation. Of course their false belief is untrue, but their misperception is what they really believed at the time. So it’s true that the person really believed what was incorrect. Got it?

I love this analogy using the Earth and the sun. Pretend that God is the sun, and we’re on the earth. As each day ends, we say the sun set, the sun went down, but in fact the sun is right where it’s always been. It is us, the earth, who turned away from the sun. God never turns his back on mankind. If there’s a problem seeing god’s face, it’s because we have turned away!

The Bible speaks of turning back to God. The word used implies a change in direction. We were going South, but should have been going North. Repent and return. (re-turn, turn again)

If we can’t see the Lord’s face, it’s time to reorient ourselves!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship