Great Exchange!

For Friday, January 9, 2026:

Romans 6:6 NLT: “We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.”

Believers are forever with Jesus. Let me explain. As Jesus died on the cross, the sins of the world were heaped upon him. That includes your sin and my sin. And those sins went away with Jesus to the place of the dead. He rose three days later, coming back without those sins. So this resurrected Jesus is without sin, just as He always was. And He is our friend, just as He always was.

Our sinful nature died with Christ. He carried our sins away, thereby leaving us clean and forgiven. This is called the Great Exchange, Jesus taking our sins away and leaving us pure, suitable for residence in God’s forever kingdom of Heaven. Because of Jesus’ mission, sin has lost its power over believers. Believers are no longer slaves to Satan or his Demons. Mission accomplished!

Sin died so that believers might have eternal life!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

The Father’s House

Truth and Freedom Church

Love and Forgiveness!

For Wednesday, December 17, 2025:

John 15:17 NLT, Jesus speaking: “This is my command: Love each other.”

Some days, when writing, I can’t top what actually happened. One of our regular readers wrote about a shopping incident that involved caring, compassion, love, and forgiveness. Dana Jo used this incident as an allegory to our relationship with God. It’s a little longer than usual, but I ask you to read to the end. There’s a message in here for all of us.

 "I was at Kohl's today and heard a loud crash and something shattering. Being nosy, I walked towards the sound and saw some people whispering and looking back to the end of the next aisle. When I walked down that aisle, I saw that an older lady had hit a shelf, and many things had fallen to the ground and were broken. She was kneeling on the floor, embarrassed, frantically trying to clean up. I felt so bad for her. Everyone was just standing there staring at her.

So I went and knelt beside her and told her not to worry, and started helping her pick up the broken pieces. After about a minute, the store manager came and knelt beside us and said, ‘Leave it, we will clean this up.’

The lady, totally embarrassed, said, ‘I need to pay for all this.’

The manager smiled, helped her to her feet, and said, ‘No ma’am, we have insurance for this; you do not have to pay anything!”

 If you have read this far, give me another minute. Wherever you are, close your eyes, and imagine God doing the same for you! Imagine the broken pieces of your mistakes, or the pieces of your broken heart from all the blows life has thrown at you, all over the floor, and you’re there trying to collect all of the pieces and fix them yourself. Now imagine God comes and kneels right down beside you, smiles and says to you, ‘Leave it all there, I will clean this up for you.’ He loves you that much and wants to put all of those pieces back together if you will let Him! With Him, we have this insurance, and it’s called GRACE! It’s free! All you have to do is ask Him to forgive you, help you, and to heal you. He’s faithful, I promise! ❤️”

 I vowed a message for each of us in this anecdote, so here we go! God doesn’t order us around like slaves. He presents us with opportunities, and watches how we respond. The woman in this story needed a helper, and we’re all supposed to love one another. So my friend jumped in to help. God is waiting for each of us to do the next right thing. Life will present us with plenty of opportunities. When any of us offers help to someone, God smiles!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

The Father’s House

Truth and Freedom Church

Dark and the Ultimatum!

For Friday, January 31, 2025:

Exodus 10:21 NLT: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Lift your hand toward heaven, and the land of Egypt will be covered with a darkness so thick you can feel it.”

Living in the city, we never experience total darkness. There are street lights, porch lights and lights on vehicles. But in Egypt 3k years ago, it was totally dark for three days. No one could see each other. No one dared move.

Pharaoh called for Moses: “Go and worship the Lord,” he said. “But leave your flocks and herds here.”

That wasn’t going to work. Part of worship back then involved animal sacrifices, so Moses needed to bring the livestock too.

On the one hand, Pharaoh had been challenged by the plagues Moses and his God had brought on the Egyptians. But on the other, he was just plain sick and tired of the whole thing. After all, there weren’t any problems like these until Moses showed up! So Pharaoh issued an ultimatum: “Get out of here! I’m warning you. Never come back to see me again! The day you see my face, you will die!”

Even after darkness, the ninth plague, Pharaoh still didn’t understand God’s power, so he’s leaving himself vulnerable to God’s final effort on behalf of the Israelites. As believers, we understand and believe what Pharaoh did not, that God is all-powerful and totally in control of everything. We love our God; Pharaoh resented God, thinking that he, Pharaoh, should have had the last word. But we know that the one true God is the final word on everything!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Glory of the Lord!

For Wednesday, January 29, 2025:

Exodus 9:13-14 NLT: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh. Tell him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so they can worship me. If you don’t, I will send more plagues on you and your officials and your people. Then you will know that there is no one like me in all the earth.’”

When reading Exodus, it’s easy to focus on Pharaoh letting the Hebrew people go. But there’s another lesson in all of this. God wants to let everyone know ‘that there is no one like me in all the earth.’ No one! Father God, his Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit are King of all kings and Lord of all lords over everything in the universe! All powerful supreme beings!

Now, if we had a problem in life, such as being a captive in Egypt, how long could that possibly last? 70, 80, 90 years? Probably less if you lived 3k years ago. God wants loyalists in his Kingdom for eternity, which is such a great number of years that it cannot be compared with a lifetime – the two are so different!

As God had commanded, Moses warned everyone to get inside a shelter and put your livestock in a barn, because hail like you’ve never seen is on the way! Then God directed Moses to lift his hand to the sky, and hail would fall destroying all the people, livestock and plants that were not sheltered. It all happened just the way God said. The entire country was devastated. People should not disregard God; they should highly-regard him!

We too should highly regard our God and his word. He chose believers to be a part of his Kingdom forever. We are blessed to look forward to an eternity in the presence of our Father! Thank you Jesus for making it all possible!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Faith in God!

For Friday, January 17, 2025:

Exodus 4:31 NLT: “The Israelites were convinced that the Lord had sent Moses and Aaron. When they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.”

The Lord had designated Moses as the point person in the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. But the Israelites needed proof. God had given Moses a shepherd’s staff that could turn into a snake, and a skin disease cured by simply putting his hand into his cloak. Seeing is believing, and the people of Israel worshiped God for remembering their plight as they accepted Moses and Aaron to lead the liberation effort.

The Israelites weren’t free yet, but Moses had reassured everyone that God was still on their side. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, freedom was only in the planning stages. But still, they worshiped! They worshiped out of faith in a God they could not see.

Today, our faith in a God we cannot see is still what saves us. God’s desire is that none would be lost, and Jesus has prepared a place for believers in the hereafter.

God always makes good on his promises, and we are the beneficiaries of his mercy. Knowing that, we worship! That’s why we praise himßå!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Time To Act!

January 13, 2025, Monday Message:

Exodus 2:24-25 NLT: “God heard the Israelites groaning, and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down on them and knew it was time to act.”

God hears prayer. He’s always listening. The Israelites had been living as slaves in Egypt, and they cried out to their God for help. That’s exactly what they should do. And God knew it was time for him to act. That’s what we expect him to do.

The time was now right to rescue the Jews. God would give the new Pharaoh and his Egyptian cohorts several more chances to do the right thing. They would not. But God would stop at nothing to achieve his overall goal of liberating the Jews from Egyptian tyranny. A lot would happen before this story wraps up, but remember that God always gets his way!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Accept the Gift!

For Wednesday, August 30, 2023:

Romans 6:23 NLT: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

As Paul counsels the Roman believers, he’s contrasting an eternal heavenly life in God’s presence with eternal death, separation from God and the Kingdom. God created mankind with the freedom to choose. In fact, a choice is required. We can choose to be a slave of Satan, or a slave under a benevolent God. The correct choice should be obvious!

Eternal life is a free gift, but we must choose to accept it.

Live like you made the right choice!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship