Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this Wednesday. It is going to be another glorious day here in beautiful Broome County, New York. The Spring foliage and the Spring flowers are at their peak. Praise the Lord for the way He surrounds us with His Splendor. As we gaze around with our eyes wide open we can see His glory and majesty displayed with so much grace all around us. It is breathtaking and awe-filled. Thanks be to Jesus, who is the author Eternal Spring.
We will gather for our midweek fellowship and study tonight, beginning with soup at 6:00 PM. We will be focusing on our last session of "Gospel in Life" by Timothy Keller. The session focuses on "Eternity: The world that is to come".
In His high-priestly prayer that is recorded in John 17, our Lord Jesus prayed for his disciples. In verse 13 He said, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete.” The nature of this joy is that it’s joy in the other. The joy is not an end in itself. This joy was never meant to be a self-serving experience. The joy comes from involving others in our fellowship.
We can never fulfill our purpose in the world simply by sitting around rejoicing in our membership as God’s people. God’s purpose for us is to proclaim Jesus Christ to the world. There’s an outward looking focus even as Jesus spoke of the glory He and the Father share. We are made to share the dance of God with others.
Paul put it like this, “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. (2 Corinthians 4:6) He then went on to talk of us being God’s ambassadors. We are redeemed, drafted, and commissioned to be part of His world-wide mission of reaching people for His Kingdom. The Bible depicts of a glorious future that has already been inaugurated in the person and the mission of Jesus Christ our Lord.
God’s creation plan had a beginning and will have an end. The Bible’s account of the end of the world is quite different from that of other religions. Where they might see the illusion of this world passing away, or souls escaping the confines of this physical existence, Christianity sees a heavenly city coming down out of heaven to fill the new earth, created to replace the old. God comes to dwell among his people as he did at the beginning. There are people of every nation tribe, people and language, gathered around the throne of God and the Lamb in worship. This is a physical reality that is transformed but not taken away. In other words what we do now in the physical world matters. Just as Jesus carried the scars of the cross to heaven with him, so what we do now can have lasting significance.
Our task as a Church is to live out the life of and in Jesus, the Risen Lord, in the world so that others see God’s glory. We do that by mutually self-giving, other- directed love. We give Jesus, our Savior and Lord, glory by reflecting his character in our life together.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/c-Jkktpp9QI
Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott
Saturday, May 14, 2011
12 Noon Women's Banquet
Location: Union Center UMC , 128 Maple Drive Endicott,
Speaker: Linda Ayer
6 PM Coffee Fellowship( First UMC Enicott, )
6:30 PM Worship Service Worship Music: Aric Phinney and the worship team
Speaker: Craig Sabin.
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