Sunday evening, December 11, at 6pm New Covenant will offer a Generational Healing Eucharist for those who desire pray and freedom from patterns of sin and brokeness in their lives.
Listed below are three resources to help prepare for participation. Prayerfully preparing will allow you to make your specific requests for healing known to the Lord.
For more information, please contact the church office. (407.699.0202)
It is one of the most important words in the English language and yet it is arguably one of the least effective. After all, the telos or purpose of words is to communicate. How is it possible that I can use the same word to describe my feelings toward my wife, pizza, and God?
What does the word “love” communicate to you?
In the Gospel this past Sunday Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” The Greek word for love in this passage is “agape”. This word refers to a type of love that gives without the expectation of receiving. It is a sacrificial love. It is what God did for us in the incarnation and the crucifixion.
Realizing that sacrifice is the key to the kind of love that God is calling us to put into practice, how do we then perceive our relationships? What does it mean to love our spouse, our children, and our neighbor? What about loving God?
I would love to open a discussion on two topics:
How you have shown or been shown this kind of love.
The true meaning of love
So, please make a post and open a thread of discussion.
Pax Christi,
Brian+
If you are the industrious sort who enjoys going into depth, then here are some books you may find applicable to the topic:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder – This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that explores theme of isolation and in the process challenges our perception of love and death.
The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis – This is a nonfiction piece in which Lewis masterfully analyzes the Greek words for love. I would recommend this to undo anything I might have said incorrectly, and he certainly presents the material far better than I did.
Till We Have Faces also by C.S. Lewis – This a work of fiction in which Lewis expounds upon, through a story, the ideas present in The Four Loves.
While putting together some thoughts for a sermon on Exodus 33.12 – 23, and looking at the 3 requests Moses makes of God:
First, for Yahweh to show him his ways so that he can know him;
Then he argues with God for his Presence to go with him;
The third request is, “Now show me your glory”.
I was reflecting on how we, as Children of Light, can show his glory and I want to share something I read from Conversations Journal — a forum for authentic transformation, that was written by Larry Crabb where he is talking about displayed glory.
“I was preparing for my 1st conference in which I would be sharing the story of God as told in my 66 Love Letters book. The challenge seemed overwhelming, I so badly wanted to convey that even with impending surgery for cancer – really in any situation – our joy depends on seeing Christ, hearing the story he is telling, and delighting ourselves in is who he is and displaying his completely countercultural and counterintuitive way of loving by how we relate.
I felt inadequate because I was inadequate. Never have the Lord’s words felt truer: “without me you can do nothing.” I needed prayer so I am wrote the following letter for friends, and don’t miss the point:
i.e.Either we try to fit God into our story and never know real joy, or we live to tell his story, to bring him glory by revealing him in how we relate, and we discover that joy is not circumstance-dependent.If we live to tell his story we then live to tell the difficult story of displayed glory. And that is the Christian Life. It’s a good life – abundant in love, love from God, and his power to love like Jesus.”
C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from devils’ viewpoints.
People move to Florida for our October weather. But sometimes it rains, and rains and rains.
Our parish picnic scheduled for today has been postponed due to the rainy weekend weather. Its new date will be announced soon.
Thanks to all of you who have gone with us through “Stop and Think.” Nearly 200 folks, meeting in almost 30 groups of all sizes on every day of the week have considered the importance of the Fear of God, the call to Follow Jesus, the importance of the Holy Spirit’s filling, and the central place of Christian fellowship for ourselves and our parish. All within the frame of God’s gracious offer of salvation and life through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thanks especially to our HOSTs, who opened their homes and showed hospitality to the rest of us as we have discussed and read and prayed and gotten to know one another better over the past 5 weeks.
Today as we look forward, we will be asking: “What do we do now that we have stopped and thought?
We start with this.
“Blessed be God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And blessed be His kingdom, now and forever. Amen.
Today is Family Sunday, and our children remain in the service with their families for the reading of the Scriptures, Sermon, Creed and Prayers; worshipping with their families.
Father Carl and Youth Pastor Glenn Starr will be preaching.
Father Carl is leading an instructed Eucharist for the children this morning, and will invite our children to join him at the Lord’s Table as we celebrate the Holy Communion.
The prayer for today from our Book of Common Prayer.
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Believe it or not, we have come to our final film in the Stop and Think series. The film is titled Fellowship. What comes to your mind when you hear the word? After considering the blessings of the Gospel in Week 01, and the three persons of the Holy Trinity; Father, Son, and Spirit in Weeks 2-4; we look now at the people who are gathered by the saving work of our great God. And that gathering, or church, has fellowship as a defining characteristic.
You can preview this week’s film here.
Questions for the study are here. Stop&Think.Session05q
Additional questions for personal reflection and sharing are here.
Remember, if you miss a group meeting or want to watch the film again, you can join us for Stop and Think Catch-up on Sunday morning at 10:30 in the Parish Hall.
Add your thoughts and impressions here on our blog or over on our forum. Share with others how you are growing and questioning and thinking as you Stop and Think.
Remember, if you miss a group meeting or want to watch the film again, you can join us for Stop and Think Catch-up on Sunday morning at 10:30 in the Parish Hall.
Add your thoughts and impressions here on our blog or over on our forum. Share with others how you are growing and questioning and thinking as you Stop and Think.
This week, we are Following Jesus. How can something that sounds so simple get so complicated? Together with friends and the scriptures, we will take our next step and Stop and Think.
Remember, if you miss a group meeting or want to watch the film again, you can join us for Stop and Think Catch-up on Sunday morning at 10:30 in the Parish Hall.
Add your thoughts and impressions here on our blog or over on our forum. Share with others how you are growing and questioning and thinking as you Stop and Think.
What a great video we saw on the fear of God. It needed a subtitle…fear of drowning. Everyone that has watched this video with me has had similar observations. Francis Chan talks about his experience being caught in a wave and coming up gasping for air. Then in the video we see a girl not exactly caught in a wave. In fact, shouldn’t she just sit up and get out of the room as it fills with water? But at the end, when she is out of breath, she floats to the top and gasps for air.
In the first series of questions we are asked about our impressions of the film. We all seem to get stuck on the topic of the room filling with water. Is it baptism? Is it feeling trapped? Is it God’s punishment? Is it a distraction to Francis Chan? Is it all of these or a combination of a few? Is that where the film takes us? What about all that stuff Fancis Chan is talking about? What about fear?
I think many times we all have another fear. The fear of sharing opinions about our personal faith in a small group. If anything, the underwater room scene offers us a way to “float” some ideas in our group without offering personal opinions. We can talk about things on the surface that ease us into deeper converstaions.
Some people have told me they choose to ignore the video, or close their eyes and just listen to what Chan is saying. I think that is a mistake. Try to tie the two ideas together in your discussions. This is a case of every answer is good, because we are interpreting a video that offers no explanation. It makes for great discussion and a good way to get to know your group members!
Sunday evening, December 11, at 6pm New Covenant will offer a Generational Healing Eucharist for those who desire pray and freedom from patterns of sin and brokeness in their lives.
