November 21, 2022
(Note: A version of this article was first published in the October print newsletter of Owensville First Christian Church.)
For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to break down, and a time to build up. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3b ESV)
The past three years have revealed much about the church in America: To whom or what many professing believers in Jesus truly place our devotion. To which kingdom our loyalty belongs. The room we have to grow in grace and love toward one another. The less-than-mature ways we usually go about leaving one church family to join another. The development of political-ideological idolatry within many congregations. All of these things have to do with our love attachments.
The cultural and spiritual climate of the past 30 months has caused me to take a deeper look at my own daily walk with Jesus. He has graced me with many transformational learning opportunities that have begun to open my own heart to more of His love and way. I hope that I'm demonstrating the inner change in me through the relational acts of my life and ministry.
As always, Jesus is our Prime Teacher when it comes to love attachment. How or why did Jesus ultimately decide to go along with His Father's will that He suffer the pain and shame of a Roman crucifixion in order to pay for the sins of the world? The answer: He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him (Hebrews 12:2b, GW, emphasis added). Surely, there was the joy that would come from pleasing His Father, as well as going home to be with Him again. In addition, there was the joy ahead of our reunion with them in due time: Christ suffered for our sins once and for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18: NLT, emphasis added).
You see, as several of us recently learned together, Love + Joy = the Motivation to do God's Will. Obedience to God isn't about willpower. It's about cooperating with the Holy Spirit to further develop our love attachment to God the Father and His Son, as well as our love attachment to others made possible by God's love for us. This is what we must remember as we move forward.
On September 23 at approximately 2:30 a.m., I was listening to a "Pray as You Go" app devotional in which the Scripture selection was the famous "For everything there is a season" from Ecclesiastes 3. As I lay on my bed and went back over the written text, I was drawn to this: For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to break down, and a time to build up. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3b ESV)
The past three years have been a time of breaking down. Surely, now "is a time to build up." I was encouraged by this word from the Lord. Brothers and sisters, this time, let's build up better through deeper love attachment to Jesus and therefore, deeper love attachment to one another. Let's fix our eyes on Jesus and like Him let the joy set before us motivate us to follow the Father's will.
May the peace of Christ be with you all,
Bart W. Newton, Preaching Minister
June 11, 2021
Lord's Day Sermon: "When God Leads Us through Deep Waters"
Psalm 77
Bart W Newton, Preaching Minister
To view a simple online worship service of “Word, Communion and Prayer,” and please click on the the following link: "When God Leads Us through Deep Waters".
From this psalm of lament we’re reminded that when we find ourselves in “deep waters,” our focus should not be on ourselves or our circumstances but on the unchanging and holy God of the Bible.