Here is a four letter word that you never want to hear… “wait”. The Advent Season, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, is about waiting. Waiting reveals us. Consider the last time you were forced to wait. What did that experience tell you about yourself? Waiting also reveals God. It is often through waiting that God shows himself to us. Are you using the season of Advent to learn how to wait for God?
We spent the fall studying the minor prophets and we conclude our study this Advent with three weeks on the book of Zechariah. Zechariah is often quoted in the New Testament and speaks powerfully into a season of waiting. This Sunday we will focus on Zechariah 7-8 and ask the question, “Will we wait forever?” As our waiting reveals us, in our waiting God reveals himself and shows us that in him we have all that we need and more.
I can’t wait to worship together this Sunday.
Pastor David
Will We Wait Forever?
December 8, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
Life Together
June 9, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
Is church membership biblical? Is it necessary? Last week we saw that God created the church, that the church is the family of God, his household, his people. Embracing this identity means that we embrace a new leader (King Jesus), a new lifestyle (the kingdom lifestyle), and a new mission (the mission of the king to renew all his good creation). As the church, together as his people, we follow Christ in all of life for the glory of God and the renewal of our neighborhoods. Here is the rub. All that identity and mission of the church stuff can sound great when it is general. However, that identity and mission is not meant to stay in the abstract, in the realm of ideas. It is meant to touch down into real life, with real people; real people that you commit to, submit to and love in all their (and your) messiness. Membership in the local church, where we rub shoulders with real people, is where this happens. The local church is where the people of God take shape and form. In preparation for Sunday, please read and pray through 1Corinthians 12:12-27. I can’t wait to worship together this Sunday. Pastor David “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5).
Portraits from the Prophets: Hosea
September 15, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
We all know the sound of these words whispered in the darkest parts of our minds, “I don’t belong, I am not good enough, I have failed so badly this time I will never be able to recover.” What do you do to cope?
Portraits from the Prophets: Micah
September 22, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
I knew what I should say. I knew what I should do. I knew what I should feel. But I had to fake it. I wanted to get what I wanted, so I had to do what needed to be done, but my heart was not in it. Do you know the feeling? If we are honest we can all tell stories about doing things on the outside that seem good and right, all the while our motives are a mess.