Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 2:37-41 (August 11, 2025)

August 11, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 2:37-41

Dear friends, may the Peace which passes all understanding fill your life every day with the joy and love of our Savior Jesus Christ.

When I went out this morning to take the boys to school, there was once again evidence of an extremely light rain during the night on the car's windshield. There were just a few spots on the windshield that were not there yesterday when I drove the car. Please pray for Tricia who will begin her radiation treatments now that she has finished the chemo treatments. She hopes to be done in time to travel later in September. Please pray for our James too. He is home today with acid reflux and throwing up. Also please remember one of James' teachers, Bengie, who had emergency gall bladder surgery last week, and has had to return to the hospital soon after her discharge because she developed complications after the surgery. She hopes to be back in school by this coming Thursday. I want to offer a word of thanks for the thoughtfulness of our Church Council at our meeting yesterday. In all our variety on the council, the unity that we share in Christ is wonderful. It was a great meeting.

There was another place several thousand years ago on the streets of Jerusalem when Jews from greatly diverse places, who spoke a language that was not necessarily of Jewish origin who heard the Good News of Jesus Christ's Resurrection in their homeland's native language. This was the time of the Pentecost event, when the Holy Spirit brought this gift of speaking and hearing with a clarity not heard of in any place before this day. But in the midst of the telling of the Truth of Christ's Gospel, and His suffering and death at the hands of the Jews who were gathered in the city for Passover, a number, quite large for that day actually, through Peter's preaching, came to understand the horror of that mob mentality on the day of the Savior's death on the cross.  However, it was even more powerful when the eyewitnesses, who were filled with the greatest joy imaginable, shared their witness to Christ's Resurrection! This is where we start today's reading from Acts 2:37-41.

In their realization of what has happened, with the witness of the Apostles, many who are hearing Peter are caught up in shame for what they have done. This is the group who comes to be Baptized, to know with confidence, the forgiveness of the Savior, and now commits to their Messiah, to become His followers and faithful ones. We do have to know though, that Jerusalem was filled with doubters, the ones who would do it all again, even with all of the eye witness claims, and later, as least, this would make the work of the Jerusalem mission come to be filled with problems, and worse than that, it would not be very long after the Pentecost before those unbelievers would make the Apostle's mission there fall flat, and in need of the infusion of resources to continue!  (Hence the offerings of the churches in Asia Minor for which Paul would eventually call.)

In today's passage there are some things which we all need to know:

1. Coming to faith during the excited atmosphere of Pentecost would probably mean that many would quickly slip away from that new faith.

2. In this passage we come to understand the power of the Cross. It can and does transform hearts and minds due to the Spirit's in-breaking gift of faith, which is combined with the witness of those who already know the fullness of Christ's Grace and Love for everyone. That metanoia (change) happens when we come to realize our own participation in sin which created, and creates, the need for the Lord to die on that Cross. It is why we need to be together in confession and prayer every week, and I suppose that every day might be better in some ways, so that we can stay in touch with our Savior and His incredible willingness to die for OUR SINS!

3. When sins are confessed before the Savior, the earthly consequences of that sin are rarely undone. We really need to know that for our lives and choices. There is a price to pay which we must always be aware. That consequence is death, and there is only one escape from the judgement of condemnation and separation from God. That escape comes when the Perfect One of God, His Only Son, came to pay the blood price for all sin, and it is only through faith, receiving forgiveness from God through the merit of His Son, that we are set free from the burden and death consequence of our sin. 

4. When sinners repent, the freedom of being saved is strengthened through the Spirit's gift of Faith, and we all come to realize that without this saving Grace of Christ, we are all bound to be separated from God's Grace and Love. This happens because everyone falls short of the Glory of God, and to be right with God our sin must be erased through Jesus Christ, our Savior. It is only through Jesus that the consequences of our past sins, become Christ's burden, and we then are given the burden of Christ's Love and forgiveness, to move into the Freedom of the Spirit's gift of faith which carries us to greater maturity and Love in our relationships in the world, and better yet, in our relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

I will be back with you tomorrow. Tomorrow’s study might be a bit delayed. Melody has jury duty in the morning, so in addition to transporting the boys to school, I will be taking Melody down to Superior Court early in the morning. I still hope to have the study out to you by noon tomorrow.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 26 (August 7, 2025)

August 7, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 26

May the LORD be with you this morning, and may you find safety in His Love.

It’s good to be with you today.  I thought that I might have sat down and written today's Psalm study last night but being out and about in yesterday's heat left me longing for rest when I finally got home.  So here we are this morning.  Today's Psalm is not a long one, but it gives us a chance to peer into the mind of King David.  Let's get that started now.  There are two directions one might choose for the reasoning of David and his need to speak this prayer to the LORD.  First, it could mean that David has been involved in some kind of military conflict and has written this Psalm as a kind of claim that he is righteous before the Lord in all things, including the shedding of blood.  We must always remember that blood is seen by David, and by God I might add, as the foundation of life itself, so to be responsible for "spilling it" could be a serious break with God and David's faith relationship.  But there is another way we could all view this Psalm.  Perhaps David sees himself as faultless before God.  When we read this prayer again, that would appear to be how David sees himself as an extremely positive light, and that his status before God is one of perfection.  We don't have to look far in our own time to see the men, yes, I believe it to be primarily men, who see themselves as innocent of any sin.  This is often so that their tender egos can be protected.   Of course, in whichever direction you might choose to understand this Psalm, in its first line, we must admit how admirable it is that David is seeking God's guidance for all that he is doing as the King of Israel.  Frankly, each new day should start with you and I seeking God's guidance for what lies ahead of us in the coming hours of that day, and then not forgetting that we have this Holy Presence surrounding us in every choice we must make.  It would be great if every leader of every nation understood that the Holiness of God can be theirs in every choice and sought to live their lives with the kind of resolve of David to be God's person in all that they had to make decisions about in each new day.  However, having the Holy Living Presence of the LORD surrounding us in our decisions is really great, yet there is another part of this thanksgiving for God's Holy guidance in all things, and that is to proclaim the truth about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob , and the Father of the Living Christ,  If we have joy in God's help in all things, then we must certainly proclaim the LORD'S greatness and powerful love for His children.  In our lives, we are responsible for making choices which drag us into unholy places and relationships.  AND we should not choose that direction and intimate contact with people like that.  This would seem to get in the way of what witnessing should be about, yet David's words for us would say that we should not allow ourselves to be involved with those people beyond witnessing to them.  Witness, speak, and act to bring comfort and hope to folks, but never, ever allow their place to enfold you in such a way that you become entrapped with them.  In it all, I always hope that the interaction of Christ through me, or my help, for these unsheltered ones, will bring a difference through faith gifted by the Spirit, or how about thieves and criminals?  What will change their hearts?  It might start with my witness, but the transformation is of God Himself through the Spirit, and you and I are led to not be influenced by the places where their hearts live.  David knew all of this about his life and kingship.  This Psalm prayer is his way to share his very heart about the world of others who may drag a faithful person away from the LORD!

Next week we move on to Psalm 27.  I pray that you are staying comfortable in this terrible heat.  I hope that you will be able to be with our Savior during worship at American this Sunday. May your hope and faith in Jesus Christ call you to gentle and compassionate witness.  

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 2:22-36 (August 5, 2025)

August 5, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 2:22-36

Good morning my dear friends in Christ. Please be careful in the heat over the next few days of this week. It is just going to be too hot to be out and about for any long periods of time. And yes, I still believe that we all need to be praying for the relief of some rain. It has been far too long since we had good heavy rain in Tucson. I think that we can all relate to the stories of drought and famine that are a part of the Old Testament that brought Joseph's family to Egypt. However, in other ways, others fled to Egypt as a kind of self-imposed exile, like the prophet Jeremiah, and even Mary, Joseph, and their son Jesus when the then King of Israel set out to destroy this new great king who was going to place Israel on a right path with God. In our longer reading for today, we can see the Spiritual drought of the people of Jerusalem, and if we think very much about the content of this reading, we can see such strong parallels to our modern times and how often, even people in the Church can be led astray by power, greed, and a hunger for control over the Father in Heaven, especially when they have failed to understand the importance of the Christ of Heaven for all of history.  This is where the Christian Nationalists have found their own "faith" taking them. They are caught in an extremely difficult reality of their own making, not of the giving of compassion, forgiveness, and love which comes from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This quite unchristian movement in the modern church really needs to re-read this passage during which the preaching of Peter reminds everyone present who Jesus really is. Remember His necessary connection to King David, and Jesus being the living presence of God in the world, bringing God's Grace and Compassion for the sin of the world to a place where it was, and continues to be, forgiven through faith in the Messiah, God's only begotten Son.  Peter also reminds the crowds listening, that they bear responsibility for the Messiah's death on the cross, assuring the people that not even death could hold Jesus because of His Holy and perfect righteousness, His complete freedom from sin. Peter tells the crowd that even David understood who this heir of his would be. And those who were gathered to hear Peter, heard through the Spirit, their own responsibility for the Son of God being murdered. But Peter lets them know, as do other Apostolic proclaimers that the cross on which Christ died at the hand of sinners, was always God's plan, so that people might once again come into a right relationship with Him! The most sinful act in all of history was carried out by the Jews, and of course, we bear that very same sin in our own lives, in all of its horrible reality, and if we were the ones to encounter the Savior, we too would likely clammer for His death as a charlatan and criminal when we thought we were the right ones, and He was the evil presence in our world threatening the importance of wealth and power that we so often treasure as the really important stuff of this life we live.

And where is Peter's proof in all of this? He, and the other disciples of Jesus, have all witnessed the Resurrection of the Savior! This is such an extraordinary claim that it is no wonder that the Spirit's gift of faith in the lives of God's children is needed for all who accept Christ! Where else, or when, have any of us ever seen a person raised from the dead after days of being dead? The struggle for Peter and the other Apostles will be that some will come to belief, and others will never understand, even though the Holy Spirit has worked to move all people to faith in Christ. Only God really knows why some remain unfaithful, or perhaps worse, revert to some unholy lie while still claiming to be Christian, or are never able in their lives to accept this glorious reality, and the presence of Holy Grace in the Son of God, our Savior.

This Sunday our Church Council meets after worship. They are reminded to bring snacks for that meeting. The Blood Pressure Clinic will also be available after church with Sarah Wright; RN. Our thanks to Sarah for her faithfulness in this health ministry!

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim