Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 1:6-8 (July 8, 2025)

July 8, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 1:6-8

Blessings and Peace be with you on this Tuesday morning.

I want to remind you all that we have a Foodies of Faith meal coming up on the last Friday of July at 11:30AM at the Blue Willow on north Campbell. Please sign up at church, or call the church office, so that we know you are coming with. If you will need a ride, give Pastor a call to plan for that to happen. This Sunday, July 13, Sarah will be available at church to take your blood pressure after service. We offer special thanks to Sarah for this ministry. She is a VA nurse.

My purpose in today's reading from Acts 1 is to help us all understand that there are substantial differences in how we see God's plan for His children and Creation, and how people, those who are faithful and those who are unfaithful, view what they believe God is going to do!  Like the Jews of Christ's time, we too often think of the return of Christ, or for the Jews the coming of the Messiah, that it will mean that God will step in to turn all authority and power over to the faithful. That is certainly what Christ's disciples understood. They were confident that Jesus would return Israel and her people to absolute full power over every enemy that they had ever faced or were ever going to have to face. Way too often our view of what God is doing is about politics, wealth, and power. In fact, this is the exact point of the direction in which the Christian Nationalists are pointed. God will use them to run everything and defeat every perceived enemy of the faithful. That just might include disposing of other Christians who do not think like that. I can tell you that I would be one who they would choose to dispose of! All of this is why Jesus had such a difficult time teaching His disciples about the Kingdom and what it meant for them. I suspect that at the time of the Pentecost event, and the pouring out of the Spirit, there were those in the midst of the disciples who continued to believe that their place would be to sit in power over others who had come to faith in Jesus.  This may well explain why Paul and Peter were often at odds with each other and give us the reason it took them so long to reach a common understanding about the nature of the disciple's place in the kingdom. Then we come to Jesus. How do you think that He looked at the work and its result in the world as He moved through His ministry, His death, and the forty days after His Resurrection as he taught the disciples with intensity and action so that they might hold His own view about the Kingdom of God and the people who serve it?  Basically, where we end up is, one side is determined to hold worldly power, but the other, the true disciples of Christ know that the Kingdom is meant to bear the Love of God into the world through Christ and the work of believers.  Let’s just take a moment to consider a part of the Lord's Prayer. We pray this prayer every week, and it considered to be the perfect prayer by believers. The phrase about which I am speaking is "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."  It is clear from this perfect pray which Christ has given us, that it is His every intent to bring the LORD'S Grace and Love to every place, and every person on this planet, and more, to the whole of God's Creation. God's Kingdom will not be based on power, but rather on Love. Imagine the trepidation of the people who were called to serve and to go to places outside of their experience, to the corners of their world! But given courage and strength by the Holy Spirit, they went! And because they went, the world has never been the same. Their witness changed everything!

Thanks for being with me today. Please note that there will be no Bible Studies next week, I will be on vacation for the week. I will, however, be at the Sunday worship services.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 1:1-5 (July 7, 2025)

July 7, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 1:1-5

Good morning my dear friends in Christ. I pray that your national holiday weekend went well and found you enjoying your travels, or your stay at home, or your family time. We had a really great time at home. We traveled out to park the van and watched the Kino Ball Park fireworks, and off in the distance we could see the A Mountain displays taking place at the same time. After grilling out for our evening meal we turned on KUAT channel 6 and watched the Capitol party and fireworks too. After that we just tried to get our Yorkie to calm down as the neighborhood went nuts with explosions and displays. At church on Sunday, we did Gospel Music Worship followed by the Great American Picnic carry-in. The worship was great, and as always, the food was great too.

If you were not with us at worship yesterday, know that Little Gypsy who was bitten by a rattle snake, is healed and back to running around and being playful at home. Thank you all so much for your prayers of support for Teri during this tough time with her dog. Please continue to pray for Kandice and Lisa in Hawaii. Kandice has had some near pain free days over the past several weeks, which certainly makes it much easier for Lisa to be her care giver. Lisa has tests and possible surgery coming up soon as well. If you would like to make a gift contribution for them, as their rent is jumping $200 in July, you can do so through the church. I know that our worship space is warm this time of the year. Our coolers are running, but the higher humidity makes them less efficient, so please dress in light clothing, and pick up a fan at the Narthex doors when you come for worship.

Today we begin our study of the Acts of the Apostle's. We are in chapter 1, verses 1-5.

As we read today's text, we discover that this is really Luke's second major letter to Theophilus. The first is one of our favorite Gospels because of it compassion for those who are downtrodden in their society, woman, orphans, the poor, and those who are infirm for any reason. We also love Luke's first letter to Theophilus because it holds in its earliest chapters, the Christmas Eve birth Narrative in its second chapter. Of course, this book is the Gospel of Luke. Now we come to the second letter of Luke to Theophilus, the book of Acts (The Acts of the Apostles). Perhaps the best way for us to begin is to realize that Jesus, through his perfect life, for his faithfulness to His Father and His Call to serve the whole of God's creation, through His willing sacrifice and death on the cross, and greatest of all for us, in His Resurrection, Christ attained in His Immortality: 1. Influence in the world of faithful people, and beyond due to the faith of all who believe.  2. His forever Presence and Power in the face of brokenness and sin, of illness and frailty, and now, 2000 years after Christ's life in the midst of God's children, He is the greatest influence ever known in earth's recorded history. Jesus is the One who was, the One who is, and the One who will be present eternally in the midst of God's creation and with all who believe in Him. This is the story of Acts. Even in its infancy, the early church was held together as it moved forward by Christ's Influence, Presence, and Power, so that filled with Christ's Grace, Truth, and Spirit, the Apostle's, perhaps most especially Paul, moved courageously into the world of multiple gods, fear of persecution, and moving from community to community with only that which they could carry, and the heart stories they knew so well from being with the Savior.  Yet, their ministries were meant to move forward with the Spirit's help, so the disciples are directed to only move out into the world when they have received the Holy Spirit. (The Pentecost Event). Today we continue to see the power of Christ's Spirit guiding those who have come to answer His call on their lives. His call is to all who are Baptized and Communing in His Church, carrying the Gospel out with His Love and Compassion for God's children. Today, as with the very first disciples, it is Word, deeds, and love of Christ in each person who shares the Gospel Truth which is the Living Christ in the world today. My closing word for all of us today, is that in this busy, information overload world, it is important and imperative that we take the time to receive and be fed by the Holy Spirit in this journey we are taking as Christ's modern-day disciples.  The Church, which these acts of the disciples will help form, will continue to be fed by the inspiration of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Starting tomorrow we will look at how this all worked those many years ago, and hopefully we will find clues for our journey today!

With Love in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 22:19-31 (July 3, 2025)

July 3, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 22:19-31

Good morning and thank you for being with me this morning as we take on another Psalm text from the 22^nd Psalm.

You just received an extended list of prayer requests from me yesterday, so I am not going to add many to it. Today let’s pray that the effects of the "Big Beautiful Bill" will not be devastating for people in our nation with regards to health care costs, and aid programs upon which people depend.

 Though our reading of the Psalm passage for today seems long, its point is not overly complicated. In the first part of Psalm 22 we have a great deal of despair over the situations in which "David" finds himself. I suspect that some of this has to do with the kind of person that David was, a raucous raider, a defender of his territory and his people. He was faithful, yet in his life he acts with disregard for the LORD'S guidance. David finds himself as the elected king of God's people, when given power he sometimes  abuses it, and yet, he is faithful in the future that is his in the LORD'S fulfilling His promises to be David's defender and protector as the tribalism of David's time, and the threats of interlopers coming to destroy all that David has accomplished, and the dangers of David's defense of Israel.  The key here is that though things may not be what David had hoped for in the present time, David displays the confidence and trust of God that will be his in the future. I am confident that from time to time many of us have also felt threatened by the present circumstances in which we find ourselves. The ultimate one of these circumstances is the last worst enemy of every one of us, death! Every breath we take, every journey we make, draws us ever close to the reality of this enemy of ours. And yet, God has given us every reason, no matter what is happening to us today, to trust in the future which He has promised us through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. What this means is that we can continue to live in the present with confidence in the future promise of our loving God. Certainly, I would love to not have my own battle with cancer in my life in the current time, yet I know with confidence, no matter the outcome of this insidious disease now, my future is set and safe in Jesus Christ. So, no matter what comes in this life, I can act with confidence in the present time, because my future is secure with Christ my Lord. David faced plenty of tough times, some of his own making, and others which broke into his life from enemies of his reign, both at home, and from other nations. But his words of confidence in the future which God holds for him are certainly a sign of David's great faith in YHWH. (the LORD) So how do we live today? Like David we must act with confidence that no matter what comes our way now, God has our future in hand. This Psalm does not answer that question that may be lingering in your head. Isn't God acting in the present too? Absolutely! I see it in the simple things like driving into church and never catching a red light all the way, or in seeking the reason I have just caught every red light on my way to proclaim the Gospel. God is present and active in both of those experiences, accompanying me every day. He is actively in my present life, just as He is in yours, calling us to confession, offering us forgiveness, and preparing our future with Him in Heaven.

Just as we have the words of Jesus in Mark and Matthew in the beginning of this Psalm, we also have His words which speak to the future and what He will still be doing after His death and Resurrection. In the last third of this Psalm, we read and hear the confident words of our Savior. In the future He will proclaim God's great good will and steadfast love for His children in the midst of the congregation (His people). I pray for each of us that the legacy of our faith in the present will be a beacon of God's light, guiding those who remain after we are gone, to move into their own futures with confidence, just we have done. God is with us today, tomorrow, and always, showering our lives with His Love, and bringing to us the hope that surpasses all understanding.

Thank you for letting me share with you this morning. May the riches of God's present Grace help each of us to remain hopeful in His promised future! It is my great honor to be the means by which this passage can be shared.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim