Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:6-10 (April 28, 2025)

April 28, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:6-10

Dear Ones in Christ,

Good morning on this wonderfully unusual cool Monday morning. Today please keep our members in Hawaii – Kandice, Lisa, and Alexis – in your prayers. They join us for worship every Sunday via the internet. Pray for Kandice and her battle with cancer. I have been praying for her to have the best quality of life possible as she goes through this health crisis. Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in the Catholic church as they now deal with their grief in the loss of their pope, Francis, and as their cardinals prepare to select a new leader. Pray for the Spirit's presence to create in the college of cardinals a willingness to move beyond their own desires, and that they will select the pope who she guides them to select. (Spirit in the book of Genesis is feminine.) Pray for our congregation that the hearts and minds of our members will move them to more active participation in Christ's Church, the Body of Christ, and that every one of our lives will be filled with the Spirit's gifts of compassion and love for all people.  I thank God for each and every one of you!

Yes, it is still Easter. Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! This passage from 1st Thessalonians is about the return of Timothy who has traveled back to Thessalonica as the representative of Paul. The news that Timothy brings back to Paul is an affirmation of Paul's work there, and the staying power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this passage it really sounds like Paul is in a circumstance which has been most difficult for him. He needed to hear some encouraging news about the staying power of the faith through which he came to the Thessalonians. When Timothy returns to share his news with Paul, we find Paul giving thanks to God for the success of his ministry with these new Christians, and for their lasting faith. Paul does this more than once as he responds to the courage and strength of the Thessalonian's faith lives. It is obvious that they have modeled their own lives of faithful and thankful service on the model which Paul had become for them. It never ceases to amaze me about the connection of this passage for today with the message of my sermon yesterday at worship. My sermon title was "Me, the Body of Christ?"  Of all of the things we think we have learned about Paul, the most important thing is that his conversion experience was complete and life changing. Though we have not been caught in a storm or struck blind to be guided into the hosting of an unknown man, we too really do know that power of the abiding love of God for our lives through Jesus Christ. However, in our modern culture today, I feel like we sometimes find it too stressful to claim the One to whom we belong, who has saved us from our sin, and presented us with the most extraordinary gift of Salvation. Even the last enemy had no power over Him, and now, in our faith journey we come to understand that victory is ours too!  This is the power of the Gospel which we, and Paul, preach. It is all about faithfulness and trust. When I tell you that I pray for you, I want you to know that I am praying with a fervor and joy for your life of faith, praying also with thanksgiving to Christ for the power of His Love to transform your life, and mine!  I am certain that there are those who believe in their hearts that my ministry of 34 years in your midst is too long, but you must know that I always feel that there is so much more that Christ has called me to teach in our setting about the love of Christ, and the outreach of our hands and hearts, because we are unable to resist helping others, bringing them to know the Christ of our own hearts and lives.  It is really important for us to be able to read how the teacher and the students were affected by the power of the Gospel. Pastors have never arrived complete in their knowledge of all of Christ's Grace, Faithfulness, Love, and Compassion. We are the shepherds of the sheep of Jesus Christ, and the pastoral joy in the Gospel of God's love in Jesus Christ for all people is in our words and deeds in this gift of life with which we have been blessed. The call of Christ to proclaim and serve is on all of us!

Thanks for letting me share with you this morning.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 15 (April 24, 2025)

April 24, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 15

This is the Day that the LORD has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Good morning to all of you. In prayers today, please keep Donna in your prayers as she recovers from a cardiac ablation to get her heart back to a steady regular beat. Also Please pray for our Jared who broke his arm last Saturday playing basketball with his Upward Basketball program. He is now in a cast on his left arm and wrist. Pray too for Paul who is most hopeful that he will be released from prison to go to a halfway house sometime in June. That will be a 5-month delay from what was supposed to be done in January. Pray that this time everything moves forward for his release. And pray for all moms as Mother's Day approaches on May 11th this year.

Today we are moving into the 15th Psalm which scholars believe was composed by David. This is an interesting Psalm considering the socio-political divisions that exist today in our nation, and quite frankly, never went away but just slipped into the background of our nation's power scene. We cannot separate David from his relationship with God, nor should we try. Unlike our nation with separation of church and state, David's kingship was deeply founded with a strong relationship with God. Though the language of tents may seem a bit antiquated, it is clear that David is writing about the assurances that come from being a truly God fearing, faithful man in every relationship where God has been appealed to for His presence, power, and perhaps for David in his kingship most of all, love!  Probably the best thing that we can do today with this Psalm is to list the characteristics of the genuine leader whose life is surrounded by God, compared to the leader whose life is not surrounded by God.

The truly faithful leader:

• Each day's journey must be filled with integrity and faithfulness to God.

• This leader must speak the Truth of God all of the time. (this is tough because of sin)

• This leader does not gossip, nor does he/she do any wrongful actions toward people.

• This leader sees contemptable people as abhorrent!

• This leader honors those who in awe of God instead of in themselves.

• If he/she offers to help a person out with loans, they require no interest in the repayment of the money.

• This leader will not act with disregard for the innocent and poor.

• Following these guides the king or queen of a nation, in this case Israel, will not falter in any way.

I probably don't need to list the other side of these behaviors and choices that others often live every day of their lives. We know from this Psalm that David is working hard to please God with his political and personal life. This entire list of character qualities is a great guide for how we make decisions and choices in whom we choose to trust politically, religiously, and socially. Maybe I should put this list out as we consider who will lead in our community. Let me say here that a truly faithful person who is Christian, Moslem, Jewish, or one of several Eastern religions could indeed meet this guide for character about which David writes.

I will be back with you Monday morning as we continue our study of 1st Thessalonians.

 With love in Christ for our journeys of faith, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5 (April 22, 2025)

April 22, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5

Happy Easter my good friends in Christ!

May God bless you on this beautiful desert morning. Today please keep Sue in your prayers as she recovers from her second eye surgery and pray for Donna as she has a cardiac ablation (stopping and restarting her heart) in an attempt to relieve her irregular heartbeat. At church we have two youth members who will be graduating in May from City High School. Please keep them both in your prayers to still be focused during these last four weeks of their senior year. One is headed off to NAU in Flagstaff, and the other plans to attend the fire academy. May God bless both of you young men in your future lives. I forgot to give thanks to God yesterday in our list of people who helped to make our worship on Easter very special. Please give thanks for Robert and Sharyn who assisted at the altar throughout the service, leading Easter Liturgy and distributing Holy Communion. 

Today we move into the third chapter of Paul's first letter to the Thessalonian church.

So far, we have heard of the Thessalonian's strong and vibrant faith which others have experienced in the world. We discovered both Paul's and their struggles with persecution. We heard Paul emotionally describe his inability to return to Thessalonica as he headed south to Athens, and his deep sense of loss because of their mutual absence from one another. Today we discover one of the ways in which Paul chooses to compensate for his absence. He does what so many others in our world today do when they are unable to be personally presence for some important event(s) which they had hoped to attend. Paul sends out an envoy, Timothy, in order that the people of Thessalonica will know that Paul's heart is truly with them in spite of his absence from them. Paul is just like parents who are really concerned about the choices of their children when the children come of age. Then decisions get made out in the community without Dad or Mom able to be there to suggest a direction, or to comfort them in a life mistake, and when things go too far astray, Parents break their promise to themselves to set this child free to face the world and expand their ability to cope with the consequences of their choices.  Yes! Paul is doing the same thing, and then with no cell phone to contact the Thessalonians, he must send someone to check to make certain that they are doing OK in the face of the persecution that Paul had warned them about. These questions may sound especially familiar. Are they safe!?  Have they been hurt!?  Are they using common sense and the strength that I taught them as they came to faith, or have they already fallen away from Christ!?  For Paul, the good news that Timothy returns with from Thessalonica is that the new Christians are really doing very well as they face these problems in their faith lives. It is obvious that Paul really does feel like a parent with them in their faith journey.  For Paul faith is about a person's trust in God and the Gospel, accepting the central truth of the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and how a person's faith continues to grow throughout life as the trials and tribulations of the world and sin break in the faith that we have.  Paul is unable to bear the thought that these new, energetic people who have such bold faith might fall away from all of it due to the persecution which surrounds them at every turn. What do you and I expect when we follow Jesus? If we think our faith will take us into our lives to have no troubles or problems, then our faith is likely to fail, because this rarely happens for anyone in their lives. But, if our faith is our courage and strength, surrounded by Christ's love, as we face our own brokenness and the brokenness of others, then we will find the peace of Christ which gives us the resources of His faith gift as we handle everything that will come our way.   When Timothy came back, Paul learned that the powerful gift of faith which he had imparted, and the Holy Spirit had grown in the Thessalonian Christians, was not weak, but as strong as he had hoped it would be.

I hope that you find peace in your life today and always, surrounded by Christ Love.

Pastor Kim