Three times in the gospels, Jesus is given myrrh. Why? Jesus was born to die.
/
RSS Feed
Three times in the gospels, Jesus is given myrrh. Why? Jesus was born to die.
In order to live with hope in a hard world, we have to get really good at seeing the evidence of our relationship with an invisible God. We have to see and acknowledge the things that point to His nearness, His awareness of us and His love for us.
A special treat for you today. A good friend of mine and long time Westsider, Eric Close is with us. Eric has a successful career in Hollywood, starring in shows like Without a Trace and Nashville and movies American Sniper. He also starred and directed in a couple hallmark Christmas films recently. He ended up in central Oregon in the 90’s when he starred in McKenna which was filmed here. It was then that he connected with Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in which he now serves as a board member. He lives in Tumalo with his wonderful wife Keri and has two beautiful daughters. We sat down recently at his home and talked about the importance of and challenge it can be to be grateful.
Never in my lifetime have can I remember our nation, the Church, and our communities being do deeply fractured and divided. The recent years have literally shattered life-long friendships, church communities, and even families. I’m sure you heard or even experienced these stories for yourselves. As I’m sure we’ve all heard, what has taken place in our world is not so much an illness, as a symptom of deeper problems.
God’s people won’t be the only ones restored in the future – the earth will be renewed too. God will heal creation into a new Eden.
The best news of all of this is that justice is a product of our reconciliation with Jesus. Because of Jesus we’ve been empowered by the resurrection of Jesus, the power of the Spirit to walk into this moment of our lives with the understanding that God is equipping his people to do the beautiful work of Christ.
God gives us hope that his presence will be among us. He will send his own spirit to fill, not only the temple, but his people. His spirit comes to transform and empower us to truly love and follow him.
#lifelovejesus #westsidechurch #bookofjoel
Repentance is the movement towards God that goes along with what we say we believe about Him, because belief alone cannot sustain our relationship with God.
#lifelovejesus #westsidechurch
What do we do when we’re faced with the unimaginable? With something so far outside our ability to fight or navigate? That’s 2020. It seems like we’re on an endless loop of new crises and if you look at everything we’ve faced this year, you realize: We’re still in the middle of pretty much all of it. Still in a pandemic, still in racial unrest and governmental upheaval and – hey, those wild fires are still burning in California. The book of Joel was not written TO us, but it was written FOR us. It has so much to tell us about who God is when the world falls apart. #lifelovejesus #westsidechurch