Wesley United Methodist Church, Orange TX

Happy Father’s day to all you Dads out there.  I hope it is a day that brings love, peace and hope into your life.  All of you who have Dads that are still around I hope you will honor your Fathers and let them know in some way that they are very special to you.

All of you who are young fathers (fathers with small children) remember your responsibility to those children. Raise them in a home that honors God and teaches them faith.  Raise them with love.  Raise them with hope.   Raise them in a home that is at peace with each other and treats each other with respect.

I know that all fathers are not perfect but our perfect Father in Heaven wants us to learn from Him a way of love that is not of this world.  If our focus is on God and His way for the world we will not only treat our children in a way that honors Him but everyone who we meet will see God in us.

I would like to close this blog out wishing my sons-in-law, Ricky Bellow and Jeremy Parzen, a very happy Father’s Day.  Tracie and Jeremy are expecting their first child and our fourth grandchild in December.  As a grandfather I am excited for them as they begin a new phase of their life with the new life they are entrusted with.  Misty and Ricky have already given us three grandchildren that are such a joy and blessing to us every day.  Thanks to Ricky for raising our grandchildren in a way that truly examples how a father should raise their children.  He is giving our grandchildren a wonderful example for the rest of their lives.

God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday.  We (the church universal) started celebrating this Sunday sometime in the Tenth Century.  When we celebrate the Trinity we are celebrating the Triune God.  That is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.   I read this explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity.  “God the Father who is for us, God the Son who is with us, and God the Holy Spirit who is within us.”

This explanation tells us that God who has always loved us, sent His Son so that we may better know this God who has always loved us.  God then sent His Holy Spirit to us to be implanted within us to always help us know the right decisions to make.

Just as we would not listen to Christ 2000 years ago, we will not listen now.  Some of us absolutely ignore the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts, some of listen when we agree with what the Holy Spirit is saying and some of us listen, hear and act upon what God’s Holy Spirit is trying to tell us.

I have to admit that I have at times experienced all three of the above.  My human nature is constantly at war with the Holy Spirit struggling to exert my will over His Will.  Through prayer, meditation, study and God’s persistence and patience I move closer to Him.

Is your will His?  Are you actively seeking Him?  Reach out to Him and He will be there for He is already as close to you as your heart.  Pray, meditate and study.  Build your relationship with Him.

That is all He really wants, a relationship with you.

God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

Pentecost is coming.  This is a great time of year to celebrate.   Celebrate His Holy Spirit coming to the disciples 2000 years ago.  Celebrate His Holy Spirit working in our lives today.

The Holy Spirit is alive and well.  His Spirit is our God approaching us, filling us, leading us with a soft whisper or a loud shout.  We are all led by the Spirit in different ways into a life that can be very fulfilling.  We must listen however to hear the whisper or the loud shout.  We must be in tune with what His will for us in this world is.  While there is nothing we do that earns us God’s love there is much that we can do to example that love to this world we live in.  Following the Spirit’s guidance will example His love through us to the world and show the fruits of the Spirit to those who live in a world that needs God’s guidance so badly.

Be alive in the Spirit.  As Christians it is what we are called to do.  Pray, meditate, study, worship or work are all good ways to get started on your very own harvest of the fruit God has given you.  Share it with the world.   It is His will and it is rewarding.

Pastor Randy

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The long-awaited new Pictorial Directory for Wesley United Methodist Church is in.  Let us know if you have not received yours yet.  Thanks to all those who participated in putting together a really good looking booklet.  Thanks to all those who took the time to have their pictures taken.  These directories are very helpful to those new members who may not know many people by name but are good at recognizing faces.  There is a directory of names and addresses in the back of the directory so it can be very helpful in making phone calls also.

The pictures above are some I took while leaving the church last Wednesday.  I just thought it would make an interesting photograph and act as a reminder of the beautiful world we live in if we will just take the time to stop and look.

Have a great week by putting the smile on your face on someone else.

Smiles are free, you can have as many as you want and the more you give away the more you receive.

God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

John 14:1-14
14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.

14:2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Luk 23:41

And we indeed justly so, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this Man has done nothing amiss.

Luk 23:42

And he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.

Luk 23:43

And Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.

What other promise do we need to hear from our Savior.   He promised His disciples that he was going to prepare a place for them and that they would be coming to meet Him.  To put a punctuation on the promise He told the thief on the cross next to Him that he would be with Him in Paradise on that very day.

Funerals always get me to thinking about life and death.  Funerals are not my favorite part of the Ministry but they are the part that help me exercise my deepest faith walk.  The fact that I believe that there is life after death is something I cannot prove but there is nothing I believe in more.  That Maui sunset picture above is one my good friend Melvin Croaker took on his last trip to Hawaii.  Melvin passed from this world to the next with a smile on his face.  I was there and I saw it.  I can only say he must have been seeing something that made him really happy.  Melvin was a disciple that was learning so much through his disease and was rewarded a place because of the forgiveness that the cross brings to all who believe in Jesus Christ.   

Jesus not only taught His disciples that a life walk on the path of “Love for your neighbor” was the right and only way for us to live but He also taught us that we must live our lives as people in a natural world.  We are subject to the environment that we live in and those that we live with which makes it that much more important for us to stay on the path which He has set before us.  A life lived in “love with your neighbor” is what Jesus wants from us.  Lets all give it to Him.  He gave us the greatest example of how far we might have to go.  To give your life for a friend.  Thats the love that He wants us to show the world. 

Give your life to Him and your love to the world and He will bring,

God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

Luke 24:32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Well isn’t it just a question for all of us.  When was the last time you felt your heart burning when the scriptures were opened to you?  Do you think you need to feel the burn?  Not feeling the burn doesn’t mean we are not Christians but when we are focused on Christ and what He expects from us we must operate in the Spirit.  We must seek out that opportunity for the Holy Spirit to burn within us and to do that we must do what the scriptures say.  “Opening the scriptures to us”  means when we spend time in the scriptures God will find a way to speak to us that will cause the burn within our hearts.  Spend time in the scriptures, it is worth everyone’s effort to make the time to experience the spiritual growth that will enrich our lives and lead us into a much richer walk with our Lord Jesus.

God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

One galaxy the stem and one galaxy the rose…hmmmm…well I guess I don’t have any questions.  There is a God.  How else could such beauty of such immense proportions come into being.  Think about how long it took for this vision of loveliness to reach us.  Think about how much distance is between the two galaxies.  I just don’t believe it was random coincidence that all that is in existence just came into being because some spot in the darkest of all voids surrounded by billions of light years of nothingness could just explode and create all we can see through the Hubble Space Telescope.  Nah, I don’t believe in randomness in life.  I do believe that if we live our lives as God calls us to we live better lives and live a life that is more meaningful.  Live a life loving your neighbor.  That is the grand scheme that God has set before us in our small part of the great universe that He has created. 

Have a great Saturday and be blessed by your Sunday Church experience,  God’s Peace and Blessings to all,

Randy

I have Star Walk on my I-pad and this is one of the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.  As I looked through the pictures I got to thinking about some of the explanations I have heard about the beginning of the Universe. One of those explanations was (paraphrased in language I can speak and to the best of my understanding) that there was a mass about the size of a quarter that exploded and formed space as we know it.  I still cannot imagine that and where did that super quarter come from.  Must have been one heavy infinitesimal spot in an infinite space.  Somehow it had to get there and someone had to stick the match to it.  Could I dare say that maybe God was around orchestrating it all.  God being involved sure makes more sense than some how it just happened to be there all by itself in a room so big you never get to the wall.  If I was a betting man I would surely have to bet on God.  He is the one who made the stars in the picture and He is the One Who sent His Son, the brightest star of all,  to tell us the Way, the Truth and the Life.   God is there whether we choose to believe or not.  His Son is our Savior whether we choose to believe it or not. They love us whether we choose to love them or not.  What makes more sense?  God or random nothingness!  As for me and my house I choose God.

Have a great day, blessed and full of the peace of God,

Randy

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” ²⁶ A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”   ²⁸Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”     ²⁹Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Thomas has taken a bad rap for lots of years and I am not sure he deserved it.  Whether he deserved it or not is still unknown.  We do know that he is the one who said “let us go also so that we may die with Him”.  Sounds like an awful brave man to me.  He may not have been the one full of faith but he definitely was willing to go to the death at that time with Jesus.  Says something about him that does not include doubt.  Perhaps he was the type of person who was upset/disappointed by the loss of the human Jesus that he knew and expected to be the savior of the Jewish race.  We know Thomas would ask questions to try to understand because in John 14 we see him say to Jesus, “Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”  Brave, curious and trying to understand the mystery of Jesus.  That’s what I see in Thomas. 

One other thought about Thomas is that in his seeing Jesus and believing He has risen from the dead, he gives us all hope.  When Jesus tells him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,”  we all who are believers today hear a blessing pronounced upon us all.  We have not see and yet we believe.

Yes, there are times when we are brave and stand up for Jesus.  Yes, there are times when we question things Jesus says because we just don’t understand and yes, there are times when Jesus is real enough to us to feel His wounds.  Thomas may have doubted the resurrection of Jesus but his love for Him never faltered. 

What I have learned from Thomas is that it is okay for us to be brave and bold in our witness, to not understand what Jesus is saying to us and to have doubts about the mystery but our love for our Savior must never falter.

God’s Peace and Blessings,

Randy

I found this info on this website – http://ilifejourney.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/why-is-it-called-good-friday/

First called Holy or Great Friday by the Greek Church, the name “Good Friday” was adopted by the Roman Church around the sixth or seventh century. Among the possible origins for the term “Good Friday” there are two that are most plausible.

The first may have come from the Gallican Church in Gaul (modern-day France and Germany). The name “Gute Freitag” is Germanic in origin and literally means “good” or “holy” Friday. The second possibility is a variation on the name “God’s Friday,” where the word “good” was used to replace the word “God,” which was often viewed as too holy to be spoken aloud.