Wesley United Methodist Church, Orange TX

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