NOTE FROM PASTOR J R FOR SUNDAY, AUGUST 4, 2019

This Sunday is the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost. The weather is hot; and the assigned teachings of Jesus and Paul are even hotter. However, learning the lessons they teach will provide some much needed “air conditioning” for our spiritual journeys.

Positive self-help, life enrichment and physical-mental-emotional healthy living industries are mega annual billion-dollar businesses. But I wonder; why is it that they have such poor track record for success? Where can one find a less expensive way to healthy wholesome living?

Colossians 3 offers some much-needed insight. It begins, “Therefore, if you were raised with Christ, … Think about the things above and not things on earth. You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

While we are all children of God, not all of us choose to walk in relationship with God. So, when Paul says, “…if you were raised with Christ;” he’s speaking of those who have made a choice to walk in relationship with God. Such a person has chosen to die to a life of trying to live without God’s help. Remember therefore, that in your relationship with God in Christ, you have access to all you need for a spirit led as well as a healthy wholesome life.

When he says, “…think of things above and not things on earth,…” he is not talking about “being so heavenly minded that we do no earthly good.” Rather, Paul is encouraging us to seek and rely on the wisdom we have access to, through, our relationship with the Divine rather than the whimsical nonsense we often get from the mega-billion-dollar self-help industry.

With that in mind, I invite you to join us at Covenant for worship this week, in the heat of summer, for more spiritual “air conditioning” for your spiritual journey. I will use Jesus’ parable of “The Rich Fool” to discover more wisdom to healthy wholesome living in my sermon titled “Don’t get so busy making a living; that you forget to make a life” based on Luke 12:15-21.

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