Walking in God's Favor

This Sunday, we wrap up our series, "Destiny 2011: Praying Towards Your Destiny."  I'm convinced that too many people live as if life is an accident or that personal choices don't really matter.  The Bible teaches us that God has a plan and purpose for each day of our lives.  When a person seeks God and walks in his blessings, that person can expect to live a satisfying and successful life.  Walking in God's favor makes all the difference for eternity and today!  See you Sunday @ the ARC!  Pastor Tom

Wrestling with God

Do you ever feel like Jacob wrestling with God?  Actually, Jacob only wrestled with a messenger sent form God, but you get the point (Genesis 32).  This week at New Life we are focusing on prayer as a means to move towards God's purpose for our lives.

The Bible is clear -- God has a will, a purpose, or a plan for the whole world - you included.  So what does praying have to do with God's purpose?  There are many types of prayers.  But praying toward purpose can be a life-changing experience.  Many people, Christians included, tend to treat pray as an opportunity to present a "wish list" to God.  Praying towards God's purpose for your life begins with getting in touch with God's promises and principles of truth.

The more we know of God's promises and principles of truth, the more we pray accordingly.  Jesus taught us this in the "Lord's prayer" (Matthew 6:10) and lived it out in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-44).  Praying towards God's purpose for you life transforms your life into a prayer which crys, "Not my will, but thine."

Join us Sunday as we consider Go's purpose for our lives and pray for his will to be done.  Pastor Tom

Thinking about favor and healing

This week in our series, "Destiny 2011" we are focused on healing.  Two weeks from now we will take a look at the word "favor".  After looking at a number of healing scriptures, I was impressed by the Luke 4:18-21 text in which Jesus reads a prophesy about the coming Messiah and then points to himself as the fulfillment.

Physical healing is a part of the spiritual redemption and restoration that we gain in Christ.  In Luke 4, Jesus reads, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Take a deeper look at the phrase, "the year of the Lord's favor".  It refers to the year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25.  The year of Jubilee took place every 50 years in the Hebrew calendar.  It was a year of redemption, freedom, and restoration.  What a powerful principle at work so early in the Hebrew religion.

Healing is a part of God's nature and design for you and me.  Just as God wants to redeem our souls, He wants to restore our physical bodies to health.  Let's pray for God's work of restoration to be active in our physical bodies as well as our spirits.

See you Sunday.  Pastor Tom

God's presence and prayer

The story of the Bible is the story of God's presence interacting with humanity.  We live in a world which believes that God is a fairy tale or at the very least a mystical, invisible force that can't be known.  The Bible teaches us differently.

Beginning in Genesis God's presence is experienced by people like you and me.  In the garden, Adam and Eve walked with God in the "cool of the day" (Gen 3).  Enoch walked in close fellowship with God and cheated death.  The Bible says that God "took him" (Gen 5).  Noah also walked in God's presence and was given an important task in God's plan.  The Old Testament is full of examples of people who walked with God and experienced his presence.  God desires for us to know His presence.

Just consider the cloud and pillar of fire which led the Israelites or the tabernacle and the Temple which provided a place for the people to meet with God.  Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of God's desire to be known by us.  when JEsus came we were given full and complete access to God's presence.

So what's keeping you from walking in the presence of the Lord?  God has made his presence available; but it's up to you and me to humble our hearts, turn from our sinfulness, and reach out to God by faith.  Only then can we experience true satisfaction in life and the promise of heaven.

I'm praying for you this week that you might experience a new measure of God's presence in your life.

See you Sunday @ the ARC.  Pastor Tom