Wednesday, December 11, 2024

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Speaking in the Light – 10-13

By Pastor Rudy

Less Building, More Body!
I want to start with an open invitation to all of you reading this to please come on out and celebrate with us “The Official Dedication Service of the Lighthouse Church” to be held Sun. Oct. 17 at 2 p.m.
After what has turned out to be a seven- year, from start-to-finish- journey to remember and a true time of testing to see if our faith was genuine, the very house that faith really built will be consecrated and set apart to the Lord for Him to use it however He see fit this coming weekend.
We will have a time of worship and thanksgiving for all the great things that God has done along the way and we will even serve you some fine finger foods and fun and family fellowship thrown in for good measure. I genuinely would be honored if you joined us.
There are so many readers that I still need to meet face to face. Believe that even if you never set foot into our church as your place of worship, you are still part of my community and I am one who is glad to call you my neighbor.
I love living and working here in Cape May County and believe it or not, I would not want to be any other place this side of heaven.
Over the first 50 years of my life, if I have learned any lasting nuggets of truth along the way it is this: “Life worth living is really all about relationships.” First and foremost it is essential that each one of us have a personal relationship with the God that we say we love, for how can you really love someone you don’t know?
Faith is not about keeping rules and regulations or rigid rituals and routines. Faith is about loving God with all of your heart and all of your soul and your entire mind and all of your strength.
Anything less than “all” will only cause you to be stuck in a random façade of a friendship with a deity that is no lord of yours at all. Jesus was always asking his disciples, “Do you love me?”
I have come to know that love will make you do things that power can’t twist your arm to pull off. It is only love that will cause you to lay down your very life to save another. This is what Jesus did for us.
When the light finally goes on in your brain and the bells and whistles of true love sing loudly in your soul- you finally ask the question, “What is too much to do for a God who did it all for me?”
It is my relationship with God that has ignited my commitment to my family, my friends, my neighbors and all those who live around me. I abandoned the land of me-first to dwell in a city where you really are more blessed to give than to receive. On our own, there is too much you in our “you-niverse.”
When we finally do let go of looking out for the wrong No. 1 and get to the point where we do trust God, we understand that He does take care of us as we go out of our way to take care of others. We are filled to be spilled.
And if you are breathing in the truth of God via inhalation, and not breathing out the works of God via exhalation, then very soon there will be expiration when it comes to your being like Jesus.
The church is not a building.
Yes, we are excited about the home base that the Lord has provided us at 1248 Route 9 South, but it will be nothing more than an inanimate pile of bricks, sticks, cement and tin if we don’t seize the opportunities to love one another.
The church is not about massive multitude meetings. It is more about compassionate need meeting greetings. Church is search and rescue. Church is adopting those who have never felt like they were part of a family. Church is hanging out with people you really like. Church is giving away the big piece of pie and being content that you are eating pie at all.
Church is a place where people really care about what happens to all those who are sitting and standing around them. Just like a house is not a home without a family, a church is not a body without living and active faith. Hey, Does Jesus really live here or is it just a rumor?
I want to close with a true story. Professors trying to prove a point gathered a sample of 40 students from a prominent theological seminary. In individual sessions, the students were given a copy of the parable of the Good Samaritan and told they would be required to deliver a sermon on the subject in a few minutes.
All subjects were told to report to the chapel in another building to deliver their talks; some were told that they should hurry because people were waiting for them, while others were led to believe that they had slightly more time to report to the test site.
On the way to the test site, each student passed a poorly dressed figure slumped in a doorway, head down, eyes closed, not moving, a man described by the testing professors as an ambiguous figure, possibly in need of help, possibly drunk, possibly dangerous–a situation not unlike the one that occurred on the road to Jericho, except that in this case the ambiguous figure was clothed.
As the subject passed, the man coughed twice and groaned.
Ninety percent of the seminarians walked on without offering help. A seminarian thinking about the parable was no more likely to stop than one given a less lofty topic, and on several occasions a seminarian going to talk on the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the man.
Only 10 percent of those who were told to rush to the test site offered help, and the professors were drawn to conclude that as the speed of daily life increases, ethics becomes a luxury.
God forbid that love becomes a luxury amidst the churches in Cape May County. Today is the day to get in touch with the needs that Jesus wants to use you to meet. Today is the day to act before you are asked to help somebody out!
Today is the day to open your eyes, your heart, your lives to those who live and move and have their being all around us.
This community doesn’t need any more church buildings. They need the church who meets in those buildings to be the hands and feet and body of Christ. And that’s something worth shouting about.
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net
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