Greetings in Christ!
I hope and pray you've had a good week.
Yesterday (Thursday, February 22, 2024), a good bit of the country was without cell phone service for the majority of the morning.
Those who had AT&T know all about this.
There was some type of service outage. The company is not saying exactly what the issue was.
I didn't mind it. I was able to get a lot of work done without the constant interruptions.
For many, however, it had to be like torture.
Just think about how many times we check our phones a day!
Emily Dreibelbis of PC Magazine reported in May 2023..."More than half of Americans (57%) say they are addicted to their phones, among those surveyed by Reviews.org. On average, in 2023, people are checking their phones 144 times a day, though surprisingly, that number has gone down substantially (-58%) since the organization last conducted a phone usage survey in January 2022. That could be because people simply aren't putting their phones down, so there's no need to repeatedly check them: Screen time overall is up 30% this year. On average, Americans spend 4 hours and 25 minutes a day on their phones, compared to 2 hours and 54 minutes in 2022."
I wonder if we would be as upset if we were without access to our heavenly Father for a while?
Thankfully, our Father is always just a prayer away.
And that access to God has been provided by Jesus.
Our sins separate us from a perfect, Holy God. It is very simple, a perfect and Holy God cannot tolerate to be around any sin.
The good news, though, is God provided a solution to our "sin" problem.
God gave His son Jesus to die for our sins.
Jesus' death on the cross paid the penalty of our sins.
1 Timothy 2:5 - "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,"
Ephesians 2:18 - "For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit."
The only "connection" problem would be on our end of things.
For example: Is there any unconfessed sin in our life?
Believers can lose the love, joy, and peace of the Holy Spirit when they persist in living a sinful life apart from God.
I believe that some can even fall away and potentially lose their salvation if they persist in such a path.
Again, as believers and followers of Christ, all we have to do is confess our sins and accept the full pardon Jesus’ sacrifice provides.
Another potential problem could be just apathy.
We simply fail to reach out to God and try to live by our own strength.
How many things do you and I try to do on our own, never reaching out to ask for God's help?
If we choose to give up our ways and follow God’s plan for our lives, we will be blessed!
Remember the Apostle Peter. Think of all the times he acted in his own "flesh" and crashed as a result.
However, he learned to deny himself and let God fill him with his Holy Spirit, he became a real champion for the Lord.
When you and I give ourselves to God as the real power source in our lives, then we will see results that we could never attain on our own.
We began a sermon series last week called “Who’s Your Five?”
We're looking at some of the men Jesus picked to be on His team when He began His earthly ministry.
We'll also have a little fun with this as we will put them together to form a basketball team. After all, MARCH MADNESS is just around the corner!
I started the team last week by revealing that Andrew would be our Point Guard.
Why is Andrew our Point Guard? He had good vision, was always assisting others, and was capable of making important decisions.
Andrew had good vision as he was one of Jesus’ first two followers, recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. He was always thinking of others as he is often seen in scripture bringing people to Jesus. He was a fisherman by trade, but had the faith to put down his fishing nets and accept Jesus’ call to become “fishers of men.”
Who will be our Shooting Guard? Come join us at FCC and find out!
Bible School starts @ 9:30 am - Worship @ 10:30 am.
God Bless,
Greg H
