Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for December 10, 2023. Today we discover that to get ready is to prepare our hearts and lives for Jesus.
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God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for December 3, 2023. Today we discover that Advent is an invitation to stay awake as we wait for and recognize Christ’s arrival.
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God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for November 26, 2023. Today Jesus reminds us that his mission is our mission and what will matter when he returns; thus, we are called to put care of others over our own convenience.
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God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for November 19, 2023. Today we are being called to put our FAITH in Jesus Christ and actively follow him, regardless of the wordly consequences.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Or you can make and mail a check out to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ O7860
God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Read Joshua 1:1-9
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Fear betrays our ability to help ourselves by thinking clearly. Expecting the worst, people prefer to remain ignorant of the cause of their torment.” (Wisdom of Solomon 17:12-13 CEB)
I was just recently in a conversation with someone about the difference between the world I remember when I was growing up, and the world we are living in today. The conversation started around the fact that so many children, youth and young adults are suffering from levels of anxiety that I don’t remember existing when I was growing up. I remember dealing with depression as a teen, and I remember the anxiety that can well up due to bullying and things like that, but that kind of anxiety is different than the kind I find in today’s generations.
When I was growing up I knew that I needed to be aware of my surroundings and not talk to strangers. Still, even though I knew that, it was not like I ever came into an encounter with creepy, stalker-like strangers. One would hear of kids getting kidnapped, but it wasn’t on the news every day, nor did it really happen (to my knowledge) in my area while I was growing up. I never, EVER, had to worry about someone blowing the mall up, or someone coming into store and blowing everyone away with semi-automatic weapons. It just never crossed my mind.
In school, all we ever had to do was prepare for potential fires. Every now and again, the fire alarm would go off, which usually meant that we were having a “fire drill.” If it wasn’t a fire drill, it was a dopey prankster pulling the fire alarm. We never, EVER, had to have “active shooter”, “lock-down” kinds of drills. We never, prior to the Columbine High shooting, worried that high school wasn’t a safe place. Sure there where bullies, and high school didn’t always feel safe in terms of my social life. But the most I had to worry about was being bullied and beaten up, not blown away! When there were bomb scares, it was pretty much always because another one of those dopey pranksters were attempting to get a day off from school.
Yet, that is not the world my daughters are growing up in. In this post-Columbine, post-9/11, post Newtown, CT, post-Paris/San Bernardino/Brussells world, we cannot help but fear for our lives. Every nght the news is on, the world is exploding, people are being massacred, martyred, and tortured at alarming rates. And the level of fear and anxiety is at an all-time high! That fear and anxiety is also causing people to go into “self-preservation mode”, where it is literally everyone for themselves.
Fear does that, it is like a huge spider web. There are so many webby threads for us to get caught up in and, if the truth be told, we are often caught up in many more than one. Once the fear web has us in its grip, we cannot escape! We are stuck in the web of fear until the spider comes down and consumes us. As we pass through the bowels of the spider, we become defined by the fear that has killed us. What’s more, we become the very thing we fear. Instead of working toward building a sanctuary, we build up walls that further divide us. Rather than building up community, we become a part of it’s destruction.
Christ is calling us away from the spider web that is fear. The Bible is consistent in its call to the faithful to “fear not”, for we trust that God is, indeed, with us, that God will never abandon us or fail us. We trust that God will be with us always, even to the end of our lives and to the end of the age. While it is hard in this world to maintain this kind of faith, I pray that you surround yourself in a loving, faith community; I pray that you immerse yourself in the Scripture and in God’s promises, and that you turn from fear to faith.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears.” – King David (Psalms 34:4 CEB)
PRAYER
Lord, deliver me from my fears and lead me to the promised land of faith. Amen.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for November 12, 2023. Today we learn that it is easy for us to fall asleep in our relationship with Jesus; yet he is calling us to keep awake and to be prepared to make a Kingdom impact.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Or you can make and mail a check out to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ O7860
God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for November 5, 2023. Today we learn that though we may, at times, face scarcity, Jesus receives what we offer, blesses it and provides for us and through us.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Or you can make and mail a check out to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ O7860
God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for October 29, 2023. Today we learn that just as God’s graces flows from Christ to the church, we are called to be conduits of grace to bless the world.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Or you can make and mail a check out to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ O7860
God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Welcome to our live-streamed Sunday Worship Services for October 22, 2023. Today we learn that when we find our contentment in God, we are freed for a changed perspective on money – no longer all-important for our happiness, but rather a tool to be used in our lives.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Or you can make and mail a check out to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ O7860
God bless you all for your generosity which is vital to our mission and ministry.
Read Ephesians 6:11-18
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8, NLT)
I just watched a new Netflix Original film entitled, “Vampires vs. the Bronx”, which is a comedy horror film about Vampires moving into the Bronx in order to take over the community and feed on its people. With that said, these vampires aren’t doing so out in the open; rather, they are hiding behind a real estate company that is run by a “familiar”, a human being who is promised by the vampires to be given immortality if he faithfully serves them.
The story centers around a young teenager (maybe 14 or a little younger) named Miguel Martinez, who is also nicknamed Li’l Mayor because of his desire to community organize. In fact, we first see him and his friends passing out flyers to save a local bodega (convenience store/deli), which is suffering because of people “moving out” of the community due to being bought out by a real estate company named, “Murnau Properties.” If you are a vampire fan, you will recognize that the real estate is named after F. W. Murnau, who was the director of the 1922 film, Nosferatu.
As it turns out, these business and home owners were not moving out; rather, they were being “bought out”, sold out, and then killed by the vampires. Miguel and his friends discover this and set out to stop the vampires from taking over their community; however, they find themselves grossly underprepared. Why? Let me just say, it is not because they are kids. In fact, if anything that is their greatest strength because their innocence and imaginations aren’t destroyed by adulthood.
The reason they are underprepared is because they don’t have all the tools they need to hunt and fight these vampires. They aren’t just fighting human beings behaving badly. They cannot just call the police, because they won’t believe these kids of color in the ‘hood over an establised, white real estate business. These kids are fighting SPIRITUAL forces of evil and injustice and, community organizing isn’t enough in spiritual warfare.
These kids, then, realize that though they typically avoided church and religion, they had to turn to it in order to fight these vampires. They needed to go to church, they needed to understand the power of the Eucharist (Holy Communion), they needed to rely on the power of the Cross, and the power of FAITH in Jesus Christ to defeat these foes. Suddenly, the church they saw as a boring obligation became their hope, and the priest they thought was too tough on them became their ally.
These kids learned an invaluable lesson that it takes more than activism and community organize to fight the forces of sin and evil. Spiritual warfare needs to be fought spiritually. In one of my favorite scenes, a vampire is about to kill one of the kids who, suddenly, pulls out the host and places it in the vampire’s mouth after proclaiming, “The Body of Christ”. The vampire was, at that very instant, rendered to ash.
This should challenge us to remember the importance of faith. Activism and community organizing will only ever take us so far. Why? Because people are sinful by nature and, even with the best intentions, will fail in truly setting up sinless institutions and organizations of change. What’s more, we are fighting forces that are not merely human, but are spiritual and evil in nature. In order to conquer such forces, we need to turn to the ONE who conquered sin, evil and death on the cross! Only Jesus Christ can help us overcome such forces and usher in the Kingdom of God in this world. Let us look toward Miguel and his friends as our example of why religion, faith and Jesus Christ are VITAL to changing our world.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Do you rely on Jesus to resist sin, evil and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?PRAYER
Lord, I place my full trust in you. Hold me to this and steer me on the path of righteousness. Amen.
