Worship service premieres at 10:30 a.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Sunday, April 25, 2021 on YouTube.
Welcome to our Sunday Worship Service for April 25, 2021. Today we will be discovering the importance of listening to others. Failing to listen to others creates all sorts of hurt and pain to those we ignore. Let us discover how listening can bring us hope, healing, and wholeness.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
If you are from another church that is not able to host online worship, we would strongly encourage you give to YOUR church and support them. They no doubt need that support as much as we do. God bless you all for your generosity.
Worship service premieres at 10:30 a.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Sunday, April 18, 2021 on YouTube.
Welcome to our Sunday Worship Service for April 18, 2021. Today we will be discovering how the difference between merely knowing Jesus and opening your heart to him. If we turn from the darkness to seek out the LIGHT, we will TRULY and WHOLEHEARTEDLY know, believe, and follow Jesus. Let us discover how this can bring us hope, healing, and wholeness.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
If you are from another church that is not able to host online worship, we would strongly encourage you give to YOUR church and support them. They no doubt need that support as much as we do. God bless you all for your generosity.
Worship service premieres at 10:30 a.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Sunday, April 11, 2021 on YouTube.
Welcome to our Sunday Worship Service for April 11, 2021. Today we will be discovering the importance of belief and/or faith in our lives, and how faith helps us to see things that our eyes cannot. Believing is seeing. Let us discover how this can bring us hope, healing, and wholeness.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
If you are from another church that is not able to host online worship, we would strongly encourage you give to YOUR church and support them. They no doubt need that support as much as we do. God bless you all for your generosity.
RECLAIM premieres on YouTube every Saturday at 9:00 a.m. EST (GMT -400).
In this brand new video series, Pastor Todd of First United Methodist Church of Newton, NJ brings passionate awareness and helpful tips on various transformational Christian practices and theology. Each episode will inspire and motivate spiritual growth through time-tested practices and and wisdom. This week’s episode invites you to RECLAIM faith as a wholesome and healthy part of our daily lives. Pastor Todd will discuss who has faith, and how it can lead us to different levels of seeing.
RECLAIM premieres on YouTube every Saturday at 9:00 a.m. EST (GMT -400).
In this brand new video series, Pastor Todd of First United Methodist Church of Newton, NJ brings passionate awareness and helpful tips on various transformational Christian practices and theology. Each episode will inspire and motivate spiritual growth through time-tested practices and and wisdom.
This week’s episode invites you to RECLAIM gratitude as a wholesome and healthy practice in our daily lives. Pastor Todd will discuss about what gratitude is, what it means to cultivate a grateful life, as well as why it is important an important spiritual discipline.
Worship service premieres at 10:30 a.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Good Friday, April 4, 2021 on YouTube.
Welcome to our Sunday Worship Service for April 4, 2021. We will be continuing on in the Lenten worship series entitled, Purple Theory. Today we will be discovering the importance of living a life of Gratitude as a spiritual practice, which makes us draw closer closer to God through understanding that everything we have is a gift from God and being grateful for it. Let us discover how this discipline can bring us hope, healing, and wholeness.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
If you are from another church that is not able to host online worship, we would strongly encourage you give to YOUR church and support them. They no doubt need that support as much as we do. God bless you all for your generosity.
Worship service premieres at 7:30 p.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Good Friday, April 2, 2021 on YouTube.
Welcome to our Friday Tenebrae Service for April 2, 2021. It’s Holy Week!!! Tonight’s worship is a Tenebrae service that remembers Jesus’ passion (suffering) during his final hours on earth, including his death on the cross and burial in the tomb. This is will be a powerful and moving worship experience, no doubt.
DISCLAIMER: While this is a full Christian worship experience with mild imagery, a Tenebrae service recounts the betrayal, arrest, trial, flogging, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. Parental discretion advised.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
Worship service premieres at 10:30 a.m. EST (-500 GMT) on Sunday mornings on YouTube.
Welcome to our Sunday Worship Service for March 28, 2021. We will be continuing on in the Lenten worship series entitled, Purple Theory. Today we will be discovering the importance of observing silence as a spiritual practice, which makes us draw closer closer to God through making a space for us to listen to God. Let us discover how this discipline can bring us hope, healing, and wholeness.
Please support us by giving online: https://tithe.ly/give?c=1377216 or https://paypal.me/newtonumc Your support is vital, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You can also write and mail a check to First UMC of Newton, 111 Ryerson Ave., Newton, NJ 07860.
If you are from another church that is not able to host online worship, we would strongly encourage you give to YOUR church and support them. They no doubt need that support as much as we do. God bless you all for your generosity.
RECLAIM premieres on YouTube every Saturday at 9:00 a.m. EST (GMT -400).
In this brand new video series, Pastor Todd of First United Methodist Church of Newton, NJ brings passionate awareness and helpful tips on various transformational Christian practices and theology. Each episode will inspire and motivate spiritual growth through time-tested practices and and wisdom.
This week’s episode invites you to RECLAIM silence as a wholesome and healthy practice in our daily lives. Pastor Todd will discuss about observing silence, as well as why it is important an important spiritual discipline.
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE “But Jesus reprimanded him. ‘Be quiet! Come out of the man,’ he ordered.” (Mark 1:25, NLT)
When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.
Part 208: Silenced. In today’s passage, we have yet another encounter between Jesus and a demon. That particular demon, according to the account, had taken away the man’s ability to speak and communicate. Once he was brought before Jesus, the Lord cast out the demon and the man was instantly able to speak.
When it comes to passages such as this it is hard to not begin to think like a person living in the 21st century. We become suspicious of such accounts because of our scientific understanding. For instance, was this man TRULY possessed by a demon or was this a medical or psychological condition that kept him from being able to speak?
It is easy to get lost in such thoughts, but to do so would be to miss the entire point. Whether this was a medical condition or whether it was the resul of demonic-possession, the point is that once this man encountered Jesus he was healed. Jesus healed this man of what was plaguing him and he was able to speak. It’s is a miracle no matter how one looks at it.
We should be careful to not see a demon behind every illness. Such theology is bad and can be deadly. With that said, that does not mean we should completely deny the existence of demons and evil spirits. It is very possible that this man was, in fact, afflicted by demons and that Jesus did exactly what the account says he did.
It is important to stress is that the devil seeks to silence us from expressing our love of God. Conversely, the devil seeks to silence the voice of God within us. Thus, Jesus’ healing this man tells us something about the power Jesus has over the devil. While the devil tries to silence us from communing with God, and while the devil tries to silence the voice of God within us, Jesus is on the side of the silenced and puts the devil back in his place.
The most important part of any relationship is communication. If communication is severed and/or cut off, relationships fail. This is true in human relationships and it is also true in our relationship with God. Satan wants nothing more than to destroy our relationship with God. We are silenced in our relationship to God through sin and seeking our own way over God’s. What’s more, God’s voice can silenced within us by all of the temptations that attempt to lead us astray.
Of course, God’s voice can never truly be silenced, but it can grow faint beneath the layers of temptations we face. We can choose to end the silence by opening our hearts to Jesus and reestablish our communication with Him. What’s more, if we reopen our hearts up to God, we can also end being silent on our love of God. We can witness to others who have been silenced by this world and the devil. We can bring them to Jesus so that they, too, can experience liberation from the silence and establish communication with God.
The devil certainly doesn’t want you to start witnessing about Jesus, and Satan will do whatever is in his power to keep you from doing that; however, Jesus is onto Satan’s modus operandi, and the devil is powerless against Jesus! In fact, Jesus liberates us and silences Satan. So, we are being challenged to open our hearts to Jesus and to put our trust in his power to conquer the evil forces in our lives and in this world. We, who are God’s people, can and will conquer evil and spread the joy and love of Christ if we but put our trust in Him.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“God is the Creator; Satan is the counterfeiter.” – Joyce Meyer
PRAYER
Lord, heal me from the things that silence my soul and muffle the sound of your voice within me so that I may serve and glorify you. Amen.
