Our Resurrection Weekend services begin with our Good Friday Evening Gathering, March 29 at 7:00 pm, and conclude with our regular Sunday activities on Resurrection Sunday Morning, March 31!

Please find below Sam Karl's notes from the Mid-service comments this past Sunday. Prayerfully reflect on the issues, Scriptures, and prayer below.

I was praying for the social evils of the day such as abuse, trafficking, slavery, abortion, murders, and wars. My heart became very heavy and I didn’t know how to pray any further and my mind wandered off to an event that happened when I was 12.

I was walking to the school. I don’t quite remember why I happened to be walking alone because usually my younger brother and I used to walk with a few more kids from the neighborhood but on this day, I was alone and doing what I normally do, not minding my own business looking around at everybody and everything that 12 year-olds look at and was slowly walking to the school.

I could see a huge commotion a half-a-mile from where I was. I ran to that spot and found an older lady carrying a newborn in her hands crying. She had apparently found the baby in the trash can. A couple of people flagged a TATA, a 3-wheeled automobile so this lady and whoever was with her could take this baby to the hospital.

I remember praying in my 7th-grade faith that God would bless that baby with immense wisdom that one day he or she would turn out to be a Nobel prize winner.

It was pre-Google days so I don’t know if that baby lived to see the next day or not. If that baby survived, it would have made it to an orphanage. Depending upon the orphanage he or she ended up in, he or she would have become an atheist or a Roman Catholic or a Christian or a Hindu.

When you go to orphanages in India and other countries without the foster care system, you heart breaks and you want to come home with all 500 of those kids.

As I was thinking through all of this my heart became heavier and heavier and I was longing for Christ’s return to set the wrongs right.

I opened up my Bible to read Christ’s conversation with His disciples in John 14.

In John 14, Christ calmed the hearts of His disciples:

By telling them that He will return for them and the exclusivity of humanity’s passage to salvation: Only through Jesus Christ.
He asserted His divinity and relationship to the Father.
He promised answered prayers if they ask anything in His name that the Son may be glorified in the Father.
He promised them Holy Spirit and a super-natural remembrance of Christ’s teaching.
And then He reiterated His promise that He would come back for them.

The first time when He assured them of His return, He told them: 
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Which part of those statements fails to sufficiently convey His promise to return for us? None.

But He chose to reiterate it again. In His reiteration, He could have simply said:
“Man up” – I separated the men from the boys. Is this what I get – long cry baby faces?
Or He could have reiterated one of Yahweh’s statements from the Old Testament:
I, the Lord do not change or that He is a promise keeper.

Any of those statements would have been more appropriate. But He said brothers & sisters:

John 14:18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

If Christ chooses not to return, that who we will be.

Besides Jesus, only James has used this word in the rest of the NT, in James 1:27. In the Old Testament, either the equivalent Hebrew word or the same concept as in “Fatherless” appeared 42 times.

In the Scripture, God has always been presented as the Father to the fatherless, defender and avenger of any wrong done against them. As J.I. Packer said in his famous Knowing God writings, “Father” is the Christian name for God.

When Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” The disciples would have been immensely comforted, connecting the dots on the nature of God as described in the law and the prophets: as the Father who does not forget His children. We should be comforted in the Character of God ourselves.

Every time, we partake in the Lord’s supper, we remember Christ’s sacrifice and His promise that He will come back for us as the Judge of all the Earth. When our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ returns:

He will reset the earth.
He will reprogram humanity.
He will purge all evidence of sin virus with no trace.
Above all, we will always be with the Lord.

Did you know we are to encourage one another with these words? (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18)

Are you ready for His return?

His return is imminent. He will come at the hour we may not expect Him to come. Let’s stand firm. (1 Thessalonians 4:15)

Let’s pray:

One true God, our hearts are comforted by the truth that you are our Father. Please establish our hearts in every good work and word until Christ returns or you call us home. (2 Thessalonians 2:17). May you be glorified in us and we in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12).

We pray for our President Elect Donald Trump. We know that you have elected him to our nation’s highest office for such a time as this to do your will and accomplish what your heart is set out to do for our country. Please surround Him with godly counselors as you have surrounded King David with. Please give him good health and protect him from all evil. Above all, please may his precious soul find Jesus as his all and in all.

I pray for those whose hearts are not content with the result of this election. Please calm their hearts and may they find Jesus genuinely through this political disappointment in their lives. We pray for all hate crimes to stop. Please protect all of our Church members, our extended family, friends and neighbors from these hate crimes.

Lord Jesus our hearts long for your return. Please come Lord Jesus, your servants are yearning to be in your divine presence. In your holy name, I pray, Amen.