Immanuel Lutheran Church & School

I am reminded that love is something people show and do.  It is a feeling, but more importantly it continually needs to be shown .  People constantly need to see that someone loves them.  You can say, but if you don’t act it, then it is nothing.

There has been studies that have proven that love must be acted on to have power and effect.  Babies that are told they are loved, but aren’t hugged, picked up, and kissed will have significant loss of growth and development, possibly even loss of life.

Love is vital for us.  If it is vital for you and I toward one another, then wouldn’t it also be vital for you and I from our God.  God is love.  He continually shows us love.  We are reminded in Romans 5:6-8 that He loved us that He died for us, and His love continues as He calls us in baptism to be united in His love with Him. 

1 John 3:16 says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.”  We are loved by our God, and it is not done only in words, it is done in eternal action, as His death happened once and for all for us, and His resurrection victory was proclaimed and named for each of us as His children.  You are loved by God.  Praise be to our God for His great love. 

God loves you! 

I am continually reminded how blessed we are here at Immanuel to have so many baptisms.  We continually see the very miracle of God as He gives to children that He has called new life.  Eternal life begins in the faith that is given to them through Holy Baptism. 

We are reminded that our life comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  Romans 6 reminds us that it is through our own Baptism that we receive this life as we are united in death with Him, and united then also in His resurrection with Him.

As a congregation we have the joy of celebrating and witnessing over 100 baptisms per year, God is good as He weekly reminds us that He has beckoned each of us to life through His cross and empty tomb.  May you and I always cling to our baptism, as in it we have faith, faith in Christ and His love and grace for us.

God Bless you this week as you remember Your baptismal faith given to you by our God!

Christ has called us to serve.  We are called to serve others before ourselves.  This is a calling that is preached from our pulpits, and is taught in our schools, and is even shared in our society (not under the calling from Christ, though He is where it truly originated from).  But as we preach this and teach it…do we prepare our kids and ourselves to actually live it?

Actions truly do speak louder than words, and our actions seem to me to contradict  what our words say.  Play this out with me.  With children we teach them to help one another when they are in need, yet in the classroom we teach and act with the primary objective to help yourself, as long as you get good grade, what the person next to you gets is up to them.  There is no success of a class academically, it is success of a class individually.  Also, this carries into our work place, which leads to many struggles in the work place.  We strive to make sure our jobs are complete, and if a co-worker is struggling, we rarely help them as we truly live in a ‘dog eat dog’ world.  The problem with this is that companies close and fail constantly because the team did not succeed, even if certain individuals did.

Christ calls us to serve others, those in need.  This does not just mean the needy, the poor, the oppressed (they are included though), but also the fellow student, the co-worker, the one who quietly is slipping away. 

Serve others, a model for life, a model that we each need to individually live for the good of the body of Christ. 

God Bless you as you serve

This is the greatest confession by any disicple yet in the life of Jesus and it is done by Thomas.  Thomas doesn’t doubt the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, he outright denies it and says that unless he can put his hands in the very holes of Jesus (greek says digitally explore them) and stick his hand in His side (get up in there and feel around), he will not believe. 

Jesus grants to Thomas his wish, He allows Thomas and Thomas alone to know and experience this.  Never ever let anyone call you a doubting Thomas for if you are it means that you do not believe in Jesus, and will not unless you too get this opportunity, and the Lord may not grant that to you. 

We see too thought Thomas going from an unbeliever to one who confesses the Jesus Christ is God.  No other disciple had done this to this point.  It is in this great confession that we share, that our Lord is our God, and gives us all strength, and deserves all praise.  This is what we share with Thomas in.  The confession of faith, of who our Lord is. 

Today, may you see the Lord as your God. 

God Bless your week, through His love for you!