King David gives us a wonderful word in Psalm 145. In a heart-felt prayer he says to God, “I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever” (vs. 2-3).

Don’t you want to get in on this wonderful celebration? How can we not celebrate our God when “His greatness is unsearchable” (vs. 3)? He is worthy to be praised and so David declares, “Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness”( vs. 6).

God is so good. He is “gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness” (vs. 8). Now we have the wonderful pleasure and privilege of living out the meaning of God’s greatness in the world that has been assigned to us. We get to live for God. Who would have thought it? We get to live for God.

We get to tell the story of Jesus to our generation. We are privileged to be one generation in an unbroken succession of generations that praises the works of God to the generation coming up behind us (vs. 4). We have the awesome privilege of speaking about the glory and power of God’s kingdom (vs. 11).

I want to be a part of that people who live out the Faith with clarity and attraction. God is too good to do anything other than this. Go out this week and make God look good because HE IS GOOD.

As wonderful as is the message of Jesus, it is also that dangerous. It can divide. Many times people who do not believe in Jesus separate themselves from those who do believe. The unifying Christ can become the dividing Christ.

It’s not Jesus came to divide; it is simply the fact that some people want nothing to do with the Good News, and they disconnect in every way shape and form from Jesus and His Word. When this happens it is a sad day.

Jesus knew that following Him would be costly. He never promised His followers their lives would be easy. He told them, in fact, “…he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:38).

Faith is serious business, isn’t it? It is costly. Yet, the promise of Jesus, born of His own cross, is that if people will let go their life in this world, turn it all over to God, and leave consequences of faith, to Him, that they will find their life, really find it, find a life that is filled with eternal implications.

There is no relationship in all the world more important than the relationship between a person and God. When one lets God become every thing to them, they discover that they are free to love and to care and to live in grace. Their lives become a means of grace to others.

Some people may not understand this miracle of grace in a person’s life but those who know Jesus understand, and wouldn't change it for the world.

As the early church was formed Jesus gave the Church a mission statement to go and make disciples, doing two things as their foundation: baptizing these disciples and teaching them. He sent them out to do their work “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). He sent them out with the promise that all authority had been given to Him and that He would be with them even to the end of age (Matt. 28:18, 20).

Christians are a sent people. We live within the authority of Another, the One who sent us. We live and move and have our being in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. What we do, we do in the name of the Living and True Triune God.

We best not be about God’s business if we are not living in the Call that has come to us. We live in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We serve in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We teach in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We baptize and worship and consume the Eucharist in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We live out the meaning of our faith in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Any hope we might have of being fruitful for the kingdom of God is dependent upon us conducting our lives in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The hope believers present to the world is rooted and grounded in the triune God, who models for us what it means to love and to heal and to care and to restore and to redeem. In God we see how a perfect community works. There is distinction but there is community and unity and singleness of purpose.

We are rooted and grounded in the community of God, the trinity who gives us our lives. What we do we do because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have embraced us into the very heart of God, and we cannot stop living out the meaning of what we have experienced.

PENTECOST SUNDAY

Fifty days after Easter we celebrate Pentecost. This day is related to the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, which remembers and celebrate God giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt. For Christians this day remembers and celebrates the pouring out of the Holy Spirit fifty days after the resurrection. It is the birth of the Church, God’s Spirit-filled people.

Pentecost is about the Holy Spirit and His indwelling and empowerment of people. It was to people who already believed in Jesus that the Holy came. He filled them with power from on high and set them loose in the world to witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is alive.

Without the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit there is no church. When the Holy Spirit is not the primary influence on a people, that people, regardless of their beliefs, confessions , and actions, are not the church. The church is that people in whom the Spirit of God dwells, through whom the Spirit of God reflects the reality of Jesus, and in whom God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth is praised, celebrated, and honored.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is central to what Jesus came to do. In John 16:7 Jesus said to His disciples, who were confused about His telling them that He was going to go away, “I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Fifty days after His resurrection this promise of Jesus came to pass.

Don’t try to live the Christian life with the presence of the Holy Spirit in you. It won’t work. Power to be what God has called us to be is dependent upon the Holy Spirit whom Jesus gives to us Embrace Him, and let God be God in your life.

Who can you trust? This may be the question of the decade. People around the world, even in our beloved homeland, have been betrayed by those to whom they have given their trust. The powerful and influential have exploited their position and have wielded their influence on the backs of common people, people who do not deserved to be treated as if they really don’t matter in the scheme of things.

Suffering is not new; it goes as far back into human history as can be known. It seems to go with the turf of being in a broken world. No one is exempt; no one.

Suffering is a major theme in the Bible. God does not ignore this huge issue, because it is a part of the human experience; it is a part of the Christian experience.

From the early Church right on down to this very morning, Christians have suffered simply because they are Christians. Some of the suffering is regulated by governments, some comes simply because of man’s inhumanity to man.

Suffering is not unique to the Christian but it is such an important theme in Scripture that one would be unwise to ignore the counsel. The letter of I Peter was written to Christians in suffering. Peter told them not to be surprised at the fiery ordeal among them (4:12) but to make sure than always and forever their suffering came not because of some evil action on their part, but because they were seeking to faithful to Christ.

Peter’s word of counsel went further. He told them that they could be sure that God was the One to whom they could entrust their souls, and that He would always do right by them.

Some times life doesn’t make sense and it is hurtful, but on the journey God is with His people, and He can be trusted even with their souls.