Clever Free Methodist

One of the most challenging times in the Church calendar are the days following right after Christmas. There are just a few days until celebrating the New Year, so Christmas can quickly be pushed aside as “over” to prepare for the celebrations of December 31 st .   So, what are we supposed to do with Christmas, the decorations, and seasonal music? Well, that is easy! Keep celebrating! Also, leave those decorations alone and keep the Christmas music playing!   The reason for that is due to the fact that we still have twelve more days of Christmas following December 25th. The end of the Christmas season isn’t until the first week of the New Year in January. And, yes, we have a name for that! We call it “ Epiphany !”   This event that the Church refers to as “ Epiphany ” means “manifestation.” The reference is to God who “reveals Himself “in the flesh” through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is also a time to mark the appearance of the Three Wise Men who were one of the first to ...

  The last Lectionary reading for 2022 is very appropriate for ending the year and anticipating the new months ahead. The two passages are from John 1, and 1 John 2. They are a contrast of thoughts to me.   The main focus comes from John 1:6-9 , “A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”   May we all make the sacrifice to invest more of ourselves into our faith and relationship with Jesus to ensure we powerfully illumine His Light into the darkness of this world. We need to be like John who testified to the light so that all might believe. The world needs to hear about the redeeming love of God. The world needs to see God through us.   As believers, we cannot “just exist” and go about our lives day after day with “self” as our main objective. There are so many pe...

  We must go back into the middle of the first century (AD) to learn of St. Nicholas of Myra (modern-day Turkey). His “claim to fame” was that he was noted for his extreme generosity to the poor. In most cases, he would secretly provide for people in need. Either way, his kindness and passion for the disenfranchised earned his reputation.   Here we are, several centuries later, and with the help of Thomas Nast’s iconic painting of “Santa Claus” in 1881, with some help from the Coca-Cola bottling company, we have our “jolly fat Santa” immortalized in our imaginations today. Given all the historical evidence of the “real” Saint Nicholas and all the stories and legends of the “mythological” Santa Claus, he has to be, without a doubt, one of the most recognizable icons of the Christmas season.   Instead of thinking of Santa Claus as some blasphemous or sacrilegious replacement for the Christmas story of the baby Jesus, I honestly feel we can use the known characteristic...

  There is an obvious lesson written throughout the Scriptures when referring to God, by name. Reverence. Respect. Honor. We should handle the use of any attribute of God with the utmost sincerity and holiness. Psalm 34:3 , “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.” Showing the highest degree of respect to God applies to our recognition of who He is in both word and deed. This is why, before I learned this lesson I am sharing with you, I would cringe in disgust when people would “abbreviate” the holiday “Christmas” by taking out the name of “Christ” and replacing it with a big-fat-ugly “X!” It would never fail, at some point, to get a card, letter or email with the inevitable greeting, “Merry X-Mas!”   Either way, I always thought it grossly disrespectful to “x-out” the name of “Christ” from the word “Christmas.” However, as I have become a pastor and have studied the Biblical languages, I have come to discover that there is something quite lib...

Anxiety. That word, alone, probably triggers a myriad of past experiences or even thoughts about current events and things we’re facing. The definition of anxiety is, “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”   I find it interesting that Jesus addresses anxiety in two distinct ways to caution us from letting anxiety paralyze us into ineffectiveness or to spiritually give up. Luke 21:34 , Jesus said, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from … the anxieties of daily life….” Jesus is saying to trust in God and to keep our priorities in the right order.   Jesus connects two very different things in this passage: drowsiness and anxieties . Generally, anxiety would seem to be associated with insomnia rather than drowsiness. Cares and worries tend to keep us awake rather than lull us to sleep. We need to be very careful not to slip into drowsiness and laziness that says, “God will provide; I ...

You are the Church. I am the Church. We are the Church together. That may sound familiar as many of us have sang these words in the song “We Are the Church” by Richard Avery and Don Marsh. The first verse is very powerful: “The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.” The Church is not an organization, but an organism. It is living. It is people. I like what the Free Methodist Church says about the church in its “Book of Discipline”  on page one: “It is clear from Scripture that the church is of God and for people. It is His creation. Christ is its head. The church is the people of God chosen for a purposeful partnership in accomplishing the will of God on earth.” This concept of the church makes it more understandable why Paul was so passionate in his letter to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 3:9, 16 , we see to powerful statements of Paul: “For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, ...

I don’t think anyone who has faced being ridiculed or slandered has found it to be a pleasant experience. An attack on our worth or enduring a heated or unkind statement meant to hurt our feelings can be painful and crushing.   Dignity! That is a very important word. It is important because everyone has it within their possession and it is a gift to be honored and guarded, but not thrown away. Dignity is defined as “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.” This is a quality that should be found within all Christians as they see all others as equal in worth and value in the sight of God.   God created us in His image which makes us all equal in worth and value. When we evaluate ourselves, we know we are not greater or less than any other person. We can be assured of being unconditionally loved by God. Psalm 139:13-14 , “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.   I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderf...