Come and See!

Hello...Here it is Monday again!  I trust that you have had a pleasant weekend and that today is the beginning of a good week for you.  Since I retired, Mondays aren't so bad...I rather like them. It's a day to get back on track from the weekend and to begin anew for a brand new week. It's kind of nice to ease into the day without feeling any pressure to do this or that...but on the other hand, it is also a time to go back over the things we learned over the weekend...perhaps at church...and put into practice what we've been taught.  So, as a part of my "One Word" for 2018 RENEW or RENEWAL, I am trying to apply what I've heard or read in God's Word and to see where it leads me in this path to renewal.

This beautiful dogwood blossom reminds me of the Cross...
We almost cut down this dogwood tree because it appeared to be dying...
I'm so glad we didn't follow our assumptions...

I hope you don't mind my sharing my notes from the Sunday Sermon with you here. I know you all go to your own churches and have marvelous pastors and teachers too, but this is an exercise for me as well as for you...it helps me to remember what has been taught before I get too busy and put my notes aside or in the trash when I clean out my Bible or purse...There is too much valuable stuff here to lose. So here goes:

Scripture: Read John 1:43-51, but the key verse is #46:

"And Nathanael said to him, 

'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'

Philip said to him, 

"Come and see."

These azaleas and dogwood are blooming along a fence by an old house that has been sadly neglected...no one comes to care for them, and yet they bloom year after year...one might assume that nothing good could come out of there...but come and see...

They were speaking of Jesus here, early in His ministry when He was gathering His disciples together...in verse 43 He had just found Philip and said to him, "Follow Me."  Philip was so excited and thrilled at being called by Christ that he wanted everyone he knew to follow Him as well.  He recognized that Jesus was the One "of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."  But Nazareth was a small, dirty, unpopular little town, where no one of any good reputation had ever come from before. Nathanael assumed that anyone worth knowing could not have come from Nazareth.  

Oh! What a sad misconception! Thankfully, Jesus perceived Nathanael's thoughts and helped him reconsider his wrong assumptions before he missed out on the greatest opportunity of a lifetime...to follow Jesus Christ, the Messiah!

I wonder what wrong assumptions we have been guilty of in our lives? Perhaps many of us have been quick to judge others for other less thoughtful reasons...race, nationality, their appearance or clothes, the kind of car they drive or the side of town they came from...or perhaps we ourselves have been wrongly judged for the same reasons.  Maybe we've judged ourselves harshly because we feel inadequate, we lack self-confidence, have inferiority complexes because of whatever we've been taught, told, or experienced by the malicious assumptions of others.

We might assume that nothing good could come out of this very ugly, unusual, dead looking "tree trunk"

Sadly, we let these assumptions become our "hiding places"...they keep us from engaging with God at a deeper level.

We allow our assumptions to become limitations...they "close the possibility of growth, reconciliation, change..."  "No room for God to show up in our lives..."

We need to let God speak to our hearts...but in order to do that we need to be in a relationship with Him before we can grow and overcome these  false "assumptions".  "Our faith hinges on Jesus Christ being raised from the dead..."

These beautiful flowers (Carolina Jessamine) are growing and blooming out of that ugly trunk above...amazing, huh? 

"God loves you no matter who you are or where you're from..."

Christ in you..."God takes ordinary, fallible human beings and makes them do great things..."...Look at Moses, Paul, Peter...and many other examples throughout the Bible and history.

"Thankfully, God is not limited by our assumptions.  But we need to position ourselves to meet God"..."Come and See!"  

(Quotes are from Sunday's sermon, 2/25/2018 at First United Methodist Church, Interlachen, FL, Pastor A.C. Myers)

So now, what am I going to do with this information?  May God help me to apply it to my heart...and to put away those false assumptions that may be limiting my own personal spiritual growth.  Perhaps there is something here for you today as well?  

"Come and see!!"