John 12:20 – Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

²³ Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ²⁵ Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. (NIV)

Today we encounter some strong words from Jesus.  Jesus speaks of dying, losing our life, and hating our life.  What can all of this mean?  After all, Jesus told us in John 10:10 that he had come to give us a satisfying life, and now Jesus says we must hate our life.  Does Jesus contradict himself?

It basically comes down to what are we living for? Each of us can have a satisfying life, but we will not find that satisfaction in the things of this world.  A death is required to find satisfaction – a death to this world.  The Apostle Paul spoke of this dying to the world (sin) in Romans 6:2-4: “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Our satisfying life – a life of peace – begins when we die to the world and live for Christ.  This is what Jesus is talking about when he says:  “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (verse 25).  Hating our life is turning from worldly ways and desires, and so eternal life actually begins now.  When we turn from our worldly ways and desires, we then follow Christ, and will be where Jesus is (verse 26).

We will be tempted this day, and every day, to love the things of this world more than God.  It is a constant battle, but a battle that can get easier as we persevere in following Jesus.  Today, let us be steadfast in dying to the world and living for Christ!

Posted by Ramón Torres

Psalm 57:1 – Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,
for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.

² I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who vindicates me.
³ He sends from heaven and saves me,
rebuking those who hotly pursue me,
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.

⁴ I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.

⁵ Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.

⁶ They spread a net for my feet —
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path—
but they have fallen into it themselves.

⁷ My heart, O God, is steadfast,
my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make music.
⁸ Awake, my soul!
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.

⁹ I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
¹⁰ For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

¹¹ Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth. (NIV) 

Before I became a pastor, I was a park ranger.  Naturally, I spent a lot of time outdoors.  I also had a lot of experience with wild animals.  Of all my experiences with wild animals, I was only attacked once.  Now, you might be thinking that it was by something exciting like a bear or a mountain lion.  Well, believe it or not, the only animal that ever attacked me was a Ruffed Grouse.  A Ruffed Grouse is woodland bird that as an adult weighs in around two pounds!  The attack happened one day when I was hiking through the woods and walked too close to the mama Grouse’s clutch of chicks. Mama Grouse was relentless!  Over and over again she would fly towards my face with her talons extended.  Needless to say, I backtracked at double speed! 

I share this story because ever since that day, the opening verse of this psalm has held for me a special meaning: “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.”  I used to think this verse quite strange – just how safe could the shadow of wings actually be?  Well, I found out that they can be a very safe place for baby birds!

The psalmist must have known something of the protective nature of a mother bird, for he used the imagery to convey God’s protective nature.  Have you ever stopped to consider that God wants to protect us from danger?  God is not only faithful to us, God is fiercely loyal, and has gone to great lengths to protect us from evil.  God has given us God’s Word to guide and teach us, as well as God’s Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth (John 16:13). To seal our victory over death, God has even given us a Savior through Jesus!

Today, let us give thanks for refuge in the shadow of God’s wings!

Posted by Ramón Torres

1 Peter 1:13 – So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. ¹⁴ So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. ¹⁵ But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. ¹⁶ For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

¹⁷ And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as “foreigners in the land.” ¹⁸ For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. ¹⁹ It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. ²⁰ God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days.

²¹ Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. ²² You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. ²³ For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. ²⁴ As the Scriptures say,

“People are like grass;
their beauty is like a flower in the field.
The grass withers and the flower fades.
²⁵     But the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And that word is the Good News that was preached to you. (NLT)

Many Christians have some difficulty understanding the concept of salvation through faith alone.  Most Christians profess to believe in it, but when you get them talking, they really aren’t so certain.  Is salvation a gift, or do we have to do certain things in order to earn it?  Passages such as the reading for today may make the water a little muddier for some, so let’s take a closer look.

In this passage, we encounter some things that we ought to be doing: exercising self control (verse 13); living as obedient children and not living only to satisfy our own desires (verse 14); being holy in everything we do (verse 15); showing sincere and deep love for one another (verse 22).  All that would seem well and good, except that Peter says the following: “He will judge or reward you according to what you do” (verse 17). Will God really judge us according to what we do?  Didn’t Jesus pay the price for salvation for us by dying on the cross?  Are not our sins paid in full?

We encounter numerous different writers throughout the New Testament, and each writer had a particular emphasis for his intended audience.  Most of the letters in the New Testament were written to particular churches, and those particular churches may have had questions about particular subjects.  Many of the people to whom Paul wrote were struggling to believe that Jesus really paid for all of their sins.  So, in those letters, Paul stresses that salvation is free.  Some letters were written to churches in which some people believed that since they knew about Jesus paying for their sins, that meant that they could live however they wanted.  In those letters, we find an emphasis on holy living.  1 Peter is one such letter. 

Salvation is free, and Jesus really did pay for our sins.  However, faith in Jesus should not just be faith in some future event (eternal life).  Jesus spent much of his ministry teaching us how to live, love, and to forgive.  If we really have faith in Jesus for some future event, then we should have faith in Jesus’ teachings about daily life, and our faith in those teachings should be evident in our daily lives.  In the end, our actions will reflect whether or not we really had faith in Jesus.

Will we be perfect, and will we always be holy?  Certainly not, but there should be a difference in the way we lived before we had ‘saving faith’ and the way we lived after coming to such faith.  In verse twenty-three, Peter reminds us that we have been born again.  This new birth should be evidenced by new life.  Our actions really do speak louder than our words.  Today, let’s be sure to put our faith in Jesus into practice so that our actions speak loud and clear! 

Posted by Ramón Torres

Colossians 1:1 – This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy. ² We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colossae, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace.

³ We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, ⁵ which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.

⁶ This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.

⁷ You learned about the Good News from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker. He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. ⁸ He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.

⁹ So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰ Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

¹¹ We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, ¹² always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. ¹³ For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, ¹⁴ who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. (NLT)

Today’s reading comes from the opening verses of Paul’s letter to the Church in Colossae.  The letter opens as most of Paul’s letters open – with Paul giving thanks for the church, and then his prayers for them. 

In verse nine, Paul writes that he and his companions had been faithfully praying for the Colossians.  He then states what their prayers have been asking: “We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding” (verse 9).  It may be that Paul chose the words of this verse to set up his letter which would, in part, discuss doctrinal issues.  Nonetheless, we can ask for nothing greater than to have spiritual wisdom and understanding.  

Christians ask for many things through prayer.  I always find it interesting when I see someone praying before a sporting event.  Yes, the person could indeed be praying for safety, and that the players would be sportsman like.  I wonder sometimes, though, if they are praying for a win!  We must be careful in our prayer life.  Not that it is wrong to pray before a sporting event, indeed, I would like to see more of it – I just desire for all people to have the right motives for their prayers.

After Paul prays for the Colossians to have knowledge, spiritual wisdom and understanding, he then shares what his motive was for such a prayer: “Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better” (verse 10). 

We pray for many things.  Let’s also pray that we – and other Christians – would gain spiritual wisdom and understanding so that we will always honor and please the Lord!

Posted by Ramón Torres

John 15:9 – “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other. (NIV) 

On my very first appointment as a pastor, I was at a very small rural church located in the mountains of southwest Virginia.  Wonderfully sweet people!  Some Sunday’s we didn’t have a pianist, and they sang a cappella.  Oh, how some of those hymns could drag along!  It seemed as if they only had a handful of hymns, and whatever we sang was from that handful.  One of those hymns was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  It is a great hymn, and the theology is certainly solid: “What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and grief’s to bear!” 

We know that we do, indeed, have a friend in Jesus.  Jesus is there to carry all of our sins, but the question we must ask ourselves today, in light of this Scripture reading, is this: Does Jesus have a friend in us? 

Today’s reading from the Gospel of John is from what is commonly referred to as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse.  It takes place on the night before Jesus was crucified, and is the longest single section of John’s Gospel.  Jesus makes it clear what he expects from those that would follow him – to love one another as Jesus loves us (verse 12).  Jesus would soon lay his life down for all of us, and he tells us that this is the greatest way to show love (verse 13).  Then Jesus tells us in verse fourteen: “You are my friends if you do what I command.”   

There are countless ways in which we can lay down our lives, but it basically boils down to living unselfishly.  Earlier in this chapter, Jesus spoke of the fruit that we will produce if we would stay connected to Jesus spiritually.  In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul tells us what this fruit is: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”  Not only is this the fruit of the spirit, these are the characteristics of a life lived unselfishly.  These are the characteristics of friends of Jesus.  

We know that Jesus is our friend, today let’s make sure that we are Jesus’ friend!

Posted by Ramón Torres

Matthew 28:16 – Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him—but some of them doubted!

¹⁸ Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹ Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (NLT)

Today’s passage is familiar to many Christians, it is The Great Commission.  It is not, however, the great suggestion.  Notice that Jesus prefaces this commission with telling us that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, as if that whole rising up from the grave wasn’t enough! 

Let us note that a commission is a charge.  It is a task to which we have been commanded.  All Christ followers receive this commission.  It is our common mission.  The first thing Jesus tells us is to go.  Christianity is not just about going to church to worship.  We do that because we want to praise God.  Christianity is not just about attending a Bible study.  We do that because we want to learn more about God’s Word.  Christianity is about going.  It is about action.  Sometimes, going might make us uncomfortable.

Why might our going make us uncomfortable?  It might be uncomfortable because Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations.  The word we translate as nations is ethnos.  We get the word ethnic from this word.  The word ethnos means all people. 

All people?  Does God really want us to make disciples of all people?  I don’t know about you, but that can make me mighty uncomfortable sometimes.  Sometimes I think of this when someone is rude to me, or when I see someone who is blatantly living a mean and rebellious life.  Even those people are included in this command.

We are to teach people to obey the commands of Jesus.  Remember Jesus’ commands?  They are easy to remember – love God and love others.  How do we teach this to everyone?  Well, we can’t teach anyone until we love God and love others.  We can’t pick and choose which days and what times we will love God.  We can’t pick and choose which people we will love.  Uncomfortable yet?!

Don’t stay uncomfortable for very long, because Jesus promised us that he is with us.  We need to stay aware of the presence of Jesus.  His presence is with us through the Holy Spirit.  Today, ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen you, and then follow!  The Spirit will lead you to someone who is in need of Jesus.  You work with them.  You stand behind them in line at the supermarket.  They live in your neighborhood.  We are on a mission from God!

Posted By Ramón Torres

Taken from morning worship, March 28, 2021

Almighty God,

We pray for Your Holy Spirit to strengthen us for whatever circumstances of life we found ourselves in.

Holy Spirit, we ask for your encouragement during our difficult days.

We pray that no matter what is happening in our world around us, we would have the same attitude towards one another that Christ has for us.

May we in unity glorify your name in all that we do, and in all that we say.

Amen.

POSTED BY RAMÓN TORRES

Taken from morning worship, March 21, 2021

Almighty God,

We want to live in Your kingdom right here and right now.

Therefore, we pray for Your Holy Spirit to give us the wisdom and the understanding to know Your will.

We want to live in Your will so that our lives would be pleasing to You.

We pray for Your Holy Spirit to bear fruit in our lives.

We pray to be strengthened by Your Holy Spirit so that we would have endurance and patience as we give witness to Your great love and grace.

And in humility, we joyfully give you thanks for adopting us as your very own.

Amen.

POSTED BY RAMÓN TORRES

Taken from morning worship, March 14, 2021

Almighty and loving God,

We pray that as we grow in the knowledge of your love, our love for you and for others would grow more and more.

We ask that we would be guided by your Holy Spirit so that we would be able to discern what is best for others.

We pray that as we seek to show our selfless love for others, we would serve them with sincere hearts, and that we would not offend anyone.

We ask this not for ourselves, but that others would come to know you, and that your name would be glorified and praised.

Amen

POSTED BY RAMÓN TORRES

Taken from morning worship, March 7, 2021

Almighty God,

We pray that we would experience the strength and power of your Spirit in our inner being. We open ourselves up to this life-changing, life-altering power.

We invite you to permanently reside in our hearts.

We pray that we would be deeply rooted in your very essence, which is love.

We pray that our lives would be transformed by the experience of the fullness of your love.

We repent of the ways in which we have sought fulfillment that did not include you.

Now, as we join together for the sacrament of Holy Communion, we open our lives to your powerful presence.

In Christ’s name we pray,
Amen

POSTED BY RAMÓN TORRES