NEWS FROM SANCTUARY –

Attendance: 86 kids: 4 Offering: $3,800

New Members class meet today with about 16 people plus staff and elders. We have another 6-12 who are planning to join in along the way. The class runs two more weeks, 4/20 and 4/27 with a new members introduction and all church brunch at Romio’s Pizza on the first Sunday in May. If you cannot make each of the three classes, your friendly and lunch/coffee-oriented staff members would be delighted to do catch up sessions with you for any of the weeks.

Seeking: full-time manager for the Green Bean coffee house. A non-profit Christian endeavor connected to Sanctuary. Candidates should have management, food service, preferably coffee shop, experience and a desire to devote themselves to the cause of Christ through community building, food service and ministry in the Greenwood neighborhood. Interested candidates should send cover letter, resume and list of professional references to info@sanctuarycrc.org.

PRAYERS –

God, we thank you for the wonderful ministry of  Young Life as it reaches out to unchurched youth in Seattle and around the world. Guide the YL leaders and may they see a great increase in commitments to Jesus Christ through their work on Christ’s behalf.

Spirit, comfort those who are hurt, lost and lonely. We pray you would be with our many Greenwood friends who struggle deeply with issues.

Lord, have mercy on all of us sinners. Grant us grace to seek you for cleansing from our sins and make us quick to forgive, restore and love others who have sinned against us.

Jesus, we pray for peace in the world.

Father, we pray for stability  of the world’s economies and for access to the benefits those economies can bring to one and all. Let your goodness, provision and justice flow down on and toward all.

REFELCTIONS – on Acts 3

Today, I had the wonderful privilege of sitting in the congregation where I serve and hearing Summer Mohrlang’s first sermon at Sanctuary. What a blessing it was!

Her opening story about wanting to be a world changer in the Air Force while be assigned to projects that were dead ends was painfully funny and reminded me how much all do want to make a difference and how much we struggle when we don’t get the chance to do meaningful things.

Summer then spoke about Peter and John in Acts 3, walking up the hill to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray, when they met a paralytic man who sought money from them.

In response to the begging, you all know that Peter answers, “Silver and gold have we none, but such as I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ, get up and walk.”

And, of course Dr. Luke, tells us in the text of Acts that Peter reached out to the man who rose to his feet, walked…then leaped and then went to praising God in a very loud and demonstrative way.  Everyone who knew him to be the crippled beggar by the side of the road was stunned and God got lots of glory.

Summer’s point was that it doesn’t take money, position, power, or even a fully buffed body to RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT POWER of GOD and change the world. Ordinary people have appropriated the power and acted at the move of the Holy Spirit for over 2000 years and so many, many great things have been done in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father.

I was deeply moved by a tiny spiritual exercise Summer threw into the meditation time this morning. She asked to pause, picture ourselves in this story and identify with it. she asked us to locate ourselves. Who am I? Peter? Silent John? The Cripple? Witnesses to the event? Among the stunned crowd who saw this man after his healing? Who am I? Who and where are you?

I have been thinking about that all afternoon. Really. And, I think I place myself in the role of the paralytic man. Crippled, broken, down and truly not too empowered at all. And, the thing that challenged me was this: “Randy, when you are knocked down and incapacitated are you open to seeing God move in a way that changes you and the world around you?” no sooner than I had heard this challenge come to me, I saw the hander of the Apostle Peter reaching toward me to pull me up and freaked out. I thought, “What if I grab this hand…and I just go tumbling butt over tea kettle because I didn’t understand what was happening, or didn’t get healed, or would lose the power of my powerlessness and hopelessness?”

Yikes. I realized that I have been that man many teams and have failed to recognize the hand of God reaching out to me through the Peters and Johns of the world.

Summer’s challenge from the Word of God, was to realize all that we cannot do…and all that GOD CAN DO in us and through us. As we move into this next week individually, as Sanctuary, as the Green Bean Coffee House, I am anxious to see where we can reach out and either convey the life changing power of the Holy Spirit, or reach out our hands and receive the power to become and do what God has for each of us right now.

God bless your week.

Much Love,

Dr. Randy L. Rowland

2854 NW 59th Street

Seattle, WA  98107

USA

206.953.0909

www.sanctuarycrc.org