To listen to Jesus is to hear a call to a certain character that belies itself in our behavior to others. It is a call to live antithetically to the commonly accepted behaviors of the world. It is in the instructional insight that we refer to as the “talk on the hill”, where Jesus puts into words his radical call to a character that is rooted in and reflects the character of God. This is where we will begin to look at the picture that Jesus paints all through his ministry of the kind of person you are becoming under his visionary influence. Jesus believes that your character is at the heart of changing the world for the better.
God is Good
God is good. That is just the way he is. Good. However, God has also created a lot of good people and it seems he has brought more than a fair share to take up residence in and around Ledbetter, Texas.
Several years ago, Lorri and I thought it would be good idea if Ledbetter had a church in the immediate community. There are so many good churches around but there just wasn’t one in Ledbetter. We started meeting in our home but before we could turn around we needed a larger space to take care of both adults and children who were coming.
Ultimately, the Ledbetter Cemetery Association made the church building on Prospect Rd. available to use for Sunday worship and activities and learning for children on Wednesday nights. We are wearing that old building out but somehow the walls are telling us that it loves being used in the community. The part about good people comes in here. All the officers of the association have bent over backwards to support us and do all they can to make us feel at home. That’s a sign of good people.
Most of you know by now that we call the church Soul Cafe. As we grow and develop, it never leaves our consciousness that we really exist because of this community’s kindness. So, we just don’t know any better way than to live up to our metaphorical name and invite you to lunch.
On Sunday, April 15, we invite everyone to come eat crawfish and sausage and whatever else the good folks at Soul Cafe bring that day. It is our way of saying thank you for all you have done to encourage and support the church. The Ledbetter Volunteer Fire Department is our gracious host this year. They continue to provide space, tables, support and help and we want to thank them as often as we can.
We have a verse in the Bible that we feel is especially instructive to us. It says this: Whosoever will, let them come and drink of the water of life freely, without cost. So this is not a way of raising money. There is no charge. We just want to say, “Thanks.” We’ll meet at the Ledbetter Fire Station/Community Center on Labadie St. at noon to start serving lunch and do hope you will come and let some of our folks hug your neck. If you want to join us for worship that day we would love to have you as our honored guest. We’ll start worship at 11:00 a.m. and have lots of fun in the process, around the tables in the Community Center. Casual, come as you are!
P.S. Someone asked what would happen if 5,000 folks show up for lunch on April 15. I said we would have to look around for a little boy with a brown paper sack with some of those barley loaves and Sea of Galilee sardines. Somehow, by the grace of God, there will be enough. You might want to come just to see how that works out.
(If you like to run, or walk, join the Fun Run 5K at 9:00 a.m.)
Resurrection Now and Still to Come
Following the Easter event of Jesus’ resurrection, His friends, followers and even His enemies had to make sense out of the unexpected. The question was, “What does it mean that Jesus died, was laid in a tomb and yet three days later He is alive?” There are at least three ways His followers began to think about the meaning of resurrection.
One is that Jesus’ resurrection is a promise and potential that we will one day share in His resurrection. Death is not the final defeat.
Secondly, faith began to inform His friends that resurrection had already begun. The resurrection of Jesus was not just about something yet to be but that a resurrection kind of life had already taken root in the lives they lived in the immediate present.
And three, the Bible seems to use the promise of resurrection as a way to touch our sense of purpose in the world right now. Our spiritual resurrection is the reality out of which we become the living presence of Jesus in the world right now.
It is still the greatest news you will ever hear. He is still alive!
Resurrection Sunday
You are invited!
Soul Cafe Church will have 2 services tomorrow morning: April 1, 2018
Sunrise Service at 6:45 a.m. (outside)
and Resurrection Sunday Worship Service at 11:00 a.m.
Potluck Easter Lunch following the 11:00 a.m. service.
Kids! Bring your Easter baskets for an Easter Egg Hunt after church!!
Everyone is welcome! Casual dress, come as you are!
Here for the Antique Show? Join us for coffee at 10:30 a.m. and stay for church and lunch!
Let’s celebrate the Risen Savior!
Good Friday Prayer
Holy Father, Thank You that Your labor in our hearts has transformed the horrid rejection of Jesus into a source of eternal salvation. We are moved by the rejection Jesus must have experienced in both His life and His death. We long that He no longer be the rejected stranger, but the honored guest in our lives.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
You Are Not Alone
There are few things that can make us feel more separated in the human race like bearing our pain alone. A large part of our crushing grief is that no one knows, no one understands, and no one cares that we are close to the end of the road of wanting to go on. Pain is like that. The physical pain with which we can no longer cope. The emotional pain of losing a soul mate. The pain of the shame and guilt we are unwilling for anyone to discover. Every pain plots to segregate us into a private world where we perish alone.
Here is the good news of grace: You are not alone. Even in your pain. Jesus has come to the cross not just to die for you, but to die with you. Every rejection, every grief, every sorrow, just like the ones that have sought to ravage and devour life from you, Jesus’ pain of His own death is the guarantee, not that you will never have to suffer again, but that you will never have to suffer alone. No matter how deep the hurt, you are never beyond the boundaries of the understanding and compassion of Jesus.
In sharing the fellowship meal this Sunday, we will remember that in every way Jesus has joined us in our pain and promised that He can see us through it.
Dr. Graham
Most of us woke up to the news that Billy Graham passed away this morning at age 99. By noon very few people in the world will not know of his passing. There are people in South Korea, the Olympic Venue, who will receive the news and immediately connect with the moment when they first heard the story of Jesus. Dr. Graham preached there. In Australia, Eastern Europe, the UK, so much of this planet owes the hearing of the Good News to Dr. Graham. Most people will be able to connect to the importance of his life. However, a legend will be able to connect to his significance from a very personal level. Without hyperbole it can be said that millions of people still living found their life-changing faith in Jesus because they heard God’s call in the voice of Billy Graham. Hundreds of thousands will celebrate today in memory of a “good and faithful servant” of God. I will be one of them.
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
One of the most serious ethical questions with which we have to deal has to do with how we treat one another. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, introduces Cain’s self-justification for killing his brother. At the most local and personal level we must work our way through that same complex question in the direction of God’s lovely relational intention for us. There is nothing about our faith-birthed understanding of God that does not have to seep through the church walls onto the streets, playgrounds, work spaces and homes in which we live. Faith, fully grown, inevitably bears its fruit in its ethic. God seems to be every bit as concerned about how we relate to one another as how we relate to Him.
This Sunday we will continue to talk about what we believe about God by looking at the tragic story of Cain and Abel. With this story as a back drop we can move our thoughts and our hearts to a place where we can plan for the kind of garden/community in which we want to live.
Sunday’s Talk: At What Point do I Get to Slug My Brother?
What Went Wrong In The Garden
The first two chapters of Genesis are the epoch stories of creation. The affirmation of the stories is that God created everything that exists. All things look to the heart of God to find the causality of their existence. Everything in heaven and everything on earth owes its existence to the diffusion of God’s goodness that results in life itself. As women and men, we were created in God’s likeness. That likeness is the capacity to know, choose, relate and love as He does. As we live out of that likeness we extend the life and goodness of God.
God placed man and woman in a garden. God’s habitat for us brimmed with provision. It was a garden that would not only sustain our physical existence but would sustain our relationship with Him. God’s own expression when he saw all that He had made was that it was VERY GOOD.
Up to this point the story of Genesis can make sense as something that took place in the past. We live in the continuation of that story. But in the third chapter we must make a transition. We must decide whether the story is just about the past or whether this is a story in which I find myself in the thick of the plot. As a story of Adam’s rebellion against God the Genesis account is true. However, as an account of every person’s rebellion against God the story is TRUER that true. This is the story of every man and woman. It is the story of every single one of us. Yes, it is the story of Adam and Eve. But it is your and my story too.
Sunday, we are going to talk together about what went wrong in the garden.
Soul Cafe Church 