From the Pastors
For 2020-2021, our ministry year theme is “Connected in Faith.” For the next three months, we’ll explore a different aspect of this theme each month.
- Connecting with God - Draw near with a true heart.
- Connecting with our Church Family - Hold fast the confession of our hope.
- Connecting with our Community - Stir up one another to love & good works.
This month, we’ll discuss Connecting with God - “Draw near with a true heart.”
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22)
There are so many important things to discuss about drawing near to God, but we’ll let Hebrews guide our newsletter this month. We…
“Draw near to God.”
This encouragement doesn’t only occur in the book of Hebrews. James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” What a beautiful promise! What better reason could there be, than that God has promised to draw near to us if we draw near to Him? And we don’t draw near to Him in fear or with doubt. We draw near to God…
“With full assurance of faith”
For God loves us! And we have every reason for confidence in this. As 1 Peter 1:20-21 assures us, Jesus “was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was revealed in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” So Peter is saying that Jesus died and rose again so that we could be confident in and have hope in God’s love.
“Sprinkled and washed clean.”
How do we know He loves us and not only other people? Our baptism. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” Mark 16 says. And Romans 6:3-4 tells us how baptism saves us: “...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.” Because Christ has been raised, we will be raised! Christ’s death forgives our sins, washes us clean. And we now have new life in Him.
We draw near to God through worship, through prayer, and through reading Scripture. And we draw near to Him, confident that we are welcome, confident that when we do, He will bless us with His presence, that He will draw near to us.
-- Pastor Josh Reifsteck
