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Letters to the Churches (July-August, 2023)This mini-series on Revelation 1-3 reflects on what Jesus might be speaking to our church today...and just who this Jesus is who encourages and calls to repent and promises.
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August 13, 2023: "Come to the Waters"
"The details of Revelation are countless connections and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures that bring Revelation its meaning, and reveal its coherence with the entire story of Creation, Israel, prophets, and Jesus. Unfortunately, the details we get lost in are details about when, how, who is being predicted in our day, and those just aren’t the details Revelation gives us. John gives us cosmic images that can orient us in any time or place to help us to live faithfully, courageously, purposefully in light of the Lamb and where the Lamb’s story is heading."
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August 6, 2023: "Endless Song"
"It is not human power, ingenuity, production, or effort that will bring about God’s Kingdom: it is the suffering of the Cross, it is finding God in the suffering and oppressed and forgotten and dying of this world—that’s where the keys to history lie."
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July 30, 2023: "The Letter Writer"
"This Book of Revelation is not here to obscurely lay out a chronology of end-time events for us Christians to make fools of ourselves misinterpreting and mis-predicting for centuries on end…but to tend the lampstands, to resource and instruct and remind and tend the church as we act as the Temple in these in between, chaotic, often painful times between the Was of Christ’s Death and Resurrection and Ascension and the Is-to-Come of Christ's return and New Creation. It is a reminder that this Christ who died and now lives is with us, is near, is tending and caring for us, and providing us everything we need to shine the light of Christ’s love even and especially in the darkest of days."
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July 23, 2023: "More Letters to the Church"
"Churches defending the Way of Jesus have the risk of becoming not so much a Good News people as a defensive, get it right, duty and obligation people. Good commitments have a shadow when we lose the whole picture. They can drain and sap life. But Jesus walks among us, with seven lampstands, with the Spirit, pictures of renewal and life, images that it's not all about your work, but the life-giving Good News bubbling up in you."
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July 16, 2023: "Letters to the Church" (Pastor Mykel Pollock)
"What Jesus tells us is, 'You don't have to fight this battle alone. Open the door. Let me come in. And I will help you. And this call is for all of us in the church." -- Pastor Mykel Pollock
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| 7.16.23.mp3 |