MOPS Annual Easter Egg-stravaganza!
What: Games, Face Painting, Crafts, Story Time and an Egg Hunt!
All families with young children are welcome!
Please bring 24 filled eggs per family (no nut products, please.)
When: March 31st 10 am
Where: Bethel Fellowship Hall
*If you would like, you can also bring items to help us fill baskets for the women and children at Union Gospel Mission and the battered women’s shelter. These items include (but are not limited to): full size toiletries (shampoo, deodorant, soap, etc.) chapstick or lip gloss, books, pocket-size kleenex, candy.
*Feel free to invite friends and neighbors! The story time will include a gospel presentation.
Contact: If you have any questions, please contact Erica Herzog @ bneherzog@hotmail.com or 713-5251.
Faith, Racial Diversity, and the End of the Age
The memory verse for March 2012 is Romans 3:23-25.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith
When Jesus Christ came, he radically altered the way one defines the people of God. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, American or Arab, rich or poor. Inclusion among the people of God is based on faith alone. The more we see and experience God’s righteousness and graciousness, freely poured out on those who fear him, the more we will be swept up in God’s vision for racial diversity. And, the more we treasure racial diversity, the sooner we will abandon our ethnocentric tendencies in order to join God in his work of calling people from every tongue, tribe and nation to worship Him. And then, Continue reading
How do you explain justification to your tween?
Use the following dialogue with your Tween to talk about the amazing gift of justification we have in Jesus! God the Father had a plan of grace for us (Grace-unmerited favor-receiving something we do not deserve). Jesus has taken the consequence that we ALL deserve when he shed His perfect blood for our sins.
Something amazing happens when we believe by faith in Jesus we are forgiven and freely justified. Think of it as “just-if-I-had” never sinned. Really? Jesus’ work and sacrifice on the cross frees me from the consequence of my sin and declares me innocent?
Yes! That is what is so amazing about grace! While the following story pales in the comparison to the awesome work of Jesus, it might help to understand a little more about the gifts of grace, justification, sacrifice, and atonement for our sins as seen in Romans 3:23-25.
One day two kids were playing in their neighborhood. Although they had been warned several times about trespassing on Mr. Erie’s property, they could not find it in themselves to stay away from his interesting house. Continue reading
March Memory Verse
Here is your memory verse for March.
Romans 3:23-25
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith.
Is there a seat at the Table for you?
Church doesn’t end after a weekend service or small group meeting. Prayer, service, study and fellowship are important aspects of faith that aren’t restricted to a couple hours a week. That is why Bethel is preparing a special seat for everyone at the Table, a place where you can connect and put your faith into action – serving, sharing, and praying together – 24/7.
There is a seat at the Table for you. Stay tuned for more details. The Table is coming this Spring.
Bethel Job Postings
Sports Coordinator – 30 hours/week
Full Description Click Here
Administrative Assistant – 23 hours/week
Full Description Click Here
Download application Click Here
Campaign for Marriage Begins Now
Campaign for Marriage Promo from Bethel Church.
The Bethel Elders and Leadership Team have identified several areas for Bethel to grow in this year. One of these areas is to equip marriages to be Christ-honoring. Bethel’s Campaign for Marriage is designed to help us grow. The campaign includes three components: a focus on prayer (beginning now), a six-week small group study (beginning week of April 15), and the Love and Respect Marriage Conference (on April 20 & 21).
This week’s prayer focus: pray for marriages currently in a storm, for each spouse to trust Him, to think rightly, to be Spirit filled, and to draw near to God.
The Gospel of Mercy AND Grace – Part 2
In Part 1 of this two-part post, we humbly marveled at the glorious exchange of the Gospel as described in 2Cor. 5:21. Christ has no sin but ours. Christians have no righteousness but his. In the least, we know that everyone who receives this truth and trusts in Christ for his or her righteousness is a child of God (Jn 1:12). But does the Gospel accomplish more in us than initial adoption into God’s family? How is the Gospel relevant to Christians who have already believed it? How does simultaneously recognizing our sinfulness and our acceptance in Christ help us to address every obstacle and to grow in every aspect?
The gospel of mercy and grace shows us that our spiritual problem is not merely failing to obey, but is also relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, to ourselves, and to others. Our acceptability to God is based on the exchange we make with Christ alone. We are mercifully forgiven because our sins were credited to Christ, who was crucified in our place. In Christ, we are not condemned for our sins. AND, we are righteous because Christ’s perfect obedience is credited to us. Any attempt to do good and earn what we have already been graciously given is useless at best.
Every sin comes from a natural tendency to forget the righteousness that Christ gives to us and to strive to make ourselves acceptable. Tim Keller writes, “Pride and disdain can come from basing your identity and acceptance on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. Discouragement and self-loathing also come from basing your identity and acceptance of your performance and thinking you are failing.” Bringing the Gospel to bear on all areas of our thinking, feeling, and behaving is the key to overcoming obstacles and growing as a Christian. Receiving our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit our flaws and to be confident that we won’t be rejected. Obedience also becomes easier because it is no longer tied to the burden of obtaining God’s favor.
In my personal life, understanding the Gospel and the doctrine of justification, which is what we have been meditating on in February, has been absolutely vital for the sake of my marriage. Marriage can feel impossible at times because each spouse feels so self-justified in their partner’s failure to meet expectations. My wife and I call it “the death spiral” and it goes something like this.
“I’m so tired of telling you to do ________!”
“I’m sorry! I just forgot, OK? And what are you so angry about? You think you do all the things I ask?”
“Don’t change the subject. I’ve asked you over and over again. I feel like you don’t listen to me.”
“Maybe. But why would I listen to you when you are constantly on my case. I don’t even want to listen when you speak so disrespectfully!”
“Well, I could speak more kindly if I knew you cared enough to help out the first time I asked you!”
“Ugh! This is getting us nowhere! I’m tired of this argument!”
And so the spiral continues and leads to death. The cycle of self-justification, pity, and anger seems unbreakable. But, when one or both of us is overcome by the truth of justification by faith, and the particular truth that God has already accepted me in Christ as having fulfilled all his expectations, escape from the cycle becomes feasible. I no longer need to respond with defensiveness feeling that I have failed my wife. I know that I have! But, I know also that in Christ I am forgiven and accepted even as a failure. I am free to admit that I forgot to help out even though my wife has asked me over and over. I can ask her forgiveness knowing that doing so does not make me less in anyone’s eyes, especially God’s.
Moreover, I pray that my wife and I would be SO overwhelmed and mastered by the truth of justification that we would learn to see each other the way God sees each of us in Christ – perfect and complete. It will be possible for us to say, “For the sake of Christ, I will not think in terms of whether my expectations and hopes are met. I will love and serve and nurture even when I see shortcomings and failures.”
The Gospel saved you once and it saves you still. Walk in the forgiveness (i.e., mercy) and righteousness (i.e., grace) that are already yours in Christ Jesus.
February Memory Verse and Tween Activity
February Memory Verse and Tween Activity
This is our final part of our Activity series involving the February Memory Verse and your Tween
2 Corinthians 5:21
New International Version (NIV)
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Tween Activity
The following story can be used as a dialog with your tween about how Jesus took our sin and we took his righteousness.
Imagine you are in school and you have followed all the rules of the classroom and all the expectations of the teacher. You are the only student who completes all the assignments and preparation for the upcoming test. You receive and A+ on your test. However the rest of the class has not completed any of the assignments, or followed and of the rules and many students actually try to cheat on the test. The rest of the students receive a failing grades on the test.
The teacher wanting to extend grace to the whole class decides to give the entire class your A+ grade while you receive their failing grade. How would this make you feel?
Explain that Jesus was perfect in every way and we are helpless in our sin. Jesus has so much love that he died on the cross. In doing so, he took our sin and gave us his righteousness. If we accept His free gift and confess on need for forgiveness then we will become righteous (clean) before God. Thank God with your tween for his great gift of making us righteous!
