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Throughout this Easter Season the youth of St John's Ivyland have been rallying around the phrase “New Life in Christ.” We’ve spent time focusing on how the fact that Jesus died for us and our sins - and the miracle of Christ's Resurrection - gives us the opportunity of redemption and the reality of “new life.” Because of the love of Christ we are free to be “new” people.
It is my prayer that you have noticed God doing a new thing in the lives of our young people. Our teens are praying new prayers, serving God in new ways, making a new commitment to participate in the life of the church, and are bringing a new vitality to worship. I truly believe that our youth have been an example to all of us about what it means to live and experience “New Life in Jesus Christ!”
As the church calendar transitions from Eastertide to Pentecost, we not only focus on how we are new individuals in Christ but how we are a new church with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit comes to the Church at Pentecost to remind us that God will never leave us, God will never forsake us; and what’s more, the Holy Spirit gives us new gifts and a new charge to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the world.
As you read this, our Pastor Brad and lay leaders are joining with elders, ministers, laity, the Cabinet and Bishop of the East Pennsylvania Annual Conference as they gather and once again ask the Holy Spirit to guide our church for the next year. I asked you to join me in doing two things: praying for our leaders and our church that they make decisions with the guidance of God, and praying for our congregation that we are able seek God’s will and live into the calling and commission that comes out of our Annual Conference.
When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, that Spirit came into a world that had already received a Savior but now was in need of God's ever presence to guide and sustain believers as they shared witness to the new life that Christ gives us all. Today our Church and in our world need to be reminded of God's ever presence, anew. We too have been gifted a Savior by God’s Grace and are not bound by the daily realities of violence, division and hopelessness that the world seems to show us. Rather we are renewed people capable and called by God to share the glorious good news of a New Life in Christ, and we too, have a God’s Holy Spirit to walk with us along this journey.
Christ's death and Resurrection provide healing for the brokenness that is caused by sin. Likewise, the Holy Spirit provides healing for the brokenness and hurts that we experience in the world around us. Let St. John’s Ivyland be at church full of hope, vitality, faithfulness, joy, healing, and love. Let us be at church that is guided by the Holy Spirit, focused on the great commandments given to us by Jesus, and living and working everyday for the greater glory of God.
~jt
John-Thomas Crockett
Dir. of Youth & Family Ministries
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