Counting Our Blessings...
Anticipating More...
ON THE COVER:
December Sermon Series
by Pastor Bob Rusert
With Thanksgiving now past and standing on the doorstep
of Advent/Christmas, I’m counting my blessings and
anticipating, expecting (pun intended) more. Life is pregnant
with the prospects for counting blessings.
Four thousand thirty-three, four thousand thirty-four, four thousand thirty-five!
What a joy… I’m counting every single one of you as a blessing, a gift from God!
Actually 4,085 blessings from Minneapolis campus, including Spirit Garage,
and 338 blessings from our Minnetonka campus, that makes 4,423. And while
I’m counting you all as “blessings,” I am aware that a New Member class on
November 12 will prepare another dozen or so blessings born into our family of
God. Blessings? My life is full of them. Thank you God!
As I write this article, I realize we’ll be seeing and connecting with many of those
blessings on Sundays, Thanksgiving Eve, Sunday School Christmas programs,
early Christmas celebrations, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day… right up to the
end of the year and after. When people know they “count,” it does something
wonderful to them. They feel welcomed, valued, affirmed and blessed. The pastors
and staff of Bethlehem Twin Cities at Minneapolis and Minnetonka count you as
a wonderful blessing from God.
Things were going fine. They weren’t
great by any stretch of the imagination,
but they were fine.
Predictable.
Familiar.
Then God shows up.
Technically speaking it was angels first,
Gabriel solo and then a whole host of
them.
Then God decided to intrude into the
ordinary.
God chose to become one of us.
We didn’t ask for this.
We didn’t know we needed it, until he
came and now we join with God’s
people of every time and place and
pray that God would intrude again.
Come Lord Jesus!
One of the coolest things about the church is, as much as we all count, God
has us here at these two campuses for the blessings that aren’t here yet! Fun!
You and I, we can bless others, all those “as-yet-strangers” as we count them
as blessings by the way we communicate that “they count!” Not just counting
as a number among many numbers, people experience that they count by
how we welcome and invite, value and respect, take interest in and genuinely
care for them. It’s critical, essential, absolutely righteous and necessary that
every “blessing” gets counted. God is counting on us to show others, especially
newbies, that they really count to us and to God!
November 27:
Isaiah 61:1-11
December 4:
Luke 1:5-25
December 11:
Luke 1:26-56
December 18:
Luke 1:57-80
December 24:
Luke 2:1-20
The holidays are busy times, it’s true. But not too busy for us to count each other
and the stranger.
• A cheerful, sincere welcome greeting, with eye contact, that says, “You
count!”
• An invitation to our Sunday or festival parties, that says, “You count!”
• Telling someone somehow that “I count you as a blessing!”
December 25:
Luke 2:8-20
I’m also counting 47 fellow staff members as 47 more blessings. So join me and
count our blessings (others) and invite someone to come and share in “A Divine
Intrusion” for Advent/Christmas. It’s coming soon, showing at a Bethlehem
campus near you.
Connecting people with God,
each other and their mission
in the world.
Next CONNECT deadline:
December 10, 2016
[email protected]
CONNECT newsletter online
bethlehem-church.org
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