The "F-Word"

 Here are a few bullet points to jog the memory of those who attended church on Sunday, March 9, 2014. If you would like to read the full text, click here.

• If you text on your telephone you likely use abbreviations such as: LOL (laugh out loud), K (meaning OK - I guess OK is too many characters to type), TTFN (Ta-ta for now)
• Perhaps you even use this one : WTF!
• Some people shy away from the "F-Word," others, like myself, use it regularly
• On any number of occasions when I get upset I'll use that thought, WTF!
• Work That Forgiveness!
• Forgiveness is the most powerful "F-Word"
• In Luke, chapter 5, Jesus tells us something very important; "...you have the authority on earth to forgive..."
• Jesus' authority comes from God. Your authority comes from God. You have the authority to forgive!
• Have you ever said, "I just can't forgive him (or her)?"
• If you think you can't, yes you can, Jesus just said so.
• "It is though forgiveness that true spiritual healing is accomplished. Forgiveness removes errors from the mind and... harmony results in consonance with divine law."
• I would say the error of the mind that forgiveness removes is the idea that another person (or yourself) is somehow "less than" as a person.
• "Forgiveness is not for other people, it is for ourselves so we can get well and heal" (Max Lucado)
• If you have a struggle with another person, or yourself, you have the authority to forgive.
• Forgiveness makes you feel better.
• If you have a struggle with another person, or yourself, drop an F-bomb on them! Shower them, and yourself, with the healing power of forgiveness.

Lobsters, Butterflies, and Cake

Here is a brief overview of our Sunday service from March 2, 2014. To see the full text of the talk, click here.

• ·        What do lobsters, butterflies, and cake have in common?

• ·        Each of these provides a metaphor for life.

• ·        A full grown man can step on a lobster in the water and the lobster’s shell will protect it.

• ·        A lobster shell is restrictive and stunts further growth. In order for a lobster to grow it must shed its protective shell, thus becoming vulnerable.

• ·        In order for us to grow spiritually we, too, need to shed our restrictive shell of protection and allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

• ·        As we grow spiritually we are “protected” from the previous discomfort of the vulnerabilities we have allowed to be exposed to the healing love of spirit.

• ·        A caterpillar crawling across a Persian rug may encounter constantly changing, and seemingly random, colors.

• ·        Our lives may seem to be a mish-mash of constantly changing and confusing events and emotions.

• ·        When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly and is able to fly above that Persian rug, it will see a pattern where once there was the experience of randomness.

• ·        When we view our lives from a higher spiritual perspective; a perspective higher than a judgmental and critical mind we see the unfolded pattern of our life. From that higher perspective we see that everything is exactly as it should be.

• ·        The patterns of our life are defined by what we might call “The Law of Life.” The Law of Life is: The creative spirit of God working through (+) our consciousness creates (=) the patterns (or experience) of our life.

• ·        Asked to take a bite of flour, you’d probably decline.  Baking soda? Likely the same response.  A spoonful of cooking oil? Yuck! Maybe a little sugar, a tad of vanilla, a bit of chocolate. OK, that sounds better, but each of them by themselves?

• ·        Taken one by one, the ingredients are less than appealing. Mix them together though, and bake them, and they turn into a delicious cake.

• ·        Looking upon the individual events of our lives we’ll find the sweet and the yucky. Seen together throughout a life time yields a rich and lovey life.

• ·        In order to see our lives as rich and lovely we must see our personal individual ingredients in a new way.

• ·        Typically we would see our experiences as examples of love or fear. Fear, we know, keeps us established in challenging patterns.

• ·        There is a loving way to interpret fear.

• ·        Fear is actually a call for love. When we are afraid to be vulnerable and allow love in or out, we express fear. Fears seems to be a protective shell, and yet all that shell does (like the lobster) is stunt our growth.

• ·        Love heals and harmonizes.

• ·        If someone extends love to you, return it. If someone calls for love from you, extend it.