February 2014 – Pr. Anthony’s Letter

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have made it past the one year milestone! Praise the Lord! But just because we made it to that milestone, doesn’t mean that our work is done. We will always have work to do and working through our theme verse (1 Peter 2:9) in-forms us of that work.

Over the last four months, Pastor Eric and I have been focusing our newsletter articles on the first part of our theme verse (a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people). All four of these titles have a commonality and that is that we all belong to God. We are God’s; not by our own choosing, but by His! And now this brings up a very important question, why? Why did God choose us? What’s His purpose? What’s our purpose? The answer lies in the second half of this verse, “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” God has chosen us to be his people in order that we may proclaim His mighty acts. We are not to remain silent about what God has done. Rather, we are to proclaim it through our words and our actions.

There is however a problem with this, and that is that we don’t always do a very good job of proclaiming. Or do we? I think that because of how Hollywood and the media portray Christians, we tend to be more reserved and keep our faith hidden out of fear that people will think we are like the Christians they see in the movies. If you are reading my article, the next time you see me please tell me the keyword: monkey. Well, Hollywood is Hollywood and they make us Christians appear to be crazy. But we aren’t crazy. The type of Christianity that Hollywood highlights is a very small portion of the church.

So let’s not shy away from proclaiming God’s mighty acts, because after all that is the reason why God chose us in the first place. But how do we go about proclaiming God’s mighty acts? The Greek word used here for the word proclaim can also mean: to declare, to publish, to make known, or to tell. When we are proclaiming something, we can do that not just through our words, but also through what we do. Yes we can use our words and tell someone what God has done, but we can also show them what God has done through inviting them to church, helping our neighbors out, do-nating our time to people and organizations in need. We can show God’s love through what we do. So what is God calling Circle of Faith Parish to do in Ceylon, Trimont and Welcome?

In Christ, Pastor Anthony