Holy Communion Anglican Church
East Greenwich, RI – Standing Firm on Biblical Truth and Christian Tradition
Our innermost desire is to be fully known and yet fully loved, and that can only be satisfied by the eternal love of God. No one can know you more fully, and love you more perfectly, than God can. You are not a creature of your own self-definition; rather, you are a being made in the perfect image of God, and therefore deserving of dignity from conception to final breath.
The most important vocation for the Church Universal today is to have a laser focus on forming a new generation of faithful disciples of Jesus – “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12).
Few hurts are more personal than that of betrayal. Yet, Jesus loved his betrayer radically and sacrificially, with full knowledge of the evil that would befall him.
The season of Lent is a spiritual retreat - a time where we can take a step back and listen to God’s voice, who points us to the areas of our life which prevent us from living rightly before Him. In other words, the Lord reminds us of our continual need for repentance, to draw near to His Son Jesus Christ and so live according to the Truth (with a capital “T”). Beloved, it is my prayer that we would recognize the importance and urgency of sober self-assessment and repentance this Lenten season.
When we give our attention to worthless things, we are robbing God of that same attention. Not that God needs our attention, but that we abandon His ways, and we allow our relationship with Him to wither. We give our attention to that which we value most at that moment in time. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
As with the Israelites, the world where we once worshipped no longer exists. The way forward is only through the wilderness, through the desert. And God will make a highway and a river to lead us, but it is our responsibility to follow him and not go astray. Thus, it is not about your way or my way, but about God’s way. May Holy Communion Anglican Church in 2022 and beyond be faithful to follow God’s way, wherever it may lead.
From morning to night, we are saturated with news. We look at our phones first thing in the morning to find out what went on while we were sleeping (just in case we missed something big!), and we conclude the day with scrolling through our phone just before going to bed (just in case we missed something even bigger!). We are, as a nation, massive consumers of so-called “news.”
There is no replacement for the institution of marriage. When you destroy the foundation, the whole house collapses. Christians, more than anyone else, must be bold to defend Holy Matrimony, for all its imperfections, because to lose it is to lose the foundation of human society, and a precious dispensation of God’s Grace.
“Who stands fast? Only the person whose final standard is not reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
God’s people do not have the option to “turn off” their spiritual identity. Likewise, a church that tries to blend in with the surrounding culture does not merely hide its lamp under a basket but instead smothers it out completely. If a church, then, is ashamed of its Christian identity, can it really claim to be Christian at all? The answer, of course, is a resounding “no.”