Sparks Highlights 9.24.14

Again, after the flood, the people on the earth began to sin and do what was right in their own eyes.  Yet, again, one man named Abraham and his wife Sarah, were found to be faithful to God.  God promised great things to Abraham as he was obedient to God – including the fact that Abraham would be the father of a great nation.  This would seem impossible because Abraham and Sarah were very old without any children.  God fulfilled that promise in the birth of Isaac.  When Isaac was young, as a test of Abraham’s faith, God told Abraham to sacrifice his own son.  This seemed so improbable to Abraham, because after all, he was old and God promised him to be a great nation.   Out of great faith and obedience to God, though, Abraham obeyed.  He believed God’s promise to him even though the situation seemed improbable.  He took his son to the place God commanded and began to prepare Isaac as a sacrifice.  How puzzling it must have been to Isaac, but Isaac trusted his father and was obedient – obedient to the point of understanding his own father would sacrifice him.  He did not struggle, but obeyed even unto the point of death.  When God saw Abraham’s obedience, God halted the sacrifice and provided a substitute for Isaac. A ram was caught in the thicket and Abraham sacrificed the ram in place of Isaac, a substitute – so Isaac wouldn’t have to die.  God provides us today the substitute for our own eternal death – that in his own Son Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ willingly laid down His life as a sacrifice for our sins.  The Bible states, like Isaac, He didn’t struggle – He willingly layed down His life.  Jesus Christ was also like the ram who died in Isaac’s place.  Jesus Christ died for our sins so we wouldn’t have to.  He didn’t stay dead, as the ram stayed dead, because He conquered the power of death when He rose from the grave.  In order to enjoy that freedom from eternal death, we must have faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins and be obedient to God, trying to live for Him by being repentant of our sins and turning away from them.  This can be found recorded in Genesis 17-21.  You are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks!   You can also check out the AWANA program at www.fbc.littletonil.org

Sparks Highlights 3-26-14

****Sparks Highlights****    Besides showing us His Holiness, His Power, His Provision, His Wisdom/Teaching, Jesus is our Healer.  He is often referred to as the Great Physician.   Jesus, God Incarnate who is our Creator, also can heal all our sickness.  Crowds would often flock to Jesus to heal their sicknesses – blindness, deafness, muteness, lameness, leprosy, and years of bleeding.  His touch would heal them, His words would heal them.  But you know what our greatness sickness is?  Our sin.  Jesus is the Healer of our greatness sickness because He has taken the punishment of our sins upon Himself – that is the antidote, the medicine, for our sickness.    Each time Jesus would heal an infirmity, He would note that it was the person’s faith that would heal them – make them whole, and then Jesus would challenge them to depart and sin no more.  See, each person’s problem was not just a sickness of body, but more the sickness of their sinful heart.  Jesus didn’t just take the time to heal their bodies – with doing that He showed His power as God, but more powerful than that, is when He told them their sins were forgiven them.  Only God – our Great Physician – can heal our sinful hearts.  But as Jesus said, it takes faith to accept Him as our healer, and a willingness to sin no more by giving Him our hearts.  Sure, after we put our faith in Him, we are not perfect in that we still sin, but at that point we should have the concern to confess that sin, and as the Bible tells us, He is faithful and just to forgive us that sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  We still need our Great Physician to heal our hearts then, too!

You are welcome to join us anytime at Sparks!    You can also check out the AWANA program at           www.fbc.littletonil.org.    

Mrs. Jennifer Schroeder, Mrs. Carol Sheley, Mrs. Barb Stein.