St Paul will be blessed to have Reynoldsburg Community Church

Worship Leader, Kenny Phillips.

Kenny will join our Praise Team and the Chancel Choir as we raise our voices to our Lord!

Kenny was the lead vocalist in the gospel group, “New Mercy” where they held concerts at churches around the Central Ohio area.

 

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes
from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8, NIV).
I am a planner. I write out in detail the lessons I will teach to a class. I map out the route to
a destination with which I am unfamiliar on MapQuest. I prepare an itinerary of my activities
every day.
The funny thing is that I often veer from my plans. I wind up talking in class about a
tangential subject. A detour takes me by way of an alternate route to my destination. Or I
accomplish a great deal of work by the end of the day, yet none of the endeavors on my to-do list
were addressed.
I am reminded of the Yiddish proverb. We plan. God laughs.
I admit that I am prone to moments of attention deficit. But I also sense there is an
additional influence working upon me each day. A kind of “meteorological” influence if you will.
In John’s gospel, the wind is used as a metaphor for the movement of God’s Spirit. Like all
other elements of the weather, wind cannot be controlled. It blows wherever, however, and
whenever it pleases.
So, too, does the Holy Spirit. Like a sailboat being pushed across the waves of an ocean,
God’s Spirit often moves us in directions we cannot anticipate. While I might expect a brief trip out
to the mailbox, the Spirit of God may lead me into a lengthy chat with a neighbor who recently
discovered her husband has Alzheimer’s. I successfully retrieved the mail, albeit two hours later.
I often hear people bemoan the idea that God has absented Himself from our world today. I
don’t believe this spiritual characterization to be true whatsoever. Instead, I believe we too
frequently move in a different direction from which God is moving. The reality is that following
Jesus requires a good deal of flexibility, along with a heaping dose of humility.
All of which is to say that when making your next plan, it seems advisable that in addition
to keeping your eyes on the horizon, you also keep your nose to the wind. Even more, be prepared
to tack your sails.

“If anyone thinks he is too great to stoop to this, he is fooling himself. He is really a nobody”
(Galatians 6:3, TLB). “

I would never do such a thing.” Those are the words I was thinking when the car merging into traffic cut me off. I felt rather smug in my appraisal of the situation.

Until….I merged into traffic ten minutes later and cut off someone else. My next thought
was: “How could that unsympathetic driver honk at me? His vehicle was in my blind spot.”

 

We humans tend to assume the worst in others while giving ourselves the benefit of a doubt.
Nitin Nohria, the present dean of the Harvard Business School, claims that none of us is as virtuous
as we think we are. Nitin identifies our sense of heightened self-appraisal as “moral
overconfidence.” Moral overconfidence is the gap between how we think we might behave in a
certain situation and how we actually behave.

 

In the brief passage above, Paul warns us to avoid such prideful thinking. The Christian life
is a life of humility. The mindset of every Christ follower should be “were it not for the grace of
God there go I.”

 

Sadly, we all fall prey to making false equivalences. We are prone to equate the egregious
sins of others with our own peccadillos. Yet comparing our actions to those of the other person is a
brand of works righteousness steeped in pride. The fact is that we all are saved by God’s grace
through our faith in Christ and unable to produce any right thing on our own.

 

Therefore, the next time you catch yourself thinking, “Why, I’d never do such athing.” Think, again. The person you accuse just may be staring back at you in the mirror.

Daily Devotion March 7, 2023

“Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will
eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days” (James 5:3, ESV).

For the better part of three decades, the National Park service has been battling the
deterioration of the Lincoln Memorial. Much of the problem is due to midges. Midges are small,
winged insects that breed along the banks of the Potomac River. They swarm at dusk and are
drawn by the lights that illuminate the memorial.
As the midges die, their bodies become a smorgasbord for sparrows and starlings. The birds
subsequently leave droppings that must be cleaned by the park service daily. The water eventually
seeps into cracks within the marble structure causing erosion. What began as a minor distraction
has become a major threat to a national treasure.
James, the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. He warned the early
Christian community of the deteriorating effects greed and materialism were having on individuals
and families. Though many Christians struggled to make ends meet, a number of others were better
off. These more affluent individuals were becoming progressively preoccupied with material
wealth.
Across my travels to third-world countries, most underdeveloped societies suffer from
diseases like tuberculosis, malnutrition, typhoid, cholera, typhus, and others. By contrast, affluent
Americans have established an entirely different set of diseases to include obesity, heart disease,
stroke, drug addiction, divorce, battered children, murder, and suicide. The technology that is
designed to save us time and effort has led to the deterioration of the human body, the deepening
divide of society, and the unprecedented demand being placed on our country’s prison and mental
health institutions.
Though issued almost two millennial ago, James’ warning to the early church is equally
valid for our day and time. The corrosive effects of our consumer-driven world is devouring this
present generation. Yet life need not be this way. There is still time to reverse the curse of
materialism.
Jesus asserted that one’s heart is tied to what that person treasures most. Ultimately, greed
poses for each of us some pivotal questions:
Whose approval do I seek most often?
Is pride pressing me to be concerned with how others view me?
Or do I place a greater emphasis as to what God thinks of me?
Your authentic response to these questions will divulge Who or what your heart loves most. And
what or Who you love most will determine the wellbeing of your hearttps://us19.admin.mailchimp.com/campaigns/finished-sent?id=15805269

The Chancel Handbell Choir needs an additional ringer. 
Rehearsals are on Wednesdays from 7-8:15PM. 

The bell choir plays about once a month on Sunday mornings