Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Transformed by Love

 Pastor Sherry’s message for July 5, 2026

Scriptures: Gen 24:34-67; Ps 45:10-17; Ro 7:14-25a; Matt 11:16-19, 25-30

I read the following story the other day and was pretty amazed by its content:

“A couple of weeks ago [in 1977] Eldridge Cleaver was telling me about his days as a Black Panther. He said that while he was a Black Panther, he was filled with a terrible, roiling feeling of hatred and violence against any law enforcement agency [and against Whites].. He couldn’t help himself. Every time he would get with them he would feel this terrible sense of anger and murderous rage within him. It made him the leader of the Black Panthers, the violent militants of the early 60s.

“But a year or so ago [around 1976] , in the south of France, in a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, he had a vision, an inner view of the face of Jesus Christ, coming out of his boyhood to him. It drove him to reading the scriptures. He read Psalm 23 over and over again. He said that ever since that time on the balcony, he never had a feeling of hatred again. He has looked for it and expected it but instead there has been a feeling of love for everyone he meets.”

(Sermon by Ray C.Stedman, “The Night is Nearly Over,” 4/10/77, as cited in www,ThePastor’sWorkshop.com, 7/2/26.)

How many of you remember the Black Panthers? I was a newly minted high school social studies teacher when I first encountered a Black Panther in 1970. I was entertaining a small group of seniors at my home, serving them sodas and cookies. One of my favorites, an African American named Valerie, brought her older brother, Kenneth along. Kenneth told me he was a member of the Black Panthers, so I asked him what they were about. He told me they hated white people and had sworn to kill them. Now I was only 22 at the time—so I cannot claim I had developed much wisdom and discernment—but I sat there digesting what he said and wondered, “What’s wrong with this picture?” So, I said to him, “Kenneth, do you mean to tell me you are in my home, eating refreshments I have set out for you, and enjoying my hospitality, but you intend to murder me?” I was asking him to help me understand because that just made no sense to me. He thought it through and admitted he had no animosity towards me personally (praise God!). His sister, my student, later told me he had dropped out of the movement shortly after our dialogue. In a similar vein, I was heartened to hear that Eldridge Clever encountered Christ 20 years before he died in 1998.

Our Scripture lessons today all comment on the transformational power of love:

A. In our OT passage, Genesis 24:34-67, we read of the love story between Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac, Abraham’s “child of promise,” born to him when Abe was 100YO, is now about 40. It’s almost beyond time for him to marry. Abraham calls forth his loyal and trusted steward, Eliazar, and sends him to Haran to locate a bride from his extended family.

Eliazar, arriving in Haran, prays to Abraham’s God to ask for a sign so that he might recognize God’s choice of a bride for Isaac. The sign is that the young woman will give him water and offer to water his camels. Watering the live stock (and the household) was a task delegated to women in those days. We know that camels are uniquely qualified for that arid climate in that they can go long distances without requiring additional water. Apparently each one can take in about 200-300 gallons of water at a time (weighing about 2085 pounds!) (See New Living Translation of the Bible, p.38.) Imagine how long this would take and how many times a young woman would have to dip up buckets full of water to fill up 10 camels. It’s a “big ask,” but Rebekah takes it on.

Eliazar goes home with her to ask for her hand in marriage for Isaac. She probably overhears the wedding negotiations—they lived in tents, so eavesdropping was pretty easy–and is intrigued by Isaac’s miraculous birth, the fact that God saved him from being sacrificed, and that the family is very wealthy. Her brother Laban (the same one who will eventually cheat her son, Jacob) tries to forestall her departure, but she is willing to leave immediately (Smart girl! No telling what that wiley man was up to!). After days on the road, she sees Isaac at a distance, and literally falls for him (the Hebrew implies she fell off her camel at the sight of him). And Isaac falls in love with her as well-→beautiful love story!

She becomes a beloved bride, and Isaac is comforted by her when his mother, Sarah, dies.

B. Our Psalm (45:10-17) describes the love of the princess bride (Rebekah) for her prince (Isaac). It’s actually a maschil [instruction] psalm, and a love song, predicting the love of Christ’s bride, the Church, for our Messiah, Jesus. Verses 1-9 deal with Jesus’ person and kingly power at His 2nd Coming.

But the portion we read this morning deals with the Bride: Verses 10-11 read-→Listen to me, O royal daughter, take to heart what I say. Forget your people and your family far away [Rebekah]. For your royal husband delights in your beauty; honor him, for he is your Lord. It also predicts Jesus’ delight in His bride, the Church, but the “nearer fulfillment” probably refers to Rebekah and Isaac. Nevertheless, both the near and the far fulfillments speak to the transformational power of love.

C. I don’t know about you, but I feel a great sense of relief to know Christ’s love is transformational! As Paul points out in Romans 7:14-25a, we appear to caught in a horrible dilemma: We love Jesus and want to please/obey him, but our old fleshly natures keep on dragging us/clawing us back into sinful behaviors. YIKES! It’s true, isn’t it?!! We do the very thing we really don’t want to do, and we don’t do the thing we want to do, the thing we know would please Jesus. Paul writes, (NIV v.24)-→What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Poor Paul and poor us! Then, knowing the answer, he goes on to say (v.25)-→But thanks be to God Who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

D. Jesus provides us with the antidote to our sinful natures in the Gospel lesson from Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30. First, though, He points out that we are doubled-minded, exactly as Paul contends in Romans 7. We don’t know what to do—weddings vs. funerals—and we don’t know how to discern properly, both with regard to John the Baptist, nor to Jesus. As Jesus’ half-brother, James will go on to write (NIV,1:8)-→…[a double-minded man is] unstable in all he does. Again, we do what we don’t want to do and can’t seem to make ourselves do what we know we should do.

Jesus’ loving solution for us begins in verse 28 (NLT)-→Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. That’s where our transformation begins. We have to stop trying to do things in our own power and take our burdens to Jesus. He goes on to say (v.29)–>Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. We are to surrender to Jesus, becoming yoked to Him. He then promises us to teach us (He’s currently in Heaven, but He will teach us through His Holy Spirit.) If we can take in His lessons for us, we will find rest, because (v.30)-→…My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. When we pull in the same direction He is going, the going is both easy and light.  He is our burden-bearer. His help and His love make what frustrates both us and Paul less difficult and more doable.

It all really comes down to obedience, doesn’t it? But we are not being obedient to Someone who will abuse us. Nor are we capitulating to a cosmic killjoy! We are allowing ourselves to be mentored or tutored by the Lover of our Souls! Because of His great, transforming love for us, He will truly bless us!

Jesus’ great love for Him transformed Eldridge Cleaver’s murderous hatred into love. If we are yoked to Christ, we can let go of hatred, rage, jealousy, a desire for revenge, the need to gossip, addictions of all sorts, and that carnal body of flesh that Paul bemoans. The love of Jesus truly transforms people if we will allow Him to work in each of our hearts.

Consider the example of Fred Stallard:

“Turned off by school. Very sloppy in appearance. Expressionless. Unattractive. Even his teacher, Miss Thompson, enjoyed bearing down her red pen — as she placed Xs beside his many wrong answers. If only she had studied his records more carefully. They read:

1st grade: Ted shows promise with his work and attitude, but (has) poor home situation.

2nd grade: Ted could do better. Mother seriously ill. Receives little help from home.

3rd grade: Ted is good boy but too serious. He is a slow learner. His mother died this year.

4th grade: Ted is very slow, but well-behaved. His father shows no interest whatsoever.

“Christmas arrived. The children piled elaborately wrapped gifts on their teacher’s desk. Ted brought one too. It was wrapped in brown paper and held together with Scotch Tape. Miss Thompson opened each gift, as the children crowded around to watch. Out of Ted’s package fell a gaudy rhinestone bracelet, with half of the stones missing, and a bottle of cheap perfume. The children began to snicker. But she silenced them by splashing some of the perfume on her wrist, and letting them smell it. She put the bracelet on too.

“At day’s end, after the other children had left, Ted came by the teacher’s desk and said, “Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mother. And the bracelet looks real pretty on you. I’m glad you like my presents.” He left. Miss Thompson got down on her knees and asked God to forgive her and to change her attitude.

“The next day, the children were greeted by a reformed teacher — one committed to loving each of them. Especially the slow ones. Especially Ted. Surprisingly — or maybe, not surprisingly, Ted began to show great improvement. He actually caught up with most of the students and even passed a few.

“Time came and went. Miss Thompson heard nothing from Ted for a long time. Then, one day, she received this note:

Dear Miss Thompson:

I wanted you to be the first to know. I will be graduating second in my [high school] class.

Love, Ted

Four years later, another note arrived:

Dear Miss Thompson:

They just told me I will be graduating first in my [college] class. I wanted you to be first to know. The university has not been easy, but I liked it.

Love, Ted

And four years later:

Dear Miss Thompson:

As of today, I am Theodore Stallard, M.D. How about that? I wanted you to be the first to know. I am getting married next month, the 27th to be exact. I want you to come and sit where my mother would sit if she were alive. You are the only family I have now; Dad died last year.

“Miss Thompson attended that wedding, and sat where Ted’s mother would have sat. The compassion she had shown that young man entitled her to that privilege.”

(Jon Johnston, Courage – You Can Stand Strong in the Face of Fear, 1990, SP Publications, pp. 111-113..)

This lovely story demonstrates so clearly the transformative power of Christ-like love. This week, let us be mindful of seeing others through the eyes of Jesus and loving others as Christ loves us. Amen! 

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

It Should be Obvious

Pastor Sherry’s message for June 28, 2026

Scriptures: Jer 28:5-9; Ps 89:1-4, 15-18; Ro 6:12-23;Matt 10:40-42

Chuck Swindoll tells the following story:

“Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country and spend an extended period of time abroad. So he says to you and the other trusted employees, ‘Look, I’m going to leave. And while I’m gone, I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I’m away. I will write you regularly. When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip.’ Everyone agrees. 

“He leaves and stays gone for a couple of years. During that time he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns. Finally he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess–weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows broken across the front of the building, the gal at the front desk dozing, loud music roaring from several offices, two or three people engaged in horseplay in the back room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss. Without hesitation he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, ‘What happened? Didn’t you get my letters?’

“You say, ‘Oh, yeah, sure. We got all your letters. We’ve even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have ‘letter study’ every Sunday. You know, those were really great letters.’ I think the president would then ask, ‘But what did you do about my instructions?’ And, no doubt the employees would respond, ‘Do? Well, nothing. But we read every one!’”

(Chuck Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Thomas Nelson, 1987, p. 242.)

I wonder if God ever considers us and thinks that way. After all, He has left us the Bible for our instruction and edification. Do you ever wonder what He thinks when He observes you or me? The employees in the Swindoll story would all have been fired, right? But our God continues to offer us grace—chance after chance after chance. (Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, says our God is the God of the first and last chances, the fat chance, the slim chance, and the no chance—meaning His love for and patience with us is inexhaustible.)

Now compare that to this true story about the Dallas Cowboy quarterback, Roger Staubach:

“Roger Staubach who led the Dallas Cowboys to the World Championship in ’71 admitted that his position as a quarterback who didn’t call his own signals was a source of trial for him. Coach Landry sent in every play. He told Roger when to pass, when to run and only in emergency situations could he change the play (and he had better be right!). Even though Roger considered coach Landry to have a “genius mind” when it came to football strategy, pride said that he should be able to run his own team.

“Roger later said, “I faced up to the issue of obedience. Once I learned to obey there was harmony, fulfillment, and victory.”

      (Source Unknown, but quoted in www,Sermons.com., 6/18/26)

I saw Stauback play quarterback, in person, and beat Army, his senior year at the US Naval Academy (I was a college freshman). If you know anything about the service academies, their training to do whatever they are commanded to do is very rigorous. They, without question, learn how to obey a superior, or endure some pretty painful consequences. Since Coach Landry preferred to call all the plays, it’s a good thing for him that Coach had a quarterback who had been trained to follow orders. Staubach had been a Heisman Trophy winner for being a superb quarterback. But, even so, he obediently submitted to his couch’s will during 11 seasons in the NFL.

Our Scripture passages today all touch on the topic of obedience. Let see what each has to tell us:

A. Our Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 28:5-9) contains a stern warning. The prophet Jeremiah has a competitor for the people’s trust—a false prophet named Hananiah.  Earlier in the chapter, Hananiah has told the king and the citizens of Jerusalem that the people and the loot stolen by Babylon will be returned to the land very shortly (Their return came 70 years later!). The false prophet is selling them lies to improve their morale. Jeremiah, the true prophet of God, was at that time imprisoned with a wooden yoke about his neck, knows this is not so and says, “Not so fast my friend!”

To speak for God, a prophet must actually hear from God! Furthermore, what he relates as God’s words must actually come true—this is the mark of a valid prophet. Jeremiah is later told by the Lord to tell the false prophet that he will die that very year (which did happen 7 months later). The warning is not to speak for God unless the words you speak actually come from God Himself. Like Stauback’s pro coach, God calls the plays and even prophets must be obedient.

That should be obvious, shouldn’t it?

B. Psalm 89 is a maschil psalm, or a hymn of instruction. The psalmist, identified as Ethan the Ezrahite, is a Levite who worked in the Temple.

In verses 1-4, he begins with praise to God for His faithfulness and love, and he also reminds us of God’s Covenant Promises to King David that a descendant of his would always sit on the throne of Israel. This side of the Cross, we know this descendant to be Jesus. In verses 15-18, we are taught that God is our strength and our protector.

In the entire psalm, the faithfulness of God is mentioned 10 times! Remember, in those days they had no bold key on the computer, no emoji’s and no exclamation points, so to demonstrate that something was important, it was repeated time and again. Ethan the psalmist is teaching us that we can and should trust in God, and we can and should obey Him, because He is completely trustworthy. I suspect this fact was very obvious to Ethan the Ezrahite.

C. St. Paul, in Romans 6:12-23, makes a similar point but comes at it from a different angle. Because we live and move and have our being due to God’s love and grace, we are not to think—or act—like we can still live sinful lives!No, we owe God our obedience. Jesus said in John14:15-→If you love Me, obey My commandments. The Christian life is not about living according to a bunch of rules and regulations. We can probably all think of people we have known who live according to what they consider the rules—don’t smoke or drink, or cuss, or wear short skirts, or attend movies, or dance, put on too much make- up—but do not really behave like Jesus. In their private lives, they explode with anger, or they gossip destructively, or they behave immorally, etc.  They have missed the important point—which should be obvious–that to be a Christian is to behave like Jesus did. The word, Christian, after all means little Christs. 

However, we can’t do this in our own strength—our fleshly natures, the culture, and the devil are all too persuasive. We need the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit. And we need to be obedient to His nudges. Paul makes the point that we are all obedient to some kind of master. We could subject ourselves to the tyranny of pleasing other people, or to pleasing ourselves! But Jesus set us free from all of these influences. As Paul writes, (vv.22-23, NLT)-→But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

We are saved by faith and we are to live by faith—not so obvious, but true!

D. Finally, in the Gospel (Matthew 10: 40-42), Jesus teaches us 4 ways to reap a reward in Heaven. Now to my mind, going to Heaven is enough reward in itself, but apparently there are other rewards given out once one is there. Jesus says some rewards are given out based upon whether or not we were (1) kind and generous toward children or others without much influence; (2) we recognized and were hospitable to righteous persons; (3) we welcomed and were loving and grace-filled toward a prophet; and (4) welcomed anyone who came in Jesus’ name. We will somehow be rewarded in Heaven for exhibiting these behaviors—all Christ-like behaviors. They involve our being obedient to Jesus, not to our own wills, to our self-interest, or to the demands of the world or of the devil.

During my vacation, I read a book by the Messianic Jewish Rabbi, Johnathan Cahn, entitled The Dragon’s Prophesy. He maintains that the terrorists of Hamas are the new descendants of the Philistines, perennial enemies of God’s Chosen People (and by adoption, all Christians). Their very name, in the Hebrew, means “violence, evil, destruction…brutality, immorality, falsehood, lawlessness, injustice, and acts of cruelty, plunder, murder, slaughter, and terror”—all of which we saw carried out on October 7th, 2023, against civilian Israeli’s (p.139). Cahn makes the point that the terrorist organization, Hamas, is a tool of the Dragon, or the Devil, in his fight against everyone who loves God. This of course includes the Jews, but also we Christians. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6:12-→For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

And he concludes that all Christians (and Jews) must become “dragon fighters”—not in our own strength, but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimonies. If you read pages 259-260, you see and remember that all the great world powers who have come against the Jewish people have dropped out of human history. The Jews, targets of tyranny across the millennia, continue to exist because they are still loved (and protected from extinction) by God. We know the final outcome as it is told to us in Revelation. We are on the victorious side! 

Becoming dragon fighters will require our obedience to Christ and our belief and trust in His power and His faithfulness. Amen. May it be so!

©️ 2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Faith and Glory

Pastor Larry’s message for June 14, 2026

Our appointed reading today begins with the word, “therefore.” 

Now, if you walk into a lecture hall and the first word that you hear from the speaker is the word, “therefore,” you know you missed something important, something that was said before you got into the room. So, in a few minutes, I am going to back up and read just a few verses before our appointed reading.

But I first want to talk about Abraham, because those verses are about Abraham, about his faith, and about his trust in God. Abraham was a remarkable man. He was a genuine man of faith. God told him to leave his city. 

To leave his culture. 

To leave his extended family.

God told him to just start walking out into the wilderness…. in obedience to Him:

Genesis 12:1-2 NIV  The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  (2)  “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

And Abraham, or Abram as he was called then, obeyed God – and he went. He went in trust, without knowing his destination! (So often we say that we will only obey God if He shows us the whole picture in advance.)

Have you ever noticed that there is a direct link in Scripture, and a link in logic, between faith and obedience? Consider this Scripture:

Acts 6:7 NIV  So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.   Obedient to Faith???? 

We only obey whom or what we believe has authority or power over our lives. When we don’t believe that someone or something has authority or power over our lives, then we are not likely to obey.

Abraham left almost everything behind and went in the direction God told him to go. That was obedience, and that was faith!

Then when Abraham and his wife Sarah were far too old to even fear having children, God told Abraham, an elderly and childless man, married to an elderly and childless woman, that he would be the father of nations. 

A pivotal moment in the account of Abraham is this one:

Genesis 15:3-6 NIV  And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”  (4)  Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.”  (5)  He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”  (6)  Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Now, Abraham was still a flawed man. Twice Scripture records that, in a possible fear for his life, Abraham lied instead of trusting God with his fate. Yet, the overall track of Abraham’s life, his trajectory, was to trust God, and therefore to obey God.

Regarding Abraham’s faith, in the verses just before our appointed reading from Romans today, the Apostle Paul writes this:

Romans 4:20-22 NIV  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,  (21)  being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.  (22)  This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”

God desires our obedience because He is God, and also because our lives will be markedly better when you and I obey God. But what God keys in on in the life of Abraham, is the faith that lies at the root of Abraham’s obedience. We might say that “faith is the root, and obedience the fruit.”

And because of that faith God declares Abraham – a flawed man – to actually be righteous!

St. Paul, looking back to Abraham says that this is the same thing that God does with us. To make his point, Paul writes:

Romans 4:23-25 NIV  The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone,  (24)  but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.  (25)  He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

Abraham believed God – he believed that he, a very old man, would become the father of nations – and God credited his faith to him as righteousness. 

So, what is it that we, that you and I, are to believe? 

Paul says it’s to “believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.  He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” 

What Paul is saying is that if we choose to believe that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins, and that Jesus was raised to life, that God will declare us, as flawed individuals, to be righteous!

The very next verse begins our appointed reading today. It is the conclusion that St. Paul draws from all we just read… 

Romans 5:1-2 NIV  Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  (2)  through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Paul is writing to a church, to believers, and he tells them that because of their faith, because of their belief that Jesus died for their sins, through that faith they have been justified – they have been declared righteous by a Holy God.

Paul then talks about 

  • the past, 
  • the present, 
  • and the future benefits of their faith.

About the past, Paul says that they have been justified through faith. He assures them that in Christ and because of Christ, and because of their faith, it is an accomplished fact.

Then, because of that past event of faith and justification – their being declared righteous… Because of that past event, the Roman believers now have peace with God in the present.

Now, this Peace with God is a really big thing! In his other writings, Paul makes it clear that until we know Christ we will not have peace with God. This is not about a feeling, but about a spiritual reality. To the believers in Colossae, Paul writes:

Colossians 1:21-22 NIV  Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  (22)  But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—

They now stand in a relationship of grace – a relationship of blessing and of access to God that they do not deserve and could never experience apart from Christ.

And now because of their faith, because God has already justified them, because they have access to grace and access to God they have a future participation in the glory of God!

In Scripture, “glory” has a broad meaning. It can mean an acknowledgement of status. or of importance, of gravitas. It can mean the radiance, the evidence of the very presence of God. Always it the mark of significance, of meaning!

Earlier in Romans Paul has described the human state without Christ in these words:

Romans 3:23 NIV  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  

Among other things, people outside of Christ lack any spiritual significance or meaning in the world to come. 

No matter who we may be in this world, no matter what we have in this world, without Christ, in the spiritual realm and in the world to come, we are…

  • Without status
  • Without standing
  • And without significance.

Without Christ, we are without ultimate meaning or purpose! 

And that matters very deeply.

In 1963, Victor Frankyl, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, who became a psychiatrist, wrote a book entitled, Man’s Search for Meaning.

The book was based, in part, on his reflections on who lived and who died in the concentration camps. Frankyl observed that those who had or who found a sense of meaning, a sense of significance or purpose were more likely to survive than were those who had no sense of meaning, significance, or purpose. We indeed search for meaning!

We tend to gloss over it, but the New Testament tells us that, even in this world, believers actually begin to experience glory!  To the church in Corinth, Paul writes this:

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV  And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

And in Chapter 8 of this book of Romans, Paul will develop this idea of glory further:

Romans 8:17-21 NIV  Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.  (18)  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  (19)  For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. (20)  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope (21) that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

As believers we have a present, a now, of increasing glory, of increasing meaning, of increasing significance. 

And we have a future destiny that includes:

  • Participation in an ultimate meaning
  • Participation in an ultimate significance
  • And participation in a future glory that we cannot even begin to imagine!

…Because of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice.

And I wish I could stop right here and say, “and everyone lived happily ever after. Amen!” But next Paul talks about suffering – both in Romans chapter 8 that we just read from, and in our appointed reading today, Romans chapter 5. And Paul ties this present and future glory with suffering.

Romans 5:3-5 NIV  Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; (4)  perseverance, character; and character, hope. (5)  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Don’t you cringe at the phrase, “character development?” I do. But as God develops our character through what we suffer, we begin to see the changes, and we are encouraged. 

We see that we persevere in faith, and we see that as we persevere in faith we are being changed: We are becoming more like our Savior – we are growing in the hope of glory! We are growing in meaning, in significance, growing in status, we are growing in gravitas in the spiritual realm!

And so Paul says that because of this, we learn to glory in our suffering. And I am again reminded of Paul’s words later in this letter to the Romans:

Romans 8:17-18 NIV  Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.  (18)  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

There are things in this Christian walk that you and I cannot do: 

  • We cannot be good enough to make the cut on our own. 
  • We cannot save ourselves.

But like Abraham, we can believe what God has done and what God has promised. 

And if we really do believe, like Abraham believed, we will obey!

  • And we can keep on pressing forward 
  • and we can persevere through all the “character development,” 
  • and we can persevere on into the increasing glory as we behold Him, as His Spirit sustains and transforms us!

And we can remember. We can remember that, because we have believed, we have access to Grace, and we have access to the Father.

And we can remember that because we have access to Grace and access to the Father, we have 

  • a future of meaning, 
  • a future of ultimate significance, 
  • a future of spiritual gravitas, 
  • a future of glory!

And we can remember that Scripture promises that this future glory will far outweigh all our earthly suffering!

©️2026 Rev. Lawrence O’Connell

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

The Great Three in One

Pastor Sherry’s message for May 31, 2026

Scriptures: Gen 1:1—2:4a; Ps 8; 2 Cor 13:11-14; Matt 28:16-20

The story is told of a Jewish father who was concerned about his son’s lack of a spiritual life.: The father had never demonstrated what it was to be a practicing Jew.: So, he felt guilty.: As a result, he sent his son to Israel to experience his Jewish heritage, and hopefully to help him develop a lively faith.: The son returned after a year.: He thanked his father for the opportunity to visit the Holy Land and he reported that living in Israel had been both wonderful and enlightening. Then he confessed that while there, he had encountered some Christ-followers and had decided to become a Christian. 

The Jewish father was terribly upset, and in the tradition of the patriarchs, he sought advice and comfort from his best friend. “It is amazing that you should come to me,” said his best friend. “I too sent my son to Israel and he returned a Christian!”: So, again according to long standing tradition, the two friends sought out the wisdom and counsel of a rabbi.: “It is amazing that you should come to me,” stated the rabbi.: ”I also sent my son to Israel and he too developed faith in Jesus of Nazareth.: “What is happening to our sons?”

All three lifted their hands to God and began to wail and pour out their grief.: As they prayed, the heavens opened and a mighty voice exclaimed, Amazing that you should come to Me.: I, too, sent My son to Israel….

(Source unknown)

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day the Christian Church celebrates one of its most central beliefs. We believe in One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.: You may recall having sung the hymn, “Come Thou Almighty King” (c.1757), which extols all three persons of the Trinity:

Come thou Almighty King, help us Thy name to sing,

Help us to praise, Father whose love unknown 

All things created own,

Build in our hearts Thy throne, Ancient of Days.

Come thou Incarnate Word, by heaven & earth adored;

Our prayer attend:: Come, and Thy people bless;

Come, give Thy Word success; 

Stablish Thy righteousness, Savior and Friend.

Come, Holy Comforter, Thy sacred witness bear

In this glad hour:: Thou, who almighty art, 

Now rule in every heart, 

And ne’re from us depart, Spirit of Power.

To Thee, great One in Three, the highest praises be,

Hence evermore; 

Thy sovereign majesty may we in glory see, 

And to eternity love and adore.

We believe the Trinity is One Divine God with 3 personalities or 3 roles.: This foundational truth is hard to explain.: We call it a “holy mystery.”

We know that St. Augustine of Hippo took nearly 30 years to write 15 volumes called About the Trinity.: He continued for years to update and revise it.: It is said that he was walking the beach one day, struggling to understand this profound mystery, when he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell. The boy would run to the ocean, fill his shell, and rush back to pour the contents into the hole. St. Augustine said to him, “What are you doing, my little man?”: The boy replied, “I am trying to put the ocean into this hole.” Augustine later wrote that this experience helped him to see that this was what he had been trying to do with his 15 volumes: fit the vastness of the Trinity into the limited container of his mind.

(Source unknown)

The word Trinity appears nowhere in the Bible, but it is implied:: In our Old Testament lesson:Genesis 1:1-2:4:We read the Creation Account: Verses 1-2, In the beginning [time], God created the heavens [space] and the earth [matter]…and the Spirit of God [His creative force] was hovering/moved/brooded [in motion] over the waters. John 1 further informs us: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.: All 3 members of the Trinity were involved in Creation.: Notice, the Bible doesn’t try to prove the existence of God. It just states that HE IS.: Psalm 14:1 declares:The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”: Psalm 19:1:The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Our Psalm for today is a creation hymn. It is quoted 3 times in the New Testament, including once by Jesus (v.6:You made Him [Jesus] ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under His feet.) These words testify to God’s great creative power and His accomplishments.: King David asserts (v.1) O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. In other words, God the Father is the creator of all the earth.: He came up with the idea of Creation. But according to John 1, Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, spoke creation into existence.: In the 1st chapter of Genesis, God [the Son] says, Let there be…10 times, and whatever the Father has envisioned or planned comes into being. Even more fantastic than speaking creation into existence, He (the Son) creates it out of nothing. The Hebrew word for this is bara; in Latin it is called ex nihilo. Only God can create something out of nothing. The rest of us must start with raw materials.

Chapter 1 of Genesis also reveals that the Father is a God of order:

Day 1, He creates light; Day 2, He creates “air spaces” between the waters on earth and the waters in the sky (vertical division); Day 3, He separates dry ground from the seas (horizontal division); Day 4, He creates vegetation, plant life; Day 5, He creates living creatures in the seas and birds of all kinds; Day 6, (vv.24-25), He creates livestock and wild animals.

Then in verses 26-31, He creates humans. Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.: This means we have personality; that we are conscious of ourselves, we can think about ourselves (Psychology calls this “metacognition”), and about our actions; and that we are free moral agents. In other words, we get to decide things for ourselves. Notice how God the Father references the other members of the Trinity in this creative act (let us…our), implying there are more than one divine person involved. 

Continuing, in Chapter 2, God establishes the Sabbath principle our need for rest following work.: This is also evidence that our God is a: God of compassion.: John Wesley reportedly summarized God’s creative acts in Genesis 1 & 2 by stating, “God created the heavens and the earth and didn’t half try.”

Paul provides us with a Trinitarian blessing in our New Testament lesson today (2 Corinthians 13:11-14):May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ [the Son] and the love of God [the Father], and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Without calling it the Trinity, Paul presumes its existence. Like a good pastor, he wants believers to experience the blessings of the entire Godhead: grace, love, and the communion/fellowship/family unity of the Trinity.

Jesus, in our Gospel, sends us out to do the work of the Church in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20):…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.: Jesus invokes the names of all three divine persons.

So what do we learn about the Trinity from our passages this morning?: Again, all 3 members of the Trinity existed prior to and were active in the Creation of the world. They are distinct entities but eternally connected in love and community and communication with each other.

God the Father is Immortal, Invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes….Creation was His idea.: He is spirit, therefore lacking a gender but reveals Himself as our Father.: He is also completely transcendent, wholly other; enthroned in Heaven; compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.: Clearly the Father is in command but never dominates or abuses the other two persons. We pray to Him, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. As you may remember, my earthly father was killed when I was 5 years old. My mother remarried, 3 years later, a man who unfortunately was verbally and physically abusive to me. Because of this, I initially had difficulty seeing God the Father as anything other than a remote, critical, punishing, and disapproving God. It is only as I developed further in my faith that I have come to realize He is instead the loving, accepting, generous Father I always wished I had known growing up. 

God the Son, Jesus, is our Brother, Savior, Redeemer, and Friend. He came to earth, God-in-the-flesh, as a vulnerable baby. He demonstrated God’s love by teaching, healing, casting out demons, forgiving, modeling how to live, and by dying for our sins.: He demonstrated God’s power by performing miracles, rising from the dead, and ascending into heaven. He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. We sing, What a friend we have in Jesus…and it is the truth, isn’t it!

God the Holy Spirit is the immanence (everywhere-ness) of God, the “with us” God who is always available to us. He is how we experience the Trinity today. He leads, guides, and directs us now; He intercedes for us when all we can do is groan; He sanctifies us and empowers us for ministry.

Our calling today is not to try to figure out the holy mystery of the Trinity—how 3 persons form 1 God—but rather to live out the attributes, the characteristics the Trinity models for us.: As we progress through life, can we demonstrate the love of God for us and for others? Can we reach out to those who need to know the grace, love, and forgiveness of our God? Can we continue to pray for God’s will to be done on this earth, at this time, and in all hearts? Can we echo the great hymn, “To Thee, great One in Three, the highest praises be, hence evermore; Thy sovereign majesty may we in glory see, and to eternity love and adore!: 

Amen!: May it be so!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Get Busy!

Pastor Sherry’s message for May. 24, 2926

Scriptures: Acts 2:1-21; Ps 104:24-35; 1 Cor 12:3b-13; Jn 20:19-23

An older pastor friend I know from North Carolina grew up on a small family tobacco farm. To make ends meet, his folks both worked in a cotton mill by day. When his mother left for work each day in the summer, she left the future pastor and his 3 siblings a list of things to do in the house and outside in the tobacco patch. Mom and Dad left each day at 6:30 a.m. and returned by 3:30 p.m. In the way of most kids, the crew of 4 would try to figure out how long it would take them to complete the job-list, and then they would play around until they knew they had to get busy with their assigned tasks.

One day, at about 11:00a.m., they were lounging around—eating sandwiches and watching TV, having done not one thing on the list—when their mother showed up! She had gotten sick at work and had come home early.

Rather dramatically, the future pastor said he recalled hearing…

“…a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire room in which were were sitting…and the name of the wind was Mama and she was some kind of mad….instead of finding her children busy about the business she had left them to do, she found them sitting around, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and doing nothing. Mama roared into the den, the fly swatter she had grabbed off the hook by the kitchen stove in hand. She drove us out of the house, across the yard and up the hill, into the fields where were were supposed to be hoeing tobacco. We danced into that field. Mama’ s hand on the back of my neck, swatting at my legs and behind, while I stretched my feet and bottom as far away from her as I could get.” What a memory!

This pastor went on to make the point that he believes the behavior of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was more “like my Mama on a bad day than any sweet, sweet spirit [or] any gentle breath of God we might conjure up.”

(Fairless & Chilton, The Lectionary Lab, Year A, 2013, p.141.)

Let’s look at our Acts reading (Acts 2:1-21) and see if he is right. Today we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the (large “C”) Christian Church. It’s the anniversary of the day the Holy Spirit was given to all those who believe in Jesus;

It also marks an ancient Jewish religious feast day which commemorated the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest—the Spring Harvest season. Thus it was one of the 3 times per year a Jewish man was expected to journey to Jerusalem (Passover and Tabernacles were the other two) to thank God for all He had provided for them.

The Holy Spirit was given to the 120 disciples on this day to equip them with wisdom, energy, and power for ministry. We don’t see the Holy Spirit—He’s a spirit—but they and we are often given signs of His presence: (1) There was the sound of wind rushing. In this case, it was like the sound of a tornado, but minus the wind damage. People who live through tornadoes report the sound of the wind is like that of 5-6 train engines rushing by at top speed. (2) There was also the curious sight of a larger flame in the air separating into smaller flames.

Stranger still, the smaller flames come to rest over the heads of the 120 disciples gathered in that place. Like the bush Moses saw aflame in Exodus 3 while shepherding sheep, these flames did not burn anything. (3) There was also the sudden, unexplained ability of all 120 to speak in tongues/languages they had never been taught. Some biblical scholars believe the disciples were speaking Aramaic but the members of the crowd heard them in their own native tongue, with the Holy Spirit doing the simultaneous translation. Most other scholars believe they were actually empowered to speak words in sentences they had never learned nor ever expected they would be able to do. I wish the Lord had gifted me this way when I had to learn New Testament Greek in seminary, but alas, He did not! (4) Additionally, Peter was emboldened to preach to the Jews (vv.14-36) about Jesus and 3,000 were baptized that day (v.41). 

I think my pastor friend is correct: Holy Spirit power is authoritative and convincing, and like his mama with a fly-swatter, seems to carry with Him the message, Get Busy! 

Now what are we to get busy doing? I preached on this last Sunday, and our other readings today spell it out:

A. Psalm 104:24-34 is a song of praise to the God of Creation. We are to praise God for having created us and the universe in which we dwell. If we were to have read it in its entirety, we might have noticed that it follows the Genesis account of creation. First, God created light and darkness and separated them. Second, He separated the waters of the heavens (sky) from those on earth.

Third, He set the oceans into place and gathered together dry land, upon which he placed vegetation. Fourth, He then set the stars, sun and moon in place, creating night and day. Fifth, He populated the seas with life forms and the earth with all sorts of animals; and sixth, He created us, breathing into humans and every other creature the breath of life!

Verse 30 is especially precious: (NIV) When You send Your Spirit, they [meaning humankind and all animal life] are created, and You renew the face of the earth—which He did! This psalm is a tribute to the creative power of God the Father and God the Son. It is the Holy Spirit who manifests this divine creative power. It’s important for us to get busy expressing to God our gratitude for Creating and Sustaining us.

B. In our 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 passage, Paul makes it clear that it is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can even say, “Jesus is Lord!” The Spirit leads us into all Truth, and leads us to accept the Truth. He also reminds us of all that Jesus taught, and helps us rightly discern the meaning of Scripture.

Paul also goes on to list 9 gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are each supernatural abilities bestowed on certain believers—not for their own entertainment or to exalt their pride—but (v.7)–>for the common good. They are meant to build up the body of Christ, His Church. They include (vv.8-10) gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the power to work miracles, prophesy, distinguishing spirits (evil ones from good; angels from demons), speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Each of us believers is given at least one spiritual gift; some are given more than one.

Each of us is also given unique skills and talents. We are not to hoard these for ourselves, but again, the purpose of the gifts is to edify the Church, not the person. However, when we are walking out our gifting, our talents, we feel pleasure, even joy—“in the zone”—it doesn’t feel like work. If we haven‘t already, we want to get busy working in our gifting.

C. Finally, in John 20:18-23, Jesus makes one of His post-Resurrection visits to His Apostles. Now He is in His glorified body, a body that is not subject to the laws of the material world. He is able to teleport, appear suddenly in one space or another. Realizing that would be startling, He offers them peace, indicating that His appearance is in no way threatening. He still bears the scars of His Crucifixion–helping them to recognize it is Him and He is alive; but also demonstrating that He bore our scars so we won’t ever have to! 

Then He breathes on them, conferring Holy Spirit empowerment for the 50 day interim from Easter Day until Pentecost. He was ensuring their safety and sustaining them; and He was also preparing them to preach and teach. Now we know that no one can forgive sins except God. But we also know our sins are forgiven when we confess them to God and ask for His forgiveness-→1 John 1:8-9 (NLT)-→If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

We are cleansed from our sins buy the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. But how would anyone know this unless they hear it (the Good News of the Gospel) from someone? Jesus is reminding them and us that we are to get busy! We’ re not to sit around eating peanut butter sandwiches and watching TV. We are not even to judge other people for their sinfulness. We are to do the work He has given us to do…telling people about Him and saving souls.

Friday night, I attended a worship service to commemorate my Pentecostal Friend’s 12th year as pastor of the Apostolic Lighthouse Church. He started the church with 12 members 12 years ago. Now it’s grown to 140 members; and they have baptized more than 100 adults in that time. He has the gift of evangelism (I am less an evangelist and more a teacher, counselor, and preacher.) But can’t we all consider what knowing Jesus has meant to us?Can we think of how the love of Christ has changed us? Can we recall how—in cooperating with the Holy Spirit, and trusting in God’s grace and His answers to our prayers–He has actually freed us, transformed us from how we used to be?

That’s what we share with others. That’s our job, Church. As my pastor friend puts it: “[On Pentecost] that wind gave [the disciples] a job, and the ability to do the job, and then He drove them out into the street so that they would get busy doing that job. Which is why the Holy Spirit, the mighty and powerful wind of God, is more like an angry Mama than any sweet baby or gentle lover. And on this Pentecost Sunday that Holy Spirit is after us. He’s after us to get out into the world with the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ….He’s after us to look around us and see who it is that we know or know about who needs to know about the love and grace and forgiveness of God in Christ (Fairless and Chilton., p.142).

You heard the man, and you heard the Spirit: Let’s Get Busy!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams 

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Let God Be God

Pastor Sherry’s message for May 10, 2026

Scriptures: Acts 17:22-34; Ps 66:8-20; 1 Pet 3:13-22; Jn 14:15-21

I came across the following list on the internet this week:

“Why God Will Never Get Tenure At Any University:

1. Only published one book.

2. It was in Hebrew.

3. It had no references [footnotes or citations from other sources].

4. He did not publish it in referenced journals.

5. Some doubt He even wrote it Himself.

6. He is not known for His cooperative work.

7. Sure, He created the world, but what has He done lately?

8. He did not get permission from any review board to work with human subjects.

9. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning all the subjects.

10. When sample subjects do not behave as predicted, He deletes the whole sample.

11. He rarely comes to class and just tells His students to read the Book.

12. It is rumored that He sometimes lets His Son teach the class.

13. Although He only has 10 requirements, His students often fail His tests.

14. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.”

(Source unknown)

I wonder if the author of this list was a believer. It doesn’t seem like it, does it? If the list is meant to be tongue-in-cheek humor, it puts us in the position of negatively judging the Great High God of the Universe! Speaking humbly, who are we to do that? What would make any human bold enough to believe we are justified in thinking we know better than our Creator and our Redeemer? Frankly, as Job learned, judging God is above our pay grade, isn’t it?

If we are going to let God be God, without our interference–which is hard for many to do—we have to allow Him to reveal Himself to us as He is, not as we might like Him to be. We have to take Him at His Word (made flesh, Jesus—the face of God the Father–and written, the Bible). My daughter and I had a friend in Pittsburgh named Mrs. Wilson. She told me that she was a Christian but she also believed in reincarnation. Like many, she thought she could pick the most appealing aspects of the world religions and decide what she liked best, thus fashioning her own religion. But if we make up our own god, and the rules through which he operates, then who is god? Reincarnation is a Hindu concept whereby if we don’t learn in one lifetime what the multitude of gods want from us, we come back after death as another life form to try again. This goes on and on until we finally get it right. She thought this idea was delightful until I asked her what she would do if she were reincarnated as a rat or a cockroach. Hinduism is a “works’ righteousness” religion, in which believers are responsible for their own salvation. She was a non-practicing Catholic who didn’t realize we can’t save ourselves—we all need a Savior to do it for us. So I gently asked her, “Mrs. Wilson, why would you want to go through all that risk and all that work when Jesus Christ has already won salvation for you?”

I think this is what Paul was getting at in our Acts 17:22-31 lesson.

He’s in Athens, at the Parthenon on the highest hill in the city, and he notices all the altars the Greeks have to their many gods. Built in 500 BC, it was originally dedicated to Athena (after whom the city was named), the goddess of wisdom, the arts, literature, and war. In Paul’s day, it contained altars to all the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. It was also the place to which Greek philosophers came to debate and discuss the great ideas of their day. Paul noticed they had also included one altar to “An Unknown God.” Were they hedging their bets? Trying to appeal to any god they hadn’t yet discovered? Paul wisely went on to tell them they were “too religious”—too caught up in their own ideas about god without knowing the One True God. He identified their unknown God as Jesus Christ and tells them he both knows of Him and knows Him. He tells them, essentially, that when he came to believe in Christ, he lost many of his ideas about religion.

He wants them (and us) to let Jesus Christ be the One and Only God in their lives. He tells them that God created everything (v.24); that He meets all of His own needs and does not live in man-made temples (v.25); that, in fact, He gave us life and we are His children. He asserts that In Him we live and move and have our being (v.28). He means that we should all have a relationship with Him, as He is, as He has revealed Himself to us. He cautions them to realize that prior to Jesus’ incarnation, God(v.30)…overlooked peoples’ ignorance…but now He commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to Him [meaning Jesus, the One He raised from the dead].

And He warns them that this God, Jesus, (v.28) is not an idol—He is real! He want us to repent of our sins and turn to Him. As the judge of all humans, He will one day return to earth to evaluate how well they (and we) have obeyed Him.

The Greeks of Paul’s day did not believe in a resurrection—this was a critical tenet of their religion. So some of them laughed at Paul, rejecting what did not agree with their religious notions. But others, including Dionysius, an influential man, and Damaris, a woman, believed him, and accepted Jesus then and there as their Lord and Savior. These two, and hopefully others, were willing to let God be God. This means letting go of what they (and we) may have held as treasured human concepts (like Mrs. Wilson’s fascination with reincarnation), and taking our God as He is, as He has revealed Himself to be.

Our Psalm (66:8-20) is one of thanksgiving, both as a community of faith and as individual believers. We thank God for historically protecting His people, testing us, purifying us, ransoming us from slavery in Egypt (or bondage to sin), and for showing us the way forward. We also individually thank Him for hearing our prayers and for answering us.

Even in Old Testament times, this psalmist knew God answers the prayers of those who confess their sins. If we don’t experience God answering our prayers, it could be because we come to Him as unrepentant sinners. I was in my early 40’s before I realized that the Lord had answered one of my prayers. He had not saved a baby I lost at 5.5 months into the pregnancy; nor did He put my damaged marriage back together. But as my mother lay dying in the ICU from cirrhosis of the liver (she had been a long term alcoholic), I began to pray at her bedside that the Lord would forgive her of her sins and take her home to be with Him. I asked the nursing staff if a Catholic priest had been called, as she had converted to Catholicism back when I was a teen. They called for an anonymous fellow from the Orlando phone book. When he arrived and began to ready himself to pray over her and anoint her, he asked me where I lived (Tallahassee, Florida, at the time), and shocked me when he said he had daughters who lived there. It turns out he was an Episcopal priest who had been accepted into the Roman Catholic religion and was able to remain married to his wife and connected to his children. He said at that time (1988), he was one of only 7 such priests in the country! I realized shortly thereafter that the Lord had sent an Episcopalian for me (my denomination then) who was a Catholic for my mother. She died about 45 minutes after he ministered to her. Prior to 1988, I had not lived a very Christian life style. I was not in the habit of keeping short sin accounts with the Lord. But I had learned to do so by then. If we are going to let God be God, we might want to preface all our prayers with an admission of and repentance for the ways we have offended God.

The Gospel lesson this morning is from John 14:15-21. In this particular passage, Jesus teaches His disciples about the Holy Spirit. (V.16) He is our Advocate, like a defense attorney who will always be there for us. (V.17) Another of His jobs is to lead us into all truth. If you don’t know how to interpret a passage of Scripture, ask the Holy Spirit to open up its meaning for you. If you don’t know who to believe when the news differs from reporter to reporter, ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern who is speaking the truth. The Holy Spirit is God’s still, small voice, speaking wisdom to us in any situation. Jesus wants us to know, however, that our ability to hear from the Holy Spirit depends on our being obedient to His commandments. Just as with Psalm 66, if we are letting God be God, we demonstrate our love for Him by our obedience to Him.

Finally, in our New Testament reading from 1 Peter 3:13-22, the Apostle wants us to remember our Christian lives will not always be smooth—and he should know! As with Peter, the Lord tests us through trials and hard times. He is present with us during our suffering, but He never agrees to always protect us from it-→someone has wisely said, “He invites us to a banquet, not a picnic.”

(J. Vernon McGee, Through the Bible Commentary on 1st Peter, Thomas Nelson, 1991, p.16.)

Peter wants us to (v.15)-→worship Christ as Lord of your life….if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. Remember It is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, then to suffer for doing wrong! Someone else has opined, “The answer is yes, Lord; now what’s the question?”.

(J. Fairless and D. Chilton, The Lectionary Lab Commentary, Year A, 2013, p.120.)

May we always let God be God, and trust in Him, even when things are not going well in our lives. May we also frequently confess our sins and remain in right relationship with Him. Amen, may it be so!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

In Christ Alone

Pastor Sherry’s message for April 13, 2026

Scriptures: Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Ps 16; 1 Pet 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

We are a people who believe in Christ’s Resurrection. Do we live today—post Easter—as though we really do? If we aren’t sure, our God has shown us how. Our readings today give us 4 vital ways. Let’s unpack them using the verses of (another) contemporary Christian song; It was written in 2002 by Adrienne Liesching and Geoff Moore, ”In Christ Alone.”

Verse 1: In Christ alone my hope is found.

He is my light, my strength, my song.

This cornerstone, this solid ground

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease.

My comforter, my all in all.

Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In our Acts lesson, 2:14a, 22-32, it’s 9:00 am on the Day of Pentecost and the people think the apostles are drunk. Peter, who has recently stumbled in his faith, is powerfully energized! He’d been afraid that he too might be crucified. But now, he preaches the first sermon in what is known as “the Church Age”—leading to the conversion of 3,000 Jews. Obviously, both he and his fellow apostles are Fired Up! They know Jesus is Who He said He was! That He is their light, their strength, their song; that He is the Chief Cornerstone, their solid ground, the source of their (and our) salvation. They therefore trust that He will see them through every problem that threatens them.

If we are living into Easter, we too should be fired up! We, too, can trust that our God is Who He says He is. God did what is impossible for people; He raised Jesus Christ from the grave. So, we too can see Him as our strength and our salvation. Because of Him, we, too, have nothing to fear. Like them, we can affirm, Here in the love of Christ we stand!

Verse 2: In Christ alone who took on flesh-

Fullness of God in helpless babe—

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones He came to save.

Til on that cross as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied,

For every sin on Him was laid.

Here in the death of Christ I live.

Our Gospel lesson is from John 20:19-31. St. John details two Post-Resurrection appearances to the frightened apostles: Everyone but Thomas is present for the first visit. The 10 see and believe that Jesus is alive! They realize anew that He must be Who He claimed to be: God. They see that He really did accomplish what He said He would: overcoming the power of sin and death over humankind. And they receive from Him (1) His deep shalom peace—not dependent on our circumstances but on our relationship with Jesus; (2) A mission or purpose: As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you (v.21). He was ordaining them for ministry; telling them they would need to pick up their cross, like Him and follow Him; and to be ready to lose their life so as to gain it. (3) Finally, He gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit-→God’s empowerment to do all that He was asking them to do, and God’s discernment for forgiving people their sins, in Jesus’ name.

If we are living into Easter, we too believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection. If we believe, we too are born to eternal life! As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NLT)–>God made Him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. If we believe, we too receive Christ’s peace; life purpose, mission, or ministry; and the powerful assistance of His Holy Spirit. We also realize that, Here in the death of Christ we live.

Verse 3: There in the ground His body lay,

Light of the World by darkness slain.

Then bursting forth in glorious day,

Up from the grave He rose again.

And as He stands in victory,

Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,

For I am His and He is mine…

Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

Thomas misses out and does not believe their reports. A week later Jesus returns so Thomas can see for himself. How gracious of the Lord to be patient with our unbelief! How sweet of Him to come back for the one (lost sheep) who still didn’t get it. Then look at the lengths to which Jesus goes to prove to practical Thomas what the others already accept. Finally convinced, Thomas confesses, “My Lord & My God!” You see, Jesus doesn’t expect us to park our intellect at the church door. He meets us where we are, and if our hearts are willing, and our eyes are open, He shows us He is alive, living, victorious!

If we are living into Easter, we too share in His victory over sin and death! We, too, can believe that He has defeated Satan’s power over us. We, too, can celebrate our freedom in and through Christ! As St. John tells us, (Jn 3:16, NIV)–>For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ has ransomed us with His life. We, too, can rest assured that We are His and He is ours…bought with the precious blood of Christ.

Verse 4: No guilt in life, no fear in death—

This is the power of Christ in me;

From life’s first cry to final breath,

Jesus commands my destiny.

No power of hell, no scheme of man

Can ever pluck me from His hand.

Til He returns or calls me home,

Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.

Psalm 16 is a prophesy from King David, also known as “The Song of the resurrection.” In it, David foretells of (verses 8-9), Jesus’ life and death. In verse 10, he predicts Jesus’ resurrection (NLT)-→For You [meaning God the Father] will not leave My soul [meaning that of Jesus] among the dead or allow Your Holy One [Jesus] to rot in the grave. Jesus, and David, both put their whole trust in God, and so should we.

In 1 Peter 1:3-9, the never-again-wavering Peter both celebrates Christ’s resurrection and warns us of trials to come. In verses 3-5, He practically dances with joy because of what the resurrection means for us all (NLT)-→All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by His great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

But he also warns us—and he should know—to anticipate that we will experience trials that will test our faith, (verses 6-7, NLT)-→So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold….We have all suffered tests of our faith, haven’t we? It’s so tempting to bail on God when things in our lives get rough. But here is Peter exhorting us not to abandon Jesus when we experience times of trial. And difficulties. Remembering this, realizing our hope is “in Christ,” Here in the power of Christ we’ll stand.

Because of Jesus’ death on the Cross and Resurrection from the dead, we believers can live into new Easter attitudes and new, improved Easter behaviors: We can live life fearlessly, trusting in the love and protection of our Lord. We can rely upon the fact that He has paid the price for our sins so we too will be resurrected and live with Him, eternally, in heaven. We can relax in His love, knowing He has redeemed us with His blood. And, we can rest assured that He has the power to help us overcome the worst Satan and the world can throw at us.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, Alleluia, Alleluia!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Complete Restoration

Pastor Sherry’s message for March 22, 2026 

Scriptures: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

The story is told that…

“In a remote Swiss village stands a beautiful church–Mountain Valley Cathedral. It has high pillars and magnificent stained glass windows, but what makes it special is the most beautiful pipe organ in the whole region. People would come from far off lands just to hear the lovely tunes of this organ.

“One dreadful day something went wrong with the pipe organ. It released the wrong tones and produced only sounds of disharmony. Musicians and experts from around the world tried to repair it. No one could find the problem. It was uniquely made; it had been customized, so no one really knew how to fix it. They gave up.

“After some time, one old man arrived for a worship service. “Why wasn’t the pipe organ used?” It’’s not playing right” said the church staff. “Let me try to fix it,” replied the man. Since it had been lying there essentially useless, the staff reluctantly agreed to let the old man try his hand at it. For two days the old man worked in almost total silence. The church workers were, in fact, getting a bit nervous. Then on the third day at noon, suddenly music poured forth from what had been a dead instrument. The pipe organ gave off the best music after so many years. The people in the village heard the beautiful music. They came to the church to see. This old man was playing at the organ. After he finished, one man asked, “How did you fix it? How did you manage to restore this magnificent instrument when even the world’s experts could not?” The old man said, “It was I who built this organ fifty years ago. I created it, and now I have restored it.”

(James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1988, pp. 244-245.)

It took the creator of the organ to restore it. The congregation of Mountain Valley Cathedral were totally blessed when the fellow who built the organ showed up. The old fellow had designed and constructed it; so he certainly would know what needed to be done to restore it.

Now think about us. Who is there who is in the best position to restore us?

Medical science knows a lot about the human body—and I am not trying to disparage them, as they have been gifted by God to help–but their medicine doesn’t always heal us does it? We can read self-help books or listen to podcasts by “experts,” regarding what ails us, or even order supplements off the internet said to be healing, but even they often disappoint.

Our divine Creator is both knowledgeable enough and powerful enough to restore us. Nicodemus (from John 3)came to Jesus wanting to know how to enter heaven-→Jesus, the King of Heaven, told him to be “born again”—to develop a personal relationship with His Savior, which he did. The woman at the well (from John 4) wanted water she would not have to draw from the well daily—Jesus told her He is the Living Water, God’s Word made flesh. If she repented of her sins, and drank in His words daily, she would never spiritually thirst again. The man born blind (from John 9) was given his sight by Jesus,

He then gazed upon the Messiah. The skeptical Pharisees missed out, but the newly sighted man perceived the Light of the World. In today’s Gospel, John 11, Jesus demonstrates His power over life and death, revealing Him as the Resurrection and the giver of Life.

Our Scripture lessons today all stress our Lord’s ability to bring us to bring us exactly what we need, to bring us to complete restoration: 

A. Let’s begin with our Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel 37:1-14. The prophet Ezekiel is foretelling the restoration of the nation of Israel. At that time, the Israelites—due to their idolatry and rebellion– had been taken captive by the Babylonians and exiled away from the Promised Land. While still in captivity, God sent His mouthpiece, Ezekiel, to tell them the Lord meant to revive them spiritually, and to bring them home. In a sense, they are just like the dry, desiccated bones lying about in a disconnected disarray. A modern crime scene investigator would have postulated a titanic battle had taken place and the victors had denied their vanquished foes a proper burial (a sign of contempt). But the Lord tells His prophet these bones are what is left of His Chosen People.

The Lord then instructs the prophet to prophesy to the bones—i.e., to tell them God’s truth. As Ezekiel speaks God’s words over the bones, they reassemble in stages: From scattered fragments to cadavers (bodies without life), to a restored and living assembly! The prophet speaks, but it is our God who gives them life. Since our God creates life, like the old organist, He can certainly bring about complete restoration!

B. Our psalmist (Psalm 130) wants us to remember that our God hears us when we call to Him out of our deep distress. Are you grieving? Tell the Lord about it. Are you worried about your health, your adult children, your grands, your finances? Take your anxieties to the Lord. Does the news upset you? Do the wars going on cause you concern. Each negative news item can become for you a prompt to prayer. We need to remember, as Beth Moore says, that when a problem is over our heads, it is always under God’s feet. We can put our faith in Him because He cares for us. He is a God of unfailing love (v.6). Verse 7 assures us that His redemption overflows. Again, the message is clear: Our God has the power to restore us completely.

C. As Paul writes in Romans 8:6-11 (NLT, v.9)-→But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. So we want to honor the Holy Spirit within us and listen to His guidance. Furthermore, we have this blessed assurance (v.10-11)-→And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.

Hallelujah! We will be resurrected! Hallelujah! We will receive completely restored, resurrection bodies!

D. In our Gospel lesson (John 11:1-45), Jesus calls the 4-days-dead Lazarus out from the grave, alive again! Laz is the third of three folks Jesus resurrected before going to the Cross: The first was the 12YO daughter of the synagogue leader, Jairus, who had just died minutes before Jesus came to her.

The second was the son of the widow of Nain, who was being carried to the grave yard for burial. Since they buried people quickly, due to the heat, he might have been dead a day. Then came Lazarus. As with the man blind from birth, God the Father wanted people to know that His Son, Jesus, had the power to do the impossible. The man said no one had ever heard of a person born blind restored to sight. Similarly, no one had ever experienced watching a person, dead long enough to have begun to decay, brought back to life.

Jesus was giving His followers yet another chance to believe He was/is the Son of God. This, though was the coup de gras! More than merely healing, this was a demonstration of complete restoration power, miraculous resurrection power! Jesus tells Martha (vv.25-26, NIV)-→I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die….If we have Jesus, we have life!

The great novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky learned this first hand and it permanently changed his life. As an educated young man from a wealthy family, he flirted with communist revolutionary thought in pre-revolution 1917 Russia.

The Czar learned of his activities and had him arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by a firing squad. Dostoevsky was blind-folded, dressed in burial clothes, bound, and led into a public square where he was tied to a post. The young writer heard the firing squad cock their guns. The order was given, “Ready, aim….” But just at that moment, a message arrived from the Czar to commute the death penalty to four years of hard labor. Dostoevsky later wrote that he never totally recovered from this experience.

On the train to prison in Siberia, he was given a copy of the New Testament, which he devoured. Realizing it was God who had saved him, he then turned his life over to Christ. Despite witnessing some truly evil things done by his cellmates, he developed the belief that humans are only capable of loving if they believe they are loved. His novels stress the Christian themes of sin, repentance, grace, and forgiveness. In other words, coming so close to death radically altered his sense of what is important in life. The soon -to-be-great Russian author had been profoundly affected by the Lord’s rescue (complete restoration) of him (Original source of this story unknown.)

Do you realize that we are not meant by our God to fear death? Or anything, really? Why would we when we worship a God who can completely restore us to life? Why would we when we realize that our Lord Jesus and Our Heavenly Father are supremely powerful and totally loving? They created us and They know what we need to live life at its fullest and best.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

Alleluia! Alleluia! 

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Our God, the “Contrarian” 

Pastor Sherry’s message for March 15, 2026

1 Sam 16:1-13; Ps 23; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

What is a “contrarian”? Have you ever been accused of being one?According to a number of excellent dictionaries, it means essentially,

“1.One who takes a contrary view or action, especially an investor who makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom, as in buying securities that are unpopular at the time.

“2. A person who habitually takes a view opposite to that held by the majority.

“The contrarians in the stock market prefer to sell when most analysts advise us to buy.”

“3. A person who expresses a contradicting viewpoint, especially one who denounces the majority persuasion.”

  1. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, as shared on Google.com)

In other words, a Contrarian” is someone who has opinions that differ from those of the majority of folks on certain issues. We tend to think of a contrarian as someone who is rebellious. Perhaps it could be said to describe you at times. I’m sure my ex-husband, and several bosses for whom I once worked said it of me. But, you know, it puts us in good company because it can also be said of both Jesus and of God the Father. We don’t want to be intentionally disagreeable—that would be neither Christian nor reasonable. Nevertheless, as one of my favorite Bible commentators, Rev. John Fairless (of “Two Bubbas and a Bible” fame) puts it:

“We don’t like it when God gets contrary, do we? We like God to color between the lines, to follow the speed limit and to stay in the right lane. And the Bible shows us a God who likes to speed, who can sometimes barely keep it between the ditches, who not only does not color between the lines; it sometimes appears that God doesn’t even know that the lines are there.”

(John Fairless and Delmer Chilton, The Lectionary Lab Commentarty, Year A,, 2013, p.91)

Fairless has exaggerated for effect, but he is saying that we tend to expect God to behave according to what we think is the one right and only way (usually our own opinion). But God is God and so what He or Jesus does is the true, right, and best way—even if it might not initially look that way to us.

This is clearly illustrated in our Old Testament and Gospel readings today:

A. In 1 Samuel 16:1-13, the prophet Samuel is tasked by God with anointing the continuously disobedient King Saul’s replacement. We learn that Samuel is reluctant to do so. He really loves Saul, despite Saul’s rebelliousness toward God. And he worries that if Saul gets wind of what he is doing in Bethlehem, the King will have him assassinated.

Despite his fears, Samuel gathers Jesse and his sons, under the guise of an impromptu worship service, and looks the seven sons over. He’s impressed with the eldest, Eliab, but God says, “NO, he’s not My choice. You are responding to what you see of his outward appearance”—the problem the people had when they selected Saul, who was tall and good looking. So, God redirects him by saying (v.7, NLT)…Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

He then asks Jesse if he has additional sons. It’s as though the youngest is so insignificant to his father that he has forgotten David. Jesse had other shepherds who could have tended the flock. However, he says in verse 11-→There is still the youngest, but he’s out in the fields watching the sheep and goats. David’s father had not planned for him to attend the worship service or the banquet to follow. But David, at 16, the youngest of 8, is the one God wants. And when Samuel anoints him as the next King of Israel, the Holy Spirit falls upon him, marking him as God’s choice.

How surprised—and perhaps how envious—the older brothers must have been! Instead of choosing the eldest brother, God–as we saw Him do with Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—chooses the youngest. This flies in the face of human expectations! We think that the baby son has the least experience and may be spoiled or entitled, having an underdeveloped character. But our “contrarian” God sees things in these younger sons that we might miss. God knows what trials they will face; and He also anticipates the character they will develop. Remember, despite his sins, King David proved himself to be (unlike King Saul) a man after God’s own heart!

B. Our Gospel lesson, John 9:1-41, relates the events surrounding Jesus’ healing of the man blind from birth.

First Jesus addresses the faulty but prevalent belief of the time that if you were somehow physically disabled, it was because you or your folks had seriously sinned. Being blind from birth was not his fate, or his karma–Christians do not believe in either. His condition was meant to provide the opportunity for God to prove that Jesus could heal a never-sighted person (v.3)-→This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.

Then He heals him. Here’s where the questions, the doubt, and the fun begin: The neighbors question whether or not this newly sighted guy is truly the blind guy they known for years. He insists he is and that his healing is real, but they don’t believe him. How frustrating for him that he cannot convince them.

My question is “Why is no one rejoicing with him?”  This has never happened before, it’s a miracle. Why are the people who are acquainted with him not rejoicing?!!

Instead, the neighbors take him to the Pharisees. The Pharisees can’t rejoice in his new eyesight either because they get tangled up in the fact that Jesus healed (or did work) on the Sabbath! The Pharisees then argue over whether or not Jesus is from God or is a blatant sinner. They ask the man and he insists that Jesus must be a man of God, a prophet. But, because the whole enterprise contradicts their belief system—their narrative—they discount the man’s testimony and search out his parents. He’s a grown man! Lord have mercy!

They locate his parents and demand to know if the man was truly born blind. The parents have heard the Pharisees are throwing Jesus’ followers out of the Synagogue—the center of Jewish community in that day–so they are cagey with their response. Interestingly, even they don’t celebrate his healing. This makes me wonder if they were already missing the money he made from begging. If you truly loved your child, would you not be thrilled that he was now able to see?!! They wisely, and probably cheekily, tell the Pharisees to ask him for themselves.

The Pharisees call the man back in, saying (v.24)-→God should get the glory for this, because we know this man Jesus is a sinner. The man honestly states (v.24)-→I don’t know whether He is a sinner…but I know this: I was blind but now I can see! Can’t you just hear his frustration?

No doubt he is thinking, “I’ve never been able to see, but now I can, due to this man you call Jesus. Can’t you just celebrate with me?” So he tells the Pharisees (v.27)-→Look!…I told you once. Didn’t you listen? Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become His disciples, too? The Pharisees are frustrated too. Their perspective is that Jesus is a sinner, no one with Godly authority. So they curse this man whose only misstep was to have been healed by our Lord! They place their faith in Moses because they don’t trust in Jesus’ origins or His power. The healed man, probably inspired by the Holy Spirit, then takes them to school (vv.30-33)–> Why, that is very strange! He healed my eyes, and yet you don’t know where He comes from? We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but He is ready to hear those who worship Him and do His will. Ever since the world began, no one has been able to open the eyes of someone born blind. If this man were not from God, He couldn’t have done it. (He reminds me, in his “moxie” of the Samaritan woman at the well.) The Pharisees, however, are outraged—their pride is offended—so they do expel him from the Synagogue.

Jesus comes to his rescue again. He reveals Himself to the man as the long-awaited Messiah. He says He came to give sight to the blind, which He has done for this fortunate fellow (as per Isaiah 63:1); and to try to convince those who are spiritually blind that they do not see. Overhearing, the Pharisees get involved again and ask (v.40)-→Are you saying we’re blind? Now who is the contrarian? Jesus says, If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty [you’d have an excuse]. But you remain guilty because you claim you can see. The short answer is “Yes.” They are able to see physically but not spiritually; whereas the blind man was physically blind, prior to Jesus, but now sees spiritually, and with much more accurate perception than the religious leaders and teachers of his day.

So what might we learn from this? We have learned that life is not fair, and sometimes our God may not seem fair, as judged from our perspective. We say or think that He doesn’t do the things we think He should do, or that He doesn’t do them the way or the time we think they should be done. YIKES! We want to think that through carefully. We are not God and we are not privy to all that He knows and plans for us. If we can trust in His nature, we know He is the Good Shepherd as Psalm 23 tells us: He provides for us, protects us, and blesses us. St. Paul exhorts us (Ephesians 5:8-14) to live as people of the Light. Christ’s light shines out only what is good and right and true. This kind of behavior differs from secular wisdom and contemporary woke expectations. If we don’t see the evidence of God’s blessings in our lives today, we need to trust in His nature and wait—with hope and faith—for what He does in our future.

We have learned that God’s purposes are right and good. The Pharisees misjudged Jesus because He did not present Himself in ways that fit their expectations, their system, their narrative. If we are offended because our God often appears to be a contrarian, we need to remember He is God and we are not.  As a result, we should each probably ask ourselves, “What truth about God or Christ have I missed because it did not fit my view of how things should turn out?”

Just as King David’s family, the prophet Samuel, and the Blind man’s parents and his neighbors, we need to be willing to put our human assumptions aside and look to see what “opposite world” thing our God is doing. Jesus came to save the lost. We are lost—and inaccurate– if we insist that all things should go our way. But we worship a Jesus who is never lost, and who—as the Son of Man, the Christ, the Messiah, the Living Water, the Light of the World—came to show us the unerring way to the Father’s heart.

Thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia! Alleluia!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams 

Posted on by Cheryl Norman w/a Mary Jo Delaney

Passing God’s Tests

Pastor Sherry’s message for March 8, 2026

Scriptures: Ex 17:1-7; Ps 95; Ro 5:1-11; Jn 4:5-42

There is an anonymous story told of an Ohio State University student who was academically competent but tended to need time to complete assignments (he was smart but not speedy). He was troubled by a Calculus class he needed to pass—and wasn’t—taught by an annoying professor. The guy seemed to delight in frustrating his already discouraged students (You know the type. They seem to dislike students and should never be allowed to have authority over them.) During exams, he would walk around, watching them like a hawk, hoping to discover someone cheating; and he would frequently announce the amount of time left just to interrupt their trains of thought and to agitate everyone. In a class of 1,000 students, the slow-but-steady young man was the only one not to turn in his exam when time was called. The prof waited impatiently and then, an hour later, when the young man finally finished his test, the prof asked him what he thought he was doing. The young man answered, “Turning in my exam.” The prof replied, “Your exam is an hour late. Congratulations! You’ve failed it. So, I will see you next term when you repeat my class.” 

The student smiled and asked, “Do you know my name?” The professor replied gruffly, “What?” The student rephrased his question, “Do you know what my name is?” With irritation, the prof replied, “There are 1,000 students in this class. What makes you think I would know your name?” The student then smiled, and, lifting up a tall stack of test booklets, placed his completed test in the middle of the pile and casually exited the huge lecture hall.

Life sometimes presents us with tests–and authority figures– like that one. We may think our prospects are slim and we don’t have much of a chance at succeeding. The truth is that if we have a relationship with the Lord, we can make it through about any trial that might come. Let’s see what light our passages today have to shed on this issue: 

A. Our OT lesson comes from Exodus 17:1-7. The context is that God is leading His people from the Wilderness of Sin—and doesn’t sin truly place us in a wilderness?–to a placed called Rephidim. The Children of Israel have already experienced God’s miraculous deliverance of them from Pharaoh’s Chariots at the parting of the Red Sea. Three days into the desert, they come across a pond of bad water which the lord empowers Moses to turn good. He then leads them to an oasis with 12 delicious fresh water springs, so they can load up their water skins. By the 15th day out of Egypt, they have run out of food (except for their herds), but God supernaturally supplies them with manna. Now they find themselves at Rephidim where there is no water.

Having apparently learned little about trusting in the Lord for His provision, they fail to pray and ask for His assistance. Instead, they turn on Moses. It’s a test which they flunk. God has provided for them already, at least 3-4 times! Psychology tells us the best single predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Jehovah Jirah truly is our provider. By now, they should have trusted in the Lord and sought Him out in prayer. Moses, afraid for his life, pleads with God to intervene. And God uses him to lead them to the Rock at Horeb, at the base of Mt. Sinai (where they will soon receive the Ten Commandments).

There God makes water rush out from the rock, enough to satisfy 2 million people and only Heaven knows how many animals. Moses names the place Massah—which means testing—and Meribah—which means quarreling. It becomes a monument to their lack of faith in God.

It is also a testimony to their rebellion, their hard hearts, their ingratitude, and their self-pity. Many centuries later, Paul will write 1 Corinthians10:1-4-→I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. And he followed up in verses 9-10-→Do not…put Christ to the test, as some of them did and… don’t grumble as some of them did….Because Massah and Meribah is also a reminder of God’s gracious and abundant provision—in spite of His peoples’ attitudes and behavior! Unlike the calculus professor at Ohio State, God is for us, not against us. Our Lord tests us to help deepen our faith and trust in Him.

B. Psalm 95 picks up the same theme! This is one of the psalms that memorializes the Israelites’ rebellious lack of faith. Verses 8-10 state (NLT)-→The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah, as they did at Massah in the wilderness. For there your ancestors tested and tried My patience, even though they saw everything I did. For forty years I was angry with them, and I said, “They are a people whose hearts turn away from Me. They refuse to do what I tell them.” Other psalms say essentially the same thing: Psalm 81:7-→You cried to Me in trouble, and I saved you; I answered out of the thundercloud and tested your faith when there was no water at Meribah. Psalm 105:40-41(NIV)-→They asked and He brought them quail and satisfied them with the bread of Heaven. He opened the rock and water gushed out; like a river it flowed in the desert. Psalm 106:13 (NLT)-→Yet how quickly they forgot what He had done! They wouldn’t wait for His counsel!  In the desert their desires ran wild, testing God’s patience in that wasteland.

You see, our God tests our faith in Him. As we develop in our spiritual walk, He tests us to discover whether we love Him for what He does for us or because of Who He is. As Paul reminds us in Romans 5:3-5-→We can rejoice too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know they they help us develop endurance [patience, persistence]. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.

Returning to Psalm 95, God provided for that generation, but—because they repeatedly failed His tests, (v.11)—So in My anger I took an oath: They will never enter my place of rest [the Promised Land]. He did not detest them, but He was angry and grieved with and disappointed in them. They wandered in the wilderness because they did not trust God. He waited for the last of that adult generation to die before leading the people into the Promised Land. 

C. Our Gospel lesson (John 4:5-42) relates Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman around her need for living water. First, we note that He had to go through Samaria. Jews normally avoided traveling through Samaria.

The Samaritans had intermarried with non-Jewish northern people after 721BC, and were considered mongrels by their Jewish kin in Judea. Nevertheless, Jesus stopped there to fulfill a divine appointment with this woman. (Never believe that women are second class citizens in God’s eyes! Jesus, the King of Glory, went into Samaria precisely because the Father told Him to meet with this woman.)

She comes looking for water at noon, a time when other women would have been elsewhere. No doubt she hoped to avoid them, and their “snarky” comments. Additionally, she was probably lonely, discouraged, and feeling empty and weary.

She encounters Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, the Living Water. He engages her first, thus overcoming barriers of gender, race, religion, religious practice, and morality. He meets her where she is, with compassion and love. He steps into her reality, promising her water that…becomes a spring gushing up to eternal life. She is curious and asks Him to give her this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water. But one thing stands in her way: her sinful lifestyle. Unlike the student from Ohio State, she is known to Christ. He knows her sinful history of 5 husbands and a 6th paramour. When He calls her out on her sins, she believes He is a prophet. But He reveals Himself to her as the promised Messiah. Thrilled, she abandons her water jugs and brings her whole village to Him. She and they all partake of the true Living Water, the Word of God, Jesus Christ. She and they—considered by the Jews to be no better than feral dogs—are transformed and saved!

We need to be aware that God will test our faith. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we should expect the testing to begin and not be surprised. Further, we don’t want to be stubborn and stiff-necked like the ancient Israelites, repeatedly failing God’s tests. No, we want to be like this Samaritan woman, realizing we are lost, unfulfilled, and desperate without Jesus. We want to learn from the tests to deepen our faith. We want the Holy Spirit to develop in us endurance and patience; to mold and shape our characters to look more and more like that of Jesus; to transform our attitudes and behaviors; to increase our hope; and to discover if we can continue to love Him even when He doesn’t give us what we want.

So the question really is, Will we pass God’s tests? When we experience deprivation, loss, a heart-breaking health diagnosis, or some trauma, will we doubt God’s presence and His provision, like the ancient Israelites? Or will we like Moses, go to Him in prayer for help, trusting in Him to rescue us? Or will we, like the Samaritan Woman, open ourselves to His loving correction and transforming power?

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

©️2026 Rev. Dr. Sherry Adams