Element Christian Church of Santa Maria

The scriptures call us to honor our parents and take care of those in our community (including widows, single mothers, and families dealing with illness). On the cross, Jesus looks down and takes care of His earthly mother’s immediate and future needs. He honors and respects Mary because she has been a such blessing in His life.

Christians confidently affirm the existence of one God, who exists eternally in three persons. The Father and the Son are the most familiar to most Christians. But the Bible’s teaching about the Holy Spirit is deeper than most people comprehend. While the focus of our faith is rightly on Jesus, our Savior, it is freeing to understand the wonderful works of the Spirit, who brings us all the benefits won for us by Christ?

WHY DO WE GATHER? Because in lifting up Christ together it is good on regular

basis to be reminded about how, in Christ, we enter in and God steps over the

threshold, into the common place of the human heart.

You may suffer...but our God IS GOOD. He remembers, He pays attention, and He sees. He is the God of covenant faithfulness, steadfast love...and because of Him we will live forever.

When you lose something and profound change takes place, we must SPEAK OF IT. LOSS is change and Change is LOSS…even if the change is good and necessary.

Lamentations is a book that is like funeral sorrow let loose on the world. It is pain and grief and sorrow for 5 chapters. It is questioning God and hoping someone stops to hear and help. Lamentations in Hebrew is EKAH (HOW).

The most amazing thing about the cacophony of voices in laminations is that it is something God Himself experienced. The messiness of what life really is. And yet in the darkest place…“there is yet hope.” That is the beauty of the gospel…it calls to us in the most brutal and raw of situations and says “God can bring redemption.”

Three things about healing:

1) There is a relationship between the healing we need and the willingness to step boldly into the presence of God as recipients of that healing

2) There is a relationship between the healing we long for and the community we belong to.

3) There is a relationship between the healing that we long for and our honesty before God.

Lamentation is a gift God gives people for healing. 2/3’s of the book of Psalms are psalms of lament. God made his people with the ability to speak. The key to easing suffering is not offering warped views of God, it is giving them a place to mourn and ultimately pointing them to Jesus.

Following Jesus is not mere words, it is not “inviting Him into your heart,” It is living and walking in the ways Jesus would, being like Him...because for many people you are the closest glimpse of Him they will ever see.