Dear Friends of Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church,

Greetings in Christ! 


A singer and songwriter by the name of Gordon Jensen wrote a song some years ago which mentions the fact that you and I as Christians are the only “Jesus” that many people will see. 

No, this does not mean we are Jesus Himself of course. We know He is Jesus all by Himself, yet it should be our goal and desire to be just a bit more like Him every day by sharing what Christ is like. We are to be “lights” in a dark world! 

If there is ever a time for people to see Christ in action through His people, it is today! Take a moment to read this story which illustrates what we are to be in this world when it comes to sharing Christ. 

Pastor Mark Thompson of Faribault, Minnesota, suffered terrible knife wounds from an assailant in his home, in October 1988. One of the many consequences of his difficult recovery was being forced to miss watching his son Chris run in the state cross-country championship meet. Pastor Thompson commissioned his brother Merv to go in his stead. According to the account in the St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch, Mark told his brother, “I can't be there to see Chris run. So I want you there at the beginning of the race. Holler a lot. … Then at the end, I want you to really cheer loudly. And I want you to make your voice sound like mine.” 

Merv heeded the advice, and Chris ran a strong race, finishing second. Merv, also a pastor, discerned the theological truth in the story. “what Jesus wants us to do.” he said. “Make your voice sound like mine.” Friends, we are called to live in this world to “make our voice sound like His”! How can we know what His voice is like? Well, I believe one of the greatest ways is to get into the Word of God and see how He ministered to, and blessed people while on this earth. While the religious crowd often shunned Him, we know He took time for those who were hurting, broken and wounded. 

Let's do that! There's an old song that has these words: ”Oh to be His hand extended, reaching out to the oppressed, Let me touch Him, let me touch Jesus, So that others may know and be blessed.” 

I encourage you today to do your best to walk where He would walk. To talk the way He would talk, and to lend your voice to the voiceless! 

Blessings in Christ, 
Deborah Schauer Pastor ​

Without Easter, the Christian faith is a waste of time. 


That’s what the apostle Paul basically said in that verse above. Resurrection not only gives us hope for eternal life, but it also confirms that what Jesus said in his earthly life was true. Jesus said he would rise from the dead. If he hadn’t, who would have taken his teachings seriously thereafter?

 “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 20. The resurrection was God’s stamp of authenticity on Jesus, proclaiming, “Yes, Jesus is my Son. Yes, he has overcome death. Yes, what he told you is the truth. Trust in what he says! Follow him!” 

During Lent we prepare our hearts through acts of self-denial, “giving up something,” because it helps us examine our commitment to Christ and meditate on the suffering and death of our Lord.

 Acts of self-denial are appropriate when the sacrifice connects with Christian commitment. But there is another view of Lent: a time to prepare to celebrate the Resurrection. When we prepare to celebrate something, we often do housekeeping chores. If we are going to have a party at our house, we first spend time cleaning the house. We prepare refreshments. We may even decorate. When the guests arrive, we celebrate. Preparing is never quite as much fun as celebrating, but it takes the preparation to make the celebration possible and worthwhile. 

Lent is our time of preparing, spiritual housecleaning – a time to dust off our faith, shine up our commitment, and decorate our lives with the joy of Christian life. Then, when Easter comes, we know in our hearts what the celebration is all about.

 At Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church, there will be some opportunities for spiritual housecleaning and celebrating. Hopefully you will plan to include one of these opportunities, or better yet - all of them, in your holy season. 

Palm Sunday Service – Palm Parade and Easter Egg Hunt 
Holy Week Reflection – Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Sunrise Easter Service – 6:01 a.m. followed by Easter Brunch 
Easter Service – 10 a.m. Choir Cantata “The Easter Story” ​

​My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:12-13
 
Valentine's Greetings! 
This is the month so many people do their best to share their love with one another in so many ways as we celebrate Valentine's Day. There is no greater feeling in the world than to be loved. Children experience love from their parents and learn as they grow up what it means to nurture and love another. When God blesses us to find that special person and fall “in love,” no expression can truly describe the joy they have found. True love is sometimes difficult to find in our world. Divorce rates are high, and the number of singles in our country is on the rise. But the power of love to transform and rejuvenate relationships is illustrated through many passages within the Bible. 

Yet, let me just take a moment to remind you of the amazing love of our Lord Jesus Christ whose example of true and perfect love should be held up for all to see. 

Jesus was clearly saying in the above scripture that our love towards one another as the family of God should not be dictated by "feelings" because you cannot give a commandment to feel a certain way. Yet, this love He wants us to have is a choice that we make in our hearts to love one another even as He loved us! 

I want to encourage you during this time of year and special celebration of love, to take a little extra time to appreciate and love the family of God. 

We live in a world in which actions are only determined by the feelings of the moment. If a person feels in love, they do all they can to bless that person who loves them. Yet, so often when the emotions are not what they once were, their level of commitment to that person takes a direct hit. 

We cannot go through this life without being offended, and often our offense arises out of unmet expectations, yet these are the times our love is tested! I encourage you today to pass the test, and love one another not only in the times of harmony and agreement, but also in those challenging moments when it is difficult to do so! 

In Christ's Love,
Pastor Deborah

​There are thousands of promises of God in the Bible. God’s Word is truth, and whatever God says will come to fruition. We cognitively know that God will keep those promises, but when life happens–when we experience difficulty and hardship, we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that God’s Word is still true, despite our circumstances. 

Have you ever been filled with such depression and despair that you couldn’t see that God’s promises still ring true in your life? No matter how we sometimes may feel, we must remember the fact that God will always keep his promises–no matter what. 

With that in mind, for the next few weeks, we will be looking at those promises of God that are found in the Bible; not thousands of them but a few that may speak some truth to us in a sermon series entitled, the Promises of God. This series will begin on January 18th at our Saturday evening service and January 19th at our Sunday morning service and end just before Ash Wednesday which starts the Season of Lent. Everyone likes to a hear about promises, especially those that come true! Truth can be found in the Promises of God! 

Looking forward to stand on the promises of God,
 Pastor Deborah

A New Tesament reference to this prophecy is found in MATTHEW 1:23 and goes on to share the meaning of the name “Immanuel” which is “God with us.” I don’t know about you, but the wonderful assurance I feel when I read a verse such as this gives me great assurance for the day and age we live. If there is ever a day we need the assurance of the presence of God, it is today, and we know God’s presence still abides with us through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. 

When Jesus came to earth over 2,000 years ago in the form of a little child, it was both the fulfillment of many prophecies declaring it would happen, but also was the beginning of the revelation of God the Father to a lost and dying world. 

God was declaring who He was through the life of His Son. A powerful scripture shares this truth; JOHN 14:7-9– 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 

Too often we can become so enthralled with the trappings of Christmas, yet fail to realize it was ALL about God coming to earth to reveal His unconditional love and continual reaching out to mankind in mercy and grace. 

As we once again celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I pray you would take time to appreciate this wonderful God who is still “with us.” He is STILL Immanuel! He is a personal God who loves you beyond anything or anyone and will be there for you even when the closest of friends turn and walk the other way. 

Take time to reflect and appreciate “God with us” during this season and consider joining us at one of our Christmas Eve Services: 

December 24, 2019 
5:00 pm—Family Service 
It’s All About the Gift 
7:00 pm—Candlelight and Communion Service
 A Special Encounter 

Keeping Christ in Christmas,
Pastor Deborah

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:16-18

If holidays can be said to be a color, for me, Thanksgiving is a “brown holiday” – something other than the frenzied red of the secular Christmas, the holy white of Easter, the patriotic red, white and blue of July 4th or the garish black and orange of Halloween. Brown is a peaceful, earthy tone, suggestive of fallen leaves, dried corn stalks and landscapes at the rest after the harvest.

 A peaceful color is appropriate for the day. Other than a trip to the grocery store, there is, thank God, no shopping season in preparation for Thanksgiving. There are no office parties, no tinsel and no obligatory gift exchanges. More than any other special day, Thanksgiving remains private and personal. And, as someone has said, no one is “complaining that they have somehow taken the thanks out of Thanksgiving.” 

No one has needed to make that complaint, for even the most hardened of us recognize that undeserved blessings come our way. Some who are less conversant with the vocabulary of the church might substitute “good luck” or “opportunities” for “blessings,” but the fact remains that the majority of us are aware that life graces us with gifts we’ve done nothing to earn. Most of us absorbed the meaning of Thanksgiving day as first-graders when we portrayed different characters in construction paper hats or bonnets or cardboard feathers we’d colored with crayons. We learned that the day was for offering thanks. 

Christians have an advantage at Thanksgiving because we know who to thank. Our faith provides a perspective that enables us to see that windfalls and bounty are not something owed to us, but gifts from a loving and gracious God. Christians understand that even in hard times when obvious blessings seem scarce, we are still abundantly graced with life itself – a wonderful gift – and with the abiding presence of God. 

As you offer thanks to God on this Thanksgiving season and Thanksgiving Day, may the brown peace of gratitude flood your soul. 

Thankfully,
Pastor Deborah

When I was a little girl, around the age of 4 years old, I was involved in a “kitchen accident” where I was scalded on both legs from an exploding pressure cooker.  This “accident” left me with second degree burns on my legs and third degree burns on my left ankle.  As a result of my burns, I had to undergo various treatments to relieve the pain and subsequent skin grafts.  Thankfully, l do not remember most of those treatments, except one which was extremely painful for me.  The interesting part of this is what my Daddy did to help me through this ordeal.

Realizing the pain his little girl was going to go through, my Daddy handed me something to hold and focus on as the doctor proceeded.  He handed me 5 silver dollars and said, “Honey, look at these coins as the doctor does what he needs to do.  As the pain gets worse and worse, you look deeper and deeper at them, focusing on them. And before you know it, the doctor will be done.”

Deep is good, right?  Every once in a while, friends want to have deep conversations.  It is good for philosophers to think deep thoughts.  Coaches want to have a deep bench.  Fans want their teams to go deep into the playoffs.  Investors are hoping for a deep recovery.  Gardeners want their plants to have deep roots. 

“Deep” implies substance.  If something is deep, it’s profound, it’s real, it’s enduring.  We want to be deep people.  We want to live deep and meaningful lives.  ''Deeper'' is a word that defines our desire for each person, going a little deeper, pushing out into deeper waters, getting away from the norm.  

We also have a deep spiritual hunger that resides in us that calls out to God, a desire to go deeper in our relationship with God.  The deep waters of God's Spirit are calling out to fill the deep places in our hearts.  We respond with our prayers and our spiritual hunger that drives us to the Word of God and worship.  There is a place in our worship where the waves of God's presence can come upon us again and again, until we find ourselves in ''deep waters.''  Worship is our pathway to deeper waters.
​
With that in mind, we are embarking on another sermon series entitled “Living Deeply-A Letter from John” and with the words found in Apostle John’s first letter, hopefully we learn what it means to live deeply in both Son and Father.

And by the way, those coins that my Daddy handed to me did help me through that terrible ordeal.  But as I look back on it now, I believe it was my Daddy being right there with me that truly helped me to go deeper into myself and push pass the pain; kind of like what the Father and Son does for me now!  
Living deeply,
Pastor Deborah

If you know me, then you know these two verses from Proverbs are my mantra for life.  These wisdom-filled verses bring me strength in times of weakness and focus when my brain is scattered into a bunch of different places.  I have read that these two verses are probably the most memorized verses in the Bible.  That is good news to me, but as I once again reflect on them, I noticed something else that comes from them; 3 commands and a promise.
Of course, the first command is to “trust in the LORD with all your heart.”  If anything of eternal value and good is going to happen in our lives, we need to begin trusting God, and half-hearted faith will not cut it. Then the next command is to “lean not on your own understanding.”  These two really go together quite nicely, for you can’t trust in the LORD and lean on your own understanding at the same time.  Sometimes, you just have to trust God and not yourself.
The third command is to “acknowledge Him in all your ways.”  To experience God’s empowerment is to know (“acknowledge”) Him at work in every part of our lives.  There is really no difference between the sacred and the secular.  He is there, working all the time.  When we can see that on a regular basis we will experience His empowerment in a special way.
After following those three commands, we get to experience the promise!  In response to all this obedience, God clears out a straight path ahead for us – “He will make your paths straight.”  Isn’t that a great promise!  God knows where we are, God knows where we need to go, God knows the best way to get there, and God even knows what time we need to arrive!
When you can’t see the end of the tunnel … when there are no answers to the overwhelming crisis you’re in … when you don’t understand anything that’s happening to you … that’s when you really just need to “trust the Lord!”  
Leaning on God’s trust and His understanding can be disconcerting when the world tells you differently.  But when I do relax in His gentle Spirit and just “trust the Lord”, miraculous and wonderful things DO happen.  
I imagine myself protected by His fiery hedge of protection and tower of refuge.  He is there – your strength, your security, your shield against a powerful enemy or a terrible situation that threatens you.
I rely on God’s ways, not mine.  My solutions, my insights, my ideas may or may not resolve the problem, but God assures me that He has a way.  Every day God has a word for me.  I find it when I read, memorize, mediate on, and apply the Word of God.
It’s tough in America today not to look, think, and act like the “world.”  Why?  One reason is that the “world” surrounds us – it invades our home, our TV, our families, our friends.  When we put our trust in God, however, we say to God, “Change my thinking – renew my mind – so that I begin to look, think and act according to Your will and I’ll trust You with the results.”
As a pastor, I have leaned on God through all the different aspects of pastoral ministry.  As an individual, I have leaned on God through the many hills and valleys of life.  May God continue to lead us through our ministry together at Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church!
Trusting in God,
Pastor Deborah

​We all want to help each other, but sometimes we are not sure where or what that help should be. Of course we can pray for each other, but sometimes they may need more than just a prayer. Here are just a few ideas: 
1. Provide rides to doctors’ appointments. If your friend is ill, take her to her doctor appointments. Wait with him, comfort her. Don’t turn away from him discomfort. 
2. Go grocery shopping. Provide food and necessities to someone who isn’t able to make it to the grocery store or who can’t afford it at the moment. 
3. Cleaning house. This one is for all the new moms out there. People tend to want to come over and hold our babies. What would be super helpful instead would be for people to come over and wash dishes or do laundry so that mom can take a nap with her little ones. 
4. Cooking. Make regular meals for someone who is ill, just had a baby, or is otherwise unable to cook for themselves. 
5. Babysitting. If you know a couple whose marriage is in a difficult place, offer to watch their children so they can have some time together, just the two of them. Or maybe you know a mom who just needs an hour or two on her own to regain her sanity. 
6. One on one Bible study. If you have a friend who is struggling in their faith or wants to build a deeper relationship with the Lord, meet with him weekly. Disciple her. Live out Titus 2. 
7. Regular phone calls or video chats. If you’re far away and can’t be there to physically help, commit to spending time weekly to pour into your hurting friend. 
8. Go for walks together. Simply spend time together. Sometimes just being there and being willing to listen is more than enough. 
9. Share about yourself. Be willing to open up. Let go of the “perfect Christian” façade and be willing to share your struggles and faults. Let your friend know they are not alone. 
10. Possibly the most important one: Ask your friend what he or she needs! How can I help? Then be ready and willing to follow through. 

If you feel like whatever you have to offer is inadequate or that you have no idea how to help just do something! God will equip you. God will multiply whatever small offering you have for someone in need. God will use you to bless many, you need only be willing. 

It’s time to start being bold, brave, loving, and fearless in living out our faith with others. It’s time to start living an authentic life in Christ. It’s time to become more like Jesus. 

Doing something,
Pastor Deborah