(I have included web sites that I researched in the text of the sermon)
(Graphic:
http://psalmpublishing.bei.t-online.de/cover.html )
SLIDE 1
Prayer
Greeting, attendance pads, Class 101
Read gospel:
SLIDE 2
Matthew 2:1-2
Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, 2"Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We have seen his star as it arose, and we have come to worship him."
SLIDE 3
10-11
When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! 11They entered the house where the child and his mother, Mary, were, and they fell down before him and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
SLIDE 4
Today I begin what I think could one of the most important preaching series that I have ever done—Christianity and the religions of the world.
I’m also highly indebted to Adam Hamilton, pastor of the United Methodist Church of Resurrection in Kansas City, a church that I attended in my travels last summer. He preached this type of sermons in his church last year and I am using much of his research on this topic.
This series could be the most important that I have ever done, especially in light of the times we live in – wars on multiple continents and a time during which our nation has been at war and now occupies Iraq. There is conflict within our own nation about displaying of religious documents such as the Ten Commandments in a court of law. When you examine everyone of those places you discover that underneath all the conflict is conflict about ideas, truth claims, and religion.
In Israel and in the Middle East the conflict is between Palestinian Muslims and Jews.
In the past, at the brink of nuclear war, India and Pakistan, that was a reflection of conflict between Hindus and Muslims.
In our own war on terrorism and the conflict we’ve had with Iraq, it’s a conflict between a predominantly Christian nation and a predominantly Muslim nation. And while we in the USA don’t see it necessarily as a religious conflict, I am pretty certain that on the other side it is seen as a religious conflict. We live in a world where conflict over ideas is most pronounced. That’s part of what’s behind the continued guerilla attacks and terrorism in that nation.
You and I also live in a world where you and I will come in contact with people of other faiths—more than any other time in our past. It is now likely that you have or will have neighbors right here in the Shenandoah Valley now who are Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Jews.
Your children may have or will have teachers at school of one of these religions. Your children will go to school with other children from one of these other religions and your children will probably learn about these world religions. You will have co-workers or sometime you may have a boss who is of another faith.
No doubt about what we see emerging is different than the world in which most of you have grown up and lived most of your lives. Many of you grew up in towns where there was not even a single Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim. Some of you may not know the difference between a Muslim or a Hindu. What do the different groups believe?
I think it is imperative that we as Christians come to understand the world in which we live and those who are seeking after God and who offer alternative truth claims. I think we need to understand their claims to the truth, that we might build bridges with them, that we might understand and learn from them what they have learned about God. As we converse with people of other faiths, it is above all an opportunity for us to share our own faith and how we perceive God and sharing with others what we have come to know In Jesus Christ.
How can you share what you know about the truth in Jesus Christ when you don’t understand where that other person is coming from? But if you have the opportunity to understand what another person of a different faith is perceiving about God and the world and if you listen with sensitivity, it opens the door for you to share the light of Christ.
So this is an important series of sermons that I will be doing in the weeks ahead. It is important but it is also threatening. I know this is uncomfortable for some of you—at least two persons have been honest enough to share that with me. I understand the discomfort and challenge of entering into this area.
It is threatening because when you start to talk about other religions it raises a host of questions. It taps into our own insecurities about our faith. Many of us are Christians because we have grown up in America. You were reared in a Christian home. That’s the case with me—I grew up not knowing anything else. Would you have been a Christian if you had grown up in India or Iraq?
Other questions arise. Can my faith withstand the earnest questions of people of other claims of truth or religions? That can be threatening.
I want you to know however that as your pastor I am concerned about you and I want us to grow together in our faith. I want to handle these topics in a way that it helps you to grow in way that when we finish this series that you will be a stronger Christian, a more informed Christian and better capable of lighting the light of Christ shine through your life.
In addition, Bethany has stood as a Christian church in this location for 50 years. I want to help you understand our place as a Christian church in all of the religions—what makes Bethany unique as a Christian institution? Why have we grown and prospered in the 50 years of ministry in this particular place?
In addition, to help you grow during this series each week I am providing you with study questions and Bible readings and suggestions for prayer. I hope you will use these resources I have provided for you. I hope to start our 50th anniversary off with a great learning experience.
In fact, I decide this week that in case you have anxiety or questions about any of this from week to week I will make myself available to you in the gym across the lobby to address your concerns after the 8:30 service except next Sunday when I have a membership class scheduled. Or if you prefer to contact me during the week—I want to help you with any questions or struggles this series may raise for you.
SLIDE 5
I’ve also listed other ideas as to why I think it is important to discuss this topic on our church web page so I invite you to go there:
http://home.rica.net/bethanyum/
So those are my objectives in this preaching series on Christianity and the religions of the world.
When you start exploring other religions there are certain questions thinking people will typically ponder. I’ll address a couple of them today and address other questions as I get into the specific religions.
SLIDE 6
The first question you might have is—Why are there so many religions?
There are some who view all the religions of the world and conclude that proves that there is no God. If there was one God, God would surely make himself know to all people who are really seeking him. Because there are so many ways at looking at religion is proof that there is no God at all.
Why are there so many religions? How are Christians to understand to non_Christian religions and can we understand how God might be working among them? How does God look at the other religions might be the most important question? Is God at work in any way in our friends of other faiths?
So why are there so may religions. Some look at all those groups and say that is positive proof there is no God. But as I think about every culture from the earliest times has had religious yearning, religious needs and religious experiences. These are common among all people. All humankind has had these same kinds of needs.
8:30 am—This video clip illustrates what people have done through all times to address those yearnings.
Show Video clip
When a loved one dies in the tribal regions of Africa, there is a longing among those people for there to be an eternity.
Let’s say you’re in India and you see an amazing thing in the heavens or on the earth, there is this yearning to cry out in praise.
In Pakistan, you get quiet and spend time in prayer, you experience something that’s bigger than yourself.
There are people in Israel who like you have experienced an insight they knew came from an experience beyond themselves—a keen sense of inspiration.
People of all tribes, nations, and races have experienced the divine in their lives.
When we talk about the ultimate reality that’s beyond this world, we’ll call that ultimate reality God. All people have reached for that. To me that is positive proof that there is a God, there’s something people are yearning for. Human beings don’t yearn for something that doesn’t exist, I think for the most part. We yearn for something that is possible that is real, that we might not have yet attained and yet we have a hunger for it.
SLIDE 7
“When people hunger there is such a thing as food”, CS Lewis once said. When human beings across all civilizations have yearned for God, it is because there is a God who can satisfy for the yearning that they have all shared in common.
SLIDE 8
At the same time, it is true that when 2 human beings experience the same thing they will talk about it in different ways. I saw the movie Bringing Down the House with Steve Martin a few months ago. I thought it was hilarious and funny. I then saw Ebert and Roper on TV review the movie and they really pooh-poohed it and had different reactions to the movie. I thought, “Did we see the same movie?”
SLIDE 9
As humans, we can experience the same thing but have different thoughts and analyze the same experience differently. If that’s true of movies how much more is that true of our experience of God the creator of the universe. Our 3 pounds of gray matter in our brains is not sufficient to give expression to the amazing reality of God.
So it doesn’t surprise me that people in different places have experienced that reality in different ways or have tried to give expression to it in a variety of forms.
(mouse click on point A.)
Thus, religion is the human response to our spiritual needs, spiritual questions, spiritual experiences and spiritual yearnings. Since religion is a human response to spiritual yearnings I can expect that human beings will describes and respond differently to those experiences. But they are reaching toward a reality beyond themselves.
So why doesn’t God just give us the answers, why doesn’t God from the beginning say—this what I’m like and lay out for us? The same reason you don’t do that with your children. God looks at the human race and understands that we are changing and growing. We are understanding more today then we did yesterday. God is patient with us and allows us to learn, I believe. That’s part of what makes us human. We are constantly seeking to understand more.
Imagine what the world would be like if you had all the answers pre-programmed into your brain before you were born. What would you do with the rest of your life? Part of the human quest is to understand and to know.
SLIDE 10
Now it is tempting to give our children all the answers. You experience that when your children come to you with their homework and you’d like to do all for them—unless of course it’s math. They’ve changed math so much. And if you’re like me you’ve forgotten all the complex things like algebra and geometry you couldn’t help any way.
But if you have an area where you excel like English or History or something, so you help your child by giving him or her all the answers? Of course not! The best way to help is to ask questions to help children come to their own conclusions. Or give them a dictionary and tell them to look it up for themselves. Or do we still have dictionaries? I guess you go tell them to look it up on the Internet.
Then what they learn sticks with them more—they come to their own insights and understandings. Something about finding their own answers helps them to develop their thinking and problem solving abilities.
In fact, it’s important sometimes that a person fails. That can be a great learning experience. One time in a psychology class that I taught at the local community college, a student came to me toward the end of the semester who had rarely attended class. He had failed the mid term exam and missed the deadline for a research paper. He wanted to know if I’d give him a passing grade because he really needed to pass this class.
Now what was the best thing for me to do? Pass him because he was a really nice guy? Because I’m a nice guy? Or let him experience failure? He may not have passed the class but I think he learned more through his failure of the class than if I would have just passed him on just because I wanted to show that I was a nice guy. It’s in the failing, in the searching, and yearning that we grow and develop.
SLIDE 11
I believe that this is how God has chosen to look at humankind. Not only in the religious areas but in the sciences and all areas. God watches us do stupid things. At one time humans thought the whole universe revolved around the earth. God must have chuckled at that and said, “It’s OK for you to be confused about that for awhile. I’m not going to worry about it. Eventually they’ll figure it out.”
One of my mentors use to say, “God does not coerce us into relationships—he gives us space to screw up. So we should do the same with others.”
I think God takes the same approach when it comes to all the different religious faiths. So God wasn’t upset up before the time of Abraham that people couldn’t fathom that their sensing of the ultimate reality could be comprised of one God. God might have said, “They don’t understand yet but someday they will.” There was a world of a variety of gods up until Abraham.
SLIDE 12
Now Abraham comes along. God began to give hints to people. And those hints theologians have referred to as “special revelation.” At such points God steps in to give us some clues, some answers. Even then God doesn’t give the whole picture—just a nudge in the right direction.
SLIDE 13
So God calls Abraham 4000 years ago and says, “You got it all wrong. Let me get it straight for you. There is only one God –the creator of all things. There is a variety of names you might call me but there is only one God. I want you to share this—I want you to be a light to the nations. “ Abraham will only touch a small part of the world’s population. So his descendents were to be a light to the nations as well.
SLIDE 14
Some years later God gives another hint through a guy named Moses. Moses is called to Mt. Sinai. God says, “Hey Moses let me tell you what I expect as far as what is right and wrong. Here’s some clues—here’s the 10 commandments.”
Did God tell Moses everything there is to know about God? No—but the commandments help to set the human race in the right direction. This is what the people could handle at that time. Then God says, “Don’t forget that Abraham’s descendants, the Israelites are to be alight to the nations.”
Then years go by and the prophets come along with more hints from God. Finally, God says, “OK. I want you to have the clearest hint possible.”
SLIDE 15
So God rather than giving another book or prophet—God’s word became flesh and lived among us. (Jn 1:14). Christian belief is that God desired to communicate with us as clearly as possible his truth, God embodied that by becoming flesh and walked among us as a human being, speaking the language of humanity. Thus, we might understand who God is, what God is like, understand his love and grace, our need for mercy and understand that there is hope even in the face of death.
Christians believe that Jesus is the greatest revelation of God. God gives hints along the way. Yet even then Jesus came to only a tiny piece of land that was occupied by the Roman empire. So the world did not yet know or understand what God had done in Jesus.
SLIDE 16
So Jesus sends his disciples and out and says, “You go tell other people.” Today on Epiphany Sunday you are reminded that you are to go and tell other people. Yet the vast majority of the population still doesn’t understand or know who God is through Jesus Christ. But they are seeking after yearning after, trying to give expression to their spiritual yearnings.
SLIDE 17
This article I read in Time magazine demonstrates that – The Lost Gospels: Early texts that never made it into the Bible are suddenly popular. People are still seeking and trying to understand their spiritual side.
SLIDE 18
So that brings me to three ways of viewing other faiths.
I want to share some statistics about the major religions of the world. There of course are probably thousands of small groups—even new religious groups being formed all the time (some are off their rocker of course). But these numbers will give you some perspective.
SLIDE 19
There are about 6 billion people in the world’s population.
(chart
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html )
Of those, 2 billion are Christian or about 1/3 of the world’s population.
· There are 1.3 billion Muslims or Islamic faith groups., about 1/5 of the world’s population.
· 900 million Hindus, about 1/7 of the population.
· 360 million Buddhists, or 1/20 of the world population.
· 14 million Jewish adherents , a very small fraction of the world’s population.
Yet because of Abraham’s faith the Jewish and the Islamic groups exist—so that’s why it’s important to study those groups.
SLIDE 20
In America, the statistics are very different.
(Chart:
· 77% of the population claim to be Christian
· 15% claim no religious affiliation in America—the 2nd largest group
· 1.3% are of the Jewish faith
· .5% -- that’s one-half of one percent are Muslim
· .5% are Buddhists
· .5% are Hindus
Interestingly, It’s the Hindu, Buddhists, and Muslim faiths that are going faster than any other group in our country, though they are very small fraction of our population.
This is an interesting statistic that I think we need to pay attention to: Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year. If this trend continues, then by about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S.
SLIDE 21
How do we look at the 2/3’s of the world’s population who are not Christians?
Christians tend to fall into three different groups in terms of how they view the other religious groups.
First, there is the pluralist group. This particular view is also held by more non-religious and nominally religious group in addition to some Christians in our culture. The pluralist view is this: Every religion is an equally valid path to make your way to the ultimate reality that is God.
I had an English professor in freshman year at Bluefield College, a small Baptist school in Southwest Virginia, who believed that and talked about her pluralistic views often in class. That was probably my first exposure to the pluralistic view—and this was not from some young liberal professor. This was an educated, learned woman who was in her 70’s who chose to keep teaching rather than retire.
In this pluralistic view, what’s true for you may not be true for me. Christianity is true for me because I’m an American, I was reared in a Christian home—this is my truth, but your truth may be different and they’re both equally valid paths to the same end.
Now I struggle in this area because I want to respect other people’s views and beliefs. But I think you have to be careful here because you don’t show respect to other people’s beliefs if you say, “well we are just saying the same thing.”
A Muslim believer would not feel respected by a Buddhist person who says—well we are saying the same thing. Because Muslims believe in one God while Buddhists do not necessarily believe in one god. So you don’t show respect to another person by saying, “Well, we’re saying the same thing.”
To say that all paths to God are equally valid causes problems for me. Think of how many cult groups have started in America alone where they go out and prey upon people’s emotions in times of weakness. They need someone to really structure their lives. In the end that person has such control over person’s lives that he leads them to commit mass suicide. Can you say that religious expression is equally valid with any other religious expression? Just because someone can find some followers and can claim some religious truth doesn’t mean what they have is true. To me not all religious claims are equally valid.
So the pluralist view can cause some problems.
SLIDE 22
The second view is the opposite – the Particularist/Exclusivist view. The particularist says, “Hey nobody’s got it right except us.” The exclusivist says “We are the only ones who really have the truth. We are the only ones who are going to make it to heaven.” Exclusivists regard their own faith tradition as the only completely true religion. Other religions might have elements of truth in them -- beliefs arrived at either by accident, or by observing nature, or by following their conscience. But they are largely false, and are often viewed as rivals to the one true religion.
We have Christians who are exclusivists. They would see 90% of the rest of the Christian population as condemned too, because they’re not real Christians yet. The Scripture verse that often quoted to try to support this view is Acts 4:12—Peter is speaking to the Sanhedrin:
SLIDE 23
There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them."
But what Peter is really saying here to the Sanhedrin is don’t expect another Messiah, he is the Messiah. That’s the point he is trying to make in the context of that Bible story. He is not talking about other religions of the world and whether God is at work in those other religions or all they all condemned to hell. He is simply saying Jesus is the messiah, he’s the one who has already come.
When I was attending Bluefield College as a young man many years ago I was talking to a pastor of an Independent Baptist church—someone I had known for several years in my hometown. The college had just started allowing dancing on campus about the time I started attending there. The Pastor I heard about dancing on campus and informed me that everyone at that college was going to hell because dancing was now allowed on campus. I thought hello—dancing is not the basis for getting into heaven. But that’s the tendency we all can fall into—if someone sees something differently we might decide they are on the “outside” and are doomed to hell.
This exclusivist view for me puts God in a box; we paint a tiny view of God which I think is inconsistent with the majority of the Biblical view of God. Ghandi once said, “I would have almost become a Christian if it were not for the Christians I have known.”
It might be amazing anyone becomes a Christian sometimes with some types of people who are running around out there claiming to be Christ followers, including me sometimes. So does God work in other faith groups? That leads me to the third possible view:
SLIDE 24
Inclusivists. The inclusivists view looks at all people of this earth and sees them all as a part of God’s creation. God loves all people. This was an important teaching of John Wesley who was our Methodist forebear.
In the Bible story of Jonah, God called Jonah to a nasty group of people, the Assyrians, so he could call them to repentance. And they repented. Here’s how the story goes—listen to Jonah’s response to these events and how God responds to Jonah:
SLIDE 25
Jonah 4:
This change of plans upset Jonah, and he became very angry. 2So he complained to the LORD about it: "Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people. 3Just kill me now, LORD! I’d rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen." 4The LORD replied, "Is it right for you to be angry about this?". . . 11But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?"
SLIDE 26
There’s the story of Sarah and Abraham in the Bible. Hagar is Sarah’s mistress. Hagar has a child by Abraham. His name is Ishmael. Abraham and Sarah send Ishmael away. They are off in the wilderness weeping. God appears to Hagar and says, “Don’t cry. I see your sorrows. And I’m going to make of your son Ishmael a great nation as well.” So the Arabs and Muslims claim Ishmael as their father of faith, not Isaac the son of Abraham and Sarah.
SLIDE 27
So we have this picture of God in the Old Testament who is perhaps at work in other ways than what we might expect or could even understand. This picture is brought forward in the NT in Paul preaching in Athens. Paul notices there people are worshiping a multitude of gods. Paul begins to preach to them and does not do it in a condemning way. He even starts out by complimenting them.
SLIDE 28
Acts 17:22ff (msg)
"It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. 23When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, TO THE GOD NOBODY KNOWS. I’m here to introduce you to this God so you can worship intelligently, know who you’re dealing with.
24"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines 25or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him. 26Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living 27so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. 28We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it well: ’We’re the God-created.’ 29Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?
30"God overlooks it as long as you don’t know any better—but that time is past. The unknown is now known, and he’s calling for a radical life-change. 31He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead."
SLIDE 29
Over and over the Bible indicates that God works even through people who don’t know him to carry his purposes and plans. So the inclusivist view says “Yes Jesus is the savior; he is the one definitive God. We judge all other claims to truth in the light of Jesus Christ and his teachings--but God can and does work in the lives of other people.”
Again John Wesley taught this in his idea about God’s prevenient grace whom I will talk about in a few weeks. God is at work and drawing those to him who are truly seeking after him.
SLIDE 30
That brings me to the Bible passage today and the story of the Wiseman.
This is Epiphany Sunday. Epiphany means manifestation or appearing. On the Christian calendar this the time of the year that we recall the story of the Wisemen who came to worship Jesus and bring him gifts. That happens sometime after Christmas. The shepherds were long gone before the Wisemen ever show up. In fact by this time Jesus’ family had moved into a house according to the Bible story. Some scholars believe it might have been as long as 2 years after the birth of Jesus before the Wisemen arrived.
I believe this story shows how God is at work among people of other faiths.
SLIDE 31
So who were the magi? Magi: This is a Greek term that refers to those people who were priests in Persia of Zoroastrian faith. Zoaristism did believe in one God but it differed in from Judaism in many other ways.
These Wisemen might have been emissaries of the king and were astrologers who looked to the sky to try to tell what the future was going to be. The Old Testament frowns upon that way of discerning truth. Yet this is what these guys are practicing their faith.
SLIDE 32
God first invites shepherds who were Jews to worship Jesus. Jesus goes to the temple at 8 days old to be circumcised. 2 elderly Jews at the temple who have been waiting for the arrival of the Messiah see him as the Messiah. But 12 days on the church calendar after he is born who does God call to be the next group of people to pay homage to Jesus --but people from another religion from a faraway place.
In Matthew’ gospel the message is –Jesus even calls those who are not Jews to come and follow him. And how did God speak to those Zoroastrian priests? He spoke to them in the language that they were use to seeking God in? They were use to seeking God in the stars. God doesn’t do that anywhere else. Because that’s the only language they know to search for God—God causes a cosmic event to happen.
It could have been a comet or the lining up of Jupiter and Saturn. Who knows what it was. God spoke in their language and caused the stars to line up so that they would follow and hear that there was a word from God. God used their religious language to reach them—see there’s that prodigal hugging God I keep harping about.
Why would God call these particular magi? God could have called anybody to come to Bethlehem to see Jesus. He called them because even though they didn’t understand all the truth, they were honestly seeking after God. They were willing with the star in the sky and take several weeks journey and take their possessions and give them to the Christ. God honored their heart by inviting them to come because their hearts were seeking after God.
When they came they saw the star stopping at the house. What did they do? They filled with joy. People who are seeking after God even if they don’t have all the truth are going to experience great joy. Those who find the truth in Jesus then are filled with joy and they worship him. Then what do they do? They leave gifts for the Christ.
SLIDE 33
A powerful story if you think about it. It teaches something about the heart of God—that God is at work sometimes in people of other faiths long before they know about Christ. Just like God was at work in your life long before you become a committed Christ follower. God wants us to use the language, the music, the culture of today’s people so they can understand. God wants us to do whatever it takes to tell people the good news because he is longing for everyone to come and know his son Jesus Christ.
SLIDE 34
God longs for all people to know that he once walked among them in human flesh and showed us the fullest picture of who God is.
This is the call of Epiphany: For you to understand the love that God has for the nations of the world, the people of other religions. It is a call for us as Christians to understand God’s yearning that they might come and know Christ. It is also an invitation for you and me who claim to be Christ followers to let Christ’s light shine through us in such a way that those of other religions might actually hear, listen, understand, and long to know more about the Savior you worship.
SLIDE 35
That’s my goal in this series of messages—by the time I am finished I will have helped all of you and myself to be better equipped to let his light shine through you and me.
I want to make this statement at the outset of this series, so that you do not misunderstand me—although it may be difficult to always to speak with the type of clarity that I wish for:
I am absolutely persuaded that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. I have devoted myself to leading people to know Jesus. But when it comes to how God looks at those who earnestly seek him, but who do not know to call upon Jesus Christ, I believe that the overwhelming witness of the life of Jesus is that God is merciful, and that he longs that none should be lost.
I often say in funeral sermons that I believe the last word in anyone’s life is the grace of God. I do not believe it is up to me to judge anyone’s eternal destiny. Only God will ultimately do that—the God I perceive to be above all a God of mercy, love, and grace.
In the weeks ahead I hope to learn more and teach you what I learn about how God has been at work in people of other faiths, what we can learn from them, and how we can share with them what God has done for us. I hope you’ll join me next week as I talk about Hinduism as we continue to seek more clearly our faith in relation to the other religions of the world.
PRAYER:
I am going to say a prayer that may express what you may want to say today---or speak to God in your heart in your own way today.
O God, I give you thanks for your love for us. I thank you that you are a bigger God than I first supposed. I am grateful that your love is so deep and wide that you reach all to all peoples. Thank you for being patient with me when I’m confused and don’t understand. Yet your longing was that I might know you fully and completely. Thank you for coming among us in Jesus Christ. Help me as a Christ follower at Bethany Church to listen, understand and learn from others and a t the same time to be capable of bearing your light to the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
