"Something New" from Pastor Joseph, Recap of March Luncheon/AGM, a Beautiful Song, New Wallpaper, Addition of our Photos Section!

There is a saying that "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb" though I am certain this was intended to refer to the weather.  It certainly has been lion-like here at Osoyoos Christian Centre - busy!   Nobody is lamenting the busyness because we have all been enjoying fellowship together and working hard to build new ministries.  Because of our flurry of activity I'm going to add two more pages onto our blog - these will be one for music, because our church is gifted in music ministry and it will be a great place to share some of that music with you.  The next page I am going to add is one for a few photos of our latest get-togethers.  I won't share ALL the photos I take, just one or two, though if anyone from our church family would like I can provide a private link to photo albums for you to view, download and print. 

To visit the other "pages" of this blog, simply look above this writing and click on the tabs that say "Home" "From the Heart" "The Gallery" "Music" "OCC Photo Album" and you can see what's new. 

Here's a preview of our latest desktop wallpaper for you which will be available for download in "The Gallery" today - available in almost every size to custom fit YOUR computer desktop!  Please, send your friends here to grab their own graphics to give your computer a "spiritual face-lift"  (hmmm is that a correct thing to say?)   

And you will not want to miss listening to  Pheonix singing "You Lift Me Up" over in our "Music"  tab... be prepared as this young man has a true annointing upon him in the area of musical talent. 

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And we especially thank our Pastor - Joseph, for providing us with weekly content, a recap of each week's sermon so that for those of you who were not able to attend you are still able to know where we are going in the Bible at this time.  We welcome your feedback here - we would like to think the Sunday message is an opening for conversation, not something just reserved for that short hour during the service.  Give us your thoughts, lets start a dialogue!  

If you missed this message and would like to hear it, let us know, we can provide an MP3 to you via email. 

Pastor Joseph Fernandes

Sunday,  March 6th 2011

Something New

I believe that there are times in our lives when we get so sick of and tired of things that we call out to God for something new – anything is better than the disappointments or the negative set backs in our present situation. I wonder though, are we truly ready for something new, especially when it may mean abandoning our suppositions or predefined categories? In our sermon series of I Samuel we recently looked at chapter 3:1-21 within this context of God doing something new.

What I find interesting here is that God does something that is unprecedented – he speaks to a boy within the period of the Judges. Let’s stop here for a moment and explore this further. When you go through the book of Judges you will observe time and time again that God used men and women as judges. If we wanted to take this a step further, we could, justifiably so, describe these individuals as warrior judges—look for example at Othniel or Ehud. Now admittedly Gideon wasn’t much of a warrior at first, but he definitely grew into the role. Finally we take a look at Samson who most would concede is a warrior judge. My point is this, that God uses individuals to judge Israel who, in our human perspective, just makes a lot of sense. However, God in his typical does something that does not make any sense.

Now, before I go any further it’s important that we try to remove our own biases from the text. What I mean by this is, if you grew up in Sunday school you heard wonderful and inspirational stories about the little boy Samuel. I remember listening to a song about Samuel and I remember one of the verses went like this: “if you want to do quite well be a Samuel.” Despite all of the wonderful stories, when you look at the context of the period of the judges—it just didn’t make sense that God looks to use a child. Although Eli is a judge over Israel this could be a de facto position because of his role as priest, the last real warrior judge that we see in the Book of Judges is Samson – the superman of sorts and then the book of Samuel opens up with the story of Samuel’s miraculous birth and then in chapter 3 where God speaks to this little boy and ultimately uses him and “not one of his (Samuel’s) words fell to the ground.” Imagine that!!!

I wonder if there were skeptics who questioned or even criticized Samuel for daring to speak as a Judge to them? Maybe given that Eli was a judge himself there were some who would have felt that it was out of line or disrespectful for Samuel to operate in this capacity. But the fact is – God was doing something new, he chose a little boy to lead his people. Yes, someone who was untested in battle; someone who had never seen war; someone who in many ways could not relate with the average Israelite because of his protected upbringing in the temple. All the these things could have defaulted him from being seen or accepted as a credible judge – but yet we that God was in fact doing something new and he was faithful as he did not let one of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.

Today, you may be in that place where you want God to do something new in your life and if you are that’s a good thing. Here’s the thing though, sometimes God does something new in our lives we just don’t realize it because it doesn’t look the way that we expect it to. We think that it will look a certain way or conform to our expected norms but this isn’t always the case. All the more reason why we need to abandon our suppositions or predefined categories and just accept that God will do something new and it may not fit these parameters as we think. In the end, he we can take confidence in the fact that he will be faithful to see it accomplished. 



Blessings,

Joseph

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EVENTS

Prayer at Kaye's Every Tuesday - 10:00 a.m.

7806 Gravenstein

Thursday Night Open WorshipEvery Thursday - 6:00

Osoyoos Christian Centre
42 Finch, Osoyoos
For more info: 250-495-2550

Mariposa Christian MinistryMariposa Gardens
8816 97th Street, Osoyoos
Sundays at 2 pm

We welcome you to join us if you are able to assist with your musical talent or to help with fellowship! Email us for more info:  occwomenonline@gmail.com