Your Latter Years Are Greater Than Your Former Years.
Our guest speaker, Reverend Ronald Benjamin, shared a small part of a sermon series that he’d preached at Metro West Church of the Nazarene. But though it was originally prepared for a church community many miles away, that sermon spoke to the present need of Bronx Bethany.
What is the need?
We need to move forward.
God confirmed the message throughout the entire weekend. I once again had the privilege of attending all three English-language services, and was able to see how God modeled the idea of moving forward into the “new thing” He has prepared for us. Let’s look at a couple of examples, using Isaiah 43:19 as a template.
Look, I am about to do something new. Now it begins to happen! Do you not recognize it? Yes, I will make a river in the desert and paths in the wilderness.
Saturday night service: Pastor Richie changed the order of service and did a new thing. Instead of opening the service with songs about God, we instead spent time in communion with God through prayer. Our prayer time was a river in the desert, satisfying our parched souls.
Sunday services: Our congregation had the joy of seeing several people do a new thing through a basic element of our faith: baptism. The baptismal candidates gave testimonies of God making a pathway in the wilderness: escaping the penalty of sin by salvation through Jesus Christ.
And, of course, the sermon did a new thing. We were given a familiar passage of Isaiah, but were given a new revelation: We are called to forget not just the bad things in our past, but also the good things. Reverend Ronald also referenced the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians: the accolades of our past are worthless in comparison to the future things God will grant us.
We’ll spend time this week unpacking different points from the sermon, but for today I’ll ask a question:
Are you willing to forget even the good things from your past?
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