"24 Hours: The Last Sermon"

Man, schedules are filling up fast in March around here!

We’d planned to hold a Ladies’ Craft Night this coming Friday evening, but it sounds like so many of our women who’d normally be here for that are going to be out of town for other meetings and trips this weekend that it would be prohibitive to keep that on our schedule.  So the Craft Night has officially been rain-checked for May.

But this coming Sunday, we’ll be opening “Carol’s Closet” following the service -- in honor of the memory of Carol Johnson, we will be holding a special sale of a lot of her clothes, hats, books, etc., and donating the proceeds to the Vacation Bible School ministry that she so dearly loved.  Plan to allow for a little extra time this Sunday for that.

And then, during Holy Week, we’re pretty much booked up solid.  I know that I mentioned lots of this last week, but then people asked for more information, so let me cover the special services in more detail here.

On Wednesday evening, we’ll be hosting a traditional Passover Seder meal, led by missionary Roy Schwarcz from Chosen People Ministries.  We’d love for all of our FCCers to join us (and please invite any friends whom you’ve been reaching out to and have them and their families join us as well) for this powerful presentation not only of the Jewish foundations of our faith, but of the Gospel message as well.  The dinner will begin at 5:30, so please contact the church office for more information.

On Thursday evening, our Youth kids will be going to the Winter Jam Christian concert at the Civic Center, so they’ll have to meet at the church house by 4:15 to carpool over.  Contact Sara Diemer for more information.

On Friday evening, we will hold our annual Good Friday service, starting at 6:30.  This is always the most quietly poignant service of our church year, and I encourage you to come join us to prepare your hearts to appreciate the magnitude of the miracle of Resurrection Sunday.

And then, of course, on Sunday morning, we’ll have our annual church family breakfast at 9:00, then a celebratory Resurrection Sunday service starting at 10:30.  We’d love to have as many FCCers and their families and friends here for that Sunday morning as we can, so please come join us.

In our message this week, as we continued looking at the last 24 hours of Christ’s life, we walked through His “Last Sermon” to His disciples.  Though the overarching theme of that last evening was living out God’s love within God’s sovereignty, the sermon itself had four interwoven themes that we expanded on a bit:

1)  Follow my commands (don’t just listen to them)

2)  Trust me -- I know what I’m doing (and I’m coming back)

3)  The unity of the household of God (Jesus is connected to the Father, we’re connected to Jesus, the Holy Spirit will connect us all, etc.)

4)  Remain connected to me (or else you’ll wither)

How can you and I consciously try to let those interwoven themes interweave themselves throughout our lives this week?