“Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also. John 14:19
Although my dad retired from the United States Post Office as a letter carrier for the city of Albertville, Alabama; a job he truly loved, his passion was to sing and play music. Dad had a beautiful baritone voice and was likened in his day to singer, Jim Reeves, by mom and many of their friends. Once he auditioned for the Sons of the Pioneers but didn’t get the spot. He played the guitar, piano, mandolin, and the fiddle just a bit. My mom told me many years ago that he was taught piano lessons when he was a kid by Hovie Lister who sang with the Statesmen Quartet. In his younger days, Dad was featured as Skeeter, The Wizard of the Electrical Guitar, as part of the bill with the Johnson Family Band out of Hustleville, Alabama. For many years dad proudly displayed a poster featuring him in this manner, in his home. I used to love to hear him sing gospel songs in church as well as at other events in the community. And I can tell you that my dad loved the music of Bill and Gloria Gather:
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow;
because He lives, all fear is gone;
because I know He holds the future,
and life is worth the living, just because He lives.
Chorus: Because He Lives, Bill and Gloria Gaither, 1971.
How glorious! How comforting! What hope! What peace! What assurance!
Did you know that because Christ lives, you can face tomorrow! Because Christ lives, you do not have to be controlled by a life of fear and uncertainty! Because Christ lives you can know your inheritance in heaven is secure if you have given your life to Christ and become God’s child through Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead. And my friend, it is true—because Christ holds the future, and does, life is worth living NOW! Why? Just because He lives!
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me…” Paul, Galatians 2:20!
Pastor Louie- a very grateful son!
Sand Mountain Sermonette 94
Luke 24:30-31; Luke 24:13-35.
The Table and the Photograph
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”
Luke 24:30-31
Summer, twenty-nine years ago, Nancy and I were visiting family for several days in my hometown. While we were there, it had already been arranged that I would present one of my “Magic-with-a-Message” Gospel Illusion shows for the congregation and guests of my Mamaw and Papaw Mabrey’s church, The First United Methodist Church of Albertville. The show was presented in the church’s fellowship hall where we had a great time visiting with family and making new friends.
Several weeks later I received a letter and a photograph I wasn’t expecting in the mail. The mother of a girl I graduated Albertville High School with in 1974 was in the crowd and her gift to me was a treasure—an 8x10 black and white photograph of she and her husband taken with my grandparents Mabrey eating supper in the original “Food Basket” Restaurant in Albertville. The gentlemen were dressed in suits and their wives in dresses and jewelry as common to adults eating out in the 1960’s. But it was the note attached to the photograph that touched my heart in equal fashion. It spoke of how the sender’s husband had “just loved” my grandfather and how my grandfather would have enjoyed the show so much! She also expressed how much they enjoyed my grandmother’s company as well. And every time I look at that photo, my heart stirs with the joy of those who shared the table with my grandparents on that particular weekly theme night the Food Basket was featuring “fried chicken!”
Having left Jerusalem late afternoon of the original Resurrection Sunday, two pilgrims were walking to their hometown of Emmaus located about seven miles from the city. And as they walk, the resurrected Jesus draws near them and begins to listen and to converse with them about what has just happened, but the Bible says these two folks are prevented from recognizing the stranger as Jesus at that time. And while they share their discouragement as to others having seen the resurrected Lord but their having not seen Him for themselves, the Bible says as they drew near their home, they invited Jesus to dine with them. And Luke tells us that it was in the familiar breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened, and they recognized the crucified and risen Lord for themselves before He literally vanished from their sight! And note the next verse, “They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Spiritual joy is manifested in the heart and lives of those who have encountered the crucified and risen Lord! “A burning heart” blazes ever brighter to the one who spends time daily at the table with Jesus opening his or her heart to His Word and sitting quietly to listen and to talk to Him in prayer! That’s why each time we partake of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion), we are invited into the grace and blessing of the Lord Jesus who died and rose for us!
May our hearts burn with the passion of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God.
See you at the table of the Lord! Read the whole story in Luke 24:13-35.
Pastor Louie
Sand Mountain Sermonette 95
John 4:13-14 ; John 4:1-42
“Hello, Down There!”
“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’” John 4:13-14 (Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well).
Each time I visited my Mamaw Irises’ little farm home located about ten miles outside my hometown of Albertville, Alabama, I was drawn to an old white-washed-block structure that covered a well just twenty feet or so offer her back porch. I still remember those hot-summer days of taking an old metal dipper out to the well site, removing the heavy flat metal iron covering off the hole, and bending over and listening to the sound of my voice when speaking down into the hole. And then, the best of all was when I would lower the bucket way down into the hole and draw up what is, still today, some of the coldest, purest, and best drinking water I have ever tasted!
That day, at Noon, during the hottest part of the day, a woman held bondage to sin and the unkind remarks of the townsfolk around her, went out when no one else would be around to draw water from Jacob’s Well near the city of Sychar. However, she wasn’t alone for Jesus was already there to meet her and to tell her about the “Living Water” only He could provide.
During the conversation, Jesus removed the iron covering she had placed over her heart that had been fashioned over a period of many years in which she had sought true love with five husbands and was currently living with a man who was not her husband. But she was open to Jesus who lovingly spoke into her loneliness and emptiness of heart, so she could be free to be filled with the living water of salvation that only He could provide.
Have you invited the Holy Spirit to speak into your life through God’s holy and transforming word? Have you spent time with Jesus and invited Him to cleanse your heart of sin so your heart and life would become in you a well of water “springing up to eternal life?” Like the woman at the well, freely offer Jesus the guilt and shame you have been carrying and watch Him transform your thirsty life into His abundantly satisfying life now and forever!
(Read the complete story in John 4:1-42).
Now, Go and Share Jesus’ Living Water with Others!
Pastor Louie