Author: Rev. Jessie Colwell

My first memory of learning the Bible is when I was a child in Sunday School. My teacher was Mr. Wells and he was passionate about sharing the stories of Jesus with young people. I remember that we would have challenges for memorization and that he would teach us songs. It is because of Mr. Well’s teaching in those early years that I am able to remember the Bible that I know today. He laid a strong foundation for me. Also when I was a little girl my parents would read Bible stories to me. Even as a little girl, I always had a love of the Bible.

When I got to seminary this foundation helped me. I was able to recall the stories I had learned and put some context to them, and finally be encouraged in various ways to teach the Bible. I love the Bible. It is God’s word to us today. It instructs us in our faith and our lives. The hardest part for us is figuring out what God is saying to us through the Bible.

You will hear this from me as your pastor as my most frequent prayer for our charge at all of our meetings is for us to discern God’s will for these churches that have been entrusted to our care.

It is one thing to read a Bible study and really enjoy it, it is another thing to embody the stories we have heard and the lessons we have learned as we share God’s love with others. This Sunday we continue the third week in our “Wesley Challenge” Sermon Series. Our question is: “Did the Bible Live in Me Today?

The first place we have to start with is this question: do we know the Bible? Do we spend time every day reading the Bible? Are we intentional about our faith development?

There are so many great tools to help us grow in our understanding of the Bible. “The Upper Room” is a great tool to read scripture and have a prayer every day. There are also so many other devotional books out there, or you can create your own devotional time.

Just as it takes us some time for us to recognize the voice of a new person in our lives, when we spend serious time studying the Bible, it helps us to recognize the power and presence of God in our lives through the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Today we are called to celebrate the gift of holy discernment. Come this Sunday to hear more and be encouraged on how to decipher God’s will for your life and how God is calling you to reach out to other people.

Prayer: “The Prayer of the Holy Spirit”
“Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, through Christ Our Lord. Amen”

Lectionary for this week: 1 Kings 2:9-12, Psalm 111, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-55

This Sunday we will continue the second week in our “Wesley Challenge” Sermon series. We are taking the “21 Questions” developed by John Wesley and his friends and choosing them as they pertain to the lectionary. This Sunday’s question is: “Am I Defeated in Any Part of My Life?” I think it fits in beautifully with our lectionary today because so often the thing we are defeated by in life is grief.

Grief can come in many forms and in my 10 years of ministry I have seen the many faces of grief. Grief can be sneaky and sometimes we may not even realize we are grieving. Most of the time when we think about grief we think about the death of a loved one. When someone we love dies we can experience profound grief. Our lives feel like they will never be the same.

When I was twelve years old both of my grandmothers died suddenly. I was closer to one than I was to the other, but even as a child I felt profound grief for their loss. I still experience grief at holidays wishing they were there, but it has lessened over time.

Although this type of grief is very difficult to experience, there are other things in our lives that cause us grief. Grief can be caused by the loss of a relationship. Divorce can be included in this kind of grief, but it also includes the loss of a dear friend or family member that is still alive, but that you are no longer on speaking terms with or you have lost contact with. This is a very difficult type of grief and many people are defeated in this area.

The grief that we talk about the least is the grief that occurs over the loss of a dream. Perhaps you had certain goals or ambitions in life, but for whatever reason were unable to attain them. Maybe you were passed over at work for a big promotion. This is the type of grief that causes regret. We think, “If I only I could have done this one thing everything would have been different for me.” This kind of thinking, this grief and defeat, can creep into all of our days.

I think what is at the heart of this question is what is the area of my life that I cannot get past? What is the thing that I keep thinking about and replaying in my mind over and over and over? These are the things in our lives that keep us living in the past and unable to be present in the here and now and look toward a future with hope.

Our Scripture for this week encourages us to be honest with one another and confess to each other; this is how we can hold onto the hope that comes from our faith in Jesus Christ, by embodying Christ to one another.

Come and hear more about our hope in Christ this Sunday and if you are feeling defeated today know you are not alone. I am here if you need to talk. The power in us sharing with one another shows us that we all have some area in our life where we feel defeated, but when we encourage each other and support one another we find strength in the body of Christ. Thanks be to God! Amen!

Lectionary text for Sunday August 12: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33, Psalm 130, Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Prayer: Healer of our grief, your Son Jesus Christ knew our grief, he gave himself on the cross so that we would always have hope, no matter what kind of grief we are experiencing. Help us to support one another. Help us to break the silence of our suffering and share with one another so we can help carry one another’s loads. Help us to really see the needs of our family and friends this week and to offer ourselves freely to help all who are grieving. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

In my second year of Duke Divinity School there came an opportunity for me to join a covenant group. This type of group would meet, just like the small groups met at the time of John Wesley, the founder of our denomination, to grow in their faith and discipleship. So I joined one of these groups and was placed with three other young women that I had never met before. Our leader, Christa, now a United Methodist elder in Virginia, told us about the history of Methodism. How John Wesley would meet with his “Holy Club”, a group of individuals who were committed to grow in their faith and discipleship.

Then she shared how they developed these 21 questions in order to go deeper in self-examination and accountability. The purpose of these questions was for each person of the group to go through them each day, then come together and share their triumphs and challenges when it came to different areas of their faith. I found this practice both uplifting and convicting, but it did help me have some of the most honest conversations about my faith.

I am very excited that this Sunday we kick off this new sermon series entitled “The Wesley Challenge” based off the book “The Wesley Challenge” by Chris Folmsbee, a pastor at Resurrection United Methodist Church.  You will find I am a big supporter of John Wesley, the founder of our denomination, and I am thankful for all the ways he has shaped the way we practice our faith.

My hope for us as the Rappahannock Charge, is that we can take the next couple of weeks going through these questions and seeing the areas in our faith we are called to celebrate, and the areas of our faith that we need to work on. On August 29 we will start our small group on this topic and participate in the 21 day Wesley Challenge where we go through one question a day for 21 days. Even if you are unable to attend the study, I will make books available for $10 the Sunday before we begin if you would like to participate on your own.

My prayers is these next nine weeks together that we will take a hard look at our faith, dive deep into Scripture and allow God to strengthen us as we combat the sin in our lives. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Buy “The Wesley Challenge” today!

Sign up for the Bible Study today!

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Have you ever felt like you didn’t have enough? Enough money, enough love, enough time? This mindset of scarcity causes to have extreme stress and anxiety. Nothing causes us more stress than the scarcity of money. We all have bills to pay. We want to help our families. We may have debt or loans, but we worry about money no matter what kind of financial shape we may be in.

I remember when I was in seminary at Duke. Everything was so expensive like buying all the books needed and the cost of living. My parents did help me quite a bit, but I felt like they had already given me so much so I took a part time job at the library to have a little extra money.

That first semester at Duke a deer ran into the very nice car my parents had bought me when I graduated Tech the previous year and my car was totaled. It seemed like everything that could go wrong was going wrong? Have you ever had one of those days?

The car that I could afford to replace my car was not nearly as nice and each time I would get into this car I would be angry. To make matters worse, the fan belt kept breaking so people could hear me coming for miles. I was embarrassed to drive that car, and felt like I was being humbled in the sight of the Lord. I kept thinking, “This is not the car I am supposed to be driving. I miss my nice car. Why does everything have to be so hard?” Even though I felt defeated in those moments, I was missing out on the reality before me.

I was blessed to be able to attend Duke and be the first person in my family to attend graduate school. I was blessed that I got a car to replace my totaled car. I was blessed with family and friends who were supporting me, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. I had just been looking at all wrong with the mindset of scarcity instead of the mindset of abundance. It is all about our mindset. Our Scripture for today from the Gospel of John invites us to live in the mindset of abundance, because this is how the God we serve operates.

It is true Christianity in America is declining, but that does not mean that the house of God has to decline. Gone are the days when people would come to church because it was something they always did. Gone are the days when stores were closed on Sundays and there were no sports practices or games.

Our society has lost sight of the importance of God and the church, but that does not make God or the church any less significant. It means that like the Gentiles in the church of Ephesus, we have to figure out a new way to practice our faith, a faith that conveys our hearts are for the Lord. We have to continue to practice our faith that builds up the kingdom of God and does not tear it down.