Church - Teaneck, Bergenfield, Bogota, Leonia, Ridgefield Park

Pensamientos para hoy (afterthought for today)

Building Camaraderie

Last Saturday we had a very successful workday at the church. Much thanks to the Trustees for their planning and organizing. Workdays help us clean the church, but more importantly, they help us grow closer together and experience camaraderie. Camaraderie is defined as "close friendship in a group of friends or teammates." This close friendship is built on shared experiences. Every time we get together to do something together, we share similar experiences. Workdays are a very important shared experience because when we work together to accomplish a goal we learn to appreciate each other. When we work together to accomplish a goal, we also learn about each other in deeper more meaningful ways. Workdays are vital to bringing us closer together as brothers and sisters in the Lord. We see that we are more than a group of loosely related people, but we are all part of the family of God. We're all on the same team working together to accomplish the goal of bringing light to a dark world.

Another important way to build camaraderie is by praying together. When we pray together we share a very intimate experience. If our prayer is genuine, if we are really seeking God and sincerely calling out to him, we are opening a window to our soul. Some people are afraid to open this window. They keep the curtains closed tight. They don't want anyone to see what's inside. But we don't have to be afraid, because we're all imperfect people traveling together on the same path to perfection. We can be honest with ourselves and with God and open our heart and soul to him in prayer even when other people are listening. In special times of prayer we find that we are not that different from one another. In prayer we see also that we are all on the same level, have the same needs, and have the same feelings.

We had a great workday and we'll have more, but we also need special times of prayer. To help us have these special times the Elders of the church are planning to have a few prayer meetings for the summer. These prayer times will be once a month on the last Sunday of the month from 10:00 to 10:30a.m. during the time we'd normally have Sunday School. King David wrote, "Listen to my words, LORD, consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly (Psalm 5:1-3)." ¹

I hope that you can join us for these important prayer times. Let us seek God together in a new and truly spiritual way and trust that God will do mighty things in and through us for his glory and his kingdom.

Opening the curtains to let the Son in,

Pastor Steve
May 20, 2011

Footnotes

Jesus is the greatest teacher who ever lived. One of Jesus' techniques was to relate spiritual ideas to common everyday life. Pensamientos (afterthought) is an attempt to follow Jesus' method of teaching. Its title is in Spanish because we recognize the importance of multi-culturalism. We hope to translate some of these messages into Spanish soon.

Find more afterthoughts at Pensamientos (afterthoughts).

You can read recent sermons by Pastor Lorenz at Featured Sermon.