Here we are in 2022. We are living in a world gone mad. The world is polarized and divided. So is our nation. So is the church. So is our little town of West Liberty. We have fundamentalist and conservatives. We have liberals and progressives. We have divided ourselves into all these tribes who do not like each other very much. We are divided and polarized over so many things. Truth has become a casualty. Love has been lost. Civility has been jettisoned and thrown out.
We need Jesus! In a devotional book written by William Pierson Merrill in 1933 entitled The Way he writes about Jesus and His Teaching. Jesus in His words gives just the message our age needs. All through the church there has resounded, and still resounds the clash of strife between traditionalists and modernists. The one cherishes the old, and has no use for the new. The other eagerly seizes the new, and has a contempt for the old. Here we are in 2022 more divided and more polarized. So we need the Real Jesus!
Jesus who taught us all to love God. Love the Other. Love Self. Love the Enemy. Love all others all around us. Jesus who said that the true mark of the Christian is Love! Who wanted us to be an instrument of His love. Who wanted His Love to flow into us, within us, and through us to all people everywhere. Who taught us that in His Church there is no Jew nor Gentile, ethnic racial differences are done. No slave nor free, social differences, cultural differences, economic differences are gone. No male nor female, gender differences are gone. We are all the same. We are all equal. No one is better. No one is superior. No one is favored. No one is privileged. No one. We are all loved. All accepted. We are not to judge. We are not to condemn. We are not to hate. We are not to divide. We are to love. We are to understand. We are to walk in the other’s shoes. We are to forgive. We all need Jesus. The world needs Jesus. The church needs Jesus. Not Jesus Light. Jesus Real!
By Pastor Mario Padilla
West Liberty Christian Fellowship