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Hey Beloved…
This is probably a bad week to talk about this subject. But with notable precision, God knew the timing of our current teaching series months ago. Sometimes sticking with the sequential reading of scripture will lead us by God’s wisdom to explore something we would prefer not to think about. What we might perceive as bad timing may indeed be exactly what we need to hear. Are you curious? Let’s talk in Deeper Thoughts below. But first, a few things going on: · Did you miss last Sunday’s “big reveal” of our new (revised) building expansion plans? Our architects have reimagined our potential expansion—to include creating a symmetrical sanctuary—and we think you’re going to like it. If you missed the business meeting after church, click here to view the recorded livestream (fast forward to 34:05 for the facility portion of the meeting). o Also important is an update on where we are in funding the project. Your generosity as a congregation has been exceptional and has positioned us where this project is becoming more and more realistic. There are still opportunities and needs to see this through. Fast forward to 1:08:40 in the video to see those details. · Teens: Youth Group: this Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. with food, fun, and the Word. For more details, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Ladies: Join us for Women’s Bowling at “The Branch,” TOMORROW, Saturday, September 13, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Email Tracey Schlitzer for details [email protected]. · Help spruce up Mt. Hope and make some new friends… Join us for our fall churchwide workday, NEXT Saturday, September 20, 9:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. We’ll have roles for all… easy lift, heavy lift, and more… fun, fellowship, and food! · Want to make HUGE a difference in people’s lives? Consider getting involved with our kids and teens… we have roles for teaching, assisting, and even helping behind the scenes. Join us for lunch NEXT Sunday, September 21, from 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. to explore what helping might be like… no commitment implied by attending! · Join me for “The Daily Six” – six minutes each morning in the Word of God, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who prefer to avoid anything God might want to tell us. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts: The news this week has been a little bleak. Correction: very bleak. It started last weekend when a video I wish I didn’t see went viral of a young Ukrainian refugee being senselessly stabbed on a commuter train while several others around her did nothing to help. Then, on Wednesday, a political assassination of a popular right-wing commentator took place in front of hundreds (thousands?) of spectators—including his own wife and children. These are another pair of tragedies in a long line of violent acts that keep coming in wave after wave in our society. I was up super-early on Thursday morning watching news coverage of the assassination when that morning’s preset Daily Six reminder email popped up on my notifications. “When I See the Blood” was the title of Thursday morning’s Daily Six and its promotional email. I cringed. It’s a direct quote from one of the most sacred moments in biblical history. An annual celebration of God’s people started with that quote that is still carried on today. Jesus Christ celebrated this statement every year at the Passover Feast, eagerly desiring to share this with his disciples. It was during one of those holy dinners that Jesus revealed his own shed blood would become the most sacred remembrance for every Christ-follower to come. But on Thursday morning, the phrase “when I see the blood” felt a little too close to home, the nation once again watching our fellow humans’ blood being spilled by senseless, evil brutes who took their political or cultural differences way, way, way too far. Our staff received an electronically submitted prayer request shortly afterwards from a Mt. Hope mom. She was asking prayers for her teenager who is grappling with friends on social media posting hateful comments—I’m guessing either decrying the assassination and hating on the political adversaries whom Charlie Kirk opposed, or left-wing sympathizers celebrating his death as a victory over what they considered to be hateful speech of his. I’ve seen both types of comments from both sides on social media--and sadly even professional media—that I’ve watched this week. This mom also acknowledged the pressure many of our teens are facing at school and among their peers for being open about their faith in Jesus. We will pray over this need and all our young people this Sunday during service. I’ll also share a few brief comments about this week’s events to call us to a Jesus-centric response to all the violence in our decaying culture. But then we’re going to get back to the sequence of what God has been revealing in our study of the Old Testament. I’m trusting the timing of “the blood of the lamb” is exactly what God wants us to process this Sunday while we absorb another bloody week in our nation. And… this is more relevant to our societal ills than we might imagine. God’s judgment was coming upon Egypt for centuries of hate-filled injustice. Ancient antisemitism had taken root as the Egyptians feared the blessings and success God had poured upon His people even while they were mercilessly enslaved. The Israelite’s hardships were not unlike the many injustices and violent acts we have seen perpetrated in our society over and over again in recent years. There is always a point where evil will reach a limit God cannot tolerate any longer. In our view, this limit is often far later than we wish it were—I’d say we Americans have long since crossed the line where God should step in. But God has a different economy of timing, rooted in his immeasurable mercy and His desire to give us a TON of time to fix things on our own. When God steps in, it will be rough. For Egypt, it meant a wretched plague where every firstborn son in Egypt would face a death angel in a single night. God would spare the Israelites, but only if they sacrificed a lamb and placed its blood on the doorframes of their homes. “When I see the blood,” God said, “I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you…” (Exodus 12:13). To us, the shedding of blood is barbaric. I felt that when I watched a Ukrainian girl get stabbed and a political activist get shot. Senseless. Brutal. Evil. But there is another side to the shedding of blood. In the spiritual realm, a godly sacrifice carries with it a spiritual transformation. The Jews annually celebrate the Passover Feast as God passed over the sacrificed blood of a lamb. Jesus would be identified as the real and final sacrificial lamb whose blood empowers God to pass over our sins. Friends, the blood of Jesus is the solution to all the ills of our society, our world, our humanity. Not shouting. Not arguing. Not shooting. It’s a complicated tale, and one we need to wrestle with from our modern discomfort with sacrificial blood. Let’s meet this Sunday and explore it together in the scriptures. We will discover why we Christians are so celebratory of the blood of Jesus—a concept sure to sound foreign to those outside our faith. In the meantime, to prepare yourself, would you take time to watch Thursday’s Daily Six if you have not already—or maybe watch it a second time to soak in God’s Word from Exodus 12? Click here for Thursday’s episode. Then… come on out on Sunday to church… oh, and bring that physical Bible. Let’s dig in together! Much love to you all in the peace of Jesus Christ… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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Hey there, beloved…
Would you be OK if I make this email’s subject line a cheesy double-meaning appeal? First: I would love for you to be a part of an immediate “next step” in preparing Mt. Hope for what God is doing, and we’re going to talk about that THIS Sunday after church (see details below). But secondly: there is a far greater preparation going on in your life… and you might not even know about it. God is grooming you for something with much wider implications than most of us recognize. Do you see it? Let’s talk in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first, some IMPORTANT updates for you: · Do you want to see the new (revised) building expansion plans for Mt. Hope Church? Our architects have reimagined our potential expansion—to include creating a symmetrical sanctuary expansion—and we think you’re going to like it. Join us for the “big reveal” THIS Sunday after service, 11:45 a.m.! o This will be part of our IMPORTANT Mt. Hope Business Meeting, THIS Sunday, September 7, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Everyone is invited as we will discuss the revised architectural design and next steps for our potential facility expansion, discuss and approve our fiscal year 2025-26 budget, and our Covenant Partners will vote to formally ratify our revised By-Laws. § For those of you who are out of town, this meeting will be livestreamed. Click our “livestream” link on the Mt. Hope homepage around 11:45: www.mthopeloudoun.org · Teens: Youth Group: this Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. with food, fun, and the Word. Parents, they’ll be meeting (and wrapping up) the same time as our congregational meeting, so this would be a great time to get your teens involved in our growing and awesome youth group! For more details, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Ladies: Join us for Women’s Bowling at “The Branch,” NEXT Saturday, September 13, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Email Tracey Schlitzer for details and to RSVP… [email protected]. We are hoping to close out RSVP’s tomorrow, September 6! · Help spruce up Mt. Hope’s campus… Join us for our fall churchwide workday, Saturday, September 20, 9:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. We’ll have roles for all… easy lift, heavy lift, and more… fun, fellowship, and food! · Want to make HUGE a difference in people’s lives? Consider getting involved with our kids and teens… we have roles for teaching, assisting, and even helping behind the scenes. Join us for lunch on Sunday, September 21, from 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. to explore what helping might be like… no commitment implied by attending! · Join me for “The Daily Six” – six minutes each morning in the Word of God, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who prefer to stay thoroughly unprepared for everything. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts: You may not recognize it. Perhaps you do, but if so, you’re in the minority. Here it is. You ready? God has placed a profound calling on your life. This is true whether you know it or not. You have a very specific mission God has ordained for you. It is an assignment that was issued long before you were born. Several assignments, in fact, that will range throughout your entire life. God has been strategizing about this mission since the beginning of time. Once your mommy and daddy set the development of your body into motion, God started tinkering inside your mother’s womb to be sure you were capable and ready for it. You can read all about it in Psalm 139:13-16. (Oh, and it gets mentioned in a bunch of other places, too: Romans 8:28, Ephesians 4:1, 2 Thessalonians 1:11, and 2 Peter 1:10 to name just a few.) But most of us have two problems with this idea of some massive “calling” on our lives. First, most people have ZERO idea what this mission is. It sounds far too grandiose for the humble capacity of our lives. But secondly, even if we did have clarity about it, we certainly wouldn’t think we are capable of fulfilling it. “Grandiose” does not match what we readily recognize in our story. But God has an entirely different view of the situation. Some of you are rolling your eyes already. Some are thinking, “there he goes again, trying to build me up to think of myself in some way that I just can’t see.” For you, talk of some great purpose for your life seems utterly unrealistic. Maybe you’re already getting up there in years and you figure whatever God could have done with you is miles behind you. Or maybe you’re still relatively young, but you don’t have a lot of talents; you’re not someone with a big, bold ego; people don’t flock to your personality, etc. etc.… or that’s how you see yourself, anyway. Others of you are thinking, “Check. Got it. God has designed me for something big and I’m already doing it.” For you, it might be the very successful career you’ve built with God’s help. Or you might be super-clear that your amazing family is the most important mission of your life. And to be sure, both of those are absolutely true. But God has something more. Moses caught a glimpse of his mission early in his life. Then he royally screwed it up. Decades later--in his 80’s—God finally finished preparing him for this mission. (You older friends of mine, please note… in his 80’s. God is definitely not done with you… not until His chariot arrives to take you on to Glory. You’ve got at least one more mission in you. Maybe two. Or three….) For Moses, his calling had to do with opening the doors of freedom for over a million (perhaps as many as 2 or 3 million) slaves who had been living for centuries under horrific oppression. That’s a lofty calling for sure. I’m guessing yours could be a little smaller in scope. But who knows? At first, Moses thought that growing up in the luxury, power, and prestige of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s palace had perfectly set him up to straighten out the injustice. And that’s when he screwed it all up. His first move was murder, which secured him a well-earned death sentence, which led to him fleeing for his life, which made him a decades-long fugitive hundreds of miles from home… none of which is conducive to fulfilling God’s call to effect dynamic political change. But it was precisely that screw-up that enabled God to prepare Moses for greatness. This might be true of you, too. The very things that you see in your life that tell you that you’re nothing special, that God couldn’t use you for greatness, that there’s no significant mission He could give you… these things might be exactly what God needs to set you up for success. Shall we connect this Sunday and discover how? The best prep-work you could do is to be sure you’re caught up with our readings on this week’s “Daily Six.” Click here to catch up! Please join us on Sunday, 10:00 a.m.— in-person (best!!) or online (if you must). The Word of the Lord will reveal how God is grooming us for greatness!! Oh… and bring your Bible with you!! Can’t wait!! Much love to you all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend |
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Jesus said, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, & with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matt. 22:37-39
42507 Mt. Hope Road
Ashburn, VA 20148
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703-729-2707