​You're invited to a special devotional trip through the Holy Land! Starting tomorrow we'll begin posting daily devotions based Pastor Mike's 2015 trip to Israel and Egypt. (Click here for Brother Mike's Daily Devotions)

​From Brother Mike:
"This was a life-changing trip for me and something that I had been wanting to do for years. Fortunately for me, it also fell less than a month after my oldest son, James McKinley, graduated from college. I asked James to go with me as my graduation gift to him and he agreed. After we returned home I began working on a document that would help me process all that I had seen and experienced in Israel and Egypt. I wrote about each site that we visited and included appropriate Scripture references and a hymn. These devotions will be derived from that notebook.

I hope you will take this trip with me to The Holy Land: the land of Abraham, Ruth, David, Mary, and Peter. A land of hope and faith, belief and betrayal, love and hate. I think the blessing of traveling in The Holy Land is best described by Cleopas and his friend in Luke 24, verse 32: 'Were not our hearts greatly moved and burning within us while the Risen Christ was talking with us on the road and as he opened and explained to us the sense of the Scriptures?' (altered from the Amplified Bible)

I pray that as you travel in the Holy Land through the pages of these devotions and see the places you have read about in the Bible, your heart will be strangely warmed and you will be awed and humbled by what God has done for you through your Savior, Jesus Christ."

And if you ask him, Jesus will come and walk with you through this adventure and every other adventure of your life.
Thanks be to God!

Tomorrow we celebrate Palm Sunday. We are at the end of the main message of The Sermon on the Mount. Since Chapter 5, verse 20, Jesus has been explaining to us what he means when he says, “You must obey God’s commands better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law obey them.” Here, at the end of Chapter 6 and the beginning of Chapter 7 (remember it was not Jesus that divided this sermon into chapters and verses), Jesus speaks to us about worry and condemnation – about how we relate to God and to each other. Then, in 7:7-12, Jesus tells us how to become the kind of person he has described in 5:21–7:6; the person who obeys God’s commands because it is who they are. Jesus then sums up those commands in one short sentence we call The Golden Rule.

When we read Matthew 6:25-34, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry. That is a valid, quick reading of the text. A more studied reading of these verses will tell us exactly why we don’t need to worry .... even telling us why it is counter-productive for us to worry. Jesus teaches us that our worry is based on a misunderstanding of who God is. When we can see clearly (go back to v.22-23) who God is, then we will understand the futility of worry.

Now, at the closing of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus comes to his last example and he assumes the best about us; that we have been listening and paying attention, and striving to be the people he is describing. We have dealt with our anger and our closest relationships; we do not manipulate, but seek to help the way God helps us. We are not doing these things just to look good or to be admired, but because we know and love and trust God. Now Jesus encourages us to abandon Condemnation Engineering. Condemnation Engineering is the art of telling people how not to do everything before they ask.

After Jesus has given us these examples of obeying God better, the logical question is, “How?” Jesus answers, “Ask, search and knock. If this is what you want to do then devote your time and your energy to the task of transformation. God is good and is waiting to help you. And if you want to get off to a quick start then treat others the way you want them to treat you.”

Join us this Sunday online at 10 am for worship. You can worship with us on our Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/FirstMethodistSealy) or wait for a new Sunday email to deliver the sermon. You can still watch last week's sermon on our website or find us on YouTube.