This week, we’re discovering:
In our Bible story that our words matter (Ephesians 4:29). What are you doing to encourage others with your words? We’ll focus on the part of the verse that talks about “building others up according to their needs.”
We can become trusted people in the way that we talk to people in addition to using the stuff God gives us to be responsible.

Our Bottom Line is: I can be trusted when I choose the right words. God is responsible and our responsibility is a reflection of God. When we show responsibility, we are building trust with people. This week we celebrate Mother’s Day, so we’ll also emphasize thanking the women in our lives who encourage and love us.

Our Basic Truth is: I should treat others the way I want to be treated.

Showing responsibility with the small things will help others see we can be trusted with big things. One of the best things we can do for our relationships is to choose our words carefully. Then our relationships get stronger and we have even more opportunities to be responsible.

Like our Memory Verse says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” Luke 16:10, NIV

Parent Cue Card

God Time Devotional

This week, we’re discovering:
Our Bible story is the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). This is key for the whole month because it talks about being responsible with our stuff—both our money and our gifting. Everyone’s been given something, so what should you do to best invest it? We’ll see how the worst thing is to sit on it or just save it for later.

Our Bottom Line is: I can be trusted when I make the most of what God has given to me. When we bury our stuff, we seem to be afraid. People waste their lives and what they’ve been given when they don’t trust God enough to let Him work through them with the abilities He gave them in the first place. When we are responsible, we can become trusted people.

It’s important to remember this week’s Basic Truth: I can trust God no matter what, as we talk about responsibility. It’s true that everything we have has been given to us by God. When we respond to God with what He has given us, then we are responsible.

It’s like our Memory Verse says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” Luke 16:10, NIV

Parent Cue Card

God Time Devotional

Good Friday is the darkest day of the year. It is the day we gather to remember the death of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of our sins and the restoration of our relationship with God. But it’s also a day to reflect of the deep love of God, who desired to redeem us. It’s a reminder that grace is greater than the depths of our sin.

This Good Friday, between 6:30-8 pm, you’re invited to gather for prayerful reflection, anointing, and communion. Come with your community of friends or your family – the gathering is come and go and open to all ages.

On Easter we remember that when Jesus died he took all the sin, death, shame and sorrow of the world to the grave and left it there, stripping it of its power. Easter means that even death has died. Easter means that evil does not have the last word. Easter means there is now nothing that can stop God’s mission to restore and renew our lives, our neighborhoods, our community and even our world.

Of course people will tell you that can’t happen or that it’s all a dream. But who would have thought a dead man could be filled with life?

Join us on Sunday, April 8 at 10:45 AM as we celebrate The Risen Christ.

On Saturday, April 21, the LFCN Women’s Ministry will be hosting a Shoe Cutting Party. We will be gathering to cut donated fabric into shoe uppers that will be taken to Africa to be sewn by Sole Hope shoemakers for a fair wage and then put on a child’s foot who cannot afford a pair of shoes. Join us on April 21!

Also, we need donated denim. There is a basket in the church foyer for you to donate your denim. As you’re cleaning out your closet this Spring, consider that your used denim could provide income to an African and also become a handcrafted pair of shoes for a child.

For more information about Sole Hope you can visit their website or watch the video below.

At LFCN, we participate in baptism to publicly identify ourselves with Jesus in his death and resurrection. This is a sacred and beautiful opportunity to declare, “I believe the best possible way to live is the way of Jesus, and I am committed to following Christ—daily dying to myself and allowing the resurrected Christ to live in and through me.”

Baptism is not a means of salvation. Rather, it is a beautiful picture of our union with Christ and our declaring that we join him as His new family who are living in His new creation now.

Baptism this year will be on Sunday, April 15.

If you are interested in being baptized, you can sign up below or at the welcome center in the church foyer.

Kiva.org is an organization that facilitates loans to borrowers who could otherwise never qualify for a loan. As a Kiva lender, you can pick someone from an area of the world that interests you and participate directly in the lending process through Kiva.org. Kiva is a non-profit organization whose online tools connect organizations with lenders, like you and me, so it’s easy to get engaged.

Most lenders participate at the $25 dollar level. Your $25 is combined with other’s loans to make up a loan large enough to make a real difference in the life of someone otherwise unable to access capital.

Also, LFCN has a Kiva Lending Team. You’ll be making sharing and serving alongside folks with whom you worship. Currently, Kiva.org is offering new members $25 to lend so it is a great time to get started. You can take advantage of that offer by clicking this link. To read more about Kiva, go here.

Take part in helping alleviate poverty by empowering those without access to traditional banking systems with the means to create new opportunities.

Join the LFCN Lending Team

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

Jesus was 40 days hungry. In his state of hunger the devil pays him a visit and tempts him.

“If you are the Son of God then…”

The tempter’s words are really important. He says “if you are the Son of God…” He could have said “if you are the Messiah” or “if you are the divine one.” He says “if you are the Son of God.”

That’s important because just a few verses earlier in Matthew we read these words:

16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Notice how the tempter operates: he immediately questions Jesus’ identity. IF you really are God’s son then prove it.

Temptation begins first with our identity being questioned. Our identity comes from who God says we are. Identity isn’t something earned but something given to us by God.

Identity

When Paul writes to the Ephesians he spends the first three chapters of a four chapter letter telling them who they are in Jesus. In that three chapter span of the letter he never once commands them to do anything. He simply reminds them who God says they are. They are, Paul says,

blessed (1:3), chosen (1:4), graced (1:6), redeemed (1:7), included in Christ (1:13), made alive (2:5), raised up (2:6), brought near (2:13), members of God’s household (2:19)

We think we have to earn it but we can’t and we don’t need to. God says that this is who we are.

It’s a temptation of identity. Temptation happens as we don’t trust who God says we are.

Trust

And, temptations happens as we don’t trust that God is who He says He is. The temptation facing Jesus in the desert was a testing of provision. Was God really capable of providing or was He on His own? Could the God whose spirit led him out into that wilderness be trusted?

The tempter is suggesting that God can’t be trusted. The argument goes, if you are the son of God and if God is well pleased with you then why are you hungry? Why are you suffering? The God who leaves you hungry must not be who God says He is and can’t be trusted.

Shortcutting Suffering

Ultimately, temptation is shortcutting suffering. It’s an opportunity to take the easy way out.

We often think of temptation as being tempted to do something ‘bad.’ That’s not necessarily the case. The tempter doesn’t tempt Jesus to do something that’s bad. He tempts him to make bread. What’s wrong with that? On the surface, nothing. It’s how the bread is produced that makes the difference.

Jesus is ultimately going to produce the bread of life but when He does it is going to cost Him something. It is going to cost His life because He is going to be the bread that is given.

What the tempter is saying to him is to produce bread in the easiest way possible. Short cut suffering, short cut obedience, short cut commitment. Don’t obey the father to get these things, do what you feel like doing to get these things.

Temptation is usually to get something good but to get it in a way that excludes suffering by taking the easy road – a road that is not in obedience to the Father but to our own flesh. For example:

It’s not a bad thing to want to provide for yourself and for your family. The temptation is how to get those things. We’re tempted to steal work that is not our own and claim it as ours, manipulate processes for our self promotion, underpay employees underneath us to bolster our departments bottom line. It’s fine to want to receive money to provide for our family – that is not a bad thing – but how we get there makes all the difference.

The tempter holds up a picture of something good and says ‘look this is a good thing. Now get it in the fastest possible way. Get it in the way you won’t cost you anything.’

In our weakened state as our identity and trust is questioned and we’re drawn toward immediate gratification, we will not be able to resist temptation. In our own power we won’t be able to do it. But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to.

Jesus doesn’t avoid suffering. He doesn’t avoid temptation. He meets it head on. He defeats it. He took the powers of death and evil, nailed them to the cross, took them to the grave and left them there. He is victorious.

We have a God living in us more powerful than even death itself.