John Louk

John Wesley established covenant services as an important part of early Methodist life. He wrote in his Journal, “Urged the wholly giving up ourselves to God and renewing in every point our covenant that the Lord should be our God.” Toward the end of his life, they were usually celebrated on New Year’s Day. It is appropriate for us to begin 2011 by renewing our covenant with the Lord God. In the old covenant, God chose Israel to be a special people and to obey the law. Our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection, has made a new covenant with all who trust in him. We stand within this covenant and we bear his name. On the one side, God promises in this covenant to give us new life in Christ. On the other side, we are pledged to live not for ourselves but for God. Therefore, may we renew the covenant which binds us to God.   Let us claim the covenant God has made with his people, and accept the yoke of Christ. To accept the yoke of Christ means that we allow Christ t

The Christmas story is the story of what God has done with the brokenness of the world. In the  midst of sin, pain, grief, suffering, loss, brokenness, God intervened. God disrupted what had been going on. This is a story that goes back to the very beginning.   As it says in  Genesis, the first book of the Bible, “In the beginning, God.” God created the world and everything in it. Simply by speaking, God created the entire cosmos. It is the very theater of God’s glory, the kingdom over which he reigns.   The pinnacle of that creation was when God made humans in the image of God. God created us to be in relationship with God and with one another. It was paradise in the Garden of Eden. It says in Genesis that God would come and walk with the man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the cool of the evening. And then a catastrophe happened. Brokenness. The fall. Humans were tempted and led away from our good beginning. It got so bad that God was sad he had created humans at all. So God destroyed

Salem has a new website. You can check it out at  www.SalemChurchCR.com . Also, the sermons I preach at Salem are posted on the website  here . I am adding a shortcut to the sermons I preach on the links list on my blog.