Scripture Meditation
True spirituality that is pure in the eyes of our Father God is to make a difference in the lives of the orphans and widows in their troubles, and to refuse to be corrupted by the world’s values.

James 1:27
The Passion Translation

Prayer

Lord,

Thank you for the opportunity to do something when I see a need. Thank you that you can work through whatever I have, however small it may seem. Let me partner with you today in making a difference in someone’s life with a small kindness, a little task done, a word of encouragement. Let me share in Jesus’ joy!

Amen.

Time for Reflection
Can you think of a time when someone has arrived to help with just what you needed at the right time? Has there been a time when you have had opportunity to be there for someone at just the right time? How did that experience impact your understanding of God?

Take the Challenge
Ask God to direct your mind and your steps to a person who needs help today, then act on it! You may want to share the joy of that experience with your family or a close friend. Let’s start a contagion of helping!

+Our Photo Challenge!
Post your picture on your favorite social media with #involvement #azurehills showing how you are getting and staying involved at Azure Hills today.

 Instructions…

How do you #pictureAzureHills?
Join our Azure Hills church community as we #pictureAzureHills together – celebrating God’s presence in our everyday moments. We invite you to share these moments, especially when we cannot share them together in person.

What is #pictureAzureHills?
This is a daily scripture, prayer, challenge, reflection question, and photo challenge that will join us together as a faith community, as we are intentional about our connection with one another during this season.

#WeAreAzureHills Photo Challenge
We want to invite you to share this journey with your faith community and use each day’s theme to inspire a daily photo. Post each day on your favorite social media site together.

Scripture Meditation:

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

–Psalms 139:1-3 (but read it all)

Prayer:

Dear Father,

I praise you that I you know me fully, yet you love me deeply. Give me the courage to fine safe people in my life where I can be authentic. Give me grace to walk with those whose struggles are different than mine. Teach us to walk in grace and authenticity.

Thank you.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Reflection Question:

1. Are you authentic in your conversations with God? Do you tell him your pain, your praise, your fears your hopes?
2. Tim Keller wrote, “To be fully known and truly love, is a lot like being loved by God.” Do you have friends who love you fully? Do you feel safe revealing your inner most self to them?
3. Can someone be authentic with you? Do you listen with grace or with judgement when someone reveals their “real” self to you?

 Challenge:

In Prayer: Talk to God about your deepest secrets. This might be a lingering sin that you’re reluctant to confess, a secret longing, a diminishing faith, or a hope that you feel is a longshot.

• Build one more trusting relationship. Share a secret hope or longing with a safe friend, family or colleague. Listen carefully if they share in return. Believe them when they express their feelings, even if their feelings are different than how you would feel.

 

Photo Challenge:
Post your picture with #authenticity #WeAreAzureHills for today and let us catch a glimpse of God’s presence in your everyday life.

Scripture Meditation:

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
— Isaiah 41:10
 
Prayer:

Dear God,
Would you come with your peace? Help us to let go of fear, anxiety or worry. Let us relax and breath deep in your presence. You are with us. Immanuel.

Thank you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
 
Reflection Question:
Do a check-up right now. Mentally… spiritually…emotionally… where are you lacking peace? Are you holding onto any fear or anxiety or worry? Surrender that to God. Hold out your hands, receiving God’s peace as a gift.
 
Action:
Many Christians have the practice of “Passing the Peace” each week. In our community we call it greeting time or fellowship, the time when we extend warmth to those around us. Choose one person to reach out to today. By this act you share the peace of God.
 
Photo Challenge:
Post your picture with #peace #azurehills for today and let us catch a glimpse of God’s presence in your everyday life.
 
Instructions…
 
How do you #WeAreAzureHills?
Join our Azure Hills church community as we #WeAreAzureHills together – celebrating God’s presence in our everyday moments. We invite you to share these moments, especially when we cannot share them together in person.
 
What is #WeAreAzureHills?
This is a daily scripture, prayer, challenge, reflection question, and photo challenge that will join us together as a faith community, as we are intentional about our connection with one another during these season.
 
#WeAreAzureHills Photo Challenge
We want to invite you to share this journey with your faith community and use each day’s theme to inspire a daily photo. Post each day on your favorite social media site with the theme and #WeAreAzureHills so we can all be inspired together.

Left to Right: Ed and Valeetah Motshiedler (Koinonia leaders), Tom Smith, Bob and Janeece Jung, Keturah Reed, Don Charboneau

One of the great things about Azure Hills is its diversity. And a significant part of that diversity is its age diversity. Azure Hills is known as a family church with a vibrant ministry to children, youth, and young adults. But the Azure Hills family is truly a family of all ages, including an active seniors group known as Koinonia (a Greek word meaning “fellowship”). Headed by Ed and Valeetah Motshiedler, this group provides an important social and spiritual connection for those 55 and over.

On Sunday morning, February 2 of this year, the pastoral Staff at Azure Hills, in consultation with Koinonia leadership, offered a Senior Appreciation Brunch. This yearly event brings about 100 seniors together and combines good food, entertainment and fellowship. The pastors enjoy planning the event, decorating the fellowship hall, and serving the food. This year’s theme was “Country Fair” and featured Don and Diana Hergert and their country/blue grass band.
Commenting on the brunch, Valeetah Motshiedler noted that she “particularly enjoyed the displays of hobbies and collections. It gave us the opportunity to interact with people about their interests and helped us know them better.“

Everything from carved fruits and vegetables, to engraved guns of the old west, to Norman Rockwell dishes were displayed.  The photo booth, run by Pastor “BT” Bryant Taylor featuring a barn backdrop and a life-size cardboard cow was a hit!

As revealed by a recent trip to Griffith Park, Koinonia group activities attract  friends of all ages. Keturah Reed, our co-head elder enjoyed the many exhibits and the fellowship during the Griffith Park trip on Sunday, February 16. Her enthusiastic Facebook post provided the picture that accompanies this article.

Ed and Valeetah, thank you for your leadership and your gift of friendship! And thank you, Koinonia, for being such a valuable part of our Azure Hills church family.

Space.

What image or sense does that word conjure for you?

I see a large expanse of Southwestern sky, far more spirited than the quiet tableland over which it hovers. I envision a wide meadow dotted by tiny grass flowers and flanked by woods—a clearing. A breathing, open space.

Space engenders freedom, peace, and possibility.

I recently stumbled upon an article in a design journal about white space. The article discussed how white space serves to punctuate a design; it pulls the eye to focus on what the designer truly wants to emphasize.  No good graphic artist uses all her space. In the crowding of the page the artist would lose the impact of his image. Could it be that the way we crowd our lives with activities and things causes our lives to be out of focus and without real impact?

It hit me recently how closely an inner attitude of white space opens the heart to the voice of God and the souls of others. The soul that is hurried and cramped can rarely afford comfort and hospitality to another soul. A time and space starved soul cannot stop and hear the story of another nor offer practical help. It holds no inner sanctuary for worship and wonder. How I need that gracious rhythm and open-heartedness that may be called “white space”! Maybe you can identify with me.

As I reflect upon how I may better offer comfort and practice hospitality, I am filled with gratefulness that our God is in no hurry. Rather our Lord has created time and space in the person of Jesus to offer comfort and hospitality to me. Within God’s white space I find redemption and restoration.

Our Creator has made a time and space for each of us. May we in turn keep white space for God and others!

READ: 2 Peter 3: 9

1 John 1:5-7
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Sometimes we think what keeps us from fellowship with God and with each other is our darkness. The stuff that we still do, say, and hold that we can’t seem to let go of. The words, actions and circumstances of the past that prevent us from experiencing forgiveness, cleansing and the mutual support of community.

Well, according to John, the follower and friend of Jesus who wrote the letter above, what keeps us from the light of God (i.e. in our darkness) is our unwillingness to admit the truth. Claiming what is not.

Lying to ourselves, to God, and to each other keeps us in the darkness and out of the light.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines lying as:
“to create a false or misleading impression”

Truth is, we sometimes don’t like who or what we are so we try to make it seem that we’re something we’re not. It is this game of charades, of costumes and cover, that keeps us from experiencing the beauty, the joy, the freedom that comes from walking in the light.

As Kathleen Norris says,
We want life to have meaning, and want to be fulfilled, and it is hard to accept that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we would like to be.

So…let’s start where we are.

In our mess… in our unwillingness to forgive, to let go, to move on… in our bitterness… in our pain… in our jealousy.

There we find Jesus whispers,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
– 1 John 1:9

The promise is for all of us. The promise is for you. The promise is for me.

Come into the light.

Find freedom… forgiveness… fellowship… hope… grace… a new life, walking in the light of God.

– Pastor Tara VinCross

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie

Isn’t this the truth? We all hope to be there (wherever there is for each one of us). Yet, on the journey towards that goal there are unexpected stops, things that waylay us and circumstances that don’t cooperate with our plans.

To each of us who are struggling – with health issues, with job loss, with difficult relationships, with budgets that just won’t balance, with a hard day – remember this promise:

“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”*

By the phrase, “Until the day of Christ Jesus” we understand that apparently God is clear on something we often forget: change takes time. Patience means, “to accept or tolerate delay.” Maybe that’s why it’s listed among the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It doesn’t come natural to us, but is something Supernatural that happens when God comes and lives in us.

Being a Christ follower means seeing redemption in every situation, in every person, in every relationship, realizing that all the way up to “the day of Christ Jesus” God is working change in us and in everyone around us.
In order to be a force for good for the Kingdom of God in the world, we must persist even when the natural temptation is to give up. We must press on, despite delay. In hope, in belief, that God is at work, even in the situation you’re facing now.

Change takes time. May you and I have the grace, the hope and the patience to press on.

– Pastor Tara VinCross

* Philippians 1:6

Fa la la la la, la la la…what? Can you believe that it’s already the Holiday Season!? Every year, the holidays seem to slowly creep up earlier and earlier on us. The pumpkin spice candles are out and the hot cocoa is being served. How exciting to see the holiday lights going up and the holiday cheer spreading all around! In some areas of the country, it’s actually beginning to look a lot like Christmas. As the shops are filled with holiday discounts gearing up for holiday gift shopping, we encourage you to embrace the holiday cheer and walk into the holidays with the spirit of giving.

This year Azure Hills Church is collecting diapers and toiletries for our annual Holiday Drive, (ending December 15th). You have to get involved! What better way to celebrate the holidays than to say thank you to Jesus for His love and grace by sharing our blessings with our community? Trust me, you want to be included in the giving back this year! Not only do we partner together as a part of God’s movement of love and compassion but also have the opportunity to bring peace to someone’s home.

During our event on October 6, Children Separated at the Border, there was a Yale University study presented that low-income mothers who do not have enough diapers for their babies and toddlers are more likely to struggle with depression and anxiety than other low-income mothers. For this reason, our co-head elder for outreach, Jenn Maxwell made contacts with organizations to help with Diaper Insecurity for these mothers. We are collecting diapers sizes four through seven and pull-ups. These items will be assisting mothers participating in two organizations KIND (Kids in Need of Defense:US/Mexico Border), and IRC (Inland Regional Center: San Bernardino). KIND protects unaccompanied children who enter the US immigration system alone to ensure that no child appears in court without an attorney. The IRC serves low-income families with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

Along with collecting diapers, our very own Rachel Garcia will be collecting toiletries to serve migrant workers in San Bernardino. Rachel has been serving this community for many years with weekly Tuesday lunches. The past couple of years instead of the lunches, she has led out annual drives to help support this community. This year Azure Hills will collect shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, socks and hotel toiletries to support these migrant workers and their families.

So as we begin to shop, eat our holiday treats and listen to the catchy tunes, let us be cheerful givers and remember what Paul shares, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).’”

Join the movement. Share the joy. Make a difference.

by Pastor Jessie A. López

“Hurt people hurt people” — a concept we’ve all heard yet haven’t truly understood its impact. We say that the church is a hospital for the broken, but do not actually foster space for God’s divine healing. Instead we find ourselves, the sick patients, playing doctor, providing false and inaccurate treatment for brokenness.

Growing up as an Adventist Christian, I recall numerous of times where my spirit was shattered into pieces by fellow Adventist Christians. “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose (Proverbs 18:21).” Stomach tense, hands clammy, mind racing—I would literally put on my fake Sabbath smile while trying to dodge and avoid ‘those’ certain people. I went and left church in survival mode without fail. Even though I had survival mode instincts, once the doxology played, I felt immediate peace. Let’s face it, one can say my church experience was a love/hate relationship. I loved Jesus but hated those professed Christians that made me cry at night. Hated the double standard. Hated the oppression of the youth and young adults. Hated how these people made me feel. How can their words have so much weight on me? If God loved me, why didn’t He block the emotional and spiritual abuse? These are but a few questions that constantly ran through my mind. My experience unquestionably laid out the difference between a so-called Christian and a genuine Christ Follower.

It’s no secret that people today flinch when they hear the words, “I am a Christian.” When we, Christians, profess our faith to our friends, co-workers or family members, we are, more often than not, seen as primitive, pretentious, ignorant, and even oppressive. Sadly, it leaves a sour taste in their mouths and instantaneously their perspective of us changes. They see the false and inaccurate representation of Christianity portrayed in media, movies, books and other sources. We are now placed in the “ANTI-everything” zone: anti-Muslim, anti-Semetic, anti-refugee, anti-LGBTQ, anti-humanity, anti-compassion, etc. And truthfully, I get it. I get why non-Christians find it difficult to take Christians seriously. Ellen G. White says:

“He who is careless and heedless in uttering words or in writing words for publication to be sent broadcast into the world, sending forth expressions that can never be taken back, is disqualifying himself to be entrusted with the sacred work that devolves upon Christ’s followers at this time. Those who practice giving harsh thrusts are forming habits that will strengthen by repetition and will have to be repented of. We should carefully examine our ways and our spirit, and see in what manner we are doing the work given us of God, which involves the destiny of souls” (9T Ch29).

The example of Christianity the world sees today is not the movement Jesus intended it to be. Mainstream Christians both past and present, have done so much damage in the world, and sadly, the deadliest weapon of choice is Scripture. They use the Bible to give grounds for wars and perpetuate injustice with those they disagree with. John Pavlovitz, author of 6 Ways Christians Can Give Faith a Bad Name in Relevant Magazine, says, “We’ve ripped it [the Bible] from context, appropriated it for our own political agendas, selectively enforced it and brutally bashed people over the head with it—and this generation has grown weary of it all. They will not tolerate a Christianity that uses the Bible like a hammer, unless it is to build something useful.”

Recently more than ever, people are leaving the Church in record numbers, and although they are not rejecting Jesus and the ministry He did, they are tenaciously saying no to the faith that carries His name. You see, people are not rejecting Jesus, but are rejecting His followers. In fact, many atheists, non-believers and people of other faiths find Jesus admirable, worthy of respect, and full of compassion.

What then does that say about us? Today we are in dire need of authentic Christ Followers. We, Christianity, are in need of people that are willing to live beyond the status quo, willing to act with compassion the way Jesus did, willing to show love rather than hate, willing to feed the hungry, willing to visit the sick, willing to advocate for the helpless and willing to lend a hand. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27). Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others…not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.” As Christians we ought to be doers. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s time for us, Christians to let the world know how much we care. As patients in the hospital, let us encourage one another in our daily walk with God and express the change we want to see in the world. This is true Christianity.

by Pastor Jessie A. López

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

God called Abram to leave the comfortable life he knew in Ur, and at the age of seventy-five, to begin a slow journey with God towards fulfilling the promises God had made to him.
The image of the Christian life as a journey captures well what it is like to follow God. Journeys involve movement, stopping, starting, detours, delays, and the ever present unknown.

This was the walk Abram faced. It took patient trust in God through many, many years (decades!), as God fulfilled His promises. It was a slow work that God was doing in Abram’s heart, so that God could bless the world through him.

This is the same work God is doing in your heart and mine. Though imperceivable to you at times, as you surrender yourself to God day by day, moment by moment, God working in your heart.

My question for you is: What does it mean for you to trust the slow work of God in your life today?

– Pastor Tara VinCross