What a great weekend. We started with Dinner and Movie Night with over 20 people in attendance.

Saturday worship brought 2 first time visitors and Sunday had 1 first time visitor and several returning for second and third times giving us a weekend attendance way above our average for a weekend.

Our newsletter will be out this weekend and will continue the discussion on how we measure success at Heart Lutheran.

All Bible studies are back to normal schedule this week.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart,

Pastor Jerry

ps visit our video page for our latest message

No Tuesday Bible Study this week. Wednesday and Thursday Studies as scheduled.

We had 1 first time visitor Sunday. Our attendance is running a little above average. Thanks and praise to God for sending more people our way.

Friday is Dinner and Movie night. Time Changer is the movie. The evening starts with dinner at 5 pm and the movie starts as soon as we are done eating.

Our message ‘The Kingdom Of God Is Near’ from the weekend has been posted and can be viewed on the video page of our website.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart,

Pastor Jerry

Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth.
- Martin Luther

Happy New Years! As we begin 2012, I want to express my sincere thank you to all who have helped thin ministry.

In 2007 a small group of families got together with the desire to do church differently. We had the idea that ministry comes first and let God lead the way. With the simple idea of ‘Loving and Serving the Lord with all our Heart’ we began meeting in restaurants and then in September we began worship services. A lot has happened in the last 4 years and there is a lot more coming. More on that in the Newsletter coming out later this week.

Our message from this last weekend ‘My Eyes Have Seen’ is available on the video page of our website.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry

Christmas is only a week away! This week we celebrated the fourth week of Advent, the week of love. The sermon for ‘Love’ can be viewed on our website.

Saturday December 24, is our annual Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. The service begins at 6:00 p.m. at the Sterling in Temecula.

Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. is our Christmas Day service at the Bel Air Clubhouse.

Meanwhile our Bible Studies are all running as scheduled this week.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry

We are now through 3 weeks of Advent. We have lit the candles of Hope, Preparation, and Joy and look forward to lighting the Love candle this weekend. Advent is a time of waiting. For us in the modern church it is two-fold. We remember the long wait for the Messiah as we wait for His return. The message of ‘Joy’ can be viewed on the video page of our website.

Last week’s message ‘He Is Coming’ had more first week viewings than any message we have posted.

Last Tuesday we had a very interesting conversation at our Morning Devotions. The title ‘Stop Waiting’ encourages the stepping out in faith for ministry and uses the examples cited in Hebrews Chapter 11 as a text. It seems like a contradiction to be waiting on the Advent while being instructed not to wait, but I think it is important for us to know what we should be doing while waiting. The conversation can be heard on the podcast page of our website.

All Bible studies are meeting this week, please plan on attending one or more.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry

No U.S. holiday is as distinctive as Thanksgiving. In our busy, deadline-fixated age, expressing gratitude to our heavenly Father is too easily squeezed out of our lives, but it is important. First, I think human beings are “hardwired” to do this. Even atheists seem to have unsettling moments when they feel an irresistible urge to thank someone “up there.” One of the problems with atheism occurs when pain is avoided or pleasure gained—having no one to give thanks to leaves you with an itch you cannot scratch.

But there is more than a primeval urge to justify thanking God. On almost every page of the Bible, we see this as a theme. The Old Testament reverberates with the sound of people praising God; Israel’s history is full of thanksgiving to God for showing them mercy and delivering them from disaster.

The New Testament is no less full of thanksgiving. Jesus himself offers up thanks to God the Father, most importantly at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:26-27), where the word used for thanksgiving is Eucharist, still used in many churches for communion. Paul not only regularly gives thanks; he actually commands it of others.

This gives us some guidelines for “biblical” thanksgiving:

First, biblical thanksgiving is innocent.
In giving thanks to God, there should be no motive other than pure gratitude. Thanksgiving is giving thanks and that alone. Of all the different types of prayer, this is least likely to be contaminated by our own conscious or subconscious desire to manipulate God.

Second, biblical thanksgiving is intelligent.
It involves looking back over the past—whether the last week or an entire life—and identifying things for which we are grateful. Thanksgiving is neglected today partly because modern Western culture is so obsessed with the future. But to give thanks to God is to look backward, not forward, and to express gratitude for the good things that have come our way.

Third, thanksgiving should be inclusive.
It’s easy just to say, “Thank you, God” for the health and wealth we have. But do we also give God thanks for friends, family, housing, holidays, or a hundred other lesser things? Let’s give him thanks for all the little things in life, too.

Giving God thanks should be a theme running through our lives. At least five blessings result from this:

The first is that thankfulness forces us to focus on what we have had rather than what we want. In our materialistic culture, we can succumb to a consumerism of the soul that reduces our prayers to shopping lists. Thankfulness looks outward, not inward. It realigns our lives so that they revolve around God instead of trying to make God revolve around us.

The second is that thankfulness highlights grace. To give thanks is to admit that you are dependent, to say, “I couldn’t have done this on my own, but you helped me.” Thanksgiving removes the temptation to boast and strengthens the only basis on which we can relate to God: that of accepting our own unworthiness and God’s free grace in Jesus Christ.

The third is that thankfulness encourages a positive attitude. It forces us to think about what is right with our lives rather than what is wrong. This is important in an age when many feel depressed. Thanking God is a proven way of piercing the gloomiest of clouds.

A fourth is that thankfulness develops hope for the future. Looking backward to the past with thanksgiving actually helps us to look toward the future with anticipation.

A fifth is that to practice thankfulness regularly ensures that gratitude will spill over into every area of our lives. We cannot thank God for difficult colleagues, relatives, or neighbors for long before finding that we express a positive attitude toward them. Grumpiness and irritability do not grow well in a climate of gratitude. Those who regularly give thanks to God find they are ready to give to others. Gratitude and generosity go hand in hand.

Whether or not we celebrate Thanksgiving, we all need to be reminded to practice thanksgiving on a daily basis. That “attitude of gratitude” is not just a duty to be fulfilled but something that will bless us and others. It’s typical of God’s graciousness that the best gift we can give ourselves and others is to say thanks for what we have already received.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who made this our best ever Operation Christmas Child. Thanks to your love and generosity, Heart Lutheran has helped change the lives of children around the world.

Our message this week asked the question, are you a risk taker? You can view the message on the video page of our website.

All Bible Studies are up and running this week. Please check the church calendar for times and locations.

The Holiday season is here and schedules are getting busy. It is in these busy times that we all need to remember to keep time for God in our schedule.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry

There is something to be said about equality, our attendance this week was the same at both services. We celebrated All Saints Day this week and our message came from Matthew 5. The message is posted on the video page of our website.

This is the last week of the Operation Christmas Child drive for this year. If you have not done so yet please fill your shoe boxes and bring them to a Bible study or worship service this week.

As we begin the holiday season, let us remember to keep God in the front of our hearts and minds, invite a friend or family member to church.

All of our Bible Studies are back on regular schedule this week. I look forward to seeing you at a Heart event soon.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord With all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry

We spend a great deal of time, effort, and money in life trying to find inner peace and comfort but it comes to us when we quit trying to find it and accept it from God. In this passage from the Gospel of John we see Jesus telling his disciples the simple advice ‘Trust in God.’ Trust is defined “confidence in and reliance on” and perfectly defines our ideal relationship with God.

We can have complete confidence in God. He makes no promises that will not be kept. Jesus being true God as well as true man would not, could not miss lead us. When he said ‘I am going there to prepare a place for you’ he meant exactly that. When we arrive in Heaven, Jesus will have the perfect place for us to live with him for all eternity.

When Thomas questioned how we can go to Heaven, Jesus once again gave a straight answer that we can still count on today. Jesus is the way to eternal life, he is the one and only way to Heaven, and he is the way we can know God. Put your faith in God. Put your faith in Jesus. When you have done this your heart need not be troubled because you have a room waiting for you in God’s house.

I feel sorry for people wanting to celebrate Halloween because it is overshadowed by Reformation every year. OK maybe not but Reformation is a very big day in Christian history. The beginning of Reformation is accepted as the day Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis on the door of the Church of Wittenberg, October 31, 1517. We now celebrate Reformation on the weekend closest to the 31st in October. To hear our Reformation message please visit the video page of our website.

We have less than 2 weeks left to get our Operation Christmas Child Shoe Boxes ready. If possible please take part in this important ministry. Bring your Shoe Boxes to a church service or Bible study on or before November 13.

No Wednesday Bible Study this week but Tuesday and Thursday mornings are meeting as scheduled.

Have a great week Loving and Serving the Lord with all your Heart.

Pastor Jerry