Extract from our Weekly Bulletin

Julio 03, 2016

A few Sundays ago in the morning, I was rejoicing in the Lord, at seeing how His powerful hand moves and how His Holy Spirit guides us without us knowing.

Generally we start our services with praise and soon afterwards we enter into a period of worship, where our spirits fuse with the Spirit of God. On that Sunday however, for some reason, the service began with worship and then was followed with praise.

Like any religious person who has been taken out of their comfort zone, I thought to myself “What are we doing?” But at that same moment, I felt the sweet voice of my beloved Holy Spirit tell me “I guided them to worship me first and then I guided them to praise because today is a special day. A day in which there must be joy because on a day like today I Resurrected! And because I am alive, I want my children to rejoice in me. I want there to be joy in my people.”

We will never understand how God moves, but we have to be alert not to question what He does. Notice that when we begin the service, we ask the Holy Spirit to take control and to do what He wants, but when the service becomes different from what we are used to, we no longer feel comfortable. My God doesn’t cease to amaze me, each day he teaches us a new lesson.

The Lord is the God of joy, God of feasts, God of happiness, read Leviticus 23 when the Lord instituted the Solemn Feasts. Sometimes we confuse the word Solemn with sadness and it isn’t like that. The Lord ordered the Israelites to be Joyful.

If we read this passage, six feasts were of joy and only one feast was to be celebrated with sadness, that was “The Day of Atonement” (Lev. 23:29-32).

The rest were of great Joy, because the Lord had blessed them in all their works with their hands, blessed them in their best harvest, blessed them in their best herds, that is why they were grateful to God and rejoiced in Him. We also see in “The Feast of Trumpets”, everything had to be with happiness for all the goods received from God.

Verse 40 says “And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm tress, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.”

When we reed this passage, one has a greater comprehension of why, when the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people placed their robes and palm tree branches in path of the Lord. For them it was an expression of jubilee and happiness. They called out “Hosanna to the son of David!” “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!

We have to have joy, we have to be a joyful people for the miracles He has made in the midst of us. The Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, REJOICE!”

I hope that what I have shared with you can help you and above all things; we never question what the Holy Spirit does in the Church. Remember that He is the owner of the Church and let’s learn to be part of that joyful people in Jesus Christ.

Again I will say, REJOICE!”

God Bless You,
Ps. Marisa Varjabedian