New Church Westville Weekly Sermon Podcast New Church Audio

One of the most astonishing teaching of the New Church is that the Last Judgment and the Second Coming of the Lord have already taken place... and hardly anyone noticed! This is because they are spiritual events rather than physical ones. This Sunday we'll talk about how a Last Judgment, which took place in the spiritual world hundreds of years ago, paved the way for a new spiritual era and impacts all of us even today. Then the following Sunday we'll explore how the Lord can come again into our lives, as His Second Coming continues with every individual.

With the recent elections many of us are reflecting on the future of this country. There is a decent amount of fear and worry, along with some hope perhaps. But how are we to think of these things spiritually? Sometimes we separate the political from the spiritual as if they are totally distinct parts of life. But the realm of laws and governance is supposed to be a support for a moral and spiritual society. If that support is shaky, morality and spirituality suffer. But regardless of the despair or hope we may feel, the Lord calls us to remember to put our trust in Him, and believe that He is still in charge, regardless of the apparent outcomes.

The Lord asks us to see in a new way.  Maybe that is why healing from blindness was a such a common miracle.  But it was not physical blindness the Lord healed but spiritual blindness as well.

Anxiety is all around us in today’s world. It is in ourselves, our friends, our communities. Does this abundant anxiety exemplify a lack of faith in the Lord? Not necessarily. It is true that faith in the Lord can help overcome anxiety; and as we grow in faith we may find that anxiety lessens. But as long as we love what is good, we will feel fear when that good thing is put at risk. The real question is what will we do with the anxiety that we feel, and can we be motivated by it to make a more loving, safe, world?

And she made a vow, saying, “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”
(1Samuel 1:11)

Have you ever seen a person who struggles with some particular evil and thought to yourself, “I’m so glad that I’ve never had to deal with that”? It helps to put our own struggles into perspective when we can see how much harder other people have it. We could put much of this up to chance: we happened to be born into a certain family, at a certain time in history, in a particular location. But on closer inspection, none of this is random chance: all of us, like it or not, incline towards the same struggles and challenges as anyone else. It is only through the Lord’s almighty power that we can be held back from falling headlong into unimaginable evils. Today we will explore the ways that the Lord fights battles on our behalf that we will never be aware of, and how much we have to be grateful for.