From the Desk of Pastor Peter

by Pastor Peter Kim

A New Year for Friendship Presbyterian Church

In our last sermon series before Advent, we went through much of the beginning portions of the book of Acts to discover what the early church was all about. We talked about how the gospel was the basis of all that the church did, and we found out how the church was devoted to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. There were three main points that I particularly wanted to highlight through our series: 1) the gospel is central in all we do; 2) we do all things in community; 3) as a gospel-centered community, we seek to reach out to those who still do not know the Lord.

So, in this new year, I hope that we can focus on those three things: the gospel, community, and being a witness.

But a problem exists. We have so many people coming into our church from so many different backgrounds and from so many different situations. We have people that are going through some very difficult circumstances. The question is how do we even begin to become like the early church, living for God's kingdom work, when we are so disconnected and facing all kinds of trials?

Brothers and sisters, friends, let us fix our eyes on Jesus! In our new series, we will be going through the Gospel of Matthew, and I hope that we will begin to see more and more clearly just who Jesus is, our King of glory. When we discover who Jesus is, we will discover the beauty of the gospel. And when we discover the beauty of the gospel, we will not be able to keep from becoming like the early church--passionate, bold, and convicted to live for God's glory.