Weekly Update Archive

Dear San Lo Community, an update for May 13, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Eric Yata for the message from Psalm 65:1-13, “Better Than Mom’s Goodies.” Remembering back to attending UC Davis and receiving care packages from his mother, Eric recalls sharing and savoring the delicious treats. God’s blessings to us are by far more significant, so as we celebrate Mother’s Day, we also celebrate God even more. This psalm is often used with Pentecost, a festival held seven weeks after Passover to celebrate the harvest. It offers great thanks and gratitude to God. In our lives today, why do we celebrate God?

1) Celebrate God for He is our Savior. (vv.1-4) ¹Praise is due to You, O God, in Zion, and to You shall vows be performed. ² O You who hear prayer, to You shall all flesh come. ³ When iniquities prevail against me, You atone for our transgressions. ⁴ Blessed is the one You choose and bring near, to dwell in Your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, the holiness of Your temple! Jesus took our sin and keeps us from the depths of hell and gives us heaven and eternity with God instead. Because this is all God’s doing and not our own, all praise is due to God. Zion is God’s holy hill, that place where all hopes and dreams turn. Our vows and promises go to God as we worship Him. It is only God who hears and is able to give a harvest, both physical and spiritual. The grace of God alone is the primary reason to praise God. When we sin, it is only because of His atonement on our behalf that we can be forgiven. It is God who chooses us, there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation. Ephesians 2:8-9 spells out the gospel for us. Romans 5:8 explains God’s love for us while we were still stuck in our sin.

2) Celebrate God for He is our Creator. (vv.5-8) ⁵ By awesome deeds You answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas; ⁶ the one who by His strength established the mountains, being girded with might; ⁷ who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, ⁸ so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at Your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. God is the maker of all. Our hope is in the one who created everything. We are in awe of His power to save and power to create. Not only does He have the power to save a few, He can also save all. Those who dwell at the ends of the earth, refers to all mankind, there are no excuses for not knowing Him. There is secular belief that says if something is not grounded in science, it is not fact or knowledge at all. This influence causes doubt about the literal Word of God. It also devalues faith as having no reason or validity to it. The ironic thing is that science actually does point to God, not away from Him. The specific amount of gravity on the earth is a perfect balance of not too much or too little. The distance of the earth from the sun is a very precise placement, again not too far or not too close. This can only point to an intelligent, all knowing creator God. Psalm 19:1, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. We can have confidence and awe in our God, not doubt.

3) Celebrate God for He is our Provider. (vv.9-13) ⁹ You visit the earth and water it; You greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; You provide their grain, for so You have prepared it. ¹⁰ You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. ¹¹ You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with abundance. ¹² The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, ¹³ the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy. God brings us much blessing. We can celebrate God for His goodness. Everything that we have has been provided by God. Sometimes we forget the hand which feeds us. We complain about the things that we don’t have, because we forget about what He has already given us.
Luke 11:11-13, “¹¹ What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; ¹² or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Praise God and celebrate Him for giving us every good and perfect gift that we need in Jesus Christ.

Have a blessed week, celebrating God, our Savior, Creator and Provider,

Stan, for SLZJCC

Dear San Lo Community, an update for the week of May 6, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Rod Yee for the message from Psalm 57, “Distress Call.” We continue in our series on Psalms: Praying the Psalms, which covers a span of 900 years of history. It is the largest book in the Bible and is the most frequently quoted text in the New Testament. Rabbis referred to it as the Book of Praises, its theme: Living life in the real world. Psalm 57 was authored by King David, who at this point, was anointed as Israel’s future King but he is running for his life, pursued by the army of Israel and is hiding in caves. Psalm 57 is one of six psalms which contain the word ‘miktam’ in its title, which has an unknown meaning, but all seem to be a cry to God.  Question: How can we call upon God in time of distress?

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Dear San Lo Community, an update for the week of April 29, 2012…

Thank you to Dr. Vernon Kam for the message from Psalm 62, “The Right Perspective.” Psalm 62 was written by David during a difficult time in his life. Probably it was the time when his son, Absalom, tried to take the throne away from him.  In this psalm, David tells us the right perspective to have when we encounter trials.

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Dear SanLo Community, an update for April 22, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Eric Yata for the message from Psalm 63:1-11, “Starved!!!”  For the next 10 weeks, we’ll be in the book of Psalms, the Essence of Prayer. The Psalms are a key for better understanding prayer and our relationship with our Lord and Savior. Have you ever felt starved or felt famished? Were you ever so thirsty you would do anything for a drink of water? Starvation is not something that we long for. Yet this is exactly the situation David is in. He is both physically and spiritually starved and hungry. David is in the dry and barren wilderness of Judea without water. Yet the deepest thirst of his life was for the Living Water. David’s soul yearned for God!  David wasn’t just hungry for God, he was starved for God.  As we consider the words David penned, we ask this very important question, “How can we increase our hunger for God?”

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Dear SanLo Community, an update for the week of April 15, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Scott Shimada for the message from Psalm 86, “Heavenly Perspectives.” From the book of Psalms, we are going through our series, “The Essence of Prayer. We can learn a lot about David and his relationship with God but more importantly, we can see what we need to do when we have our own tough times. The past few months have been pretty rough. There have been a lot of ups and downs.  At times it seemed like a lot of things were going bad and it was all starting to pile up.  Have you ever been in that situation? Maybe you’ve had your own low points. Times when you just felt so hopeless.  Those times when you feel like you can’t win or that everyone is against you. Have you been there?  Have you felt so low that you even start to tell yourself that you can’t win.  You convince yourself to look at the dark side and ignore the bright side. Question – When we are going through tough times, what should we remember to do?

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Dear SanLo Community, an update for Easter 2012 …

Thank you to Pastor Rod Yee for the message from Luke 24:13-32, “A Talk to Remember.” News travels quickly these days via the internet. Back in Jesus’ day, news of His miracles, who He is, His arrest, trial, death and resurrection was shared verbally and through writings. Luke was a Gentile historian, who wrote the longest gospel, and was the most prolific of New Testament writers. Luke is the only gospel writer who wrote a sequel (Acts), and gives the most complete account through compiling eyewitness testimonies, some of them include: Mary, mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; His disciples. 

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Dear SanLo Community, an update for Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Brian Tekawa for the message from Luke 19:41-44, “Heartbreaker.”  This passage is known as the “Triumphal Entry.” For those with false hope in Jesus, it was a triumphal entry but for Jesus, it was His death march. To remember Jesus’ triumphal entry, we call this day, Palm Sunday. It is a significant day to remember for the follower of Christ as it is the day that marks the beginning of Jesus’ last days on earth. On this day, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem one week before He would be crucified, riding on an un-ridden donkey with the crowds shouting hosanna and laying palm leaves before Him like a red carpet to welcome Jesus. Their hope was for Jesus to be the king who would free Jews from Rome.

Luke’s focus was writing to the Greeks and he emphasized Jesus, the Man. Maybe that is why Luke is the only one of the four gospels that records Jesus weeping over His people. Jesus is 100% God but He is also 100% man. There is no other religion that makes this claim about the person they follow.  There is no other man like Jesus. You either believe in Him or reject Him. He is God and man. Not just any man but a sinless man who committed no wrongs. When we forget that Jesus was a real person we forget that He had real emotions. We don’t realize how our thoughts or our actions affect Him. We don’t think about how our actions can break His heart. Today we are going to examine what breaks the heart of Jesus as He entered Jerusalem for the last time. What breaks the heart of Jesus?

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Dear San Lo Community,

Thank you to Pastor Eric Yata for the message from Acts 28:17-31, “The Final Episode.”  We have come to the end of Acts. This final episode and chapter focuses on being witnesses and living out the gospel for Jesus Christ just like the beginning of Acts in Chapter 1 verse 8. So, the key question is, “What happens when we live out the gospel?

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Dear SanLo Community, an update for the week of March 18, 2012…

Thank you to Pastor Rod Yee for the message from Acts 27, “Weather or Not.”  There are severe weather storms such as tornados and hurricanes. There are equivalents to weather storms throughout life: trials and issues that affect us physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, in our family or relationships. Paul, while a prisoner of the Roman Empire for allegedly starting a riot in the temple area in Jerusalem (Acts 21) is accused by the High Priest before Felix, the Governor (Acts 24). Felix’s successor, Festus, invited King Agrippa and his wife Bernice to listen to Paul. He was a descendent in the line of Herods, placed by Romans in Jerusalem and Caesarea. Acts 26:28-9, In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian. “I would to God, that whether in a short  or long time, not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.” Paul appealed to Caesar (25:11) otherwise he would have been set free. So he is sent to Rome, the most powerful city of the time on a six-month voyage of 276 persons, soldiers, sailors and prisoners, who were on board the 140 foot Egyptian grain ship.  How do we weather the storms of life?

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Dear San Lo Community, an update for the week of March 11, 2012…

Thank you to Dr. Vernon Kam for the message from Acts 26:4-23, “Paul’s Testimony.” In Chapter 26, Paul is before King Agrippa II.  He gives his testimony.

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