KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As many peo­ple live in dark days with many fears, Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter Rev Le­tra Ja­cob yes­ter­day told wor­ship­pers they must ex­pe­ri­ence Je­sus in a way that al­lows him to change their lives.

De­liv­er­ing her East­er Sun­day ser­mon at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church in San Fer­nan­do, Ja­cob said peo­ple live in a day and age far dif­fer­ent from their par­ents’ and grand­par­ents’ youth­ful years.

“Those were prob­a­bly the good days when every­body looked af­ter the in­ter­ests of each oth­er, but now we live in a time when every­body is just look­ing out for them­selves. Some­times, my dear broth­ers and sis­ters, we need to ex­pe­ri­ence Je­sus in a way that dri­ves us and push­es us to an­oth­er lev­el,” Ja­cob said.

In look­ing at the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus Christ, Ja­cob said many were in awe at his res­ur­rec­tion and work as they had life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ences. She told the con­gre­ga­tion that many of them were yet to ex­pe­ri­ence Je­sus mean­ing­ful­ly to change their lives, draw­ing them to the cross and al­low­ing them to ex­am­ine them­selves and see if their lives need­ed chang­ing.

Ja­cob said Je­sus did not just die for some, but for every­one. She ex­plained that not every­one Je­sus shared bread and wine with loved him, as even Ju­das shared in the feast.

Ja­cob re­mind­ed the con­gre­ga­tion of Matthew 5:43 in the Holy Bible, which says: “But I say un­to you, love your en­e­mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spite­ful­ly use you, and per­se­cute you, telling them to look out through the in­ter­est of oth­ers.”

Af­ter many made deep sac­ri­fices dur­ing Lent, she ques­tioned whether it had changed them for the bet­ter and brought them clos­er to Je­sus. She said the res­ur­rec­tion gives new hope that there is life in death, as it teach­es that the “mys­tery of the tomb” was tri­umphant and vic­to­ri­ous. There­fore, she said, there is vic­to­ry in Je­sus.

She asked how many had dif­fer­ent con­cerns about re­la­tion­ships, think­ing there was no hope and noth­ing would change. She re­it­er­at­ed that the res­ur­rec­tion gives new hope, that in death, there is life.

Ja­cob told the con­gre­ga­tion that there was noth­ing dead in their lives that God could not bring back to life or any­thing they want­ed that God could not give.

“I want to en­cour­age you to con­tin­ue pray­ing. Pray for your re­la­tion­ship. Pray for your fam­i­ly. Pray with­out ceas­ing. Con­tin­ue to look to the Mas­ter, and even though we are sur­round­ed in dark­ness and dif­fi­cul­ties con­tin­ue to come our way, we know God is still there through his son, Je­sus, be­cause he sent him in­to the world to save us and that he did.”

Ja­cob said many peo­ple choose to abuse Je­sus’ sav­ing grace and walk down the dan­ger­ous road of de­struc­tion.

“Thou shall not steal. Thou shall now kill, and we throw the word of God away. We seem not to fear God. We are com­fort­able in tak­ing the life of an­oth­er. We seem to be com­fort­able tak­ing that which is not ours.

“We are com­fort­able not giv­ing God the due re­ward. We are com­fort­able where we are and who we are, so change is some­thing we do not read­i­ly ac­cept, but with Christ, my broth­ers and sis­ters, there must come a change for those bap­tised and con­firmed to­day.”

Ja­cob told wor­ship­pers that no one should have to tell them to do the right thing, fear the Lord, at­tend church and pray.