Welcome to the St. Martin's Prime Timers Adult Bible Fellowship.

Each Sunday we meet in the Payne Education Center, rooms 207-209, from 10:10 to 10:50. During Lent this year our mentor, Vice-Rector the Rev. Massey Gentry will be teaching. His Lenten theme is the Five Keys to Observing a Holy Lent. This is a special time of year for all Christians and we invite you to join us.

Prime Timer News

Vice Rector the Rev. Massey Gentry is the Prime Timer mentor. During Lent this year all the St. Martin's ABF's are led by their mentors.

Father in Heaven, please get me a good parking space!

Vice-Rector the Rev. Massey Gentry taught the Prime Timers today with our Lenten theme of "Five Keys to Observing a Holy Lent." Today's talk was about prayer, or as Rev. Gentry said, one of the least understood aspects of our spiritual lives. God talk is serious talk, you don't ask God for a better parking place, or selfish material goods.

Rev. Gentry admitted to a guilty pleasure, listening to Coast to Coast AM, in Houston its on KTRH-AM 10pm to 4am. Yes, he should be ashamed. Just kidding. This show is a collection of just about every conspiracy theory and whacko idea you can think of. Just tonight they were discussing getting into a deeper level of communication with your pets! Remember X-Ray Specs! Rev. Gentry heard them talking about the Tomb of Jesus, an example of how anything can be trivialized. Has it come to this? Is faith so weak that you can lose it to a TV Show!

This led to the statement that the fundamental issues of life are not good and evil, as you might think, but of chaos and order. We pray to bring order out of chaos. Too much order, however, can bring evil, look at Hitler or Mussolini or Pol Pot.

In the Bible, water or the sea is often a metaphor for chaos. Jesus walked on water and calmed the seas. Moses parted the Red Sea to rescue the Jews from the Eqyptians.

The Greek philosophers attempted to order the chaos. They ask is life arbitrary?  We all want predictability in our lives. When we turn on the radio in the morning we don't want to know how many people were killed in Iraq or if the Iranians have a nuclear bomb, we want to know what's the weather and how bad is the traffic going to work. Predictability and order.

Ancient people performed sacrifices to bring order. We kill this goat, or virgin, to bring abundant crops and calm weather. We give part of this meal to the Gods so that we can have peace.

Prayer is a method of intercession with God. The problem is whether we regard prayer as an act of magic or an act of faith. In magic, we attempt to compel God to act in a certain way. If God will help me get that BMW car I will be a good boy. An act of faith is praying to develop a deeper relationship with God, to bring order to our chaotic lives. A recent study tried to find empirical evidence of prayer for others helping cure illness. Of course they found no such link.  The point is that prayer is different for everyone, its meaning and its results vary every time. You can discuss serious things with God, and he will listen.

Massey mentioned the writings of Tony Hillerman, especially his first novel "The Blessing Way" about murders on a Navajo reservation. A class member brought up The Hanoi Hilton as an example of treatment so awful that only through faith or something external to yourself was it possible to survive.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

Rev. B. Massey Gentry
mgentry@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leaders

Images of Chaos and Order*:

Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights (right wing) Hieronymus Bosch c. 1500. Oil on panel, at the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Rev. Gentry's theme today was Chaos and Order!

The Architect's Dream, by Thomas Cole, 1840
Oil on canvas, at the Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.

Seven Christian Habits:

1.  A personal, intimate relationship (through the Holy Spirit) with God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ in which I believe and trust in Him and His love for me and for my salvation in this life and the life to come.

2.  Daily personal prayer and weekly worship of God in His Church by which I receive the renewal of my emotional-spiritual energy which I need to live my life.

3.  Regular study of the Bible to understand how God has related to His people and what His will has been.

4.  Adjusting my will to the will of God for me as revealed in Scripture, prayer, worship and my relationship with Him.

5.  Service (which is ministry, which is love, which is doing good to God, others and self):

a. At home to family and friends.
b. At work to co-workers.
c. At Church.
d. In the world, especially by leading others to God in Christ.

6.  Fellowship (renewing relationship) with Christian people.

7.  Stewardship of my resources:

a. Of my relationships.
b. Of my time and talent.
c. Of my money, giving to God and His work my tithe (as I calculate it).

The Lesson for Sunday, March 18th is titled "Showing Divine Love"

Key Verse:  1 John 4:19

Focus of the Lesson:  As human beings, we need several kinds of love to become healthy, whole persons. What is the source of our ability to love one another with divine love? John says our love for one another comes from God, who first loved us, and from the Spirit who abides with us.

The reading is 1 John 4:7-21. This text is from the New International Version^®.

   ⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

   ¹³We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. ¹⁶And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
   God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ¹⁷In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. ¹⁸There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

   ¹⁹We love because he first loved us. ²⁰If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. ²¹And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

NIV®

* Art from great masters of the past is courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art.