Advent – The Coming of Jesus

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]For centuries, believers around the world have used the weeks leading up to Christmas to prepare themselves for celebrating the birth of Jesus and awaiting His Second Coming. The Advent season begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and concludes on Christmas Day. The whole point of Advent is to spend several weeks – four weeks, to be exact – preparing for Christmas.

Advent, from the Latin word meaning “coming” or “arrival,” is the traditional celebration of the first advent of Jesus born in a stable and the anxious awaiting of His second advent in glory. The focus of the season is a time for remembering and rejoicing, watching and waiting.

Video Driven Advent Bible Study

Eastwood Tulsa has made RightNow Media, the Netflix of Bible study, available for free to all our members. As a church-wide focus on the coming of Christ, you will be studying on your own, with your family, or in your small groups Matt Chandler’s sermon series, Advent, on RightNow Media, beginning December 1st, 2019.

Schedule and Study Guide

Advent – The Coming of Jesus is a five-part sermon series from Matt Chandler, Pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas.

December 1st – Part 1: A History of Darkness and Depravity
December 8th – Part 2: Rescue
December 15th – Part 3: Forgiveness
December 22nd – Part 4: New Hearts and Lives
December 25th – Part 5: All Things New

Study Guides are available in the foyer or are available for download below.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”Download Study Guide Now” color=”purple” size=”lg” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Feastwoodtulsa.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F11%2FAdvent-Study-Guide-RNM-Compressed.pdf||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

How to Subscribe to RightNow Media

You can get your free access at https://eastwoodtulsa.org/rightnow, inside the Eastwood Tulsa App, or by texting “RightNow EWBC” to 41411. Here is the link to the study >> https://www.rightnowmedia.org/Content/Series/1308

Watch Now

As we remember and enter this story, the coming of Jesus Christ, we reconstruct and embrace the true story of the gospel in our lives.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

July 30, 2019June 12, 2025

Get Excited About Missions

May 14, 2019June 12, 2025

Through the Beatitudes

Women’s Discipleship Study

Through the Beatitudes – Learning how to allow God to heal our hearts. Wednesdays beginning May 29th from 6:15 – 7:30pm in Room 135.

Childcare is provided.

For Women Only, this study through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 shows us God’s road to recovery, wholeness, growth, and spiritual maturity.

We all have issues that may be interfering with our fellowship with God and others.

Therefore, we all qualify. You can become free from addictive, compulsive and dysfunctional behaviors and learn how to leave them behind and move forward.

April 22, 2019

Love One Another

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Dr. Ronnie Floyd

The United States of America is comprised of more than 328 million people, each of whom lives in one of 19,510 incorporated locations in the United States (towns, cities, and villages) in 3,142 counties.

Our vast nation needs the transforming message of Christ.

Advancing an intentional strategy of prayer for America calls upon each Christian, church, and ministry to do all we can, working together to achieve this God-sized assignment: to remember our audience and the daunting task entrusted to us.

Not one of us can advance this strategy alone. We need one another.

Transforming America with Prayer

Transforming America is only possible when the Lord hears the roar of His people in prayer for all of America.

That is why the National Day of Prayer is significant. It calls upon each of us to unite with our fellow believers in prayer for our nation on one specific day: Thursday, May 2, 2019. The National Day of Prayer is the one day each year when every town, city, and county should have at least one prayer observance for America. This needs to be accomplished in 2019.

Prayer can help create a culture where a transforming message can be heard and received by everyone, including people who may not look like us, believe like us, talk like us, or understand us.

If we cover our nation in prayer, America will receive this transforming message that will be lifted up across our nation, beginning now and especially on the National Day of Prayer.

Transforming America with Jesus’ Words: Love One Another

“Love One Another” is the theme for the 2019 National Day of Prayer. These words are powerful and convicting. They set a spiritual standard for us and challenge us.

Jesus’ words, “Love one another,” are recorded in John 13:34: “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another” (CSB, emphasis added).

Please notice, in this one verse, Jesus calls us three times to love.

Love is so important to Jesus that He went further with these convicting words in the next verse: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love another.” Of all the actions we can take as Christ followers, only one action distinguishes us from everyone else in this world. It is Love One Another.

In our nation, where government cannot fix us and politics cannot heal us, we must call out to God and live out before others these transforming words: Love One Another!

Why Love One Another?

Love One Another is a dynamic theme to advance, beginning now and through the National Day of Prayer and beyond. These are the words of Jesus Christ. We cannot improve on what Jesus said: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you. . .” (John 13:34).

I find it very powerful that in the first part of John 13, Jesus said someone would betray Him, and at the last part of that same chapter, He declared someone would deny Him three times. But it was in the middle of this chapter that Jesus proclaimed boldly but compassionately, “Love one another.”

This theme is extremely relevant. It is clear, simple, and easy to understand. It is also easy to communicate, even to people who are perhaps very different from us and do not understand us.

I believe everyone in the United States would agree that our nation could become much better if we would just love one another. Everyone gets it. America needs to learn to love one another.

How Deep Is Jesus’ Love?

John 13 begins Jesus’ farewell to His disciples. From John 1 through John 12, the word love is used 12 times. From John 13 through John 21, the word love is used 44 times.

Love is the theme of His farewell.

Love was Jesus’ burden when He prayed for unity among His followers in John 17. He prayed, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (v. 26, emphasis added).

Loving one another distinguishes us from unbelievers. Loving one another is God’s transforming power in all relationships.

According to the testimony of the early Christian apologist Tertullian (A.D. 155–240), the pagans said about the early Christians, “See how they love one another?”

The pagans witnessed these early Christians washing the feet of others. They even saw them lay down their own lives for the Lord, for His name, and for others.

When Jesus said, “I give you a new command,” He was speaking of a new kind of love that is personal and fresh. Theologically, the death of Jesus Christ is the only way we can get right with God, and it is the coming of the Holy Spirit that sets our hearts afire with love!

The specific word for love used in John 13:34 expresses purpose. It is the kind of love that gives of self completely and unselfishly. It is a love that calls us to lay down our lives for others and to seek the welfare of others.

Love like this transforms people and can transcend all problems within relationships. Love like this is a new kind of love, and the Holy Spirit ignites us to love even our enemies. Jesus said, “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). This is extraordinary love based on the depth of God’s love for His Son Jesus, and for each of us.

Even in his epistles, John addressed this kind of love. With boldness he declared, “Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love his brother or sister” (1 John 3:10).

Jesus is calling us to forgive, release, forget, and even to seek out those who offend us and love them in a better way. Jesus calls us to love people just as He loves us: willfully, sacrificially, and unconditionally.
Because God has loved us, we are to love one another. When we belong to Jesus, we belong to love.

How Wide Is Jesus’ Love?

Love One Another spans all generations, all ethnicities, and all languages.

Each of the 350,000+ churches and 200 denominations in America needs to live up to these profound, life-changing, transforming words of Jesus: love one another!

God’s greatest footprint on our nation is the hundreds of thousands of churches across our country. Each church can host a prayer observance for America on the National Day of Prayer, or a few can join with each other to cover their region in prayer.

While our task of mobilizing unified public prayer for America is daunting and intimidating, it is not impossible.

A Day of More Prayer

We need to resolve to make Thursday, May 2, 2019, the day America is prayed for more than any other day this year. We need millions of people to pray for America on the National Day of Prayer.

We may differ with one another at times, but we can always love one another. Love is our highest duty to God and to one another. Love is the badge of our discipleship. Love is what sets us apart from others.

Jesus did not say that we are known by our creeds, songs, doctrine, knowledge, achievements, dress, appearance, or the color of our skin. We are only known by our love.

We need a baptism of love by the Holy Spirit that will immerse the entire Church of Jesus Christ and our entire nation in a baptism of love. This kind of love must begin in the church houses of America, and then go to the state houses of America, and ultimately go all the way to America’s White House.

Loving one another will transform America.

“Love one another just as I have loved you.” John 13:34 #Love1Another

RONNIE FLOYD is president of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. His website is ronniefloyd.com.

This article was originally published at https://www.prayerleader.com/love-one-another/[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”National Day of Prayer @ Eastwood Tulsa” h4=”Thursday, May 2nd from 11am – 1pm”]Join us for a come and go prayer service as we pray to Love One Another.

Loving one another will transform America. We encourage you to get involved in the National Day of Prayer! #love1another

[/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row]

March 27, 2019March 27, 2019

The History of Easter

When I was growing up, my family made a big deal about getting all of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins together to celebrate everything from Christmas to New Year’s Eve to birthdays. Easter was no exception. After wearing our brand-new Easter clothes to church Easter morning, we would all head over for lunch at Uncle Adrian’s house followed by the best Easter egg hunt ever.

Grandpa would put $50 in one plastic egg and wrap it in silver foil and $100 in another plastic egg and wrap it in gold foil. Then he would hide them among hundreds of other candy-filled plastic eggs. The trick, of course, would be finding the coveted silver and golden eggs before anyone else. The problem was, grandpa usually hid those eggs so well you would need a metal detector and a shovel to find them. This search covered over an acre of both cleared and wooded property. He would even hide them in the pool occasionally (this was in Florida so the water wasn’t that cold – brrr).

As a child, Easter for me represented family, church, fun and candy. Oh, the candy! Did you know that U.S. candy makers produce some 90 million chocolate bunnies and 16 billion jelly beans for Easter each year? I never understood why we received chocolate bunnies, but I didn’t care. They were cute and tasted good .

As I think about celebrating the Hope of Easter this year, I was curious about why it’s called Easter. I mean, the word Easter isn’t even in the Bible. No one knows for certain when people began observing the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a holiday, although some evidence points to the second century or earlier.

The English word Easter can be traced back to the Greek word Pascha, which is derived from the Hebrew term pesach, meaning “Passover”. The Passover Festival was established in the Old Testament in Exodus 12 as an annual celebration of Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery.

In Exodus 7-11, Moses tells of the ten plagues inflicted by God upon Pharaoh and Egypt who held His chosen people captive as slaves for 400 years. The first Passover coincided with the last of the ten plagues, the death of every firstborn male in Egypt. For Israel to avoid this terrible judgment, God required a blood sacrifice. Every Israelite family were to select an unblemished one-year-old male lamb and care for it in their homes for 14 days. I can imagine how much they would have grown attached to their new pet. On the 14th day, they were to slaughter the sacrificial lambs taking some blood and putting it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they were to eat the roasted lambs. Later that night, as God brought justice upon Egypt, He saw the Lamb’s blood on each Hebrew dwelling and withheld judgment, passing over those houses in mercy. Ultimately, the festival foreshadowed God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice on the cross for the sins of mankind.

Both the Old and New Testaments make it clear that Christ was the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system that God gave His people on Mount Sinai.

“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.” Isaiah‬ ‭53:7‬ ‭NASB‬‬‬‬‬‬
“The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” ‭‭John‬ ‭1:29‬ ‭NASB‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
“Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” 1 Corinthians‬ ‭5:7‬ ‭NASB‬‬‬‬‬‬
“Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” 1 Peter‬ ‭1:18-19‬ ‭NASB‬‬‬‬‬‬

That the Messiah was crucified during Passover week (John 19:14) was no accident. Jesus was making a powerful statement in revealing Himself as the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament Law.

After the early church started, following the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), the first Christians started gathering together for weekly worship services on Sundays, or “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), to honor the day on which the resurrection occurred. Eventually, believers started commemorating Christ’s triumph over death with an annual festival we now call Easter.

For true followers of Christ, what’s most important about Easter is not its origins, traditions, or even the very institution itself, but rather the glorious truth that it celebrates. The Son of God is alive, and His victory over death provides eternal, life-changing hope!

The resurrection changed everything, and gives us hope and peace even today. Celebrate with us on Easter Sunday at EASTWOOD TULSA at 10:45 am.