Announcements
Spirit of Joy on Facebook
Visit our new SOJ FACEBOOK page; also, visit our new SOJ YOUTH FACEBOOK PAGE.
Church Calendar
- Monday, May 12, 2014, 5:30 PM
- SOJ MEN Serve Open Door Meals
SOJ MEN serve Open Door meals at the Grange, 6:00 P.M. Please sign up on the kiosk to bring food and/or serve. Click Here for more information.
Do You Know Magdalena?
She's a 7-year-old girl in Tanzania, and our Sunday School Missions Mile of Pennies has been supporting her since 2009. We need your pennies. Click Here to see how easy it is to help.
You Can Help!
You can make an important contribution to our church mission by praying for and contributing to these needs:
- We have two altar flower arrangements every Sunday which can be sponsored in honor or memory or celebration of someone or something special in your life. Please contribute $20 for one or $40 for both.
- We have two sponsorships every month for the newsletter, one to cover the cost of mailing, and one to cover the cost of adding color printing, each for $45.
- All year long we are grateful for your donations of paper goods and related items for the kitchen & bathrooms at the church, including paper towels, tissues, toilet paper, paper plates, coffee cups, drinking cups, plastic utensils, even coffee. You can save your receipt and turn it in to the office to receive credit on your annual statement of giving for tax purposes.
- Prayer list changes can be written on the copy from your bulletin and placed in the offering plate (we update the list every week).
Thank you for helping!
Welcome to the Internet site of
Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church in Ramona, California
You'll find our worship services expressive, open to all, and full of the presence of the LORD.
Our goal is to glorify God in our meetings and meet your needs with his Word. Spirit of Joy is diverse in age and ethnic and social origin, but we are united by love for Jesus Christ our Savior.
There is no better life than one based on the Word of God and lived in relationship with Him.
We're located in Ramona, California, on the edge of the "back country" in northern San Diego County... Click here for directions.
Liar, Lunatic, or Lord
If the Gospels are a reliable account of a historical event, we face a challenge regarding Jesus’ remarkable claims about His identity:
| John 4:25-26: | I am the Messiah. |
| John 5:16-18: | Made himself equal with the Father. |
| John 6:47-51: | Believe in me and have everlasting life. |
| John 8:58-59: | I AM. |
| John 9:35-38: | I am the Son of God. |
| John 10:25-30: | I and my Father are one. |
| Mark 2:10: | The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. |
| Matt 25:31-46: | The Son of Man will judge the nations. |
In his great book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis posed his famous "Trilemma:" Jesus must either be a liar, a lunatic, or Lord:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God." (Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, p54-56)
What about you? Have you decided who Jesus is? Let me know.
Gospel Reading for
Sunday, April 27
John 20:19-31 - On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands …
...view all readings
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
—1 Peter 1:18-19