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We all have times when we become paralyzed by evil and falsity. We want desperately to be good but for some reason we cannot seem to let go of harmful thoughts and feelings. The Lord’s forgiveness offers us a way out of this spiritual paralysis: when we raise our thoughts to Him, He heals us through His forgiveness, and in that healing we find freedom for our minds.

This Sunday evening we’re going to be concluding the Helping Each Other series by talking about how to offer spiritual support. It sounds so good–offering spiritual support. And it is so good and can make such a difference when it’s done well. But offering spiritual support can also be done badly–people can be arrogant, controlling, clueless, etc. in the ways they approach “trying to help” and they can end up actually making things worse. But the answer isn’t that we should stop trying. Let’s learn what the Lord teaches about how to avoid common pitfalls and how we can best approach offering spiritual support to others.

We know that the Lord has created us to love others; but what about ourselves? Can that love also be from the Lord? All of us have needs that must be met but it can be hard to ask for help. We worry about putting a burden on others or opening ourselves up to criticism Yet the Lord is clear that we are to love ourselves. If we cannot love ourselves enough to get the help that we need, we lose the ability to help others. When we ask for help we are not being selfish, but rather are taking the first steps towards helping others.

This Sunday we begin the sermons that go along with the Helping Each Other: How to Serve Spiritual Needs program. Helping each other sounds great in theory but it can also be really challenging. We’re going to start this series by looking directly at the challenges involved and how the Lord’s teachings can help us to overcome them.

When people offend us or attack our intentions or motives, what should we do? Our tendency is to hit back, but He has a better way. And why did He say we should turn the other cheek? Did He mean it literally?

Everything in the universe reflects the Divine marriage between Love and Wisdom. Without these two qualities everything would fall apart. Over the next two weeks we will be exploring this union. This week, we will focus on our need to marry love with wisdom if we want to be truly useful. Either one on its own is weak, but together they can do amazing things.

Hell is something a lot of people would rather not think about and not talk about. And it makes sense: who would want to contemplate the idea that they or people they love might end up in a place of suffering for eternity? That’s terrifying. But ignoring hell or pretending like it doesn’t exist also doesn’t work. Just like we talked about last week with heaven, hell is a reality that we can experience on a daily basis and so we need to look at it squarely and try to understand how best to deal with it. That’s what we’re going to try to do on Sunday.

Heaven and hell can seem like fuzzy, distant, old-fashioned ideas—something from a different era, like fairytales with heroes and monsters. A lot of people today aren’t sure that heaven and hell even exist and those that do think they exist often think of them as something that will only be relevant later in life, when they’re getting ready to die. The New Church perspective is that heaven and hell are realities that we deal with every day and that what we believe about them can have a profound impact on our lives. Come hear the New Church perspective on heaven this Sunday.

How far does forgiveness extend? At what point do we withhold forgiveness? The Lord pushes us to expand our forgiveness to include even those we think are least deserving. We see this expansive forgiveness in the tale of the prophet Jonah: the contrast between his resentment and God’s forgiveness teaches us a lesson in just how far God wants us to take forgiveness.