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Celebrating Epiphany – By Father Andrew Bahhi

January 02, 2022
in Feature Articles, The Word
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Father Andrew speaks with us to celebrate Epiphany:

I would like to wish everybody a happy, healthy and a very good time this year.

Last year we lost a lot of brothers and sisters, we had good things, and we had sad things. But we thank God because we are the children of the Resurrection. We are believers, we are Christian. We believe that the power of the light is stronger than any bad thing. That is why we are still here, witnessing, praying with hope that no matter what we face, we have our faith that will overcome and conquer any circumstances that we go through.

We pray as the Lord says in the book of Revelations, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The first and the last.” He is everything, eternal and everlasting, and He is the creator and the judge.

We give our lives to God, especially with repentance, as we celebrate the Epiphany.

We pray that the spirit of the Epiphany, to encourage all of us, we can begin our year with true repentance.

These days GPS is very common. In our spiritual life we need to have a form of GPS. Whenever we are lost in the world, we just need to look to the GPS for instruction and help getting to our destination.

Is this year going to just be a number in our life? Or is this year an opportunity, a call, an invitation from God? So, we can invest it spiritually and guide our life by the power of the Holy Spirit to go to the right direction.

What is going to be in your hand for 2022?

  • How much spiritually are we going to grow?
  • How much repentance are we going to offer?
  • How much ministry service we are going to serve our church, God, and everyone around us?

The GPS, my brothers and sisters, is guiding us to our destiny. And the word of God, the Holy Spirit, is leading everyone accepting him to lead them to reach his or her destiny. Because the Lord said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” – John 14:6.

The Lord explained everything to us 2,000 years ago, the way to salvation and heaven. The way to salvation is the lifestyle that I lead with Christ every single day. God is calling us in these times, especially in the Epiphany, God is making the path very clear to everyone and follow Him in His name.

In order to go to heaven, we need to lead a heavenly life on Earth. The repentance, dear brothers and sisters is returning to God.

The repentance is the key of knowing God. Without having a repentant heart, God won’t come to us, and we won’t be able to know Him very well. The repentance also is knowing ourselves, like the Prodigal Son, it is coming back to our selves and the true meeting with God and His spirit.

I pray that all of us while we pray for Epiphany, I pray that we ask Him to purify our heart, clean our conscience, accept our repentance. And we make a decision that “My goal for this year – me and my family – I will be with the Lord.”

St. Paul in Galatians 3:27 says, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” So, when we are baptized, we wear Jesus. And Jesus is guiding us in this life to heaven. But unfortunately, with this Glory of Clothes from Jesus, we often put these things aside.

This Holy time is a call to take everything off and put Jesus on. The word baptism means “to put something on” or “cover.” And in the Syriac church we call it “Denho,” the lights, because the Holy Trinity appeared very obvious for the first time in history when the son was baptized. And the father said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” – Matthew 12:18

Learn more from Father Andrew’s sermon video here.

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