Light of the Glades Church holds to the basic Christian truths which have always been proclaimed and believed by the those who have been embraced by Jesus Christ. Our way of presenting the truth of the Good News of God in Christ may be new and innovative, but the doctrine itself is just exactly that which was proclaimed by the prophets of old, taught by Jesus, and preached by the apostles.

Although we were created by God in His image, both male and female, to lead joyful lives of love and service in fellowship with our Creator and one another, we were seduced into a life of selfishness (sin!) instead. This fall away from God created for us a dead end without him, and we now live in a world of injustice, sin, and death. We need the gift of redemption!

God responded to our desperate situation with a plan. He Himself would break through the barriers of time and space and natural law, and become one of us. He would share our life, and show us how to make that life holy by living as loving servants of one another. He would share suffering and injustice with us, showing us how God can take suffering, and turn it into a blessing, by bringing through His suffering the gifts of peace and forgiveness for even the worst sinners. But most importantly, He would share our death, and show us how His power of life breaks death to pieces, and how His power over death is a gift that all of us can share in. God did this as Jesus of Nazareth.

God continues to bring Himself down into the dust and struggle of daily life. Soon after Jesus resurrection, God sent the gift of the Holy Spirit to His people, the means by which He lives with us, and shares each believer’s life. He continues to call and comfort us through the gift of baptism and the gift of the Lord's Supper, where we share an intimate experience of the presence of our Lord, who wraps himself up in common daily things (water, wine, bread) in order to reassure us of His commitment to us, wherever we are.

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This God, who did such a radical thing in Jesus, has revealed himself to be One God, who exists as a Trinity in three distinct Persons, called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That God has chosen to reveal this mystery about Himself is a wonderful gift of self-disclosure!

God continues to gather people into His kingdom by touching them and inspiring them to faith through the Gospel, which is proclaimed in many ways by His faithful people, but which we find faithfully and trustworthily secure for us in the words of the Bible. The Holy Spirit Himself works on people's hearts through the Word as it is shared, as it is delivered in the Sacraments, and as it is made visible by the acts of love and compassion of His people. God's people are called to live in a caring and forgiving community, and the church is that community of all people everywhere who believe in the promises that God makes to them in Jesus.

Five hundred years ago, a deeply religious, but deeply troubled man named Martin Luther discovered that all his efforts at religion were getting him nowhere that his efforts COULD NOT get him anywhere. He discovered the great truth of Christianity, that in Christ, redemption comes to us as a free gift, based on the work of Jesus, rooted in the love that God has for us all. He dedicated the rest of his life to taking that message, and communicating it to people in a way that they could understand it in a way that reflected the cultural reality that shaped their way of learning and understanding the world. We follow in Luther's footsteps, trying here at Light of the Glades to do exactly that same thing take the heart of the Gospel, and interpret it in modern speech and forms, that the people in our own culture who do not yet understand what God has done for them in Jesus, might come to know how deep and high and long and wide the love of God in Christ for them can be! We believe that that love of God calls us to be a people inspired by the Bible, comforted by the presence of God as our Risen Lord Jesus, and guided by the values of kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control, making contributions to the lives of others and our communities for the sake of God's gift of Himself as Jesus.forgiveness, gentleness, patience,kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control, making contributions to the lives of others and our communities for the sake of God's gift of Himself as Jesus.

Phone Number 239-641-3980
Email lightoftheglades@yahoo.com
Copyright 2009 Light of the Glades Church