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Welcome to AllFaith.com and Beit Emunah's AllFaith Community Worship!
We are a community of diverse people from different and unique backgrounds united in the belief that God is REALLY ONE and desires us to be of One Spirit within our diversity.Each of our Sunday gatherings have a different focus. This week: Renewing your mind!
I hope our Jewish friends are enjoying a safe and peaceful Pesach wherever you are, and to our Christian friends, Happy Easter!Good morning, friends. Thank you for gathering here today.
I want to begin with a simple observation: Spring is springing all around us! Whether you notice it in the lengthening days, the first green shoots breaking through soil, or the birds returning to their nests—spring arrives with quiet insistence. And across human history, we've recognized this season as something more than meteorological. We've seen it as a mirror for our inner lives.
Today, I'd like to explore a theme that resonates across the faith traditions: Renewal. More specifically, what it means to renew your mind during this season of awakening.
Renew My Mind Highfield Community
The phrase "renewing your mind" comes from a Christian text—the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, where he writes, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." But the impulse behind those words? That belongs to all of us. Every tradition I'll touch on today speaks to this same human longing: to shed what weighs us down, to remember who we truly are, to begin again.
Create in Me a Clean HeartKeith Greene
This isn't about blending traditions together until they lose their shape. It's about listening to each voice distinctly, then hearing the harmony they create when sung together.
Renew My Strength Daily Surrender
SPRING IS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL
Why spring? Why does this season speak so powerfully to renewal?
Consider what happens in nature. Winter doesn't end with a bang—it ends with thaw. Ice softens. Water flows again. Dormant seeds wake up. Life returns not because the earth forgot how to live, but because it was waiting for the right conditions.
Human beings are not so different. We carry winters within us—periods of grief, stagnation, confusion, exhaustion. And like the earth, we seem to have an inner rhythm that responds to light, warmth, and time.
Across the world's many cultures, spring festivals mark this transition:
- Nowruz, the Persian New Year, begins at the spring equinox. Families clean their homes, set tables with symbolic items, and welcome the new year with hope.
- Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, celebrates the victory of good over evil and the arrival of spring. People throw colored powder at each other, dissolving social barriers in a riot of joy.
- Easter eggs and Passover matzah—both ancient foods, both connected to spring, both carrying stories of transformation.
These aren't coincidences. They're expressions of a deep human intuition: that renewal is possible. That after darkness, light returns. That we are not trapped by who we were yesterday.
The true Meaning of PESACH: REMOVING THE LEAVEN WITHIN
Let's consider Pesach—Passover—the Jewish celebration of liberation from slavery in Egypt.
Passover arrives in the Hebrew month of Nisan, which falls in spring. We're currently celebrating Pesach. Before the holiday begins, families conduct a thorough cleaning of their homes. They search for chametz—leavened bread, anything that has risen and fermented. They remove it completely.
On the surface, this is about food. But the sages understood something deeper: chametz represents pride, ego, the parts of ourselves that puff up and harden. The removal of leaven is an act of spiritual housecleaning.
There's a beautiful teaching from the Hasidic masters: "Just as we search our homes for crumbs of chametz, so we must search our hearts for crumbs of arrogance, cruelty, and indifference."
During Passover, Jews eat matzah—unleavened bread. It's called "the bread of affliction" but also "the bread of freedom." How can the same food carry both meanings? Because freedom begins with humility. Before we can leave Egypt—before we can leave any place of bondage—we must be willing to be small, to be simple, to strip away what's unnecessary.
The Passover Seder includes a moment where participants lean back as free people, even though we once were slaves. This isn't just remembering history. It's embodying a truth: you are already free. The renewal happens when you stop acting like a slave and start living like someone who has been liberated.
What would it mean to really search your own interior for chametz?
What beliefs, habits, or patterns have hardened inside you? What would happen if you removed them?Dayenu The Maccabeats
EASTER: RESURRECTION AND NEW LIFE
Now, let's turn to Easter, the Christian celebration of resurrection.
At its heart, Easter declares something radical: death is not the end. The tomb is empty. Life has broken through.
This isn't merely a theological claim. It's an invitation to experience resurrection in the present tense. The Apostle Paul wrote about being "raised with Christ"—not just a future hope, but a present reality. To be renewed in mind is to participate in this resurrection now. "Christ" means annointing. Let each of us find the Christ nature within ourselves and be raised from the darkness to the Light or renewal!Think about what happens in the Easter story:
Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb expecting to find a body. She finds a gardener instead. Sometimes renewal looks like mistaking the divine for something ordinary until we're ready to recognize it!
Peter, who denied Yeshua three times, is restored and given a new mission. Renewal includes forgiveness—not just receiving it, but believing you're worthy of it.
The disciples, hiding in fear, become bold witnesses. This is because real renewal transforms cowardice into courage.
Easter symbols reinforce this: The eggs represent new life breaking from our shells. Rabbits multiply rapidly. Flowers bloom from bare branches. All of them whisper: something dead can come alive again.
The Greek word for repentance in the New Testament is metanoia—literally "changing your mind." Teshuva or repentence is not just feeling sorry. It's a fundamental reorientation of how you see yourself, others, and God. Its about beginning a new and better course.
When Christians speak of being "born again," they're not talking about erasing the past. They're talking about a new capacity to respond to life. The same person, but with a renewed mind.
Ain't no Grave Jamie Wilson
OTHER TRADITIONS: A WIDER HARMONY
I want to honor a few more voices in this chorus of renewal.
- Nowruz, celebrated by millions across Iran, Central Asia, and beyond, marks the Persian New Year at the spring equinox. The word means "new day." Families gather around the haft-sin table, with seven items beginning with the Persian letter 's'—each representing hope: rebirth, love, health, prosperity, patience, youth, and abundance.
One practice is particularly striking: jumping over bonfires while chanting, "My yellow is yours, your red is mine." Yellow represents sickness and weakness; red represents warmth and vitality. People literally give away their burdens and receive strength in return.One of my favorite holidays is Holi, the Hindu festival of colors.
It arrives in late winter or early spring. For one day, social hierarchies dissolve. People throw colored powder at each other regardless of caste, age, or status. The colors wash away in the rain, leaving everyone equal beneath the sky.
Holi teaches that renewal requires play. It requires letting go of our control. It requires trusting that the colors won't stain your true self—they'll wash off, and you'll emerge lighter.Even secular spring traditions carry echoes of this wisdom. Spring cleaning. New Year's resolutions (even if they arrive in January). The impulse to start fresh, to organize, to breathe deeply.
Don't Worry! Ndlovu Youth Choir
These aren't competing truths. They're different languages describing the same landscape. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind!" How and what you think matters! It's about renewing the way you think and look at the world. Some things you can change, some you can't. What you can do is change the way you think and react. So think positive! You've got nothing to lose.
Think Positive! The King's Accademy Praises and Prayers to God.
We invite you to share your prayers with us and with God now. Hold those you would pray for in your heart and release them to GOD for healing and blessing as we sing, The Lord Bless you.
Let us join our hearts and minds. May One GOD hear our prayers and respond favorably to us and awaken us all to Light of Truth.
Announcements:
Music videos and lyrics are used based on their public available. AllFaith.com makes no claim to any of them.
Note: All Times are Eastern.Our broadcasts are Live on Zoom and most stream through Rumble. Broadcasts other than our Sunday gathering stream to Facebook,* MeWe, Gab, Gettr, Truth Social, X, and Mike Lindel's VOCL site.
* Note that our Sunday Gathering broadcasts are not on Facebook due to their contuining censorship.
Mondays at 8 PM: We are reading my book Above We Stand, part two of the We Stand Trilogy availabe on Amazon. This reading is only available live on Zoom.
Wednesdays at 8 PM: The Apocrapha continues.
Thursdays 8 PM: Deep Dive into the Bible. We continue this week with Genesis 1:1.
Sundays 2:30 PM Our AllFaith Community Worship Service. If you'd like to chat, I'm usually on by 1:45.
ALLHEART Is the 1st and 3rd Sunday at 8 Eastern!
* All times Eastern.
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Closing Prayer>
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Be the Blessing you were created to be
And
Don't let the perfect defeat the good
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