Game Over

Game Over

Hello All! Glad to have you back this week, I hope you are ready to jump in!

This week we are in Philippians 4:8-9

"⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

This passage is located in the last chapter of Philippians and it brings with it an appreciation for the church he is writing to. Paul has poured into and invested in this church for quite sometime and he is closing his letter to them with this idea. His time to pour into them and help them grow is coming to an end with this letter. He may have the chance to see them again or speak to them again, but for now it is ending.

Our first goal of the week is to define what is excellent and praiseworthy. As we reach these situations in life where our time of influence is coming to an end we try to grasp onto a few things. Whether it is the end of our college career and we want to be remembered, the end of high school and we want to stay friends forever, or even a job that you love and now you have been let go. 

Paul's temptation in this letter could be to say, best of luck while I'm gone, you guys are going to be alright I think, GOOD LUCK! He wants to be there with the church, he wants to see them succeed, he wants to walk through life alongside them but he can't. He reminds them to not focus on him but rather on the things that they have been taught.

Practice what you have learned. I can't tell you how many times I have walked out of a sermon, read a leadership book, or had a fantastic talk with a friend who showed me something that I could improve on. The whole car ride home I think of how great it would be for that practice to be in my life, yet I don't act on it. 3 weeks later I realize that I didn't do it and can barely even remember what it is that I didn't do. 

Paul didn't want to be forgotten, this is a natural feeling. After investing in something and pouring into it, nobody wants to be forgotten about. Paul realized how much bigger this was though, he would survive if they forgot about him. They would survive if they forgot about him, but their effectiveness for God's kingdom would be lessened by not practicing the things Paul had taught. Paul was led by God to share with and invest in this church, and so the practices and ideas he shared with the church were vastly important. To forget about these things and move on in life is to give satan a victory. 

Finally a promise, the peace of God will be with you. Paul was just a man, the church was made up of normal people. The thing that allows this promise to be true is the living and resurrected Jesus Christ. Paul's time with them had come to an end. He will no longer be able to invest in them, and this is sad. He is not leaving them on their own though, Paul has shown them the light of Jesus Christ. He is in a state of discomfort because he just wants to continue walking through life with them. What Paul has realized though, and why he can give this promise is because they are not alone now. 

Jesus conquered death so that we could all have eternal life through him. It is a tough thing to deal with a goodbye. When you have invested in something for so long that all you want is to see it grow it is painful to pull yourself away from it. Jesus didn't call us to be the water though, He has simply asked us to spread the seed. Jesus, the water of life, is there to come in and bring it to fruition. So I'm not promising that goodbye is easy, I'm not promising it to be painful. By focusing on the good though, the lessons that Jesus has used you to teach or been taught, we achieve the peace of God. We walk with the risen Savior.  

Thank you for reading and God bless.

A Tight Grip

 

A Tight Grip

If this is your first time reading, welcome. It's good to have you here today, and if you are a returning reader, I pray that you see something new today as well.

Let's jump straight in because we've got a lot to cover. 

This week's passage is found in John 20:11-17

"¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Now this week's message comes from a lesson that I have been facing all week. Pastor Rob Bell released a series of videos called the Nooma series in order to give a different spin on teaching the word of God. The Bible is not twisted in these videos, it just gave a new medium to sharing the word. One of these is titled Today, and it uses this passage.
  
In this scripture, we have seen Jesus be crucified on the cross, dieing the worst death that any of us could have imagined. Those closest to Him watched as He struggled through His last moments. 3 days have passed and Jesus's friends visit His tomb often to grieve their loss. We observe this moment though with an odd twist at the end. 

You see Mary Magdalene was a close friend to Jesus, and she has witnessed His death. Upon seeing Him alive, she moves out of her shock in towards Him to embrace Him, but Jesus doesn't embrace her and say everything is alright. Instead He tells her to let go, and to go and spread the good news. 

What does this mean? Why would Jesus ruin this moment for her, why not sit in the glory of it having defeated death and celebrate the embrace of a dear friend? Time is not static, it is a continual thing. You see so often in life we want to pause and just stay in the moment, without moving on towards what is to follow.
  
I am one of the worst offenders of this, as many times I have looked to a moment in the past saying how great that moment was. How I wish I could go back to some of the "glory days". But what does that say about now, about the moments at hand. You see Mary was excited to have her Jesus back, she was excited for things to return to how they were. But they can't. Jesus didn't come back to life, defeat death, and conquer our sins to return to His life pre-crucifixion. Jesus came back to offer a chance for us to join Him as He joins the Father.

Great things happen all the time, glorious and awesome moment occur in our lives. Jesus intended for those moments to come, we get to experience love and joy in those times. The warning that we are receiving though is that we aren't to hold onto these moments because they are fleeting. We hold on so tight to a moment sometimes, that we blink and that moment has gone from the present, to now being in the distant past.

I often look at my past and wonder what I could have done better, what I messed up at, or even what I did well. Do you know what happens in these moments though? I miss out on what is at hand. I am so focused on what has happened then, that I miss now. Jesus gives Mary a role in the present, to go and spread the good news. Find your role. Jesus is calling you to something right now, He has an urgent plan for you, but sometimes we miss it. We focus so much on future things to come, or moments in the past, and deny His plan for right now. 

The truth that I have learned while trying to wrestle with this message this week is this: We can't grab hold of what is in store for today, if we are so busy trying to hold onto yesterday. So let go.

Rob Bell closes the video with this, and I feel it is appropriate to end our time today, thank you for reading and God bless.

"So may you accept the past for what it is. May you celebrate what needs to be celebrated and grieve what needs to be grieved, and then may you receive from God a new spirit. One for here, now, today."

Bored

Hello all! Sorry that this post is coming so late, but I still wanted to make sure it was up for you when you woke up the next morning. This week's blog is a little less intense than the last week, but I personally have found really cool working with it over the last week.

Our passage is Acts 20:7-12
^"7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. ⁹ Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. ¹⁰ Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” ¹¹ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. ¹² The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted."

All of us have been bored at one time in our lives. This may have been while you were waiting on your oil to get changed, or you were waiting for class to finish on a Friday afternoon, or you were waiting on dinner to finish cooking so you could eat. Boredom is something that can be so common and so destructive. I sometimes like to tackle boredom in different ways such as making up my own game or time to learn something new. The boredom we are discussing today though is a much more serious type of boredom. Being bored with God.

The bible focuses on us as Christians having a relationship with God, and how this relationship is a thing that grows constantly. However if we are honest sometimes our relationship hits a dry spot. Sometimes we seem to get stuck in a spiritual rut. The passage that we are looking at has two different perspectives on boredom. Shall we look?

The first is Eutychus, the man who falls asleep and dies for it. Am I saying that next time you fall asleep in a church service you will die? Nope. Speaking from a man who has narcolepsy, it's tough to stay awake sometimes in church, I'll agree with you on that. Eutychus has attended a service where Paul intends to preach through the night. Paul has been preaching for hours at this point and Eutychus falls into his deep sleep and falls out of a window. This is tragic, but there is something that can be learned. Look for opportunity to learn. Sometimes we hear a story in church and we tune out. 

"Oh I've heard this before..... I wonder where we'll go for lunch. Man I've got a lot of homework to do today. I wish Chik-fil-a was open today." Next thing you know the sermon is over and you have missed your opportunity to see something new about God. The scripture is God's word and every time we read it we can grasp something new from it. By checking out of a service because you feel that you have heard it before kills the opportunity for you to grow even closer with God.
  
The other perspective is Paul's perspective. Paul sees this man fall out of a window and die while he is preaching. Now I have only delivered about 15-20 sermons to a crowd before, but I am quite sure that if someone died during one of my sermons I would ask myself two questions, Do I stop teaching and call the ambulance, and am I really that boring? Paul does neither of these though, he knew what he was teaching needed to be heard, so he walks over brings the man back to life, and keeps on teaching! Be enthralled with God.

Paul was so in love with God that all he wanted to do was talk about him. A man's death wasn't even enough of a distraction to keep Paul from teaching the good news. Now this second point may be a little hard to grasp the practicality of it. You say, but I've tried to find that passion for Him again, it's just not there anymore. Then I would ask you to look at your life. What areas are things going well in? Do you feel like you have gotten there all on your own?

Maybe you aren't doing so well right now, bills are stacking up, family is hard, sickness is striking, even love doesn't seem to be working out. God has a plan for you. Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that God doesn't intend to hurt us, but rather to make us prosper. Focus on that, the provider that will meet all of your true needs in the way He best sees fit. Sometimes we expect God to do something crazy to get us out of a crazy time when we keep getting knocked down. We forget that it's His hand who keeps helping us get back up. 

 Thank you for reading and God bless.

Number My Days

Number My Days

Hope everyone had a fantastic celebration this past weekend with the 4th of July, and it's good to have you back here. Today's topic is heavy. I am warning you this ahead of time because it could bring up some emotions, and I am asking you to keep reading. I really feel that this message needs to be heard, and so I pray you will follow along this journey.

Our passage this week is found in Psalm 90, with a particular highlight on verses 10-12.

"Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
¹¹ If only we knew the power of your anger!
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
¹² Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:10-12 (NIV)

This is a passage or phrase that I feel many of us have heard before, teach us to number our days. Often this verse is shared in the middle of or right after a time of great sorrow. Our days are numbered and we should take everyone of them as a blessing. I believe that message lies in this passage if you just single out verse 12, but I also believe the scripture gives us another message that is an encouraging note to go alongside this heavy truth.

This chapter in Psalms is subtitled "A prayer of Moses, the man of God" and it is important to know this because it gives us understanding of the passage. It opens up with a hope in God who was here in the beginning and has been the refuge for His people from day one. It also discusses His overall mastery of time and how God has sees our entire lives "like a day that has gone by." 

Then we move into verse 10, where the writer discusses how little strength and control we have over when our time has come to leave this earth. How we can have what we feel is strength, yet it fades so quickly in the grand scheme of life. 

Then we hit the key verse, verse 12. Let us not focus on the first part of the verse this time though, but rather wrestle with the second half. That we may gain a heart of wisdom. The writer ends the passage asking for God to show mercy towards them in this time of suffering. He states that their suffering has been long endured and that they just want relief from this time of pain. "Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us." Why this sudden change in attitude after verse 12?

I believe it is because verse 12 is the bridge between the two places. The writer seems to be praising God in the beginning, and mourning and asking for relief in the second part. Doesn't this seem like our lives today? Life seems to be great and everything is fantastic. Our relationship with God is flourishing, or maybe even sliding to the backburner. Then it happens, you receive that news. A phone call comes that rocks your entire world. That simple drive home at night doesn't go as simply as intended. Then we are left begging God to remove us from the time of pain.

This is a natural feeling. If you are in this time of pain, I want you to first know that God loves you and hasn't abandoned you. He is standing right next to you with arms wide open ready to carry you through this, we just need to keep focusing on His love rather than our affliction. The heart of wisdom is our guiding light in this. You see wisdom helps us in discerning through the tough situations. Wisdom helps an individual make the tough call. Wisdom helps us realize that there will be another time of praise to come, God will make things right again and joy will be in the morning. But it also helps us to see that God doesn't leave during those bad times either. By maintaining and continually pursuing this relationship with God through his word, we can grasp onto this wisdom.

Teach us to number our days, yes, every morning, every breath is a blessing. Some of us didn't expect to be in these hard places right now. But let us receive and embrace this heart of wisdom, so that love may be realized from the God who is master of time.

He loves us so much that He put HIMSELF through a time of pain, so that we could live an eternal life with no more pain. 

Thank you for reading and God bless.