A Shortcut to Happiness

Greetings All,

Today's 'thought' has to do with ministry - true ministry - difficult ministry - Christian ministry. It comes from David Hansen's book, "The Art of Pastoring" and carries a challange to pastors.

But before you click the 'delete' icon, thinking this thought only applies to pastor types, read on. For if you've ever struggled with choosing the easy way, or the quick fix, instead of the best way, or the hard road to healing, his advice can give helpful direction. Enjoy.

"We pimp shortcuts. Everybody wants them. People will pay good money for them. We love cheap love and hate the costly cross. By giving people shortcuts we are cheating them out of life in Christ, and it destroys us. Entertainment, management and counseling are valid activities in their proper arenas, but for pastoral ministry they are easy outs, quick fixes, short-term satisfaction, shortcuts that bypass the cross... Many people who come to me for counseling want a quick fix; they want me to give them a way around living a moral life, a shortcut to happiness that skips following Jesus in costly discipleship.

In our hypertherapuetic milieu, people want professionals to do something to them to make them feel better. Living through life, meeting the demands of following Jesus, living under the lordship of a holy God doesn't appeal to the general public these days... people would have me do something to them rather than admonish them to live through the thick forests of their lives by following Christ in discipleship....

There are other shortcuts... For instance, people need to worship God, but they want to be entertained instead. Maintaining worship as a vertical dialogue with God in which we eschew entertainment and press our minds and bodies into service is a battle against one of the public's deepest felt needs. Boredom is so extreme in our day that people feel they are dying. Boredom makes people feel as if their central nervous system is winding down and shutting off. People will pay any amount of money to relieve boredom for the same reason that they will pay any amount of money for a pacemaker.

People want singing that excites and envelops, special music that impresses, sermons that warm the heart, testimonies that make them cry and miracles that make their skin tingle. Worship as entertainment, defined as the ritual excitement of the central nervous system to temporarily relieve boredom, is a shortcut to the believer's soul-deep satisfaction of serving God through vertically oriented worship. Entertainment is passive and is an effect wrought upon the participant by the 'worship leaders.' Worship (on the other hand) is active and requires effort expended by a thankful congregation of believers on behalf of a holy and merciful God, initiated and led by the Holy Spirit.

If we entertain people, our church will grow. If we lead in worship, our church may shrink until it is composed of a group of people who want to worship. Then the church has a chance to grow based on the precedent of worship. The church that worships will have many visitors who never come back, yet a few who cannot stay away."

Pursuing worship in spirit and in truth,

Pastor Jeff

Pray Always, Pray Continually

Greetings All,

This week's 'thought' is about prayer. It comes to you from the Puritan preacher George Swinnock and is taken from, "The Works of George Swinnock." Though written hundreds of years ago, his words are as relevant an exhortation for the church today as they were in the day he wrote them. If people would only heed his admonitions it would make an untold difference in their lives, in the church, and in the world. (*Some of the language has been updated.) Enjoy!

"Prayer should be constant. It is your duty to give yourself to prayer. It is like the fire on the altar of the Temple -- it must never go out day or night. It is like the believer's breathing -- a Christian's prayer may have intermissions, but never cessation. There is no duty given to a Christian for his constant attention so much as prayer -- pray always, pray continually, pray without ceasing, pray with perseverance, and pray forevermore.

To pray without ceasing means: 1.) To be in a praying frame all the time. The soldier always has his weapon ready, though he is not always at battle. Your heart should always be in tune so you can make heavenly music. The believer's spirit is like fire on the hearth -- though it is not blazing, it is ready upon any opportunity to be blown up into a flame.

2.) No important business is to be undertaken without prayer. You are God's servant, and must ask permission in all that you do. When you rise up or lie down, when you go out or come in, prayer is with you. The world's poison can be expelled with this antidote.

3.) Set a regular time aside every day for prayer. The Christian has his set times for meals for his body every day, and so it should be for his soul. As with the marigold, the believer should open himself in the morning (through prayer) for the sweet dews of heaven's grace and blessing. At night also he can find some opportunity to converse, as a lover, because during the day he is hindered by business.

Prayer is the key of the morning to open the door of mercy, and prayer is the slidebolt at night to secure him in safety. He that prays should lift his supplication to God even during the day. Prayer has its internal arrows which it needs to shoot heavenward throughout the course of the day.

Some seasons for prayer should never be slighted. When the Spirit of God stirs within us to come and pray, we should make haste to come to God in prayer and not delay."

In the Grip of His Grace, Pastor Jeff

Joy and Happiness

Greetings All,

This weeks 'thought' comes from the well-known missionary statesman of the last century, E. Stanley Jones. He was a man who spent many years in India and whose writings were extremely popular in the 1950's.

It deals with the difference between joy and happiness, and the disillusionment people can struggle with when they seek a form of happiness which the Bible does not promise. It is taken from his book "Christian Maturity." Enjoy.

"There is something deeper than happiness, and that is joy. Happiness comes from happenings, but joy may be within us in spite of happenings. 'Happiness' is the world's word; 'joy' is the Christian's word. The New Testament does not use the word 'happiness' or promise it -- it uses the word 'joy.' And for good reason.

Many people are expecting happiness from following the Christian faith -- that God will arrange things that happen to them so they will add up to happiness.[For most this means having everything go their way, or go in a way that they would approve of, or appeals to them.]* When the things that happen to them do not produce happiness, such people are dismayed and feel that God has let them down. Why should this happen to me? They expect to be protected from happenings that make them unhappy. This is a false view and leads to a lot of disillusionment, for the Christian is not necessarily protected from things that make people unhappy. Was Jesus protected from things that make people unhappy? Was Paul? Their Christian faith got them into opposition, into persecution, into death. How could a faith that has a cross at its center promise exemption from happenings that ordinarily bring unhappiness?

What is the answer? The Christian faith offers joy in the midst of happenings which make people with that faith unhappy![Yes, people of faith can experience joy even when they are unhappy with their circumstances!]*

When the Christian doesn't find joy on account of his happenings, he can always find joy in spite of them... You must live 'in spite of.' Carlyle once said: 'You may hear it said of me that I am cross-grained and disagreeable. Don't believe it. Only let me have my own way and get everything exactly as I wish, and a sunnier or pleasanter creature you will not find." But Carlyle was being satirical here. We must make sure our own happiness is not dependent upon happenings." [* Added explanatory insert by me!]

Where can joy come from in the midst of unhappy times? From the promise of our Sovereign God who declares through the Apostle Paul that He, "works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." (Rom. 8:28)

Notice what Paul does not say -- He will make everything work out as we like. That would be to fall into the trap Jones warns against. He promises to work it out for our good, and then goes on in the next verse to tell us what that ultimate good is: "to be conformed to the image of His Son."(Rom. 8:29)

The "good" which God "works all things together for" is our being confromed to the likeness of Jesus. He uses everything (even the most difficult and painful of circumstances) to sanctify, purify and grow us more and more into the likeness and image of the Son He loves. And when we seethat as our greatest good in this life, and desire it with all our hearts, the promise that God will work it all together for that end gives us joy even in the midst of our pain. Strange and contradictory as it sounds, it is true that we can experience joy at the very same time that we are feeling unhappinesswith our circumstances!

In the Service of Christ, Pastor Jeff

Am I Really a Christian?

Greetings All,

It's been a while since the last thought I sent your way! My vacation was great. I spent the first two weeks fixing and painting my mother's house in Massachusetts, and the last week in the beautiful state of Maine. And since I've begun to catch up on things here at the church, I'll resume sending these out on a regular basis!

This weeks 'thought' comes from Iain Murray's book entitled "Heroes." The "hero" he writes about today is Jonathan Edwards and the excerpt deals with the struggle of trying (during the First Great Awakening that swept down the entire east coast of America during his time - approx. 1735-1745) to discern true converts from those who simply had some type of mystical/spiritual/physical experience or got caught up in the emotion and religious fervor of the moment, yet showed no signs of any lasting heart-change. As a pastor I found it to be insightful - I trust you will as well. It's a good thought to use for self-examination. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

"What is the evidence of a saving conversion? It is not, he says, a prior conviction of sin -- men can have that and never be regenerate (or born again). It is not the speed at which the supposed conversion occurs -- the stony-ground hearer of Christ's parable 'immediately' received the word with joy (yet withered away - Matt. 13:20). It is not whether conversion is attended by physical signs... (or) whether texts of Scripture come wonderfully into the mind -- the devil is able to quote Scripture. Positively, the (true) test is whether or not conversion has been the result of regeneration. That is to say, has the individual known a change of nature, has there been the introduction of a new principle.

'There are many that think themselves born again,' he writes, 'that have never experienced any change of nature at all; that haven't had one new principle added, nor one sinful disposition mortified; that never saw one glimpse of divine light, never saw the least of God's or Christ's glory..."

Again he says: 'They that are truly converted are new men, new creatures; new not only within, but without; they are sanctified throughout, in spirit, soul and body; old things have passed away, all things have become new. They have new hearts, and new eyes, new ears, new tongues, new feet... they walk in newness of life and continue to do so to the end of life.'

Because this new life is the restoration of the life of God in the human soul, the chief characteristic of its possessor is God-centeredness. The true convert is aware of God, admires God, loves God, lives for God. The false convert, whatever his language or experiences, remains self-centered. Self is the one abiding interest of the unregenerate life...

The natural man is governed by what Edwards calls 'false affections.' He may think he has love for God but that is only because he thinks of God as profitable to him - self-interest is (still) in control. But the regenerate person loves God for His moral excellence, that is His holiness. It is his holiness that appeals to the true believer and attracts the believer... he loves the way of salvation because it is a holy way; loves the commands of God because they are holy; loves heaven as a world of holiness.

Holy love, as we have already noted, is the 'chief of affections' in the Christian, and this grace , Edwards shows, has one inseperable companion, namely, a humble spirit. A person who is satisfied with his spiritual attainment, who has no longing for more grace, is not yet Christian at all."

In my church in Honduras there was a young lady who had been involved in different churches most of her life. She had even attended a Bible School. As a result of some personal struggles and sermons from the book of Acts she came to me questioning whether she was really a Christian. I did not reassure her that she was (that's not my place, since I can never really know for sure, and it could be disasterous for me to tell her she was if she was not). I simply handed her one of Edwards' books, "Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God" and told her as I handed it to her, "If you can read this book and still think you're a Christian, you probably are." (I had read it wondering the same thing after 4-5 years as a pastor!). Pick up a copy if you have similar questions. It's not something we can afford being mistaken about.

In His Service, Pastor Jeff