Two Thoughts to Ponder

Greetings All!

     Today I send to two short and totally unrelated "thoughts" for you to ponder.  The first is "Doubt as the Doorway to Truth" by Madeleine L'Engle.  I have found this to be true in my own experience.  In fact, about three years after I came to Christ, I prayed for greater faith. The result (quite to my surprise) was to be assaulted by many doubts that seemed to come out of nowhere!  It confused me entirely. I asked for faith and I received doubts It wasn't until later that I realized that it was in seeking answers to those doubts that faith came.  God's ways are not our own! 

     
     The second "thought" is a true story passed on to me by a friend who leads short term mission trips overseas -- Paul Hatmacher of "Churches in Missions.'  It's a story that displays the providential intervention of God in the life of one very unsuspecting man.  Enjoy!

Doubt as the Doorway to Truth 

     "We are often taught that it is unfaithful to question traditional beliefs, but I believe that we must question them continually -- not God, not Christ, who are at the center of our lives... but what human beings say about God and about Christ. Otherwise, like the church establishment of Galileo's day, we truly become frozen people. Galileo's discoveries did nothing whatsoever to change the nature of God; they threatened only man's rigid ideas of the nature of God....

     The great metaphysical poet, John Donne, writes: 'To come to a doubt, and a debatement of any religious duty, is the voice of God in our conscience: Would you know the truth? Doubt, and then you will inquire." If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning. There is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God (as men of the religious establishment did in the days of Galileo) then I want to be open to God, not what men say about God. I want to be open to revelation, to new life, to new birth, to new light. Revelation. Listening. Humility. Remember -- the root word of humble and human is the same: Humus. Earth.  We are dust. We are created. It is God who made us and not we ourselves."

An Incredible Story 

     "Joseph Stalin ordered the purge of all Bible's and believers in Russia.  Millions of Bibles were confiscated and multitudes of believers were sent to die in prison camps.  Recently, COMission Ministry, sent a team to Stravopol (east of the Black Sea in Russia) and had literally thousands trust in Christ. They needed Bibles and heard from a local that there was a warehouse outside of town where Stalin had the Bibles stored.  Wondrously, the officials gave them permission to check it out and they found thousands of Bibles that had been taken from believers.  So the team hired students from a local college to clean out the warehouse. 

     One young man they hired was a skeptic, but he accepted the job for the money.  As the day wore on they noticed the young man had disappeared. They eventually found him in the corner of the warehouse weeping. He had slipped away having taken a Bible.  What he found shook him to the core.  Out of the thousands of Bibles, he had found one belonging to his grandmother... a woman persecuted all her life, who had died in prison.  No wonder he was weeping.  God had just dramatically revealed Himself to this young man.  His grandmother had no doubt prayed for him and for that city. Her prayers had followed him. And now this young man's life has been transformed by the very Bible that his grandmother found so dear." 

     God's ways truly are mysterious - beyond searching out (Romans 11:33).  He moves and guides in ways we least expect. "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps" (Prov. 16:9). Little did that skeptic know at the beginning of the day (following his hearts desire for a little extra money) that his life would be blessed in an infinitely greater way by the time he headed home that evening.  God's ways are so much higher than ours -- and always better!

Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

A Place for Weakness

Greetings All,

This week I was skimming through the opening pages of a book by Michael Horton entitled, "A Place for Weakness."   It's the response of a man who has looked at much of modern day Christianity, compared it with the New Testament version, and found it terribly lacking.  A man who wonders: "What about the people who don't get healed from cancer?  The people who have no miraculous deliverance to brag about?  What about those who aren't lavishly successful, and don't go from "rags to riches"?

     In fact, after pointing out how the modern church loves to parade around, "famous athletes, politicians, entertainers, ad other icons of popular culture... as trophies of grace," he very validly asks, "Have you ever seen a janitor interviewed for his testimony?"  What about people like the poor widow who gave her last two pennies to the Lord's work, but never (as far as we know) got blessed with a hundred-fold return, or millions of dollars as compensation for her extreme devotion?   A lady who was poor, and remained poor, yet loved the Lord with all that was in her?  Are there not millions of such believers the world over?  Where is our acknowledgment of their great faith in our churches or television broadcasts?  We do speak of martyrs, but what about those so poor they, "went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute... and mistreated"?  Those who "wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground" -- yet were faithful to the end, thus earning them the title:  "those of whom the world was not worthy" and people who were "commended (by God) for their faith."  If our faith cannot look up to them -- MORE than to the STAR ATHLETE or SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRE -- then we must ask what has happened to the Christian faith that James describes as the valid kind in James 2:1-13?

     I believe Horton does make a very valid point.  And I share this thought to challenge us to separate worldly triumphalism from true biblical Christianity. Enjoy.

God of the Cross

     "We don't like to think of ourselves as losers, especially in America. Even popular religion is often exploited in what Friedrich Nietzsche would celebrate as "the will to power."  If it is going to sell in the marketplace, it must be clearly seen that our particular brand of religion will make us winners in business and politics, boost our self-confidence, and position us and our families as the envy of our non-Christian neighbors.

     In part, this is an attempt to answer the claim that religion in general, but Christianity in particular, is for the weak...  Media mogul Ted Turner, who, though raised in a conservative Christian background, now reportedly calls Christianity, "a religion for losers."  How do you react when you read these words, or encounter them in veiled remarks by friends, co-workers, and relatives who do not know Christ?  For at least a century and a half, American evangelism has spent great effort and money on public relations campaigns for Christianity in just this area of concern. Famous athletes, politicians, entertainers, and other icons of popular culture are regularly trotted out as trophies of grace. Have you ever seen a janitor interviewed for his testimony?

     Of course, there are notable exceptions, such as Joni Eareckson Tada, who has brought so much wisdom to suffering since her diving accident left her paralyzed. But we seem obsessed at times with convincing the world that we are cool, which especially in this culture means healthy, good-looking, prosperous, and, even better, famous.  Not only can one remain cool in Christ; it is this personal relationship with Jesus that, far from calling us to die, gives us that little bit extra to, "be all we can be."  At least that's what the before-and-after testimonies seem to suggest. Jesus came to recruit a team of all-stars and coach them to the Super Bowl of better living.  As the title of one religious bestseller has it, we can have our best life now, just by following a few principles for daily success.

Any Place for Weakness?

     How do we square all this with Jesus' statement that... "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31-32)?  Paul also gives a recurring emphasis to weakness: "On my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses... But [the Lord] said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (II Corinthians 12:5, 9-10).  Would Paul have made a very good spokesman for "muscular Christianity" or for the other images of success so widely praised among us? 

     In his "Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902) Harvard professor and philosopher William James distinguished between two types of religion: "healthy-minded" and "morbid-minded." Those belonging to the sick-soul camp (the morbid-minded), he said, see themselves as sinful, dispossessed, and disinherited, while the healthy-minded exude optimism. America has attracted the disinherited of the earth to our shores in order to make a better life for themselves and their posterity. It's one of the amazing gifts we have: to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps" by starting out in the mail room and ending up in the board room.  But this healthy optimism has also led to a practical denial of the dark side of life.  In religious terms it has meant that the bad stuff has got to go -- no downers, such as human depravity, and inability for self-salvation, or the need for divine rescue, and so forth... Feeling good has emerged as not only a national priority but a religious obsession for Christians and non-Christians alike...  I do not think that a biblical sense of human sin and the need for redemption from outside ourselves requires national pessimism, but a religion of human goodness will never sustain a people in times of disaster and threat. We may be able to explain the "evil empires" beyond our borders by their lack of our national values, but what happens when we experience our own homegrown varieties of terrorism, violence, and social disintegration?

     The religion of the healthy-minded is persuasive in our time... However, a religion of healthy-mindedness, which ignores the reality of the fall in all its aspects, renders itself finally nothing more than a form of therapy during times of plenty and irrelevant in times of tragedy.  What we need is not therapy, but news -- good news! ... The bottom line of this book is that the Gospel is for losers. And that, in fact, we are all losers if we measure ourselves by God's interpretation of reality rather than our own. The demand for glory, comfort, autonomy, health and wealth creates a vicious cycle of craving and disillusionment.  It even creates its own industry of therapists and exercise, style, and self-esteem gurus -- and churches -- to massage the egos wounded by this hedonism.  We become prisoners of our own felt needs, which were inculcated in us in the first place by the very marketplace that promises a "fix."  We become victims of our own shallow hopes...  Consider the fame of the great stars of stage and screen whose lives we secretly wanted to share, who are now in Hollywood nursing homes, often with only memories to comfort them. How quickly adoring fans lose their interest when the vigor of youth can no longer be sustained by surgeries and lotions and diets...

     Ironically, it is precisely where the world detects the most obvious example of weakness -- the cross -- that God triumphs over sin and death at the peak of their most deadly power. Here's the irony: Just where the highest and holiest victim of truly undeserved suffering cries, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" victory over sin and death is taking place. This is the foolishness and weakness that trump the wisdom and power of the ages."

     The discerning person will find it impossible to suggest that Horton has not hit a nail on the head.  American Christianity, out of a shame the apostle Paul did not have about his weaknesses, has worked to become acceptable to the surrounding culture by turning its back on biblical Christianity and embracing American triumphalism, as well as elements of its materialism and hedonism.  Many believers now seek their "best life now," while millions go without and the world perishes in their sin.  In fact, the Church has joined the world in its worldly pursuits, thinking we could actually do what Jesus says no person can do -- that is, serve two masters -- God and money (or the things it can buy).

     May we come to see, before it's too late, that the ultimate treasure is Christ Himself.  That He is enough.  Or as one dear saint put it: "He who possesses all things without God possesses nothing, but he who possesses God, possesses in Him all things."  We need to get it right!  Its not what we can get from God, it is simply having God that is the greatest and most fulfilling of all desirable treasures.

     May we all pause to consider what we believe, why we believe it, and where those beliefs come from -- because many don't come from the Bible.

In the bonds of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff

Holy Week -- the cross and the resurrection

Greetings All,

     I just returned from a three week ministry trip to India, thus explaining why you have not received one of these thoughts for a few weeks!
     It was wonderful, as usual, with many reasons to praise God. Yet it reminded me of one of the things that occurs whenever one ministers cross-culturally, or in a setting where pluralism, syncretism, or relativism are the dominate prevailing philosophy. Therefore I wanted to share this excerpt that a friend posted on his Facebook page recently. It is so true - here in the States and elsewhere.
















      
      I know we are coming up on Good Friday and Easter, and on Holy Week I usually post a thought addressing one of those two events.  But this year I would like to change that up a bit and post this thought from J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937).  He was Professor of New Testament at Princeton University Seminary, between 1906 and 1929.  And I share his thoughts this week because it is actually the events of Holy Week -- the cross and the resurrection -- that make what he says here all the more relevant.
     Christ's sinless life of obedience, sufferings, sin-atoning death, and resurrection -- when rightly understood in their biblical framework of redemption -- are what gave Jesus, the disciples, and the apostles, the basis for proclaiming that salvation is found in Him alone (John 3:1-8, Acts 2:38-41, Acts 4:12, etc.).  The early church humbly proclaimed this because they understood the ultimate purpose behind His substitutionary life of obedience and death for sin.  The modern church, if they do understand it, tends to be embarrassed by the exclusivity of such a claim.  Machen sheds a bit of light on that, even this piece was written about 100 years ago. Enjoy.

     "The early Christian missionaries demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion to Christ. Such exclusiveness ran directly counter to the prevailing syncretism of the Hellenistic age.  In that day, many saviours were offered by many religions to the attention of men, but the various pagan religions could live together in perfect harmony; for when a man became a devotee of one god, he did not have to give up the others.

     But Christianity would have nothing to do with these “courtly polygamies of the soul."  It demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion.  All other saviours, it insisted, must be deserted for the one Lord.  Salvation, in other words, was not merely through Christ, but it was only through Christ.  In that little word “only” lay all the offence. Without that word there would have been no persecutions; the cultured men of the day would probably have been willing to give Jesus a place, and an honorable place, among the saviours of mankind.

     Without its exclusiveness, the Christian message would have seemed perfectly inoffensive to the men of that day. So modern liberalism, placing Jesus alongside other benefactors of mankind, is perfectly inoffensive in the modern world.  All men speak well of it.  It is entirely inoffensive.  But it is also entirely futile. The offence of the Cross is taken away, but so is the glory and the power."

     He is so right.  His comments were accurate then, and they still hit home today.  No one really tends to mind if a person looks to Jesus as a moral guide, or spiritual instructor, or life-example.  Jesus as a man, prophet, or spiritual guide, tends to be respected in most all places by most all people. It's Jesus as Lord, and Jesus as Savior that stirs up antagonism, opposition and persecution. The cross humbles (shatters) the pride of humanity, while His Lordship assaults the autonomy of humanity.

     We like to do what we want without being told that certain choices and options are just plain wrong, and we want to believe our efforts at gaining God's favor can make us acceptable to Him -- the first being nullified by His Lordship, the second by His death of the cross (Gal. 2:21 / I Cor. 1:20-31).

     So, as you contemplate the events that took place on that first "Holy Week" so long ago, consider this: The cross proclaims I cannot be saved apart from what happened to Jesus on it. All my best efforts fall far short (Isaiah 64:6). And His resurrection proclaims He is the Lord to whom I owe all due obedience (Romans 1:4-5).  If I miss either of those, I have really missed two of the primary messages of Holy Week.

In the Service of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

Living a Life that Makes Sense

Greetings All!








This week's "thought" comes to you from Francis Chan, and is taken from the book, "Passion" (a collection of different articles focusing on living the Christian life in earnest).  This excerpt comes from the chapter by Chan entitled, "Living a Life that Makes Sense."  It speaks of how Chan, a well-known pastor here in the U.S., learned to be bold in speaking the truth, and consistent in living out his faith, from members of poor and persecuted churches in India, China and Thailand.  His words are very challenging yet inspiring. Enjoy.

     "I've heard stories -- you've probably heard them as well -- about Christians overseas. I've heard stories about the underground church in China, for example. Or stories of people in India who give their lives to Jesus and literally sacrifice everything... I've been hearing these stories all my life, and I finally reached a point where I decided that I had to see for myself.  I had to meet some of these Christians around the world. I had to know if they were for real.  So I spent a few months overseas with my family. I didn't do this because I was godly; I did it because I knew I wasn't, but I desperately wanted to be.  I looked at my life and saw that I was lacking boldness. I didn't have the guts to say everything God wanted me to say.  So I wanted to learn from Christians who were bold enough to follow Jesus no matter what it cost. 
     We traveled first to India and I had an opportunity to to speak to a huge group of people there. You have to understand -- these people were the persecuted church. Many had watched family members be beaten to death for their faith. And there I was, standing on stage in front of all these people.  I didn't know what to say to them.  I told them that what I really wanted to do was hear their stories -- and that's what I ended up doing.  I listened to a woman tell me about how she came to know the Lord. As soon as her village learned that she was a Christian, the whole village came to her hut. They brought decapitated lizards and told her that she and her husband needed to drink the blood and convert back to Hinduism. They gave her an ultimatum. She had to deny Jesus.  At this point in the story the woman looked at me and said: "I couldn't do it. I couldn't deny Jesus." So she grabbed her Bible and she and her husband just ran. The whole village had rejected them -- they would be killed -- so they ran into the jungle to hide. She was pregnant with their first child at the time. So as they hid in the jungle, her husband helped her deliver their first child. They were desperate for food for themselves and this newborn baby. But God provided. He got them through it. This woman told me, "We weren't going to deny our Lord. I just held on to my Bible. I would not let any of them take my Bible from me. That was the only thing we grabbed, and we ran."  I talk to a woman like that and I think, 'That's a life that's worthy of the Gospel. She understands that Jesus is all that matters. Her manner of life is worthy.' 

     I talked to another guy who showed me the scars on his head and his back. He told me that within a few months of becoming a believer, a huge group of people surrounded him and started beating him. He was thinking, "Okay God, this is it. This is the way it's going to end. That's ok. I'm not going to deny you."  He told me he was able to crawl away, but looked back and watched the crowd beat his friend to death. He endured all this, and he had only been a follower of Jesus for a few months!   I talked to so many people who went through these kinds of things, that I finally asked one of the leaders, "Don't you have any people in your churches who just call themselves Christians but don't really live it out?" He just looked at me and said, "That wouldn't make sense. [Over here] If you call yourself a Christian, you automatically lose everything. Why would someone volunteer for that if they weren't serious?" He told me his story -- that when he was eleven years old, he gave his life to Jesus.  He told me, "I still remember coming home and telling my dad. It was pouring down rain outside. I told my dad that I was a Christian, and he took everything I had and threw it outside into the mud. Then he looked at me and said, "Don't you ever call me Dad again."

     Think about it. This is an eleven year old kid!  What would you have done? He said, "I went over and picked my Bible out of the mud, along with a few other items, and I just wandered around looking for somewhere to go."  He eventually became a pastor, a husband, and a father. Twenty years later he even reconciled with his dad, who became a believer himself.  That is powerful stuff!  I hear these stories and I can't help but think that his manner of life is worthy of the Gospel...

     Then we went to China. We visited part of the underground church where they train leaders... They asked me why it was so strange to hear their stories. I had to explain that things are different where I come from. I told them that most Americans talk about the church, but they're referring to a building.  I explained we have a ton of these buildings, and you can choose which one you want to attend. Then I told them that people might attend one for a while, but when when they find another with better music, they'll switch. That's when these students started laughing hysterically.  I swear I wasn't trying to be funny. Some times you're saying something serious and everyone thinks you're joking.

     I kept going. I told them that if one church has better child care than another, then a lot of parents are likely to switch. The students started laughing harder.  I explained that sometimes people will switch if the service times are more convenient, or if they like one speaker better than another. The students were dying with laughter.  I felt like I was doing a comedy routine. But all I was trying to do was explain the American church to the underground church in China.  As they were laughing I realized they're right.  It doesn't make a lot of sense.  I look at their lives and everything makes perfect sense. I look at our lives and I wonder...  When we hear stories of Christians overseas, we think they're weird. But we're the strange ones. This is how Christianity works around the world, and we're over here in America getting caught up in our consumer-driven approach to church...  Where is the manner of life that lines up with the Gospel?"

     In my trips to India I have seen the same.  I've spoken with people who have really suffered for Jesus and the Gospel. I prayed with one woman who had all her possessions thrown into the street and trashed, and was then threatened to be burned alive -- along with her children -- if she told another person about Jesus. But she wasn't going to stop.  "It would be an honor to die for Jesus," she told me.  I felt like a midget among giants.  I also saw poor pastors who traveled hours to attend a conference, and others who bore in their bodies the scars they had received for being faithful to Jesus.  It all made sense.  It all made so much sense.

In the Bonds of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff

Causes of Persecution Against the Church and Our Response To It

Greetings All!

As part of the preparation for my Adult Sunday School class on, "Causes of Persecution Against the Church and Our Response To It,"  we have been examining (and are now watching a video series on) the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian pastor and theologian martyred (hanged) by the Nazi's in the closing month of WWII for being outspoken opponent of the gross evil and injustices of Hitler's regime.  In doing so I came across this excerpt from his wise and extremely insightful book, entitled, "Life Together."
     It's book dealing with the nature of Christian community and the interdependent fellowship we are to have with one another (not independent, but interdependent).  You will surely notice he is a deep thinker, having received his doctorate at only 21 years of age.  Yet he's a thinker who was deeply devoted to Christ and His Church.  With that being said, I will merely let his own words speak for him (with an explanation at the end for those who might struggle with a few of his comments)!  Enjoy.

     "Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone.  Because they cannot stand loneliness, they are driven to seek the company of other people.  There are Christians, too, who cannot endure being alone, who have had some bad experiences with themselves, who hope to gain some help by being in association with others. They are generally disappointed.  Then they blame the fellowship for what is really their own fault.  The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium.  The person who comes into the fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is really not seeking community at all, but only a distraction which will allow him to forget his loneliness for a brief time... 

     Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.  He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot escape yourself; for God has singled you out. If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ's call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called. "The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone... I will not be with you then, nor you with me" (Martin Luther).

     But the reverse is true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called; the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of a great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. "If I die, then I am alone in death; if I suffer they (the fellowship) suffer with me" (Martin Luther).

     We recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be alone, and only he that is alone can live within the fellowship. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship...  One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.  Along with the day of Christian family fellowship together, there goes the lonely day of the individual. This is as it should be. 

The day together will be unfruitful without the day alone, both for the fellowship and for the individual. The mark of solitude is silence, just as speech is the mark of community.

     Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community.  One does not exist without the other.  Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech...  The speech, the word which establishes and binds together the fellowship, is accompanied by silence. "There is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak" (Ecclesiastes 3:7). As there are definite hours in the Christian's day to speak, particularly the time of common worship and prayer, so the day also needs definite times of silence, silence under the Word and silence that comes out of the Word. These will be especially the times before and after hearing the Word...

     Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father's room. We are silent after hearing the Word, because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word belongs to God. We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word... not to show disregard for the Word, but rather to honor and receive it."

     For those who have not tried to oversee a group of believers, or seek their growth in the ways of Jesus, some of his words may seem confusing.  But for those who have, I'm sure his words resonated deeply in your soul as he spoke about the life-giving and spiritual-growth-enhancing need for God's people to engage in silence before God, and engage with His people.  The need to spend time alone before Him, and spend time together. The need to still ourselves before God and His Word in purposeful respite from our hectic busyness, on the one hand, and then join with the community of the faithful to speak words of life regarding what God has spoken to us, on the other hand.

     In it's simplest form this is nothing more than to follow the example left to us by Jesus.  If ever there was anyone who did not need others, it was Jesus.  Yet He gathered people around Himself and spoke truth into their lives constantly.  Not because He "(could) not stand loneliness," and was "driven to seek the company of other people," but  but because in His times of solitude, purposely going away to be alone with His Father in prayer, He had received from Him truth He needed to share with them.  Jesus life is the prime example of a life of radical balance -- fellowship, service, instruction and ministry empowered by times alone, in solitude, away from the crowds, off in the wilderness or on the mountaintop.  It was there in the alone times that He renewed His strength through a life of prayer that mingled silence with speaking.  We could all learn an important lesson from His example!  This is what Bonhoeffer advocates -- Along with the day of Christian family fellowship together, there goes the lonely day of the individual. This is as it should be."

And in relation to Bonhoeffer's last few remarks, I also have to encourage what he advocates -- silence before and after hearing the Word of God.  

Too many times I have seen life-changing truth that wasn't taken in because the soul was not stilled or prepared before the presence of God to be able to hear it. And the same is true in regard to after hearing the Word.  Often, people do not give it time to percolate deep down into the soul, because they rise from hearing the Word proclaimed only to engage in trivial chatter which immediately makes it drift from the memory.

     As a pastor I know my words are obviously not God's words -- unless all I do is say what His Word says.  Then they are His words.  And to hear a message from God, and then rise to disregard it with speech that has no relation to it, is to reveal a desire to shelter the soul from His truth.  We must prepare our soul to hear it, and we should then give it time (in silence) to seep down deep into our soul that we might be transformed by it.  Bonhoeffer is right:  "We are silent before hearing the Word..." and "We keep silent after hearing the Word... not to show disregard for the Word, but rather to honor and receive it."

Just some wise food for thought!  Pastor Jeff

Persecution for the Faith

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' has to do with persecution for the faith. It has to do with our brothers and sisters all over the world who are suffering for their faithfulness in following Jesus. As you know, in many parts of the world loving Jesus puts your life (and the lives of your family) at risk.
     Just recently Antonio Audo, Syrian priest and bishop of Aleppo Syria said of the current situation there: "Many churches stand empty, targets for bombardment and desecration... Now our faith is under mortal threat, in danger of being driven to extinction (in Syria) the same pattern we have seen in neighboring Iraq." Muslim militants often use the political unrest as a cover to eradicate Christians and destroy churches.

     This particular thought has to do with how we as Western Christians should respond to all that. It is by Steve Lundquist, vice-president for domestic ministry with The Voice of the Martyrs, and was printed in this month's (June 2014) Decision Magazine. I found it insightful and challenging, and for that reason offer it to you.

     "Steve Lundquist... has a challenge for Western Christians who are concerned about their brothers and sisters who are suffering for Christ.
     First, Lundquist says, realize that persecuted believers do not want your sympathy: "You do these people an incredible disservice to portray them as 'these poor, suffering people' who need you -- you blessed Westerners -- to come and give them stuff. This is not a 'worthy cause' to engage in. This is our family.

     Second, understand that the best response is not simply to rush in and try to 'make it better.' Rather, help them to be obedient to Christ's commands, including that of proclaiming the Gospel. Lundquist explains: 'At The Voice of the Martyrs, we ask, 'What do you need to become more successful in evangelism?' We give the people the resources to do things we know will increase the chances that they will be persecuted. And we also provide assistance when that persecution happens.' 

     Third, count the cost of being a true follower of Jesus. "I could effectively minimize Christian persecution all over the world,' Lundquist says. 'All I have to do is convince every Christian around the world to follow the example of the typical American believer. You know, compartmentalize your life: Go to church on Sunday, but don't talk about Jesus Monday through Saturday.'

     'We have so watered it down. We say: 'And now, with every head bowed and every eye closed, slip your hand up.' You know, don't take a risk. And then we wonder why, the first time there is opposition, people are not standing.

     'Our persecuted brothers and sisters have something that we so desperately need. If we take their example, our life is not going to get easier. But the message we need to be trumpeting is this: Count the cost. Understand the cross and figure out what it's worth to you, and then decide whether you're in or not.'"

     I've been preaching a series of messages from the book of Revelation and am currently focusing on the Seven Churches (in chapters 2-3). Therefore persecution has been a recurring theme (should you desire to listen to any of them, click on the following link: http://www.christcommunitybiblechurch.org/ and go to the 'sermons' page).

     This excerpt by Steve Lundquist presents us with the same question. Do we primarily seek our comfort, and thus invisibility, or do we seek to be obedient disciples, realizing it will inevitably increase the world's displeasure with us and possibly put us in the line of fire?

     Is it time to ask ourselves afresh: "Would I be willing to lose all for Jesus? Is my love for Him superior to my love for everything and everyone else?" And if so, will you commit (or re-commit) to following Him and obeying Him come what may? Will you pray for the grace to do so?

Yours in the Bonds of Christian Service and Obedience, Pastor Jeff