Trust
08/26/10 05:23 PM Filed in: From the Pastor
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5 & 6
Lord,
Trusting You isn’t all that easy.
I mean, You see things
from a totally different perspective.
I worry about the immediate
while You’re shaping the eternal.
Daily demands dominate my thinking
while You’re busy with the whole scope of my life.
For me, my life is all consuming.
It’s important to You, too,
but as a part of a whole
not just an individual entity.
I want to trust You,
I want to believe You know what’s best,
that Your will for me is designed
to release my highest potential.
I do believe, Lord, Help me to believe more.
History is my best hope.
Across the scope of a lifetime
I can see the wisdom of your Will.
Even in my short life
the evidence of Your direction
gives me a sense of destiny.
I trust You, Lord, I really do!
Amen.
Proverbs 3:5 & 6
Lord,
Trusting You isn’t all that easy.
I mean, You see things
from a totally different perspective.
I worry about the immediate
while You’re shaping the eternal.
Daily demands dominate my thinking
while You’re busy with the whole scope of my life.
For me, my life is all consuming.
It’s important to You, too,
but as a part of a whole
not just an individual entity.
I want to trust You,
I want to believe You know what’s best,
that Your will for me is designed
to release my highest potential.
I do believe, Lord, Help me to believe more.
History is my best hope.
Across the scope of a lifetime
I can see the wisdom of your Will.
Even in my short life
the evidence of Your direction
gives me a sense of destiny.
I trust You, Lord, I really do!
Amen.
Genuine Church
08/19/10 12:13 PM Filed in: From the Pastor
“Lord,
All these messages about genuineness are beginning to scare me. Genuine faith and the practical insights of Pastor James clearly reveals to me that real faith impacts my attitudes and actions in ways I’d sometimes like to let run wild with little control and restraint. Genuine love as revealed by Simon Peter is a journey that demands that I pay attention to matters of morality and how I treat people. I’m well acquainted with the message of grace and I live each day so grateful your compassion and forgiveness are eternal gifts. But genuine love reminds me that you call me to a type of lifestyle that honors righteousness and demands my character is transformed by truth. Genuine works, as made clear by the Apostle Paul, are the ways in which I walk in the purposes that you prepared for me in eternity past. Works become my expression of gratitude as I live out my days on this earth and they provide a connection from this life into eternal life,
Now Lord, you have me studying and preaching on “A Genuine Church.” I look at your specific words to congregations and pastors in the past and I hear your eternal voice specifically to our church family and me. Genuineness I assume means a degree of transparency and honesty, with myself and with others. So here goes. I easily get distracted and even sometimes discouraged by the day-to-day pressures of church life. Folks I love get frustrated and out of sorts at times and they behave in the oddest of ways. Financial matters weigh heavily as we navigate blending the worlds of vision and blessing with the harsh realities of budgets and patience. And then there’s the daily grind that everyone seems to be going through that finds expression in so many ways. Has it always been like this, Lord? Is there really anything different about the times in which we live? I want to believe so but in my heart I know better. And even if it is different, your call to our congregation today is the same as it’s been to every church in every century. Simply put, genuine faith, love and works will find expression in very practical and recognizable ways.
Lord, may Christ’s Chapel be a genuine church that you look at with pleasure. Our study during the next few weeks will hopefully reveal your heart to us. It will also probably revel our hearts as well. I trust you with the journey. Amen.”
All these messages about genuineness are beginning to scare me. Genuine faith and the practical insights of Pastor James clearly reveals to me that real faith impacts my attitudes and actions in ways I’d sometimes like to let run wild with little control and restraint. Genuine love as revealed by Simon Peter is a journey that demands that I pay attention to matters of morality and how I treat people. I’m well acquainted with the message of grace and I live each day so grateful your compassion and forgiveness are eternal gifts. But genuine love reminds me that you call me to a type of lifestyle that honors righteousness and demands my character is transformed by truth. Genuine works, as made clear by the Apostle Paul, are the ways in which I walk in the purposes that you prepared for me in eternity past. Works become my expression of gratitude as I live out my days on this earth and they provide a connection from this life into eternal life,
Now Lord, you have me studying and preaching on “A Genuine Church.” I look at your specific words to congregations and pastors in the past and I hear your eternal voice specifically to our church family and me. Genuineness I assume means a degree of transparency and honesty, with myself and with others. So here goes. I easily get distracted and even sometimes discouraged by the day-to-day pressures of church life. Folks I love get frustrated and out of sorts at times and they behave in the oddest of ways. Financial matters weigh heavily as we navigate blending the worlds of vision and blessing with the harsh realities of budgets and patience. And then there’s the daily grind that everyone seems to be going through that finds expression in so many ways. Has it always been like this, Lord? Is there really anything different about the times in which we live? I want to believe so but in my heart I know better. And even if it is different, your call to our congregation today is the same as it’s been to every church in every century. Simply put, genuine faith, love and works will find expression in very practical and recognizable ways.
Lord, may Christ’s Chapel be a genuine church that you look at with pleasure. Our study during the next few weeks will hopefully reveal your heart to us. It will also probably revel our hearts as well. I trust you with the journey. Amen.”
The Cross
08/13/10 01:16 PM Filed in: From the Pastor
Lord,
Your cross in not simply ugly, it’s beautiful! Not with the pseudo-prettiness of stained glass and neon, but beautiful, with the vibrance of life as seen through the reflected light of the empty tomb! Yes, it was not a disaster, it was a divine provision. You were not a helpless captive, but a willing sacrifice. You became obedient to death, to the death of the cross. You refused to be taunted into coming down because dying was the only way to destroy death, because coming back from the dead was the ultimate triumph. Your cross is paradoxical: both an end and a beginning, both a tragedy and a triumph, both death and life. Thank you, Lord, for using the ugly cross to forever disarm death. Thank you for coming out of the tomb and bringing all of us new and endless life.
Amen
Your cross in not simply ugly, it’s beautiful! Not with the pseudo-prettiness of stained glass and neon, but beautiful, with the vibrance of life as seen through the reflected light of the empty tomb! Yes, it was not a disaster, it was a divine provision. You were not a helpless captive, but a willing sacrifice. You became obedient to death, to the death of the cross. You refused to be taunted into coming down because dying was the only way to destroy death, because coming back from the dead was the ultimate triumph. Your cross is paradoxical: both an end and a beginning, both a tragedy and a triumph, both death and life. Thank you, Lord, for using the ugly cross to forever disarm death. Thank you for coming out of the tomb and bringing all of us new and endless life.
Amen
Looking for Hands to Use
08/07/10 07:58 AM Filed in: From the Pastor
Imagine, if you can, an eighty year old man, a dark weatherbeaten sheepherder, standing barefooted by a burning bush in the middle of the desert, hiding his face in his hands like a modest maiden. That’s Moses in Exodus, chapter three. He’s barefooted because the voice out of the midst of the bush told him he was on holy ground, and bare feet were in order. Hiding his face was his own idea, and a good one, for what man among us dares to look the Almighty in the eye.
In moments like that, when it’s just you and God and nobody else, every selfish act, every disobedience, every failure returns with shameful clarity. And yet, God did not chasten Moses, did not chide him. Instead He called him, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)
Moses responded, “…Who am I…?” (Exodus 3:11) Which was his way of saying, “Don’t you remember who I am? I’m a wanted man, a murderer. Forty years ago I tried and I failed. I’m flattered God, but you’ve got the wrong man. I’m not qualified.”
And Moses was right – as far as he went – but he missed the point. God’s call was not so much the confirmation of Moses gifts but a testimony of His faithfulness. His call is always a sovereign act, independent of our personal goodness. As Gene Bartlett puts it, “…’the audacity of preaching,’ is found in the awareness that the person who preaches is, himself part of the guilt and need to which he speaks.”
Maybe Alexander Irvine said it best in his novel “My Lady of the Chimney corner.” The “lady” goes to comfort a neighbor whose son had died and she says, “...God isn’t a printed book to be carried around by a man in fine clothes, not a cross dangling at the watch chain of a priest God takes a hand whenever He can find it, and just does what he likes with it. Sometimes He takes a bishop’s hand and lays it on a child’s head in benediction, and then He takes the hand of a doctor to relieve pain, the hand of a mother to guide a child, and sometimes He takes the hand of a poor servant like me to give comfort to a neighbor. But they’re all hands touched by His Spirit, and His Spirit is everywhere looking for hands to use.”
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, “Christ has no hands but ours.”
In moments like that, when it’s just you and God and nobody else, every selfish act, every disobedience, every failure returns with shameful clarity. And yet, God did not chasten Moses, did not chide him. Instead He called him, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)
Moses responded, “…Who am I…?” (Exodus 3:11) Which was his way of saying, “Don’t you remember who I am? I’m a wanted man, a murderer. Forty years ago I tried and I failed. I’m flattered God, but you’ve got the wrong man. I’m not qualified.”
And Moses was right – as far as he went – but he missed the point. God’s call was not so much the confirmation of Moses gifts but a testimony of His faithfulness. His call is always a sovereign act, independent of our personal goodness. As Gene Bartlett puts it, “…’the audacity of preaching,’ is found in the awareness that the person who preaches is, himself part of the guilt and need to which he speaks.”
Maybe Alexander Irvine said it best in his novel “My Lady of the Chimney corner.” The “lady” goes to comfort a neighbor whose son had died and she says, “...God isn’t a printed book to be carried around by a man in fine clothes, not a cross dangling at the watch chain of a priest God takes a hand whenever He can find it, and just does what he likes with it. Sometimes He takes a bishop’s hand and lays it on a child’s head in benediction, and then He takes the hand of a doctor to relieve pain, the hand of a mother to guide a child, and sometimes He takes the hand of a poor servant like me to give comfort to a neighbor. But they’re all hands touched by His Spirit, and His Spirit is everywhere looking for hands to use.”
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, “Christ has no hands but ours.”