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You Know Me

By Pastor Dwight on May 21, 2009 6:44 PM Comments: 0 (Read, or add your own)

"I stand amazed in the presence, of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean. How marvelous, how wonderful, and my song shall ever be, How marvelous, How wonderful, is my saviors love for me."

This week we have been reading Psalm 139. This is a Psalm that requires some pondering. Is he saying he likes to be in God's presence, and always having God in his presence? Or is he wishing he could get away from God for a little while? Do we like to stand in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene? Do we like to wake up in the morning with the realization that we are still in the presence of God?

I decided the Psalmist likes to be always in the presence of God. If he could go even to heaven or Sheol; if he could go as far east as he can imagine (the wings of the dawn) or as far west as the sea stretches out from Israel, he will find God ready to guide, and willing to hold him fast. He likes that. And I do too. Except for the little Jonah part of me, that sometimes wants to flee to the place where God might not be. But that I find does not work so well.

"You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar."

So I will stand with the Psalm writer, and the hymn writer.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Trust in the Lord

By Pastor Dwight on May 15, 2009 2:35 PM Comments: 0 (Read, or add your own)

This week we have been reading Proverbs 3:1-6 together. It calls us to "trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

This bit of wisdom is all about the heart. In the ancient world, the "heart" was seen as the seat of a person's will. The heart was where life decisions were made, where one set the course of one's life. In most of us, the will is very strong. We are strong willed chldren. We seem to know what we want in life and how to get it.

There is a homeless young man who comes by the church from time to time to see me. I have known him now for seven years and his life has not changed one bit in that time. He is a very determined young man and he will not change his will, so his situation does not improve. It is very hard to influence or change a person's will.

This passage gives us directions in how to change our strong wills, so that we can trust the Lord and follow His ways. It says the will is changed by keeping God's commands in the heart.That is, we allow the commands of God and our own wills to co-exist. Then we are to bind love and faithfulness around our necks, so that they lie close to the heart. (The picture here is that of a necklace.) This is the central promise of the marriage vow we use in our church, to be loving and faithful. So if love and faithfulness are worn around the neck, that means you make a commitment, you take a vow to work on doing God's will.

Next, these qualities are to be written on the tablet of your heart. The image that comes to mind is Bart Simpson filling the blackboard each day after school with another thousand promises of "I will not..." There is power in repetition, and our words do matter in shaping our wills.

Finally we are to trust in the Lord with all your heart, that is, to lean on the Lord. The TNIV says "in all your ways SUBMIT to him." This is where change takes place. When we are able to submit our ways to God, then He will make our paths straight.

How willing are we to use this process of trust in our lives?

Stories that tell a STORY!

By Pastor Brian on April 25, 2009 7:09 PM Comments: 0 (Read, or add your own)

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him." - Romans 8:28

Most likely at some point you have heard this verse spoken as an encouraging word, maybe to a friend walking through a difficult time or in a sermon about the nature of God's work in our world. It's a great "God is on your side" kind of verse. Sometimes I feel this verse gets overused or applied in overly simplistic ways. What does it mean that God works for the "good" of those who love him? How do we understand what Paul means by good?

As a pastor in this church over the past few months I have had interesting encounters with people and their "stories." I think we still feel the loss of Aaron Barg in our lives. The memories of his memorial service and the time spent with his family during that period are still extremely fresh in my mind. We all remember a sanctuary packed full of people touched in some way by this beautiful young man. We heard the story of Aaron's life but in the process we were connected with a much bigger story, God's story. Two storylines clearly entangled touching us all in powerful ways.

And then I think about the conversation I had Thursday night listening to Dwight Samuelson's story. Here was a situation where Dwight wasn't expected to live, overcame amazing odds, and doctors called what happened a miracle. One thing I heard last night was the phrase that God used Dwight through this experience. God worked through Dwight's hurting body, providing amazing healing which became a testament to God's power and answer to prayer. So there I was last night laying in bed thinking about these different stories. On the one hand you have a young man who lived a life of physical struggle where the outcome was not what we desired and on the other a story of healing in the face of amazing odds.

Can we in light of this verse which declares God's work as "good" in the lives of those who love him still hold these two stories together? As difficult as it is sometimes I believe the answer is yes. Leon Morris says that "good"in this passage should be understood as "true good" or "final good." I believe he is suggesting that we must see "good" in a much deeper way or from a wider perspective then its current use in contemporary culture. I want to say at this point that by talking about good, especially in Aaron's context I don't mean to minimize the pain of his absence, but rather to begin to define "good" in terms of a larger activity. It was through the stories of these men (Aaron and Dwight) that a much bigger story was told. It was through these men that the beauty, power, love, and design of God was and is made known. It is this larger story, broader purpose, and eternal understanding that unifies the stories of these men into the fabric of God's story.

Jesus and Da Vinci: Two crafty guys!

By Pastor Brian on April 14, 2009 12:52 AM Comments: 2 (Read, or add your own)

No this isn't a new Dan Brown book about Leonardo da Vinci and some secret insight into the life of Christ that was been hidden and banished by the Catholic Church and found by one of the greatest mind in the 15^thcentury.

I was watching a new show on the Discovery Channel call "Doing Da Vinci". The whole premise behind the show is a team of engineers, expert metal workers, and carpenters working together to build ideas and plans that Da Vinci had 500 years ago but were never built. It is a fascinating show. The first idea of Da Vinci they constructed was a tank designed to protect the soldiers insight while blasting cannons in a 360 degrees. The result of their work was pretty impressive.

So what does this have to do with Ephesians 2:1-10 you might ask? This passage is probably pretty familiar to most. In verse eight we see a frequently quoted passage about the nature of our forgiveness and salvation. It is a gift given to us through grace apart from anything we can do to earn it. This idea forms one of the fundamental pillars of the evangelical faith.

But as I read it through this time, this wasn't what caught my eye. Rather I was found myself dwelling on the last verse. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I wonder if sometimes in our cultural context we focus so much on what we can do to get ahead, to right our own ship, to made advancement in our careers, to be the master of our own domain that I think it is incredibly easy to forget that we are a workmanship of someone else. We were created in Christ Jesus for a purpose. The plans of our life, they were put into motion long before we could actualize them. So as the ideas of a genius lay dormant for 500 years become reality in the 21 century so too are we in the eyes of our maker. The free gift of grace allows us to reconnect with our craftsman's. We have been moved from the broken pile (with little hope of fixing) to the work-in-progress pile. The joy of our journey, no matter where we are in life is to find out what those good works are and to participate in the plans that were drawn for you and me.

What is the craftsman's doing in your life?

What have you discovered about the plans prepared for you in advance?

How can the body of Christ encourage you in this journey?

Week of April 12: We are reading Ephesians 2:1-10

By Owen Youngman on April 13, 2009 8:17 PM Comments: 0 (Read, or add your own)

¹As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ²in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. ⁴But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.⁶And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

New International Version (NIV)

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Recently in Eastertide Category

You Know Me

Trust in the Lord

Stories that tell a STORY!

Jesus and Da Vinci: Two crafty guys!

Week of April 12: We are reading Ephesians 2:1-10

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