Who Will Feed This Child?

Pledge

Why?

Recently, I was asked the “Why” question. I was about to do something and a friend told me, “Before you do this you have to answer the “Why” question. Why are you doing this?

In the process of making some of the most important decisions of our lives, we seldom answer that question. We may on some shallow level, but that isn’t enough. Our “Why” answer should be an emotional response. It should be the answer to the question that keeps us up at night from time to time. It may make us cry. For some of us, answering that question is like turning on a light in a dark room. Things begin to come together into a clearer picture. We recognize true purpose and meaning. 

This brings us to the question itself, Why are you a Christian? 

Some of us will speak of finding purpose and meaning in the world. While that could be a good answer, there are many people who seek and, seemingly find, purpose through other things and religions. Others will speak in terms of escaping the wrath of God and the coming judgment. That too would be a sufficient answer, but it is an answer that, ultimately, lies in the future and does little to address the here and now of a person’s faith and actions. Some of us would mention that it arises from the way we were raised. Our parents brought or sent us to church and it has become a part of our ritual. It is something we do out of habit, similar to taking the shoe and sock completely off of one foot before we move on to the other, or taking both shoes off before we take both socks off. Why are we a Christian? Why do we go to church? 

Ultimately, the answer lies totally outside of our own person. We are a Christian because God loved us and called us to be his disciples. Yes, that is my Calvinism sneaking in here. When God summons us to be his disciples, that call is irresistible. The Holy Spirit quickens us. In other words, the Spirit of Christ raises us from spiritual death and decay, allowing us to respond to the call of God upon our lives. That means we do nothing! We have no power. We are a child of the King rather than an orphan on the street. The King chooses the children he will adopt into his house. They don’t choose him.

I know, you may be asking where the emotional response comes from. The Good News is that God has indeed chosen us. He has raised us up from the depths of misery and lostness to participate at his heavenly banquet. We fail to recognize how blessed we are until the moment when we recognize our original state of separateness. 

Why are we a Christian? Because God loved us first in order that we might love Him. 

Pastor Craig

We Hope

The First Sunday of Advent is traditionally called the Sunday of Hope. We light the Hope candle on our Advent Wreath and we hope for the return of Christ to reign in His world.


This hope is more than a wish. This hope is as needed as life and breath at this time. Hebrews says that “faith is the evidence of the unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). I think we could say the same for hope.


This year has brought us the loss of loved ones. Some who are near and dear to us will not be at our Christmas table this year. We miss them. There is a hole in our lives and we HOPE in the resurrection, that time when we hope for our own resurrection and rely on the promises of Christ Jesus that all those who belong to him will see his faith and gather around his throne to rejoice in his goodness.


This year has brought us increased racial tensions. An event happens between people of different races and others immediately proclaim that the event is the product of one race hating the other, or, maybe, both races hating the other. The consequences ripple throughout society and the world and other lives and families suffer as well. Riots, lootings, and arson destroy neighborhoods that were already on the brink of poverty and collapse. Opportunists use the tension to cause chaos and sow discord. They attempt to destroy our hope that love and peace can reign between races, cultures, political and socio-economic differences.


We need the Prince of Peace who brings Hope in our lives now more than ever. Today we light the Candle of Hope, not just because it is the First Sunday of Advent, but because we need our own act of defiance. We light a candle in the blackness of human sin and suffering and we proclaim the coming of the one who brought salvation to humankind and who will bring the fruits of the Spirit in our midst and gather us around his throne, regardless of color or any other divider we experience in this world.


We Hope.

Pastor Craig

Glorious Journey

What makes us the way we are? When we see bruised and broken adults, are they the product of their own poor choices? Or are they the victims of the poor choices that surrounded them in their youth? We say that there is a time when we must stand accountable for our own actions. Our society holds this to be true. When a thirty year old commits a crime, no one arrests the parents.

What about when a young person turns out to be an outstanding adult? Much of the time we give credit to the parents, telling them what a good job they did raising this particular child. But what about that young person who becomes caring, compassionate, trustworthy, loyal, reliable, wise, thrifty, gentle, loving, and joyful almost in spite of the influences that surrounded them rather than because of them.

I must say, I simply don’t know. I do know that when God puts his hand on a young man or woman they will indeed do something grand. That is the power of the hand of God.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Co 5:17

I have heard it put best this way. When Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, he didn’t use new and fresh water. The water pots placed there by the door were pots for purification. In other words, the water may very well have been some of the same water the celebrants at the wedding had used to wash their feet as they came in off the dirty roads. Jesus’ command to fill the pots does not indicate the pots were empty. They only needed to be “topped off.”

When Jesus told the servants to take this water and serve it to the guests, you can guess the hesitancy of the servants might have had.

You want us to take dirty foot-washing water and serve it to the wedding party!

The amazing thing is that Jesus didn’t simply turn water into wine. No, he took dirty, polluted water, water unfit to drink, made it clean, and then turned it into wine. That is the miracle of God’s work in you. Jesus Christ takes you as you are, with all your sins, mistakes, flaws, and faults, and cleanses you in a manner worthy to be presented to the Master of the Feast. It doesn’t matter whose choices led you down that awful path you have travelled.

Next He turns you over to the Holy Spirit who takes you and forms you into something that brings joy to that same Master who proclaims you the very best that could be!

Don’t dwell on the place from which you came, rather, glory in the journey you have begun!

Pastor Craig

Sanctification

When you undergo trials, how do you look at the experience? If you think of the trial in a spiritual context, do you wonder if you have done something for which you are being punished? Do you wonder if the Holy Spirit is in the process of strengthening your faith? Do you think God must be busy dealing with someone who has a greater need?

What if God is simply trying to help you understand? What if it has nothing to do with you? What if God is simply answering our prayer that we might learn how to be more compassionate?

Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings.

(1 Peter 4:13)

Hebrews 4:15 tell us  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.
That is a tremendous comfort. It is not always a moral thing. Sometimes our Lord is simply teaching us something about compassion. He might be preparing us for an opportunity to minister to someone else.

He has allowed us to follow a difficult journey so that we can understand someone else’s journey later in life. I know that seems, at times, a harsh sentence, us going through difficulties so we can understand someone else’s difficulties. I have learned to look at it as a training ground. Our life is like that. Things do not happen in a vacuum. Whatever happens in our life, god intends for us to use it for his glory. Knowing this, look at life differently, your Lord giving you all the tools you need, not just for your own life journey but to share in the journeys of others as well.

Pastor Craig

From October 31, 2014

Today is one of my favorite days of the year! Yes, for the vast majority of the country it is simply Halloween, a night to dress up, go to parties, and get candy. I gave up the costumes some time ago, and I buy my own candy now. However, as a pastor I love the day for very different reasons than I did as an elementary school age boy.

Today is the day when Martin Luther decided he had had enough and wanted to talk to someone about what was going on within his church, the Roman Catholic Church. He loved it and wanted to preserve it. He wanted it to be true to its calling. He wanted it to be faithful to the Gospel.
Dr. Luther asked for a debate. He wrote out 95 points of concern he had with his church and where he thought it had departed from the Gospel. It was 492 years ago that he took his challenge and posted it on the door of the church in Wittenberg. It was a bold move because he was declaring that he was out of step with the entire church. He was not declaring his intention to break away from the church, but he was being very clear as to what he thought he needed to do and to teach as a pastor/priest in his community.

So, began one of the central acts of the Reformation. Dr. Luther was not the first. In fact, his inspiration came from the letters of John Huss who had been burned as a heretic 115 years before Luther became so bold to nail his own concerns to the church door. For his efforts, he was eventually branded as a heretic himself, and, probably, would have met the same fate as Huss if had not developed a very powerful ally in Frederick III, Elector of Saxony. Fredrick was both an avid collector of relics and a supporter of modern scholarship. He was educated at an Augustinian monastery and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He collected religious relics—19,013 of them, in fact, by the year 1520—with the wish that Wittenberg, as a depository of sacred items, would become the Rome of Germany. He had such rarities (it was claimed) as four hairs from the Virgin Mary, a strand of Jesus’ beard, and a piece of the bread eaten at the Last Supper.

The pious Frederick also founded the University of Wittenberg. After inviting Luther to teach there, he found himself having to protect the troublesome professor of Bible.

When in 1518 Luther was summoned to Rome for a hearing, Frederick intervened and arranged for the meeting to take place on safer German soil. And after the Diet of Worms placed the reformer under an imperial ban, Frederick found him a hiding place at his castle, the Wartburg.

Today we remember the Reformation and continue its tradition of the primacy of Scripture over tradition. We commend ourselves to the task of study, prayer, and obedience to the Holy Spirit over the traditions of councils and denominations. Do something radical today – read your Bible!

Pastor Craig 

What Does God Want?

What does God want for your life? We all say we want God’s will? Most of us struggle to find it. However, we usually limit it to major decisions in life. Should I take this job or that job? Which college should I attend? Who will be my perfect mate? Some of us agonize over what we think God may want us to do; others assume that God wants whatever is in our best interests, whatever will make us happy, so that is how we decide.

There are a handful of things we can know for certain that God wills for our lives.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification.

(1 Thessalonians 4:1)

Many of us think Sanctification is something that is automatic, coming with salvation instantaneously. Not so, that is Justification. The process of Sanctification begins with our salvation, but it is never completed in this life.

The strict definition of Sanctification is “to set apart something for the use for which it was intended.” The “set apartness” takes place at the moment of salvation. The living out of that “set apartness” takes a lifetime. It involves a constant search for what God wants us to do with our lives. It involves active engagement in ministry. It involves intentional learning and study of the Scriptures that we might discern what God expects from us.

Sanctification is not a question of whether God is willing to bring about this work in me. The question is, “Am I willing to bow my will to His? Am I willing to put myself under his complete guidance, saying ‘More of Thee and less of me?’” Am I willing to say I will give up that which I dearly wish was God’s will for that which I see revealed in His word to be true? Am I willing to let God do in and through me everything He can for the furtherance of His kingdom and the glorification of His name?

It is time for the body of Christ to become more Christ-like. We often pray that the Spirit of Christ would fill us. Now, we must add to our prayers the actions which are indeed Christ-like.

Know, as you begin, that the road is too difficult for you. That is why Jesus provided the Comforter from the very first days of the Church. The path is steep and the way is hard. Each of us battles against our own nature, a way that seems right, but which the Holy Spirit tells will lead to our own spiritual downfall.

We have spent enough time trying to remake God in our image, with our likes and dislikes. It is time for us to be remade in His.

Pastor Craig