A New Name

A New Name

In the stage play Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote meets a prostitute named Aldonza and says to her, “You will be my lady.” She is shocked. “Yes, you are my lady and I give you a new name – Dulcinea.” She laughs in his face. But Don Quixote affirms her to be the person he perceives and believes her to be.

As the play continues, the stage is empty. It is night. Offstage a woman screams. It is Aldonza, being raped in the hay. She appears on stage, disheveled, hysterical, terror flooding her eyes. Quixote speaks, “My lady!” She shouts back, “Don’t call me your lady. I was born in a ditch by a mother who left me there naked and cold and too hungry to cry.” Don Quixote insists, “My lady.” She shouts back, “Don’t call me your lady. I am only a strumpet to use and throw away. I am only Aldonza.” She whirls and runs off into the night as Don Quixote calls after her, “But you are my lady. You are Dulcinea.”

After a while the curtain drops and rises to the scene where Don Quixote is dying. Suddenly to his side comes a woman who appears to be a Spanish queen, dressed in lovely and lavish lace. She kneels and prays. Don Quixote opens his eyes and feebly asks, “Who are you?” She rises and stands tall. She is beautiful. She speaks softly: “Don’t you know who I am? I am your lady. I am Dulcinea.”

Imagine that. Think of the titles you could/should bear. Liar, Gossip, Adulterer, Greedy, Glutton. Those are some of the less offensive ones too!

Jesus Christ comes into our world and turns everything upside down. He strips away that which causes us shame, humiliation, and embarrassment and gives to us noble birth. He takes away our filthy rags and dresses us like royalty!

2 Cor 5:17-18

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

All things! Everything has become new!

Let us listen to what God says about us. Let us hear who God says we are. Let us think as much of ourselves as God thinks of us!

Pastor Craig

Now, Wait Just a Minute!

Have you prayed today? Hopefully, even in the midst of our busy day, each of us took time to pray. Oh, you’ve forgotten? Don’t worry. I‘ve done the same thing more times than I would care to admit! But, how can we forget to pray? It seems it shouldn’t be possible for a Christian to forget to begin each day with the One to whom the day should be dedicated. It seems just as impossible that, having arrived at the end of the day, we would forget to thank the One who saw us through that day – thank Him for safety, for provision, for guidance, for health, for family, for. . . well, everything!

We don’t forget to breathe! You say, That’s part of our autonomic nervous system. If high school biology is a part of your too distant past think involuntary nervous system. We don’t have to think to digest our food. We can only control our breathing within certain parameters. Perspiration, heart rate, salivation – all of these are part of that same nervous system.

Why isn’t there one for praying? Why do we have to remind ourselves to pray? Make promises with dire consequences, etc? Some people seem to be able to pray about anything, at anytime, and anywhere. Others of us seem to operate under the premise that the Almighty should only be bothered under the most dire of circumstances. We believe that God isn’t really interested in us finding a parking place in the front row at Wal-mart. We can so easily forget to thank Him for the sunshine after the rain, or the rain after a long period of doing without it.

The other issue that seems to dominate our prayer life, when we do actually have it, is the inability to keep our mouths shut! When we do pray, we come with a long list of wants. We want God to heal, to help, to guide, to give, to stop something, to start something else, to protect, to keep, to forgive, to correct, to resurrect, to – I think you get the picture. Don’t get me wrong. I am a FIRM  believer that God wants us to ask for the things that are on our mind. He wants to hear from us, even if it is about that parking place at Wal-mart.

However, have you ever considered that God may have something to say to you as well. We pour out our torrent of “wants” and “gimmes” and then run on our merry way waiting for the angels to deliver our heavenly shopping list. What if God literally pulled us back, sat us down, and said, Wait a minute here! We need to spend some time together. I have some things I need to make sure you know, and I need to have your undivided attention so I know you heard them! By the way, I love you.

Remember how you felt taken advantage of as a parent when children used you as a taxi service or an ATM machine and then ran off to have their fun. Maybe, there are times our actions make God feel exactly the same way.                                   

Pastor Craig

Darkness

Unknown to most of you, there is a small group studying The Dark Side.


Before you think of Star Wars or bring up images of occult practices, understand that each of us has a Dark Side.

St. John of the Cross (16^th Century) wrote a poem that, later, he penned into a booklet entitled The Dark Night of the Soul. Most of you have been there at one time or another. It is that period in one's life where loneliness resides, where none other walks beside us, where, at times, it seems as though God Himself has left us for another path in another place. These are the times and the places we do not want to talk about. We want others to think we are on top of the world, that all is well within the scope of our life. Yet, we know it hasn’t always been true. We have wandered the lonely paths ourselves from time to time. Sometimes it seems more like a lifelong journey than one element of life’s journey.


The Dark Night is where we finally meet the Savior. It is the place where the grace of God, over time, becomes more real than ever before. It is not always a bad place. Most pastors travel it far more often than they will ever tell their congregations. Leadership lends itself to lonely journeys. It is a place of longing but not always a place of pain.

This small group is sharing a book entitled Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership. Its pages hold up those qualities that make us the leader that we are. Then they show how those very strengths sow the seeds of something more dangerous, how confidence can be so easily transformed into PRIDE (Yes, the capitalization is intentional), how love for something or someone can become a claim of ownership and a defense of what we would consider our rights, how passion for something is a single step away from the hatred of all that is not that thing for which we are passionate, and how the desire to please and make others happy becomes an all consuming, overpowering drive for the approval of others.

It is a difficult thing to look at ourselves in this way. Most of us turn away and desire to think of “happier” and “healthier” things. However, even as Socrates said, The unexamined life is not worth living, I would challenge you by saying The unexamined life is a life lived dangerously.  To ignore the dark side in one’s self is no less dangerous than to deny any addiction. To invite people to walk along our path in that Dark Night of our soul is a terrifying thing. It speaks to vulnerability. It bares our soul, the very part of that soul we most long to cover up and conceal. So, we cover up more quickly than Adam and Eve. We hide in the bushes hoping others will not see. Yet, we live in community. Living in community implies vulnerability. We become willing, hopefully, through much effort and over a considerable length of time, to be family, for it is in those dark places we most see and appreciate our need for our Heavenly Father. 


Pastor Craig

How to make someone feel at home!

Where do you feel so welcome that you can just be yourself? Who is always glad to see you regardless of how or when you show up? OK, from the picture, you can tell that I think dogs are among those who form the most Christ-like welcoming committee anywhere. How can we welcome the community into our fellowship like that?

There are three areas of concentration the session and I have identified for 2010 – attendance, Sunday school, and support and growth of the youth program.

We want all of our areas to have the same welcoming effect you would experience if these two welcomed you home each time you arrived. Imagine feeling that accepted.

To address these three areas we are going to do four things.

1.      We are going to get up and get moving. Colossians 1:28 tells us our job. We proclaim him so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. That is our goal. We can’t wait for them to come to us. Growth and discipleship are not optional. Each week we will find some practical way to put the lesson into practice, beginning today.

2.      We will become students of the Scriptures. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. In other words, we cannot pull of #1 unless we equip ourselves by doing this second one. We will actively use Scriptural principles in every aspect of church life. I know that sounds like something that would be a “no brainer,” but I think we often take that for granted rather than actively pursue it.

3.      We will “own” our church program. David Bish says, Church isn’t something you go to, it’s who you are!” The Church is not the building. The Church is you and me. We DO church. This is our church. It is our ministry, not the ministry of the session, the pastor, or a committee.

4.      We are the pastors to the local community. Matthew 5:14 ff says You are the light of the world. . .let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. We are called to be followers of Christ. However, we are also called to be leaders in ministry. You began this with your efforts to raise money for Helping Hands last week. May our ministry efforts reach far beyond our physical grasp!

Pastor Craig

Why did Jesus die?

Why did Jesus die?

Most of us would say, “Jesus died to save us from our sins.” What would you say if I told you that was not entirely correct? Oh, don’t get me wrong. Our sins are forgiven, and they are forgiven only because of Jesus saving work on Calvary. But is that all? Does that describe the whole picture? What does Jesus save us to in the process of saving us from something.

Jesus died to empower us to good works. We were trapped in sin. We longed to do those very things the law of God commanded us not to do (Romans 7:7ff). We now have the possibility of good works.

Do we do them? NO! You and I both know that. We are still trapped in Romans 7. We long for a way out. In fact, we do not actually become aware of our sinfulness until the Holy Spirit begins the work of salvation in us. We have no awareness on our own. We have no desire to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to protect the orphan, to visit those in prison, etc.

John Austin Baker goes so far as to say that if we seek heaven only as a refuge from what we perceive hell to be, we might not comprehend either one. He describes heaven as that place where we finally attain the perfection in love that the Spirit as caused our own spirits to thirst after.

Hell is not the place of fire and torment as we see so often depicted. Hell is that place where we know we will never become the people God intended us to be! Mr. Austin argues that until we stop pursuing eternal life and, instead, pursue the infinite goodness, we will be eternally frustrated and have doubts regarding both. Once we take on the good works of Jesus Christ, not as an end to dodging hell, but simply out of the new love Christ has put within us, then that love grows and puts us more securely on the path to eternal life as well.

We are not saying that ones is not saved until that point. We are saying that one will always question their own eternal destiny until the reach the point where the eternal destiny does not matter as much as living for Christ in the here and now, doing the will of Christ out of the love of Christ helps us to fully experience the salvation of Christ. Could that possibly be what James was saying all along!?

Pastor Craig