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