Love Requires Listening

Sunday morning retuning: So how are you doing at displaying your evidence that you love God, that is by loving your neighbor as yourself?  Not easy, but essential.  Over the next couple of days, make it your aim to act on what God spoke to you Sunday from Luke 10:25-37.  Be a Good Samaritan!

For me, learning to love requires that I be listening to what God is saying to me in my everyday life.  Often these days that is in terms of “giving myself away”, but more on that in another post.  In the last day, the Lord has put two scenarios in front of me through which He spoke.  I want to encourage you through them to be listening to what God is saying to you in the everyday rhythms of your life.

My mom and dad came in town yesterday for a couple of days.  My dad is very knowledgeable in home improvement things so I asked if he could help me install a ceiling fan.  We wired the new switch and box and went to test it and it did not work.  He was befuddled as to what was wrong.  I then realize that I had connected our tester to the hot and ground, instead of the cold, see the white wire not bent.

My take away?  If things do not seem to be working, you better make sure you are connected to your power source.  If you do not sense God’s power in your life, you may want to check your connection, even take the time to do some trouble shooting if necessary.

  Then as I was backing out of my driveway this morning…

Though Sarah had reminded me moments before that my parents car was behind mine in the driveway.  I ran into it anyway.  Fortunately, there was not damage to theirs, but you can see that mine was not so fortunate.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the small pile of rusty metal that fell out of my Civic. 

My take away?  Sure, I probably need a safer car, but my first thought was, how easy it is to forget the obvious, get into my RoUTine and plow through life.  I need to keep my eyes open for the times Jesus is trying to redirect me.

Nothing terribly profound here, but I wanted to remind you to stay connected, keep your eyes open, and listen for what the Lord may be saying to you in the daily doldrums.  He is probably directing you in some way to a deeper walk with Him, and a deeper love for others. Thanks for walking the path with me.

Jesus, we want to follow You.  Help us humble ourselves daily.  Help us to have a healthy fear of You.  By Your Spirit’s power, help us to walk in Your ways and stay close to You, whether You are moving or not.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Timothy

Seeing Clearly

Sunday morning retuning: Remember our Big Idea from Sunday?  “We believe because Jesus has opened our eyes!”  Thank You Jesus for helping me to see clearly!

And Jesus wants to do more that just reveal Himself to us.  He wants to show us His purposes and His ways as well.  I had a recent opportunity to experience this.

I had asked those of you who receive this inspiration via email to pray for me last Thursday.  I was planning on spending some extended time before the Lord to seek His plans for the transition before our worship team ministry.  I thank you for praying because not was I able to spend the time, I really was encouraged to see some things become clear to me that previously had not been.  Specifically, I was trusting the Lord to reveal a new structure involving two bands consisting of a number of people who had auditioned the two weeks prior.  And I believe He did.

I found myself sitting in a local nature preserve praying and asking for clarity of the vision God had been giving over the last couple of years.  I sat on a bench and looked out at all the trees before me.  It made me think of all the people who serve on our worship teams.  Sometimes it is hard to see the individual in the midst of what we do collectively, but the auditions helped musically speaking, and now I needed God to show me how to assign the right people to these two new bands.  I needed to see the trees that made up the forest and appreciate the unique contribution each makes.  What I needed was essentially the opposite of the old saying “see the forest for the trees” or trying to make out a pattern in a mass of details.

I needed to “see the trees in the forest”.  In the midst of the broad picture, I needed to discern the details, the role each person could or should make.  I believe I was able to do that.  I sat with all the evaluations from the auditions and four years of getting to know our church and these people, and a clear mental picture of how these teams might be constructed, right down to primary and alternate members of each, began to emerge.  What I had thought, prayed and dreamed about for a long time, slowly began to take a definite shape before my very eyes.  Almost as though someone else’s hand was drawing it.  You think?

I look forward to explaining that picture this weekend to as many who can make a quick meeting on Sunday between the two Engage services.  Pray as we continue to transition to a new day in our worship, as a ministry and a church, all the while with our overarching prayer being “Show Us Your Glory!”

Jesus, thank You for helping us to see clearly!  Not only the glory of the Father in the hour we first believed, but the marvel of His plans as we continue to walk along one step behind You.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Timothy

Where You Stay, I’ll Stay

Sunday morning retuning: Have you prayed Luke 10:2 yet?  As you ask the Lord for harvesters, are you prepared to be one?  Can you see the fields before you?

I was reading this morning from Jeremiah 42-44 and was reminded of our commitment Sunday morning.  In verse one some leaders came to Jeremiah and asked him to pray that God would show them, “where [we] should go and what [we] should do.”  I thought of our words, “where You go I’ll go, where You stay, I’ll stay” from the song, I Will Follow, by Chris Tomlin.

There are some things that are more easily said than done, and over the years I have had the opportunity to encourage God’s people to sing any number of them.  They are often words that voice the commitment our hearts have made to the One who has redeemed us, and they are lofty.  For instance, from later in that chorus, “Whom You love, I’ll love [that’s everybody by the way, even your enemies], How You serve, I’ll serve [He washed His disciples feet remember?], If this life I lose, [whoa, wait just a minute], I will follow You.”

Those words from Jeremiah reminded of those words we sang Sunday.  Only problem is, when Jeremiah came back from his answer from God, they denied, and did what they wanted to anyway.  How often have we been guilty of that?  Telling God we want his leading, when all we really want is His blessing.

Although our willingness to follow may seem most obvious in our going, I want you to consider for a moment or two how staying can be equally as telling.  Take for instance the illustration of a harvest.  Now I know the scripture about one plants, another waters, and then others about those who reaps, but consider this.  What if God wants you to plant, water and reap?  That takes some patience.  Farmers are not generally very nomadic.  Actually, quite the contrary.  But farming is hard work.

Are you working in your field?  Take field to mean every possible use, and ponder that.  If not, get busy, or wait, depending on where you might be in the process.  Wherever you are, make sure you are one step behind Jesus, even if He is sitting down, and has been for awhile.

Sometime God wants you to stay.  There are consequences to not following, even if it means staying.  Consider God’s indictment upon the leaders in Jeremiah 44:10-11.  Let us humble ourselves, fear God, and walk in His ways.

Jesus, we want to follow You.  Help us humble ourselves daily.  Help us to have a healthy fear of You.  By Your Spirit’s power, help us to walk in Your ways and stay close to You, whether You are moving or not.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Timothy

A Taste of Heaven Here

Sunday morning retuning: Pastor Myron laid out our Next Steps as we endeavor to walk one step behind Jesus.  How exciting to think of how God is going to use us in these next three years!  I pray you will be a part of this, as we see God changing lives here and around the world.

As we celebrated Communion a little differently Sunday the choir sang “Behold the Lamb (A Communion Hymn)”. There was a line in it that really hit me, as often does when I am trying to pay attention to the love and truth we declare.  It was this part of the fourth and final stanza.

As we share in His suffering 
We proclaim Christ will come again!
And we’ll join in the feast of heaven 
Around the table of the King.

It was those words “we’ll join in the feast of heaven”.  We get to join in the feast of heaven.  Wow!  I have enjoyed some great meals in my day, but that one is going to be the one that even the best have only foreshadowed.  Besides I really like eating.

But Heaven was already on my mind.  As I was planning the services for this weekend I felt led to schedule “When You Move”, a song we have learned in the last year.  There is a great line in the chorus of that song that says, “For when you move our lives are changed, we know a taste of heaven here.”  A taste of heaven here.  I want that.

It makes me think of times when Sarah is making mashed potatoes and she asks me to taste them.  Every time I do, they are delicious, and I want to scoop out another spoonful because that taste has left me longing for more.  You know want I am talking about right?

So I was in the kitchen cooking up some eggs this morning (you are sensing the strong food theme here I hope), and I was thinking of heaven because I had been listening to Steven Curtis Chapman’s song See.  He wrote this after loosing his adopted little girl.  If you listen to nothing else today, please listen to this.  One day we will see.

I asked my son Josiah, “Do you think heaven will be better than this?”  He responded immediately, “Yes!”  That childlike faith blessed me and challenged me again with the question. “Why do we not think of it more often?”  I can hardly wait to see it, and the One who made the way for me to be there.  How about you?

Jesus, we cry out for more of You.  Come and move in our midst that we might be changed and know a taste of heaven.  Show us Your glory.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Timothy