pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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From the Heart

What one word would you use to sum up who Jesus was and is?  Would it be messiah or savior or healer or king?  True, He is all of these. For me, the word would be love.

What are the keys to our faith?  Is it worship, giving our tithe, serving on a committee, maybe helping with the Youth program?  Certainly all of these are means to growing in our faith, but according to Peter, the key is to love one another and to love God.

What if each day we evaluated our faith journey through the question: ‘Am I loving God and neighbor more deeply from the heart?’  Sometimes this is hard to evaluate on a daily basis, but I think if we spent some time thinking on this question, we will find the little ways in which we did love more deeply from the heart.

If we spend hours reading and studying our Bible, are faithful in attending worship and in our giving, and if we serve here or there – we can please God and we may grow in our faith.  But if we are doing these things out of duty or obligation but not out of love, we are lost.  We are lost because although we may grow in our faith, the love doesn’t spill out for God and into other people’s lives.  We must lovingly give ourselves away to truly grow deeper in our faith.


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Practice, Practice, Practice

In order for a famous musician to offer a great concert, they practice.  They begin with scales and other exercises and they practice their score.  In order for a dance to shine on the stage, they must build their bodies and practice skills as well as the actual routine.  The musician and dance both put in much for that relatively short time on the stage.  They do so that they will seem like ‘naturals’ on the stage.

Do we live our life in such a way too?  Do we read the Bible daily to gain knowledge and to find that little nugget each day that we can take with us and live with that day?  Do we seek God’s presence during prayer throughout the day?  Do we offer Him praise in both  the good and the bad?  Do we practice our disciplines so that living our faith is the ‘natural’ way that we live our life?

Or are we a little lacking on our daily homework?  Is our practice insufficient for the important moments when God calls upon us to be His disciple each and every day?  Or are we ready?  Have we put in the time so that when another in need stands before us, that it just seems natural to offer what is needed?  It is not for our glory that we serve.  It is not so that the person walks away thinking how great a person we are.  It is so that the person walks away thinking how great a God we serve.  It is so that light that shines in us draws them to the Light of the world.  That is why we practice.


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More Than Enough for Me

In times of pain or sorrow, stress or anger, we like to have someone to go to, to talk with.  Life just seems better when we have someone to bear and share our burdens with.  Often times this is with a friend or a couple of friends, but God wants in on the conversation too!

Reading Psalm 116 this morning, I am reminded of the song “More Than Enough for Me.”  It speaks of God being in our every moment and knowing all of our needs and emotions.  The psalmist cried out to God and just knows that because of His great love for her, He will hear her cry.  And like the psalmist, we too can know God in this way.

And what then is our response?  Out of our recognition of and in response to His great love for us, out of ourselves we offer praise, worship, service, and sacrifice.  When we are loved our natural response is to love back.  That great love of God flowing into us in turn becomes love flowing out of us into other’s lives.  The chorus from that song goes, “Jesus you’re all I need, You are more than enough for me.”  He is all we need.  He is more than enough.  So let’s share a little!


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A Family of Faith

One day Peter preached about Jesus, repenting of sin, and being baptized into faith in Christ.  Baptism was the sacrament that celebrated the commitment of one’s life to following Christ.  On this one day many people heard Peter’s words, felt his passion, and felt that little tug upon their own hearts.  3000 responded and we baptized on that one day.  3000!!

Each of these ‘new’ Christians returned to their homes and daily lives.  But they were different because now they were filled with the Holy Spirit.  And through this faith and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, they were each connected to the larger body of Christ.  This commonality allowed them to come together as a community of faith where they could sustain this newfound belief and could begin to grow in this faith.  As they gathered they could help and encourage one another.  They could practice that love of neighbor that Christ called them to.

Like they, we are also made to be in community.  Each of our Christian communities is important to us because it is centered on this love of Christ.  To encourage and love and support and pray for each other, we come to know that couple or family or single person that sits down from us in the pew or row.  And they come to know us.  We notice if they are missing or if something seems different about them.  And they notice these things about us.  It becomes our family.  They become part of our family and we become part of their family.  This Sunday, when we gather, may we see ALL as our dearly loved brothers and sisters in Christ, all as part of the family.


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Walking Along Our Road

Do you remember when you accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and entered into a relationship with Him?  It may be a moment you can name and date – a ‘born again’ type of experience.  It may have been a gradual shift from the stories of Noah and Jonah to coming to know and believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins.  In either case, from the point of decision forward, one is never the same person again.

Often this prompts the awareness that we need to change and we begin to try and live more and more for Christ.  At first we notice and work on the ‘big’ and obvious sins in our lives.  These obvious ones usually fall away quickly.  And as we grow in our faith, we begin to see the less obvious sins in our lives.  Ridding ourselves of these sins can be harder – they often have deeper roots and reside within us where others cannot see them as easily and where we can try to keep them tucked away.  Yet there is hope.  For in and through Christ, we can begin to conquer these deeper sins as well.

As we live into Christ, we are drawn to share our joy and also to enter into other’s pain. We grow to risk greater for our Lord and Savior.  As we risk and step out in faith, we move a little further along our journey of faith and a little deeper in our relationship with Christ deepens.  May your walk be good today!!


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The Living Word

As Jesus and the disciples walked along the road to Emmaus, he explained to them how he was reveals and came to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures about the Holy One.  These were scriptures all good Jews would have known and would have studied and heard preached.  Yet on this day the scriptures seemed new to their ears.  The living word was made new again in their hearts.

Sometimes when I read a passage that I have read or even studied before, sometimes something new jumps out at me.  Does that ever happen to you?  The living word is made alive in a new way within us.  It may be a passage I ‘know’ but there is this new nugget.  We are not who we were when we first read it and we are not the same person after discovering our new nugget.  This is why we are on a journey of faith.  We never ‘arrive’.  In the DEVO today the author wrote of their love for geocaching.  It was not in the finding of the cache or in using the technology.  The joy came from noticing all of the details in God’s creation as she carefully looked for the cache – things she would never have noticed and found joy in if she were simply on a hike.  The Bible can be the word of God or it can be the living word of God.  We can read a passage or we can engage a passage.  We can be simply reading or we can be seeking to find new nuggets.  We can think we have ‘arrived’ or we can be on a journey.

And like the two disciples walking along the road with Jesus, once they allowed the living word to change them, they realized that Emmaus was not their destination anymore.  God was leading them somewhere else and they left for Jerusalem.  May we too allow God’s living word to speak freshly into our lives and to be the guide that directs our paths and that brings us new growth on our journey.


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Arriving Sooner

As the two disciples walked towards Emmaus, the loss of Jesus was heavy on their hearts, but the story of Jesus being alive provided some hope.  As I read these verses in Luke 24 I can gear some excitement in their voices as they ponder the possibility.  But there is still a little doubt and confusion because they don’t fully understand that it is all part of God’s plan.

We have all been there – in the midst of some heartache or struggle – questioning why and feeling oh so lost.  And then suddenly He is right there, walking alongside of us, right in the here and now.  And like Jesus walking along the road to Emmaus, He too speaks into our situation and we begin to come out of our sorrow or confusion.  God’s plan starts to come into focus.

We begin to see again that we are part of God’s plan, and we continue to walk on.  But we walk with a new warmth in our heart for that little taste of heaven has put a little bounce in our step.  As we continue on our journey of faith, the taste of heaven becomes a taste for heaven as God becomes a 24/7 part of life instead of a here and there part.  We become a part of helping heaven being a part of this life.  And like the two on the road to Emmaus, we wonder why we didn’t “arrive” sooner!


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He is That Big

Standing on a beach, looking out across the ocean, it seems like you can see forever.  Despite our natural vision ending at the horizon, we  know the ocean goes on.  It extends beyond what we can see yet we know there is more out there.

If one just stays still and looks out across the water, all else seems to disappear.  We loose sense of the breeze and the warm sand and even of the waves landing on the beach.

As we look out into our faith and look out to find God, one begins to sense something like the ocean.  Our faith can be as vast as the ocean.  Our faith can have no visual end.  Our God is that big.

Yet in that vastness we can find God at any point or at any place.  When the waves of life start landing on our shores, we can find God.  When the breezes start to toss us about, we can look into our faith and draw near to God.  When the sand beneath our feet start to shift and seem to be getting unstable, we can seek God out.  Our God is that big.  He is always everywhere and anywhere to uplift, to encourage, to comfort, to heal, to call us forward, to call us out, to cleanse us of our sins, to love us.  Our God is that big.  Thanks be to God!!


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One Things Remains

Do we live a comfortable faith?  Do we live our faith without too many fears?  I think we can.  But we can choose to live a risky and dangerous faith too.

We can choose to play it safe.  Even though we pour ourselves out in Sunday morning worship and are quite devoted in our quiet, personal times with God, we choose not to risk out in public.  We can be a “good” person at work at school, … but not necessarily be a Christian there.  Isn’t it easy?

Should faith be easy?  In 1 Peter 1 we are told that our trials and tests will refine and purify our faith.  Easy doesn’t refine and purify.  Easy coasts.  Easy is comfortable.  Easy is stagnant.  Easy doesn’t lead others to Christ.

May our faith be risky, dangerous, bold.  May our faith be living, exciting, growing.  Because even in the trials one thing remains.  His love never fails.  His love never ends.  His love never gives up on us.  May we not live an easy faith.


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The Word is Enough

In our society there is often a quest for “more”.  People want more money, more prestige, more time off, more friends, more and more.  The quest can be consuming and the goal can become their god.  But Paul found the secret, how to be content in plenty and in want, hether well fed or hungry.  In Philippians 4:13 Paul writes, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  Today it seems many cannot be content.

In John 20 it is revealed that there are other words and miracles of Jesus not recorded in his gospel.  Should that spur our natural instinct to want more?  No!  But it does make me wonder.  It makes me wonder, would more stories help more people to believe?  Sadly, I think not.  God led men far wiser than I to make prayerful and divinely inspired decisions about what writings to put in the Bible.  Similarly, God led John to write what John wrote, no more, no less.

Our faith rests upon Jesus as risen Lord.  He died for our sins.  That is really the story we need.  True, we want more.  And there is value in knowing more.  There is much written in the Bible that teaches us how to live a Christ-like life and about the nature and desire of God.  If we delve in and study the Word, it is enough.  We do not need to know more.  God has provided all we need to be content. Continue reading →