Grace and Peace

   Pastor Fred continued the sermon series on Galatians by preaching out of 2:1-10. One of the main points of the message is that are we seeking to cause chaos and discord, or are we looking to unify. When we are unified, we may not all look alike, think alike or do the same things, but are we going towards the same goal.  In essence are we putting Jesus at the center of everything we do. 

  Just remember, everything we say and do is not done in a vacuum. Most of our communication is not so much in what we say (which is important) but how we say it in the tone of our voice, our body language and if we are using sarcasm. In the book of James, Jesus brother tells us that we need to put a bridle on our tongue because it has the ability to give and to take life away. I know there have been plenty of times where I have had to go apologize for something I said. We can ruin or make someone’s day by one unintentional comment.

  What happens if we keep the main thing the main thing. There are some messages that need to be delivered in person, and not over text, snap chat or email. That’s why Paul went to Jerusalem to talk with the leaders of the church to see what side they were on. One side is the idea of the false teachers either trying to add stuff or take things away from the Gospel such as food restrictions or circumcision. Or were they willing to serve God without adding all the extra rules that are more culturally based and not Biblically based. To use that Bob Dillion quote again, “we all have to serve someone,” so is it God and His goodness or the false teachers who pervert God and His grace by adding things to the Gospel.

  Pastor Fred finished up his message talking about peace and I want to add in joy also. When we fully pursue God, we will get those things and it is something that we can take comfort in and strive for. One of the things that hit me is that how many of us are putting out this fake peace and joy. What I mean by this is that we tell others that we are living the dream and in all reality, or is our life is a hot mess and we are struggling. Where as Gods peace is easy, this fake peace takes work and is often not with it because we will get burned out and maybe even become cynical or bitter. I found out in my own life when I reach for the fake peace, my relationships are not as solid and I lose the ability to share my highs and lows and it puts me on an island and isolated? So here is something to ponder, are we seeking after true God give us His peace that passes all understanding? Or are we  striving for human peace that will leave us alienated, burnt out and trusting no one?

Tom Boustead

False Gospel

 

  Pastor Ben continued are current series by preaching Galatians 1:11-24. One of the initial things that caught my eye was that Paul gave his credentials of what makes his message true and of God. It also means that the Gospel that Paul preached isn’t some fairy tale or made up, but of God. Anyone who preached something different or added to the Gospel preaches a false Gospel. 

  This idea of the false Gospel got me thinking of a quote from the book To Hell and Back where a Catholic Chaplin George Zabelka was having a conversation with a military personnel member over the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan. They were pondering how he could bless the men who were flying off so they could kill and or be killed. The question that came about and we need to ponder is that are we trying to get God to condone our false Gospel or something even worse, something that is evil? So are we are we trying to become more like Jesus or are we trying to make Jesus look like us? 

  This idea of the false Gospel is that it tends to make us either feel good or it makes us right and everyone else who disagrees with us wrong and even our enemy. This Gospel tends to elevate our own desires and make us or our cause holier than what it really is. So my question is, are we adding rules to Christianity to make ourselves feel better? Or are we adding those rules so that we can keep other people out of the Kingdom or to make others or ourselves jump through extra hoops to enter Gods Kingdom or to make sure we avoid hell?

  Another thing we have to consider with our false Gospel is we have to wrestle with the idea of what is truth. The famous cultural idea is the idea of truth and even the Gospel is that it is all subjective. The Gospel or the truth is what we make of it and how we interpret it. If we look at the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that no one can see or access God except through Jesus (John 14). John also tells us that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ( John 1). In essence, there is absolute truth and the only we can find it is through Jesus and not only seeking Him but also submitting to His will and plan. The best way we can fight this false Gospel is to seek Gods face and submit to His will. 

  I will close with this. How are we doing at submitting to God and His truth? The more important idea is that are we living out that truth and grace in a dark world? To close out here is a paraphrase of my favorite C.S. Lewis quote. It is God isn’t safe but He is good. Are we living in that goodness or are we seeking to live in comfort because that’s what the false Gospel is all about.

Grace and Peace 

Tom Boustead

I have decided to……

 

  Pastor Fred started a sermon series on the book of Galatians this week and he started off in chapter 1.  There are several things that caught my eye. The first one is during worship when we sang the song I have decided to follow Jesus. I remember singing that song as a kid either at camp or at VBS and it got me thinking. It is good to be reminded of the basics of our faith and the time we made that commitment to follow Jesus. The more pressing thing that came to mind is not only are we teaching our kids what to believe but also why. When we do this, our children will know what they believe and be able to defend their faith as they grow older. Hopefully this will lead to kids wanting to grow their faith deeper and be spiritually mature. 

   The second thing that caught my eye is how the Apostle Paul tells the Galatians to be aware of the people who are trying to pervert the Gospel and for the evil that is running rampant in the world. All one has to do tis pay attention to the newscast or your favorite social media outlet over the last month to know the circus that is going on here in Minnesota. What gets me is that the people who are perverting Gods law and justice so they can feel that they can do whatever they want in the name of God.  Are we doing things such as marching in the streets, making vile social media post condemning the other side all to get clicks and for the approval of those we value and to vilify the other side. Or are we more concerned with Micah 6:8 of acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. She we are concerned with justice, which we should be, is our own form of perverted justice that doesn’t care about Micah 6:8 or are we humbling ourselves seeking Gods face before we act? 

  So here is a question that goes back to my first point, and that is, have we forgotten the faith and grace we first turned to so that we can become popular or stay in the popular crowd? Or are we seeking Gods face and doing the hard and uncomfortable work of having the Holy Spirit change us through the reading and implementing of Scripture into our lives, or are we too busy changing God into our world view?  The song also demands us that we put the cross of Christ first and that are we willing to follow God by ourselves? 

  I will leave with these two ideas. The first one is that we live in a dark and corrupt world, are we being like a lighthouse send out light to a dark and unforgiving world? The second one is that in Romans 1, Paul tells us that things will get so bad that God will actually turn us over to the desires of our hearts and this is when it will get scary. So are we getting to the point of God letting us fulfill the evil desires of our hearts?

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Seeking Heaven

 

  In this weeks message Pastor Fred finished up the series The Next Advent and the preaching passage is from Colossians 3:1-4.  The Apostle Paul tells us if we have been raised up with Christ, we are to have our focus on heaven and everything that is holy and righteous. Here are some observations that I came away with. 

  My first observation is that we are to keep seeking. It is not a one time thing, but it is a continuous action. Within the last week, I was out at my parents house and I lost my car keys, which also had the key to get into my apartment building. I continued to search for them so I could get home and even got help from my mom. We kept looking for them until they were found on the roof of my van. Heaven is the same way, we need to keep seeking it. Or another way to put it, are we pursuing it like we do our favorite sport team or video game, or the next great online deal. We wont stop pursuing our fandom until that championship is won or that video game is bought and conquered or that great deal is secured on that thing we really need. Just remember, if we stop seeking or our seeking is off, we might miss heaven all together

  It is hard to be born again if we don’t die first.  This reminds me of when Jesus and Nicodemus met up in John 3. Jesus shares that the only way we can see heaven is if we are born from above, or born again. This has Nicodemus confused, so he ask the question of how can one be born again because they can not reenter their mother’s womb? Jesus response was that we are to be born of the spirit. This means we let our fleshly desires die so that God Spirit can enter our hearts. This is where we desire the things of God and not what this world has to offer. Both Gods desires and our fleshly desires can not coexist and we must choose one and let the other die. If we want our garden to grow and be successful, the seeds we plant must die first before they can reproduce a good harvest. The same is true with our spiritual lives, if we are to be fruitful spiritually and see heaven, we must die to ourselves first. So here is my question, what are we allowing to live in or lives and what are we catering too? Is it Godliness, eternal life and peace, or is it the desires of our flesh that leads to destruction? 

  My final observation is that God expects and requires our participation. Yes, we are saved by faith and grace alone, but those things require a response. For those of you who are either engaged or married, at some point the question was ask “will you marry me?”. That is a question that demands a response and it usually is done rather quickly. Both parties participate in the planning and execution in anticipation of the big day. Baptism is the same thing. It is us saying yes to Gods free gift and we participate in Jesus death by being dunked in the water and we are raised with Jesus when we rise from the water. Baptism signifies and is an action of dying to self and embracing the Holy Spirits work in our life. It allows God to transform our lives. I love some of the liturgy of the Catholic service, and one of the things the priest often tells the congregation is to remember their baptism. Not only does this remind us of who we belong to, but God is also calling us that we are to keep responding to His grace and to share that grace with a dark and broken world. Also it is a reminder that this world isn’t our home and for those who believe, will be praising Jesus in His presence for eternity, whether He returns and calls us home as a whole, or He calls us home to heaven on an individual basis. 

So here is a couple of questions.

 What prevents us from dying to ourselves and embracing Gods plan for us? 

  Do we need to remember our baptism?

  How good are we at continuously seeking God and His Kingdom?

What will be Me?

 

   Pastor Fred continues the series of the Second Advent and the hope and expectation of Christ return as King. One of the main passages that Pastor Fred preached on is 1 Corinthians 15 and the resurrection of the body. There are many different things we can expound on, but here are a few things that caught my eye. 

  The first one is how the Apostle Paul and the writers of the Gospels responded to this idea of Gnosticism. One of the main ideas of Gnosticism is that it makes life and Christianity a head game and that our bodies don’t really matter. It’s that we can do whatever we want as long as either no one gets hurt and or everyone gives consent to said action. This thought allows us to dwell in sin and to make it acceptable. Whether it is and addiction to pornography, food or any other activity, we can say as long as we are not hurting others, anything is fair game. The truth of it is, not only are we hurting ourselves when we do those things, but we are putting up barriers with other people and it changes our relationship with them. There are countless studies out there proving that a pornography addiction ruins marriages or at least puts a strain on them. This next idea is primarily for guys. When you struggle with porn, it will change how you look at woman, especially it will change the relationship with your wife and kids, especially if you have daughters. We can’t see people in what can they do for us and what kind of distorted personal gratification we can get when we give into these desires. 

  My second observation is that we can’t grow and be fruitful unless we get planted. Before a seed gets planted, it dies first. I think what Jesus had in mind is the idea that in order to grow, we must die to ourselves and to our desires and to put on what God has designed for us. So what are those attitudes and actions that we carry and live out that we need to put away and let die? To be blunt, there are some things that will keep coming back because we keep on feeding it and we won’t let die. Or what are those things that need to be killed. 

  My final observation is this, our bodies are a good thing. Not only did God call creation good, but Jesus came in, resurrected and is coming back in human form. I don’t know exactly what our resurrected bodies will look like, but we will have them. I know that when we get then, we won’t have a need for doctors, lab work or hospital stays. This is why we should care for them, because God gave them to us and we are to take care of what He gives us. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Just as we take care of our holy spaces, should we do the same with our bodies?  I hope everyone has a great week

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Second Advent

   As Pastor Fred continued our Advent series with starting with the reading of Mark 13:23-37. The main point of the message is the shifting our focus from the first Advent, which waiting for the promised Messiah to the second Advent, which is the return of Jesus as King. This where God will make everything complete and His judgement will be made final. One of the things that I found interesting is that there are 300 references to Christ return in the New Testament alone. Since this is the case, how shall we live in the light of this news. 

   I think the first thing we need to realize is that this world isn’t our home. I remember growing up there was a Christian comedy show that played on Sunday nights on a Christian radio stations across the country and the theme song was This World is not my Home. The theme of the song was that we are just passing through this world and our final destination is heaven. In essence, we aren’t to get to comfortable because there is something greater than what this world has to offer. I will give these two warnings. The first one is that we are not so heavenly focused that we are no earthly good. The second warning is that we can not be so earthly focused that we will miss heaven. It is striking that balance of knowing what are destination is and working towards it, but is also being in tune to the worlds needs and meeting them. So here is my question, how do we strike that balance?

   The second thing we need to realize is this idea of “the signs of the times.” What I mean by this is that we know everything has a season and we can sense or see the changes coming. Whether it is the changing of the leaves, the days getting longer or shorter and a change in temperature. When this happens we often go into a mode of preparing for the upcoming season. Whether it is making sure we have the right equipment and toys out and working along with putting the previous seasons toys and tools away. So, here is my question, how are we preparing for the return of Christ? What are the things we need to put away for the season or just get rid of? How does one prepare for the return of Christ? Besides making Him the Lord of our lives, how about putting on the full armor of God found in Ephesians 6 or the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5.

  The third thing we need to realize is the idea that if Jesus didn’t know the time or day of the return, we won’t either. I think this is a good idea because if we did know, we would procrastinate on what God has called to do. A few years back, there was a jeweler in Superior who felt led to sell off his inventory because he thought the return of Jesus was soon and he wanted to get things in order. He didn’t give any bold predictions of day or year when he thought Jesus was returning, but he wanted to be ready and he also wanted to shift his focus on building Gods Kingdom. Christ will return and making bold predictions of day or year does more harm than good. I think it’s a misuse of our time and Scripture when we try to iron down a date. Our calling is to be prepared for Christ return

  I will leave with this. We are called to be good caretakers of what God has given and blessed us with and one day when He returns, we are going to be judged and held accountable for how we used the things that God left us in charge of. So how are you being responsible and developing Gods gifts in your life? Is God going to find you faithful when He returns?

The Main Thing

 

    It was nice to have Pastor Hollis back preaching and his passage was from Ephesians 3. The two major themes that got preached on is that God loves us and it’s something that we can not comprehend completely. In Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The Bible shares not only how God interacts with and loves His creation like providing manna in the wilderness, to disciplining King David when he had his affair.  Yes God is all powerful, eternal and holy, but at the core of His nature is love. As John wrote in his epistle, God is love, and it is the very reason why He does things and who He is. 

   The second main theme is, what is our response to Gods love? Do we love Him back and are obedient to His voice? God isn’t going to make us robots and program us to be obedient or loving, it is a choice we have to make. We all have someone that we care about and love deeply and we do things to help foster that relationship. Whether it’s buying a cup of coffee for them when you get together, or doing a chore they despise. A good relationship has rules, but it’s not so it can be a check list. But it’s to help create healthy boundaries and to help foster growth in the relationship. 

  The church is entering a 21 day fast and prayer focus and there is no better way to start off the new year. Fasting and prayer can each have multiple blogs a piece, but I will boil it down to this. Prayer and fasting is like hitting the reset button. We find out what is important and it helps brings things into focus. It is not so much about giving something up, but it is obtaining something better, like a better relationship with God and or others. Or it’s about getting rid of things that hold us back and may even cause some physical, emotional or spiritual distress. It is finding out what the main thing is and removing the things that get in the way and hinder our relationship with God. C.S. Lewis said this about prayer but it could word for fasting also. He said that he didn’t pray to change God, but so that God could change him. So what are those things that God is calling you to give up or fast so you can have a more vibrant and growing relationship with God and others? I will leave with this analogy, prayer and fasting is like refiners fire, where God takes away all the impurities so we can become more like Him and have a growing relationship with Him. It also allows us to know what the main thing is and do it which is loving God with everything we have and our neighbors as ourselves. 

Questions to ponder 

  What are those things that limit our relationship with God?

  Are we willing to seek God and to trust Him?