Choosing Gods Best

   Pastor Fred got back into the book of Galatians by preaching out of 5:13-26. One of the thrust of the book is the freedom that we have in Christ and we not only should live in that freedom but we shouldn’t abuse that freedom. One of those freedoms we have is how we treat others and we can love others as Christ loved us through His power. How often do we abuse that freedom and command by tearing others down. One of the criticisms that the world has of the church is that we tend to devour our own. So my question is would we rather help raise people up or bring and to encourage them, or bring them down and continuously kick them while they are down?

  One of the things I was thinking about as I was working tonight is that often we think that true freedom is being able to what we want when we want to do it. How many of us when we were kids couldn’t wait to get out of our parents house so we could do what we wanted when we wanted? In the end and after some time, along with some maturity, we realize that are parents just may have been right. True freedom is having boundaries and living in the protection of those boundaries. When we don’t, sin takes over and we become like a dog returning to its vomit. No matter how hard we try not to, we still end up at the vomit pile. 

  One of the points of the passage is how we struggle with our flesh which is better known as our sinful nature. How often do we obey our sinful nature rather than God? If you have seen the movie The Dark Knight, and it is a battle between Batman and the Joker. I see the Joker represents our sinful nature, and just as the Jokers whose whole identity too cause chaos and destruction. Sin does the same thing, because it adds chaos and destruction into our lives and those who are close to us. It often leads us to ask the Jokers famous question of “why so serious?”

  This chapter is known for the Fruits of the Spirit and we can’t fully embrace those fruits, we need to deal with our sinful nature first. The first thing we need to do is do some self examination and see where we sit in relation to God. Do we let our anger, lust, apathy or any number of other things run and ruin or lives. Once we become sick and tired of being sick and tired, it’s asking God to not only renew us, but change us. One we start dealing with our sin, we need to find something to replace it, or something else is going to take its place. How many people do you know who quirt smoking and they gained weight. They needed something to do with their hands and to deal with their cravings, so they switched from cigarettes to goof. It’s switching one bad habit for another. This is where the Fruits of the Spirit come in, because we are replacing our sinful nature with Gods Holiness and character. The chief fruit is love in my book, because that is how God operates and it is the basis for all other fruits. We have peace, patience and the other fruits because we love God with all we have and others as ourselves. So how well do we not only love, but sacrificially love. So how can we learn to choose Gods best and do it?

  Christianity is the only activity or even religion that one succeeds by surrendering. There can be a mindset that we have to earn our salvation or we have to control our own destiny. Now we do have some responsibilities, but we have to give up our way of seeing and doing things. We either go down that path of self destruction and we burn out, or we don’t see and participate in the bigger picture. I am sorry, but Frank Sinatra is wrong and we can’t do things our way. To close out, it is reminding ourselves and putting into practice the Lord’s Prayer of Gods of Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Or as Bob Sheen likes to tell the youth during Breakfast Club, it’s not about choosing our best and doing it but it is choosing Gods best for us and living it out. I essence when we choose our best we tend to fall flat on our faces and get ourselves in compromising situations? 

Grace and Peace,

Tom Boustead

  

Good intentions vs Being Intentional

 

  

  Pastor Haven preached out of Acts 2 and the Day of Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit and the speaking in tongues. The cool thing about the story is as the Disciples were preaching the Gospel, everyone was amazed because they heard the message in their own language. As Peter was preaching, a miracle happened and 3,000 people accepted Christ and were baptized. The religious leaders accused Peter and the Disciples of being drunk because they were not only preaching the Gospel but they were also preaching in tongues so that other people could understand it. Peter responded by rebuking the question by saying that it was only 9AM. So here are two questions, when miracles happen, do we embrace them or write them off? The other question is what are you being filled with? Is it the presence and power of the Holy Spirit or doubt and garbage that this world has to offer? 

  There is a difference between having good intentions and being intentional.  I have done an internship with the spiritual care team of a hospital and a part of the program was that I was supposed to come up with several things that I wanted to learn in that particular unit. What made it made it go from having good  intentions to being intentional was that I had to come up with ways to meet those goals and I met with my supervisor to discuss what I have learned and how it was going. One of my goals was to be able connect better with patients, so I took a six week basic sign language course to better understand the deaf  culture and to learn basic sign language. I even got to use it with a patient and his wife. A part of being intentional is having accountability, whether self induced or having someone else help me and remind be to be intentional in certain areas of my life. So are their areas where we need some goals and accountability so that we can be more diligent and intentional in doing things and connecting with others?  It is pointless to have good intentions if we don’t put then into use. 

  How are you connecting with God and others. Haven referenced something similar in his message, there is a saying that we are the sum of the five people we either spend the most time with or who have the loudest voice in our life. So if we spend slot of time with people who watch sports, chances are we are going to become sports fans. We often pick up the language, attitudes and habits of those we spend the most time with. I’m all for connecting with people who look, think and act differently than we do, but are we seeking to show them Gods light or are they changing us for better or worse? This may be a challenge, but find a small group of people that are like minded that you not only support each other, but challenge each other to grow. In that group, have someone who is wiser and more mature and even older, so they can pour out their wisdom and experience so that we can learn from it. In the same vain we should be that person to someone else. I was a little bummed that I had to miss Easter dinner with my family because I had to work. As I was finishing up some stuff so I could go to lunch, my phone dinged and it was a message from one of the youth volunteers saying that there was a group meeting at church that night and it was open to ever wanted to come. So I went over on my lunch and we all just shared about life and had quite a few laughs and it made my night. Are the people who speak into your life worth listening too? Also, what prevents is from finding people to speak hard truth and to receive it?

  What do we need to be more intentional with? In essence what are the areas where we need to grow. If we say we believe in God, but we would rather spend more time mindlessly scrolling through social media than spending time in prayer or reading Gods Word, there might be a problem. We can’t expect our relationships to grow with God if all we do is spend thirty seconds on prayer and reading a two minute devotional. If you consistently only spent five minutes a day with your significant other, the relationship will fail. Our relationship with God is just one thing. I’m sure God is tugging at our hearts to be mote intentional, whether it’s our relationship with Him or others, to habits we either need to develop or to quit and either developing or letting go of relationships with other people. I challenge all of us this week to find more ways we can be intentional and do it

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Resurrection Sunday

 

  Pastor Fred kicked off the Easter sermon by reading out of Mark 16. There are several things that caught my eye. The first one is that we are not much different than the disciples. The disciples spent three years with Jesus and still had trouble believing in Him. So one of the questions that came to me, are we more concerned about making Jesus our Lord or for Him to make our lives easier? The disciples saw countless miracles and heard Jesus preach countless messages and yet they still had a hard time believing that He was the Messiah. Maybe that’s why everyone was asking for one more miracle because they either wanted to put off making Jesus as their Savior or they were more interested in living comfortably than denying oneself. This is a guess, but there were probably people who followed Jesus around for the dog and pony show and just wanted to be entertained. So my question is, do we do the same thing?

  In high school, I took a class at a neighboring school and when the school van brought me over, we listened to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story on the radio. The concept of the segment was that Paul would give the epilogue to either a famous or not so famous story. They usually had a happy ending and it encouraged people to look at life differently. I wonder if Paul Harvey would do a rest of the story on Nicodemus. In John 3 Nicodemus started off such a religious skeptic with Jesus that he had to visit Him in the cover of darkness. We see through out the Gospel of John that Nicodemus moved from a religious skeptic to a follower of Jesus, to the point of making it so that he couldn’t participate in the most holy of Jewish Holidays, the Passover, because he was unclean for taking the body of Jesus and placing it in a tomb. So here is my question, are we willing to either deal with our preconceptions or hurts surrounding religion and Jesus, or are we going to wallow in them? Remember, Christianity is more than a list of rules, but it’s a relationship. For those of you who are in a serious relationship or even people who have some friends that know everything about you, how would the relationships do if was strictly based on rules. Those relationships would be purely transactional, robotic and filled filled with unmet expectations. This is how are are relationship with God would  be if we focused on rules and not being relational. In essence rules can lead to more of what I can do for God instead of what God does through me. 

  To wrap up, here are some thoughts. Easter has to be more than ham dinners, Easter eggs and pastel colored church cloths. Easter needs to be about the Son of God coming to earth not only to dwell among His creation but to show us who the Father is and to provide a way to be reconciled with the Trinity in heaven. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 that death has been swallowed up and that it has lost its sting. So my question is are we willing to put are stupid riles away, have Jesus heal our hurts and instead of asking for one more miracle so we can be entertained? Remember Easter believing in what Christ did for us and have Him go from some guy with good things to say to making Him the Lord of our life. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Holy Week

 

  Pastor Ben started off Holy Week by preaching out of Mark 11:1-11 and the Triumphal Entry. Ben encourages us to place ourselves in that day to help get us thinking. For those of you who know of or grew up on Adventures in Odyssey I want to stop by Whits End and take the trip in the Imagination Station to experience this week. Here are my thoughts that I am processing through

  The first one is that people are fickle. What I mean by this is that as Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crowds were praising Him and waving palm branches. By weeks end, the same crowd was yelling crucify Him and demanding the release of Barabas. It proves that people are corrupted enough to run a smear campaign without the use of social media to get what they want. The scarier aspect is that people were gullible enough to fall for it. As people, we generally want to go with the flow and be a part of the cool crowd, so whatever the cool kids are doing or the people who have influence over us tell us what to do, we do it without much rationale thought. So whatever is it going for us to not only use our brain, but also follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and stop being so fickle or gullible?

  The second one is that our view of kingship is different than Jesus.  In the first century, there were groups of people known as Zealots whose soul purpose was to over throw the Romans and to set up Gods Kingdom here on earth. It comes across that they wanted to rule with an iron fist and only let people in that they deemed worthy. This kingdom is about laws, shame and power. Gods Kingdom is something different, because it is about not self promotion, but dying to one’s self, grace, forgiveness and glorifying God. In essence, it is more about serving than being served and pointing others to Gods goodness. So our we more concerned about serving our own agenda than being transformed by God?

   The third one is how we see Jesus correlates to how we relate to Him. If we see God as a father, which He is, we often relate to Him as we related to our earthly fathers. For those of you who had horrible fathers, (I am extremely sorry if you fall into this category) we often expect God to treat us as they did, and we respond to God as we would to our earthly fathers. For those with great earthly fathers, we often respond to God as we responded to our earthly fathers. To bring it home, not only is God a good Father, but He is also has authority over all. So are we going to submit to His love, grace and authority. In essence God is calling us to live a transformed life by being a living sacrifice. Being a living sacrifice means that we make a daily choice to get on that altar. So here is my question, what keeps us from being a living sacrifice and continuously jumping off of the altar? 

  May we take this Holy Week to find a way to grow closer to God and to be transformed into Gods image.

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Done in Love

 

  

  Pastor Fred continued the series by preaching out of Galatians 5:1-12. There are several things that caught my attention. The first one is the issue of freedom. We have been from sin and death so my question is why do we want to give up on that freedom that God gives us and return to sin and death? It is essentially we become like a dog who returns to its vomit. In all reality, that is just disgusting.

  My second observation is that are we willing to wait and is worth waiting for?  As we wait, this doesn’t mean we just sit on our hands and do nothing. What I am offering us to do is what I call holy waiting. It is still waiting on God to do what only He can do, but we are also being obedient and doing things that we know God has commanded us to do. I know waiting isn’t the easiest thing to do, but waiting means that we are being faithful and trusting God will show up in His perfect timing while doing what we know in love. 

    My third observation is that we should be known by who we know, where we are going and we are motivated by love of God. What is meant by this is that we should know God and His grace and the world knows that we are a disciple of Christ. The second part is life is a journey and the destination matters. Are we developing our relationship with God so that heaven is where we go. Also, what is our motivation for doing things. Is it out of guilt or because we have to? We should do things not for self promotion or a get out of jail free card but because of our love for God. Not only that, but it is our way to glorify and worship God. Also when we do things out of love, we are bring Jesus to other people and to show others that they are loved by God. It is pointing people to God and it is called being apart of the body of Christ. The church thrives when we all do our part. So what is God calling you to do in love?

  To wrap up, God calls us to abide in Him. This means we can’t earn our salvation by following certain laws. So here is my big question to close out this blog. Just as the first century church thought that circumcision was a necessary step for salvation, what is our thing that we thing is necessary for salvation, but really isn’t? 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

  

Getting our toes stepped on

   Pastor Fred continued our sermon series by preaching out of Galatians 4:21-30 and he explored the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. If we are focused on the Old Covenant which is focused on legalism and it makes it about what we can do for God and we insist that we have to earn our salvation. It is about doing things for God so that we might find favor. Or we don’t do things because we think that we will upset God and He will not love us, or that we will look bad in front of other Christians. In essence this could be perverting the good news of the Gospel and the power of God because it makes it about what we can do and not on what God can do. How about instead we are mote concerned with the freedom of the new covenant and focus what God does to and through us.  So here are some of my thoughts.

  The first one is from Matthew 21:31 which Jesus tells the religious leaders that the prostitutes and tax collectors will make it into heaven before them. The religious leaders new the law and the freedom that God has to offer, but they chose not to live out in that freedom because they were more concerned about following their version of the law instead of living in Gods grace. The prostitutes and tax collectors took their checkered past sought Gods grace and forgiveness and chose to do the will of the Father. So my question is, do we want to look holy or to be holy?

  My second thought is that we may believe in God, but how often we don’t like what He has to say.  In essence we feel that our twos are getting stepped on.  I think that this is why we avoid the Old Testament because we don’t like what God has to say. God seems vengeful and it doesn’t give us the warm fuzzies. How often have you heard that the God of the New Testament is not the same God of the Old Testament? We serve a God that never changes and just because we don’t like what God has to say doesn’t mean that there are two different Gods or that God changes. The Old Testament points to the New Testament and the New Testament fulfills the Old Testament. We can’t have one without the other.  On a side note, if are either red letter Christians or want to disregard the Old Testament, that is working towards heresy. 

  I will with the story of Nicodemus when he met with Jesus in John 3. He was a teacher that was supposed too know the law and God because he spent all of his time studying it. So did Jesus call Nicodemus a fool because he didn’t know what it means to be born again or that he knew what it meant to be born again and he just didn’t like the answer? I think we are a lot like Nicodemus because we know the answer a lot of the time but how often do  we still ask questions to hopefully get an answer we like or to get God to change His mind? I will close with what Jesus essentially told Nicodemus, the flesh produces flesh and is subject to and lives and dies by the law while the spirit produces spirit and lives by grace and has eternal life. So do we live by the bondage of the law or the freedom of grace in the spirit? 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

The Unexamined Life

   Pastor Fred continue our series by preaching from Galatians 4:1-20 this weekend. One of the things that hit me kind of hard is that everything has a tax or a cost. It reminded me of a famous quote from the movie Top Gun which is “does our ego writes cheques that our bodies can’t cash?” Or the even scarier realization that does our ego write cheques that our soul can’t cash. To put it plainly, evert word action or inaction comes with a price. Does our ego get in the way and either think that the cost either not that high or we are going to benefits outweigh the cost? I pray that when we speak and act that we count the cost of doing or saying it. 

  Another observation is that we all are a slave to something. The basic concept is whether we are a slave to sin or a slave to Godliness. When something enslaves us, it can be the only thing we think about and it even consumes us. Some people would call this an addiction. We just finished up the state high school hockey tournament for Minnesota tonight. At one time tonight there were 2,200 people waiting hoping for a ticket to get into tonight’s championship game and Grand Casino Arena holds over 18,000 people and this is where the game is played. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to catch the game, especially if you are a fan of one of the teams, but if your day, week, or year is ruined because you couldn’t watch the game in person, or you place hockey over God, there is a problem. I challenge each one of us not only to be a slave to righteousness, but also a child of God.  It is taking Gods free gift and accepting it knowing that we can’t do anything to earn it. It’s about God being the center of our attention. So what are the things that prevents us from keeping God at the center of our lives?

  My final observation is how well do we hear bad news or correction? When we hear these things we often become defensive and often shut the other person out.  When we are being corrected, how often do we try and justify our behavior, even if we know we are in the wrong? We often care more about forming a response to the correction than understanding what the other person is trying to say. I know I’m not the only person who hates to be corrected because it feels like I have been gut punched. So when these opportunities of growth come our way, don’t be afraid to listen, ask questions to clarify and lean on other people of God to see if they see the same thing and ask for accountability. Do not forget to show grace to the person sharing the difficult truth and to yourself.

  I will close with this, when receiving some difficult news or a hard truth, practice Psalm 19:14 in which we are examining the words of or hearts and what we meditate on. It is so that they can be pleasing to God. It is going to those dark and scary places of our lives and not only repenting, but to give it over to God. Also, according to Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead