Grace and Peace

    Pastor Ben preached out of Judges 6:1-24 and how God used Gideon to rescue the Israelites from captivity. One themes of the Israelites, especially in the Old Testament is that things go well, then the Israelites get cocky and do what is right in their own eyes, God punishes them by sending them into captivity and the Israelites eventually repents, God forgives them and delivers them from captivity and then all is well. This cycle happens a number of times throughout the Old Testament 

  One of the things that caught my eye is how often do we blame God for our own stupidity and for the situations we get ourselves into? We often want to take responsibility for the good things we do, but when we do something stupid, or even sin, we blame God and or others. We blame God for not taking that temptation away or we wouldn’t have said something that was hurtful if the other person didn’t say what they said or done what they did. In essence, we enjoy quite well playing the victim card and somehow try to escape our punishment. Here is where the rubber meets the road and that is we may not be able to control what others do or say, but we can control our response. God Gave us the gift of a free will, so we can make choices on how we respond. How respond often reveals our heart and our intentions. Consequences, both good and bad are a result of our actions and intentions. They often point out the direction we are going. 

  How often do we make excuses? When God called Gideon to go rescue the nation of Israel from the Midianites, Gideon came up with every excuse not too. He claimed that he was the weakest of his clan and his tribe was the weakest of the 12 Tribes of Israel. Making excuses is nothing new and famous Biblical characters made them also. The biggest one was Moses. When God called him to go free His people, he claimed that he stuttered and that he wasn’t nothing to look at. We often make excuses because it will make us uncomfortable and it is going to cost us something great. We are more concerned with our comfort than doing what God calls us to do. 

  Gideon decided to obey God and go rescue the nation of Israel, here is my question for all of us. When we do this, we are being obedient, even thou we may be entering a storm and we have a peace about doing it. Could it be fixing a broken relationship or making better health decisions, no matter the what comes our way. Here is the thing about Gods peace, it doesn’t mean the absent of strife, but it is our condition and who we trust. The cool thing about Gods peace is that we don’t get it when the battle is over, but it often comes during the battle. In John 14, Jesus is celebrating His last Passover meal with His disciples before He is beaten, crucified and resurrected. The disciples are scared with what Jesus is telling them. Jesus tells them the peace He gives them and peace is what He is leaving them. Gods peace is that comfort that goes beyond human explanation and it keeps us focused and calm. Gods peace is knowing what we are doing is right, no matter the chaos that is going on around us or what others may say, because God is whispering in our ear His comfort, approval and direction.

  I will close with this, Gods peace doesn’t always mean that things will be put back together here on earth. Even though Gideon rescued the Israelites, the Midianites were still out there as neighbors. Or we tried to put the marriage back together but still ended in divorce because of a cheating spouse. The list goes on, but it is seeking God with all we have, even in the midst of the chaos and taking comfort in His grace, goodness and holiness. 

Grace and Peace

Tom

Godly Vision

 

  Pastor Fred kicked off a new series by preaching out of Ephesians 1:15-23.  I echo what Pastor Fred said and I encourage everyone to spend some time reading the book of Ephesians so that we be transformed by Gods grace. Also a little context, while Paul was writing this letter, he was locked up in prison because he was proclaiming the Gospel. One things that impresses me is that even though Paul was in prison, he was still proclaiming Gods grace. 

  One of the main points that I observed and that Pastor Fred preached on is about our vision or our eyesight. How often do we see things through our own eyes and try to convince God that how we see life is the way He should see life. How often do we tell God our life stinks and that He should do something about it. Or do we follow certain news programming or particular people because we agree on how the see life. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t listen to these people, but are we filtering what they say and do through how God sees things. My prayer is that we start seeing things as God sees them.?  

  One of the things that makes cults so popular is that there is an element of truth within their belief system, but that truth gets so distorted that it becomes a bold face lie. This is where we need the eyes of Jesus so we can decipher between what is actual truth and what is aimed at making us feel better. Or something that is scary is bold face lies that people try to pass off as Christianity. Jehovah Witnesses try to pass themselves off as Orthodox Christians but if you are to dive into their theology, you would realize that they don’t view Jesus as the Son of God, but a god. This means that there is no Trinity and this is an essential part of Orthodox Christianity. So are we praying to have Gods eyes so we can develop discernment and know the difference between wheat and chaff?

  Another thing about having the eyes of God is realizing that we are greatly loved. Within Greek (what the New Testament was written in), there are several different words and meanings for the word love. They can range from a brotherly love to a sacrificial love. Sacrificial love is loving someone with everything you have and are willing to lay down your life for that person. The other part of sacrificial love is not so much giving what someone wants but what they need. The best part about Gods sacrificial love is that there is nothing that we can do to earn it. The only thing we can do, is respond to that love. Do we live a holy life honoring God or do we do what we want to do and self destruct?

  I will close with this. When we have Gods eyes, or vision, we can properly put this life into perspective. As mentioned before, Paul was jailed for his faith at the time he wrote this letter. He still found joy and was dedicated to teaching the church of Ephesus through letter writing. Paul knew that the trials of this world has nothing on God and His goodness. We don’t let the trials of this world keep us down because Gods love and grace is greater. 

  There is the famous hymn Be Thou My Vision is based on a poem. The author of this poem was blind when he wrote it. Even though he could not physically see, he still knew what it meant to have Gods vision. So my final question is do we have Gods vision or are we to distracted and focus on everything but God?

Grace and Peace 

Tom Boustead

How is Your Faith?

 

  I hope everyone has had a great holiday weekend. Pastor Fred preached from Acts 14:8-22 and this is Paul’s first public ministry and what kind of day would of been on our first day on the new job we heal someone who is crippled and by the end of the day, we were left for dead outside the city limits. How many of us would go back to this place some time later to encourage people in their faith. This happened to Paul and here are some of my thoughts from this passage. 

  My first thought is that I wonder who is this man who could walk from birth? The only thing we know about him is of his ailment of not being able to walk. I find it interesting that there are miracles throughout the New Testament that we don’t know much of the persons story or even their name. Pastor Fred asked me a question this week on this passage that got me thinking. The question essentially was, what made Paul go over and heal this man? There was no recorded conversation between the guy and Paul, so why did Paul heal him without knowing his story or faith. My thought was that maybe it was done so that the glory of God could be revealed. How often are we healed or delivered from something and we forget to praise God for it? Instead we promote the hard work and sacrifice that we did to make something happen and we forget about God being all powerful and deserving of glory and praise. One explanation is that Paul did it to show Gods authority over all. 

  My second thought is that we are often really vain and we really like to promote our goodness or place other people on pedestals and then we crucify them as them for any wrong doing. As Christians we are guilty of this. Bill Hybels and Mark Driscoll both were pastors of fairly influential churches in the early 2000’s and often were keynote speakers at church conferences and people listened to what they had to say. Then they both had their fall from grace and were crucified for their words and actions. Now, they needed to be held accountable for those things, but I wonder if that fall from grace would of been minimized if we didn’t place them with that God like status and they didn’t allow their ego to be fed and allowed it.  When the people called Paul and Barnabas gods and were about to make sacrifices in their honor, they told them no and tore their clothing. They realized the real power was from God and not them. 

  My third observation is that after Paul and Barnabas preached the good news of the Gospel and telling the people that God made Himself known through the sending of rain, the people became fickle and let the nay sayers talk them into stoning Paul and Barnabas, even after the miracle. What gets me is that they were left for dead and after they were healed up, they went back to minister to the other believers. I would have said peace out and not gone back, but Paul and Barnabas realized that there were brothers and sisters in Christ who were struggling and they went back to minister to them. This not only took courage, but faith also. They saw the bigger picture and glorified God by going back. 

  Here is the application for us today. Throughout this whole passage, faith is at the core of it. Paul healed the man who couldn’t walk not to make himself look better, but he realized through the Holy Spirit that he had faith to be healed. There was also faith for Paul and Barnabas to go back after they were left for dead and minister to a church that was struggling. So here is my question, how is your faith doing? Are you trusting God to provide or have you become bitter enough to walk away or not trust as much? At some point we all hit rock bottom and we have three basic choices. The first one is to grab some dynamite and keep digging. The second one is that we sit there and whine above our problems. Or the third option is that we act out in faith and we stick out our and callout for Jesus. Remember, for those of us who are not at rock bottom, we use our faith to come alongside those are struggling and encourage them. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Holy Play

  Pastor Fred continued the series by preaching out of Zephaniah 3:9-17 and we learned about how play as worship. Play can be defined is something we get to do and not have to do and enjoy doing. For clarification, this form of play is God honoring and often feel His presence and joy over us. Here are some random thoughts about this weekends message

  How often do we see God not as joyful, a singer and who delights over us but as angry, domineering and even vengeful. Do we take Jonathan Edwards famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (it’s a classic sermon and deserves to be read and meditated on) to the extreme and think that God wants to smite us for every little thing we do.  Now I recommend reading the three short chapters of Zephaniah to gain a context for the final eight verses, because in those chapters God is judging His people for their sin and stupidity, but there is hope. The first sign of hope that there are consequences for sin and stupidity and we are going to be held accountable. Secondly, God wishes for no one to perish, but to seek forgiveness and to be made new. Thirdly, God promises us a remnant or a group of people who stayed faithful to His calling and sought forgiveness and grace and continued to seek after Him. So instead of seeing God as vengeful, see Him as a loving Father who desires to sing with and over us.

  I consider Luke 15 as the Lost Chapter. Luke shares three parables of a lost sheep, lost coin, and the lost (or parodical) son. In each of the stories, someone or something was lost. When all three things were found or returned home, God celebrated by stating what was lost is either found or came home and all of heaven and earth celebrated. Instead of the father shaming the son, or the shepherd doing the same to the sheep, they were met with great joy and a celebration ensued. Now there were consequences to be dealt with, but they could wait till tomorrow. When something is lost and is returned, we often feel great joy. How often have we lost something of value, such as car keys, a wallet or even a child in a busy park. We often put everything else on hold so we can find those things often turning everything upside down. God does the same with us. 

  If God laughs, rejoices, sings gand creates, shouldn’t we do the same since we are created in His image. In essence holy play is when we worship as we play. Telling great jokes, putting together puzzles to spending time outdoors hunting or fishing. I consider holy play as worship because it’s not only fun and something we enjoy doing, it also helps us connect with God and for us to not only delight in each other, but also it helps us to keep God in His proper place. For me, I like to be go to various state parks to take pictures on my days off.  Not only do I spend time in thought and worship, but I have found people who go to state parks friendly. I have my share of random conversations with random people on various topics and had many laughs. My favorite is when my mom and a family friend joins me to go exploring. We share many laughs and take many rabbit trails but often ends with either a picnic lunch or ice cream. In essence, Holy Play is time for worship and for finding joy in God, but also connecting with others. If we go back to the creation story in Genesis, God created us so that He could be in relationship with us. This means that we can and should commune ad enjoy God and each other. May you find time and events to holy play and to worship God with each other. 

Grace and Peace 

Tom Boustead 

Sacrificial Worship

  Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Ephesians 6:5-9. One of the things that hit me as Pastor Fred started out is that does our worship have purpose? One of the things that often gets us in trouble is that when we worship, we just go through the motions. In essence, it is just something that we do so that we can check it off of our list. Whether it is our devotional and prayer life, or coming to church and even sharing the Gospel. Do we do it so that we can check it off of our list and we can go do our own thing. True worship should be in everything we do and takes our all, whether it is worship in a church service to how we work for our paycheck and how we interact with everyone we come into contact with. 

  I was doing some reading this week and was reminded that worship is sacrifice. As we have gone through this series, Romans 12:1-2 has come up weekly and it is Paul telling us that we are to be a living sacrifice. When we become a living sacrifice, we say that it is not our will but Gods. When we worship and become a living sacrifice, it’s often means that that it is going to cost us something great. Could it mean we get a little less sleep, or go without so others can have something. Often when this happens, God puts us in uncomfortable situations, not because He is a jerk, but it allows u to either trust Him more or to walk away and do our own thing. Sometimes God calls us to sacrifice something that we hold valuable because we have placed it over God and we would rather worship that instead of God. Maybe we Gould spend less time on social media or drop it all together because we either care to much about what other people think or their reaction to some news story or gossip. I know I can be guilty of this, it is saying something just to get a reaction out of someone while sitting back and watching them fume. Sacrificial worship is keeping the right things in the right place and giving God all the glory. 

  So here is a question I thought of, can we truly worship without joy? We can worship when we are happy, because that is more circumstantial and we are in a good mood for various reasons. Worshipping with joy means we worship despite our circumstances and what is going on. Can we worship when our boss is being unfair, or our significant other said or did something extremely hurtful. True worship is handling those situations with grace, forgiveness and not sweeping it under the rug. Or how about when we are the idiot and do or say something that is hurtful. We shouldn’t have joy because we did those things, but joy in worship comes in seeking forgiveness and making restitution so that it does not happen again. 

  Over the last few weeks Pastor Fred has repeatedly said that worship happens in all area of our lives. One of the big areas is how we worship at work. Most of us work at places where Christianity isn’t the only option and there are even people who are hostile towards Christianity. Worship at work is more than requesting Christian music be played or praying for our meals during our lunch. True worship is how we work. Do we do things to the best of our ability, do we take shortcuts in our projects, to how we interact and talk with and about people. People often notice and believe in more of what they see us do and how we react people than the words we say. I have worked with people who had the ability to talk about big game, but when it was time to work, they had no work ethic and treated people like garbage and most people knew it. 

  One of the interesting things with working at Wal Mart is that I work with a lot of younger people and they have no connection with God. There are two guys in particular that I interact with a lot and we are all history fans. So we often share tidbits of history stuff with each other and ask historical questions. My latest question was asking them what famous world leader past or present they would like to interview? I got everything from Julius Caesar to Adolf Hitler.  The conversation it led to was interesting. When we worship as we work, people tend to notice and ask questions. Through that, we can build relationships and point them to Jesus. 

  I will close with this. We are all created to worship God in everything we do, and yess sometimes it is hard work and sacrifice, but life goes better when we do it Gods way. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Work as Worship

   Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Colossians 3:18-4:1. The crux of the message is how do we bring the sacred  to the secular. As Pastor Fred was preaching, I was reminded of when President Kennedy as he was campaigning for the White House in 1960, he had gotten a question about being Catholic and President. He responded by saying that: 

     “He wasn’t a Catholic running for president, but he was the Democratic Nominee running for president 

       who happens to be Catholic.”

  In essence, he was saying that his faith or worship wasn’t going to affect how he was going to run the country and interact with other world leaders. When we take this view or approach, our faith or worship isn’t that important to change how we do things and see the world. Our faith becomes very private when we do this and we loose that communal feel not only with God, but others also. Here are some thoughts from this weekends message.

  My first observation is about our sincerity in worship, not so much when we are in church, but we live life when we are with our family, at work, or even when we are doing our hobbies. How often do we zone out while we are doing those mundane task whether it is doing dishes, pointless paperwork while at work. Sincerity in worship means that we do those things to the best of our ability, no matter if it is for our best friend or that boss we could care less for. Remember, everyone is created in Gods image, and we worship God in how we treat them and do things for them. 

  The Apostle Paul in his letter to Philemon, he encourages the runaway slave Onesimus to go back to Philemon and to work as he is working for God. This idea of work is more than performing task, but it is glorifying God in all we do and doing things to the best of our ability. Paul also tells Philemon to treat Onesimus with care and respect because he is a believer and a child of God. 

  My second observation is that according to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10 that we are Gods handiwork and we were created for a purpose. God has created each one of us uniquely and it not only shows the vastness and greatness of God, but our worship back to God is taking the gifts that He gives us and doing them for His purpose. God designed each one of us for a specific task and to reach particular people. Where we get ourselves in trouble is when we take those gifts and use them for not their desired purpose. Even worse is when we become jealous of other people’s gifts and we either try and develop those gifts and become frustrated when we don’t get the desired result, or we sit down, throw our hands in the air and throw a fit. Bringing the sacred a little closer to the secular is taking those gifts that God gave us and taking how He designed us and we go out and we change the world. I call this work as worship, because we are not only worshipping God through song, but in action also. 

  I will close with this and it has been a theme throughout the whole series. We are to be a living sacrifice, and when we do this, it requires everything from us. We can not keep certain things from God, we are getting off of that altar and doing our own thing, we go from worshipping God to worshipping ourselves. When this happens, the secular and sacred get further apart and when we do this, we put God in a box and we only open that box when we need Him. God is not only supposed to transform our song and who we pledge allegiance to, but also in what we do and how we do it.

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Worship as Response

 

  

  Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Colossians 3:12-17 and we could spend forever in this passage mining the truths that the Apostle Paul gives not only to Timothy and the church at Colossae in the first century, but to us in the twenty first century. If you want a piece of random information, theologians like John and Charles Wesley along with Martin Luther took popular songs of their day and put sound theology to the melodies and they used it in their worship

  The first thing that hit me was that forgiveness is apart of our worship. Just as we were forgiven by God, we shall forgive others as a part of our worship. Can we truly sing and worship God if we have bitterness, fear or hate in our hearts? Throughout the whole Bible, God tells us that He would rather for us to be in right relationship with Him and others over a well sung song or the gifts that we give. Even Jesus tells us to leave our gifts at the altar so we can go make things right with others. Can we truly sing and worship God without giving and receiving forgiveness?

  My second observation is that worship is sacrifice. In Romans 12 the Apostle Paul tells us that we are to be a living sacrifice. This means that worship takes our whole life and dedication, wether we are singing in church to mowing the lawn, and even at our place of employment, we do things and interact with people as a form of worship and for Gods glory and also to exalt Him. But I will warn all of us, being a living sacrifice means that it’s for Gods glory and not ours. The other is that being a living sacrifice means that we like to jump off of the altar and not be that living sacrifice because things get uncomfortable or we don’t like the direction that Gods calling us. 

  My third observation is that singing often is a great unifier. I was at a conference in college and the worship duo Shane and Shane led worship. After one teaching session, they came on stage and led worship and there is something about a bunch of over caffeinated and sleep deprived college students who came from all over the Midwest singing and worshiping together. God showed up that night and we worshiped as one. It didn’t matter our college, where we were from or if we had Armenian, Reformed or  Pentecostal theology, or who we voted for, because we were all there to worship the same Savior. Worship, especially singing helps us not only unifies and builds community, but it also restores our focus on who should be worshiped and that is God. 

  I will close with this, it’s easy to worship when we know the songs and we like the style, but can we still worship when we don’t know the songs and or despise the style? Also, do we check out when we don’t like the song, style, or are distracted by that days events. True worship is singing no matter if it is a Chris Tomlin song or a hymn from the 1500’s played on an organ, we worship God in song, because worship, especially singing is our response to what God has done for us and even through us. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead