Why go to church?

   

  To start things off, I have two questions. The first one is what is church?  The second one is, why do we go? To throw out an idea to the first question is church a building filled with things that people call holy and where God is. Or is it a building where people gather to be fed spiritually and to grow together. Here are a couple of ideas or possible answers to the second question is that it is a place where we go to drink coffee, sing a few songs, hear someone ramble on for twenty five minutes to get some sort if itch scratched and then leave so we can get on with our week. Or is church where we plug in our air pods so we can listen to our favorite pastor or theologian as we run errands or be in nature and call it good.  Here are some observations of what the church could be. 

  For those of you who are fans of country music, you might recognize the name Toby Keith. One of his more popular songs is called I Love This Bar and the song goes on about how he love a particular bar because of all the different people from different backgrounds come to this place to be with each other. Most of these people would come from the wrong side of the tracks. What if the church became that place where we dropped the country club mentality of having to look or dress a certain way to come into church. I work with the 13 to 30 year olds here at Wal Mart who are either coming back to church or who are searching for something with a little more substance. I can tell you that their hairstyle is a little weird for my taste, visible piercings and tattoos are a cultural norm and their language can be a little rough most of the time, but here is the one thing I do know.  God loves them so abundantly that Jesus died a death and was raised from the dead so that we could have a relationship with Him. What would it look like not only if they came into our community, but also felt welcomed and a belonging?  What would it take for this to happen? 

  Church has to be more than hearing a good sermon or podcast. There has to be some sort of life change. John Wesley would call it Entire Sanctification or Christian Perfection. Others would call it Christian maturity. The concept is are we growing in grace and are we putting away the hurts, habits and speech that is not glorify God and that prevents us from being Christ like. The church is a place where we can find accountability so that we can grow and allow the Holy Spirit to take control of us. The church is also a place to show Gods love to others whether things are going well or things have hit rock bottom. It’s knowing when it’s appropriate to celebrate and when it’s time to sit and grieve with others and to pray with them. How do we do this and not feel uncomfortable during the tough stuff? 

  Let’s wrap this up by closing with Pastor Fred’s preaching passage of Matthew 16:13-18. Jesus ask the disciples the all important question of “ who do you say that I am?” After the Disciples listed off a couple of suggestions, Peter answered that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus admitted that He was who Peter claimed Him to be and that the church was going to be built on that. The church isn’t about the Pope and some Apostolic tradition or what program we can run to get people to come to church. Instead it is being transformed by the power and the grace of God so we can go out and serve other people, even the ones who don’t look, think or act like us. As much as we want church to be a building where we can meet God, it can happen anywhere. Some of the most memorable times I have met with God was not in a building and with people who I normally didn’t associate with. So here are two questions. The first one is what are some of the most memorable times you have had encountering God? Secondly, how can we serve others so they can experience the love and grace of God?

The wide and narrow road

   As Pastor Fred finished up the series The Impossible Gospel we dived into Matthew 7:13-14. The center of the discussion is the two paths that leads to two different gates. One gate is easy to find and allows for many to enter. The second gate is smaller and is designed for a smaller amount of traffic. Growing up on a farm we had the 12’ gates that allowed for tractors and multiple cows to enter at one time. Then we had the 4’ gate and that was often connected to a chute and it allowed only one cow to pass through at a time and the chute was about 3’ wide, so there was no room fir the cow to turn around and it kept the cows on the straight and narrow. The gates that Jesus was referring to was more about the way of salvation and not cattle handling. 

  This parable is talking more about how people are searching and gaining salvation. We live in a culture that claims that we should live our own truth and that there are more than one way into heaven. How. Often does this lifestyle tell us that as long as it makes us happy, we should do it, and this is how we find salvation or at least bliss. My first question is that what if our own happiness comes at the expense of someone else, should we still do it, especially if it someone we are close to and value? Happiness is often based on a feeling and is more me focused. Doing what makes happy is apart of the wide road because a lot of people are trying to be happy instead of content. 

  Another observation concerning the gates and salvation is that is Jesus the only way that we can be saved? Some would argue that Jesus is one of many options if Jesus is an option at all. Or we have people that say it’s Jesus pls something else. So here is my question, it Jesus isn’t the only option for salvation, why do we choose to be a Christian? It’s a lot of work, self denial and hardships. The rules also seem to be overbearing and exclusive. There are other religions that are more warm and fuzzy along with being inclusive that would seem to be better than Christianity if all roads lead to the same place. There is a bumper sticker that says coexist and it uses the symbols of the more popular world religions. As much as the people on the wide road want to believe this, at the end of the day they will become incompatible with each other because their core beliefs are all different. 

  The narrow road is filled with ups and downs along with heartbreak and joys. Is Christianity the narrow road because not everyone is willing to pick up their cross and follow Jesus? Or is it narrow because we are called to give up what makes us happy so that we can be content? In the book of James, he tells us that we are to consider it pure joy when we go through trials and temptations because it builds endurance, perseverance and is a refining process so they we become more like Christ. So I will leave you with these two things. The first one is what keeps you on the straight and narrow? Is it to become more Christ like or is our of fear or a sense of duty. The second thing is if it was easy everyone would do it

Grace and Peace 

Tom Boustead

Why do we Pray

   In this weeks preaching passage of Matthew 7:7-12 and among the many things Pastor Fred preached on is prayer. The message reminded me of a C.S. Lewis quote of “I don’t pray to change Gods mind, but for Him to change mine.” It got me pondering and I asked myself the question of why do we pray? Do we pray so that we can get what we want and we view God as a genie and His only purpose is to grant us our wishes. Or do we pray as an act of desperation, hoping God will hear us and grant us our wishes. I think our prayers can reveal our intentions and how our relationship with God is going. Is our prayers centered focused? What I mean by this is our prayers more about make us and others comfortable and even asking God to take away opportunities for us to grow? Or are we asking God to make us equal to Him? Instead of treating God like Santa Claus and our prayers being a wish list, how about we treat prayer as communicating with God. It is building a relationship with God and having a continuous conversation with Him through out the day. 17th century French Monk Brother Lawrence became famous (and later turned into a book) for his idea of practicing the presence of God.  It didn’t matter if he was doing dishes or other mundane task, he was in constant conversation with God. When we do this, we build a relationship with God and we see Him as a loving Father instead of someone who only gives us what we want or as a thug who will smite us if we don’t prat. So here are some questions to ponder

  What are some of the challenges to your prayer life?

  What would it look like for you to practice the presence of God through out the day?

  How often do we try and change Gods mind instead of Him changing ours?

Crap in Crap out

  Recently I had the opportunity to preach at youth group and my preaching passage was Proverbs 8. The  main thrust of my message was the idea of what goes in often comes out. The ideas we consume whether it is what we read, watch and who or what we listen to will shape our character. Another way to put it is crap in and crap out. If we consume questionable food, speech and or ideas, we end up living out those ideas. If we eat horrible, we will have weight gain and health problems related to it. We will also feel horrible. The same is said about the ideas we consume and continuously think on. If we consume horrible ideas, we will start speaking about them, believing them and living them out. The opposite is true also. If we continuously consume good ideas, that will affect how we speak and live our lives. The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we are to take every thought captive. It is more than just throwing out the bad thoughts, speech and actions, but it is filtering everything through Gods truth and aligning what we do, consume and say with Gods truth. I will close with Psalm 19:14 which is “May the words of my mouth and the meditation be pleasing to you God.”

 Questions to Ponder

Do you take inventory of what you consume on a daily basis?    

How do we take every thought, action and speech captive? 

What does it mean to meditate? 

How does what we meditate on shape our character? 

Called to Serve

   This past weekend Pastor Ben preached a great message and one of the verses that he used was John 15:13 which is “no greater love than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.” Through this, Ben preached about how we should have a servants heart and that we are called to serve other people. It doesn’t matter if we are the CEO of a fortune 500 company or a janitor at a rescue mission, we are all called to serve other people. Here are some of my takeaways from the sermon. 

  The first one is that acts of service will often cost us something and sometimes it is a great cost. When we serve, it will cost us either our time, money, and or talents. This might mean we can’t go to a movie because someone needs a listening ear, or it might cost us a phone upgrade because someone needs the money more than we do and our phone still works fine. It is saying no to our selfish desires is tough no matter how much we think we need them. 

  The second idea is that we need to start seeing people as someone who God loves dearly and are created in His image. In essence we have to stop with the us versus them, or not liking them because of their stance on immigration or who they voted for. We serve because we are being the hands and feet of Jesus and we are proclaiming not our own goodness but what God does through us. 

  The third idea is that Godly service will often make us uncomfortable. It’s because we are rubbing shoulders with people who do not look, think or act like us. Are we not wanting to serve because it makes us uncomfortable and we don’t want to grow. Maturing spiritually, emotionally and relationally only happens when we are forced to operate out of our comfort zone. It is forcing us to rely on God and not what we can do. Remember service isn’t always about the warm fuzzies, but it is doing what is needed and what God has called us to do. As kids we wanted a steady diet of candy and sweets, but good parents make sure that those things are done in moderation and that we eat a salad more than candy. 

Here are some questions to Ponder

  What and where you are those uncomfortable places we need to go and spend time in?

   Who are those people or doing things that God is calling us to spend time with or doing but we are not wanting too?

   Do we serve for the warm fuzzies or to point people to God?

Grace and Peace

  Tom Boustead