Oak Hill Baptist Church

Are there too many excuses?

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Be doers of the word, not hearers only …” James 1:22 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Are there too many excuses?”

Okay, one more story from A.J. Jacobs and his year of living Biblically. Rather than quoting the story verbatim, I’ll paraphrase it for you. One of the Biblical commands A.J. was struggling to obey was the stoning of adulterers. First of all, how do you identify one? And second, could he get away with stoning them? Isn’t it against the law? Wouldn’t they put him in jail? Being obsessive/compulsive, and being fully committed to this business of following the Bible as literally as possible, he was seriously bothered that he might not get to stone an adulterer.

However, A.J. is nothing if not resourceful, and the more he studied the problem the more he realized it might not be hopeless after all. For one thing, the Bible doesn’t stipulate how big the stones have to be, so he wondered if perhaps pebbles would qualify as stones. His team of Old Testament counselors (including a couple of ultra-orthodox Jews) agreed that technically pebbles are stones. So, A.J. got himself a little pouch full of pebbles. Now, to find some adulterers.

One day he was walking in Central Park in his robe and sandals, with his staff, long hair, unkept beard, and pouch of pebbles. He stopped to rest on a bench. On the other end of the bench was a grumpy old man who looked like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo. The guy appraised A.J. and snarled, “What are you, some kind of a nut?” A.J. said, “No, I’m just trying to follow the Bible as literally as possible.” The man considered that for a moment then noticed the pouch in A.J.’s hands. “What’s in the bag?” the man asked. “Stones”, A.J. replied. “What’re they for?”, Mr. Magoo wanted to know. “They’re to stone adulterers” A. J. admitted. “You’re throwing stones at adulterers?” “Yes”, A.J. said. “Well, I’m an adulterer!” Mr. Magoo declared. At that news A.J. perked up and eagerly responded, “Are you really? Could I stone you? You would really be helping me if you would let me stone you.” “If you try to, I’ll punch you in the mouth!” Mr. Magoo threatened.

A.J. was in something of a panicked quandary. He didn’t want to get in a fight but he couldn’t afford to let this opportunity pass either. So, without giving it much more thought, A.J. quickly stood up, extracted a pebble from the bag, flicked it at Mr. Magoo, hitting him in the chest, and then ran away, leaving Mr. Magoo shouting curses and shaking his fist. Thinking about it later, A.J. felt bad about picking on a grumpy old man in Central Park, but on the other hand, he did get to stone an adulterer.

That’s a funny story but there’s actually a lesson in it for us. A.J. was so serious about his quest to obediently comply with Scripture that he refused to let circumstances or obstacles stop him. Instead of making excuses, he found ways to overcome the obstacles and to follow the Bible. A.J. did it for the sake of a book contract. What if we would make half as much effort for the sake of following Jesus?

Is it possible we’re a little too quick to make excuses rather than going all in and making the extra effort? Just some food for thought.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

I’ll do my job and you do yours

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good …” 1 Corinthians 12:7 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “I’ll do my job and you do yours”

This morning I want to bring us back to the story of A.J. Jacobs and his year of living Biblically, as recorded in his funny book, “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible”.

Since A.J. was following the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, two-thirds of his year was spent living in the Old Testament and one-third in the New. As you would guess, living in the New Testament was a lot easier for him than was the Old Testament, but still, it had its moments. One such moment occurred when he got to Mark 16:17-18 and he read, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes …”

That last part really stumped him. He wondered if he was supposed to go around picking up deadly snakes. So, he consulted his team of New Testament counselors and he was amazed to discover that there’s a fringe sect of Christianity that actually does practice snake handling as part of their worship services. Intrigued, A.J. jumped on a plane, flew from New York City to Knoxville, TN, rented a car, drove ninety minutes to the little town of Del Rio, and met with Pastor Jimmy Morrow of “The Church of God with Signs to Follow”.

Jimmy was thrilled to have A.J. visit and he was eager to tell him all about snake handling. He even invited A.J. to attend their worship service, which A.J. found to be excessively long but also disappointing because so few people attended, only six. He asked Pastor Jimmy about the low attendance. Jimmy told him that six was about normal but sometimes nobody shows up. “But I preach anyway.” Jimmy said. A.J. was confused and responded, “Wait, you preach anyway, even if there’s nobody here?” To which Pastor Jimmy responded, “Sure. My job is to preach, their job is to show up, and I’m going to do my job whether they do theirs or not!”

Jimmy went on to tell a story: “One time nobody showed up. I still go up on the pulpit and preach. And this guy walking by, he stuck his head in and said, “What are you doing? No one’s here. No one can hear you.’ And I said, ‘Well you heard me, didn’t you?”

What a great lesson for a preacher! I like that and I’m going to adopt it as my own attitude, “My job is to preach. Your job is to show up. And I’m going to do my job whether you do yours or not!” Who woulda thunk I would learn a helpful preacher-lesson from a backwoods snake handling Pentecostal preacher recorded in a book written by an obsessive /compulsive secular Jew – but there it is.

So, we’re gonna have church this Sunday at Oak Hill Baptist (with signs to follow). There won’t be any snake handling but there will be lots of preaching. Y’all come now, ya’hear?

God bless,
Pastor Jim

How hard do we really try?

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “How hard do we really try?

A couple of months ago my brother sent me a book as a gift. The title is “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.” It was written by A.J. Jacobs. A.J. is not a Christian, he’s a secular Jew. In other words, he’s Jewish by heritage but he doesn’t practice the faith. He makes his living as a writer for Esquire Magazine and he’s also the author of couple of quirky but funny books. Oh, and he’s obsessive /compulsive to a high degree (hold that thought).

The idea behind A.J.’s book is that he decided he would spend an entire year attempting to follow the Bible as literally as possible. And I do mean literally. He began in Genesis, found every command and instruction in the entire Bible, and then he tried to follow it as best he could. He let his hair and beard grow untrimmed for a year. He wore white robes and sandals. He carried a ten-string harp everywhere he went. He observed the dietary laws of Leviticus, tithed, burned incense, stoned adulterers (this was funny), and much more. He did it all, for a year, while living in New York City, in a small apartment with his wife and toddler son, and taking the bus and subway to work every day at Esquire Magazine.

Remember, A.J. is obsessive/compulsive. He pays excruciating attention to detail – excessively so, and that’s the focus he brought to his year of living Biblically. He’s also a clever and funny writer and so his daily descriptions of his adventures are often hilarious. Probably the funniest involved the Levitical laws regarding menstruating women. In the Old Testament, menstruating women are considered impure. Therefore, they’re required to quarantine themselves for the duration of their monthly cycle. Additionally, any chair they sit in during this time is also impure and cannot be sat in by anyone else.

A.J.’s wife Julie is quite a character too and although she sort-of went along with his Bible project, she messed with him a lot too – just for fun, and this stuff about menstruating women was one step too far for her.

One day, when A.J. came home from a long day at work, he fell into his favorite chair. After a moment Julie said, “I started my period today, and I sat in that chair.” A.J. immediately jumped up and moved to another chair. Julie then said, “I sat in that one too.” Again, he popped up, snapped at her in frustration, and moved to another chair. She waited a moment and said, “That one too.” It turned out that before A.J. came home Julie intentionally sat in every chair in the house, making them all impure, and leaving him no chair he could sit in. The entire book is like that – one episode after another of A.J.’s quest to live as Biblically as possible, and much of it is very funny.

Our daily devotional today is less serious than most of the others, and yet there’s an important point for us to consider: “How hard to we really try to live Biblically?” A.J.’s year-long quest was extreme, and done for the wrong reasons (a book contract), and yet, he was on to something.

As the people of God, we’re called to conform less to the patterns and habits of the world (Romans 12:2), and more to the guidelines for living God has given us in the Bible. But how hard do we try to do that? How much effort do we really put in to it?

We’ll come back to A.J.’s story tomorrow and think about this a little more.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Pray for others

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “As for me, I vow that I will not sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. I will teach you the good and right way.” 1 Samuel 12:23 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Pray for others”

I have always admired Samuel, the leader in ancient Israel in the days before and during the reign of King Saul. Over the course of his long life, Samuel served in every major leadership role that was available to a Jewish man of his day including seer, priest, judge, prophet, and military leader.

But it was his commitment as the spiritual leader of the nation that to me is the most impressive and inspiring. As we read in 1 Samuel 12:23 (above), he felt a personal responsibility before the Lord to pray for the people and to teach them God’s ways. That’s an example that every pastor, preacher, teacher, and Christian leader should strive to emulate.

In yesterday’s devotional we thought about the personal responsibility God has given us to pray for ourselves. There are too many examples in the Bible of people praying for themselves for us to ignore. God obviously wants us to do that. But there are also many verses which call us to pray for others (intercessory prayer). 1 Samuel 12:23 is just one example of a leader who was committed to regularly praying for the people God had entrusted to him. The Apostle Paul felt that way too: “For this reason, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you.” (Colossians 1:9)

But this call to pray for others pertains to all of us, it’s not just for leaders. In James 5:16 we read, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.”

In 1 Timothy 2:1 Paul wrote, “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for everyone …” In Matthew 5:44 Jesus even told us to pray for our enemies, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” And in Romans 8:26 Paul told us that the Holy Spirit even helps us to pray, “In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings”

Does your church have regularly scheduled group prayer meetings? I hope it does. And if so, do you attend them? I hope you do. At Oak Hill Baptist we meet for prayer at 8:30 on Sunday mornings and at 6:00 on Wednesday evenings. We would love to have you join us.

God calls us to pray for others. He has made it a matter of personal responsibility.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Pray for yourself

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Pray for yourself”

I have a book about prayer called “All the Prayers of the Bible”. It was published in 1959 by Dr. Herbert Lockyer and over the next twenty years had to be reprinted twelve times in order to meet the demand and to fill all the orders.

In the book Dr. Lockyer records and then comments on every prayer in the Bible, beginning with Genesis 4:26, “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord”, and ending with Revelation 22:20, “Come, Lord Jesus”.

There are more than 650 prayers in the Bible with over 450 recorded answers. Knowing that is helpful and instructive. Evidently prayer matters to God. Apparently, He wants us to pray or He wouldn’t have given us so many examples of it. God has made prayer a matter of personal responsibility for us. He calls us to pray; He teaches us to pray; He gives us hundreds of examples of prayer; He listens when we pray; and He answers our prayers.

Interestingly, of all the subjects the pray-ers in the Bible could have addressed in their prayers, one of the most frequent is themselves. Very often the pray-er is praying for him or herself. This is helpful to know because too often we accept the false notion that it’s selfish to pray for ourselves. That’s simply not true. In fact, as David modeled for us in Psalm 51:10, prayer is often when God does a lot of the molding and shaping in our lives. During our prayer times God is busy shaping, changing, and refining our heart.

The Christian life is lived from the inside out. What’s true of the heart will be true of the person. When a person spends long periods in deep prayer asking God to change his or her heart, the results of that prayer will show itself in outward ways in things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). That’s the outward evidence of a rich inward prayer life and it’s what David was praying for in Psalm 51:10.

In the Bible God has revealed to us that prayer, for ourselves, is not only needed, it’s a matter of personal responsibility. We need to do this for ourselves. I encourage you to spend some time today praying for yourself.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Be a reason people come to church

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!” Psalm 133:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Be a reason people come to church”

Today is Monday, how was your Sunday? Did you remember the lessons from our recent daily devotionals and did you practice them? For instance, did you fulfill your personal responsibility to attend the gathering of your church? Remember, your church needs you to be there.

If you were there, did you fulfill your personal responsibility to encourage, bless, and serve others? All of us have been given spiritual gifts, talents, skills, abilities, and resources that God intends for us to use to bless others and to help with His kingdom-building work. Did you do your part? Did you help?

Finally, did you fulfill your personal responsibility to protect the unity of your church? It’s up to each of us to be thick-skinned and not easily offended; and we are to be agents of peace rather than taking offense and bickering. Most things are not a big deal and therefore should not be made into big deals.

A healthy church family gathered together, with everyone fulfilling their personal responsibilities to make and keep the church healthy, is a joyful and spiritually nurturing experience. That’s what David was describing in Psalm 133:1 (above). He was writing about the community of faith and what a wonderful thing it is when God’s people get along with each other. That’s why David was also able to write, in Psalm 122:1, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” David loved going to church! And so should we.

When I began this series about personal responsibility, I noted that the issues we would think about this month were all matters of personal responsibility for us because God has revealed in the Bible that He has made them our responsibility. Therefore, I suggested we should each select a few and turn them into New Years resolutions that we would work on in the coming year.

Today’s topic from Psalm 133:1 would be a great goal to work on this year. Decide to be a source of blessing, peace, and harmony in your church – a person others love to be around. How wonderful if you were a reason people wanted to go to church! They don’t want to miss church because they don’t want to miss seeing you. That’s not taking anything away from Jesus. Quite the contrary. It would be evidence of Jesus working in you and through you to bless others.

Will you make it one of your resolutions this year to be a reason people want to be in your church?

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Churches die from within

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1-3 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Churches die from within”

I’m currently reading an excellent book entitled, “Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church” by Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer. The basic premise is that Christians within a church family have to be able to respectfully disagree on non-essential issues, without hurting or dividing the church. There are some moral and theological absolutes that do have to be agreed upon and on which we cannot compromise. But most things don’t fall into the category of “absolute”. Political preferences being a perfect example.

At one point the authors pose the question “What is the greatest threat to the church of Jesus Christ today?” They then go on to suggest some possible answers: postmodern relativism, the LGBTQ agenda, racial injustice, sexual predators, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. But then they write this:

“But without denying the significance of any of those threats, we believe the greatest threat to the church today is the same as it has been in every generation since the New Testament was written: quarreling. Persecution (from outside forces) strengthens the church. Intellectual and cultural challenges deepen our faith and stimulate our theological thinking. Ethical commitments that conflict with the culture make us stand out as salt and light – or at times may provoke us to purify our own lives to become better salt and light. Quarreling, on the other hand, is insidiously dangerous because it kills from within.”

They are right. It’s very rare for a church to die as a result of an assault from an outside force. Almost always churches get sick and slowly die from within. Very often that sickness is the result of quarreling and divisions among the members, and usually, those quarrels are about non-essential things. I can’t remember a case of a church being divided and splitting because one group insisted there weren’t even people being saved and the other group thought there were already too many. Usually, church members are in agreement about the absolutes of the faith. Church fights almost always revolve around lesser important things that should not be allowed to take on such importance and to do so much damage.

God has given us each personal responsibility for protecting the unity of our churches. Unity among the faithful was a prominent theme in the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul. Ephesians 4:1-3 (above) is just one of the many passages on the subject. Colossians 3:12-14 is another, “Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”

Churches almost always die from within. God has given us all personal responsibility to be agents of peace, reconciliation, and unity in our church families. We’ll think more about this tomorrow.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Be intentional about doing good

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Be intentional about doing good.”

I honestly don’t know how many verses there are in the Bible that instruct us to do good deeds, but there are a lot. I tried counting them but stopped once I passed 100. I mean seriously, God has made His point. Does it really matter if He said it 99 times or 110 times? The fact is He has clearly, overwhelmingly, and convincingly revealed to us in the Bible that we are to go out into the world and as Jesus said, let others see your good works so they will give glory to God.

So, no pew potatoes, please. We have to get up and get going. We have work to do. God requires it; Jesus taught it; and the Holy Spirit empowers it. And, God has made it a matter of personal responsibility for us. It’s an important part of how we practice our faith, and we have to be intentional about doing it.

One important way to accomplish this is as a church family. That’s why at Oak Hill Baptist we base our church life on the Acts 1:8 model of ministry. This is a structure that results in us having ministry partners and ministry projects in our city, our state, our country, and in other places around the world. As a result, there’s never a time in our church life when we’re not all working together to prepare for the next ministry activity that will take us, as a group, outside the walls of the church buildings to shine the light of Jesus in a hurting and broken world. If you would like more information about how the Acts 1:8 model of ministry works, let me know and I’ll be happy to email it to you.

However, as important as those group efforts are, serving others and doing good deeds should be a regular part of our personal practice of the faith. Doing those things should be so much a part of who we are as a disciple of Jesus Christ, that doing them is second nature to us. It’s simply who we are and how we live.

I once read a challenging question that I find both convicting and inspiring. So much so, that I wrote it down and periodically ask it of myself: “As I go through life, do I leave blessings in my wake? Do I leave a trail of gladness behind? Let it be said that, ‘He went about doing good and blessing people.’” I want that to be true of me, and I hope you want it to be true of you too.

I encourage all of us to be intentional about doing good. God requires it of us. He has made it a matter of personal responsibility.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

God makes us responsible for doing good

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.” Galatians 6:10

Our thought for today: “God makes us responsible for doing good”

All this month we’re considering issues of personal responsibility which God has clearly revealed to us in the Bible. In other words, there are things God has shown us in the Bible which He wants us to do, and we therefore have a responsibility to do them. Being all-powerful, God could easily accomplish these things by Himself and without our involvement. Instead, He chooses to involve us for our own good. It’s good for us to have responsibility for stuff.

One of the things the Bible clearly reveals to us that God makes us responsible for is doing good deeds for others. We are to bless them, in His name, with the objective of helping them to understand and experience the love God has for them.

The most common example of Christians doing good for others is doing something good or helpful for a suffering person. This often takes the form of humanitarian aid, or some other means of comforting those who are suffering. This kind of helping is so important to God that in Matthew 25:40 Jesus said that when we do something like feeding the poor, housing the homeless, or visiting those who are sick or in prison, He considers it to have been done directly for Him personally. This kind of helping someone in need could even be as simple as helping a neighbor with a repair or chore. It can all be done in the name of Jesus and for His glory.

Another form of doing good that’s especially important to the Lord was mentioned by Paul in Galatians 6:10 (above). It’s doing good for those in the household of faith. He was referring to Christians taking care of Christians, church family looking out of each other. This is an important part of church life and it goes a long way towards helping a church stay healthy and strong.

A somewhat surprising form of doing good which God requires of us, is doing good for and being a blessing to your enemies. In Matthew 5:44, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said we are to bless our enemies. In Romans 12:20 the Apostle Paul said, “If you enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.” In other words, for example, when you answer anger and meanness with calm reason and kindness, it will often cause the other person to be ashamed of themselves for not being as gracious as you are. That then can lead to a change of attitude and behavior in them.

Being intentional about doing good is a dominant theme in the Bible and therefore there’s much more to it than we can address in a single devotional. So, we’ll come back to this tomorrow.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

Christians should not use filthy language

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander; and filthy language from your mouth.” Colossians 3:8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Christians should not use filthy language”

This morning we will continue our lesson from yesterday about the importance of taking responsibility for our language. As the followers of Jesus, we are not to use profanity, mean or hateful words, or even crude language.

The Bible is pretty clear about this. Yesterday we read two passages which teach this (Colossians 4:6 and James 3:9-10). I just cited another one above (Colossians 3:8). I’m about to quote three more. That’ll be six, but I could list more. The point is, there’s a body of Biblical literature which teaches that we, the people of God, are not to use profanity or mean and hurtful speech.

“No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29 “Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks.” Ephesians 5:4

This issue of using strong, foul, and profane language, along with crude jokes and suggestive innuendos, is becoming more and more of a problem. The political and social atmosphere in our country is overheated and supercharged. Too many Christians are allowing their passionate advocacy for political and social issues to stoke their emotions and incite them to strong and inappropriate language. This should not be. The Bible doesn’t allow for it.

As was noted yesterday, we can and should and must advocate for Biblical principles in the social and political arenas. We should be active in and vocal about political and social issues. But we have to control our emotions and our language as we’re doing so. My book “Getting Along Without Going Along” is about that very thing. If you would like a copy, message or email me.

How do we get to the point where we can confidently and even passionately contend for our positions but without letting our emotions and our language get away from us? Here’s a prayer King David prayed that you could make your own. You could pause and pray it before you speak: “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” Psalm 141:3 (NIV)

Prayerfully ask God to set an angelic guard over your mouth. Make that your repeated prayer. Then, as Paul instructed in Colossians 3:8, put away filthy language from your mouth. This is a matter of personal responsibility.

God bless,
Pastor Jim