Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such a faith save him?” James 2:14 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Faith without works is dead.”

At Oak Hill Baptist Church we are an “Acts 1:8 church”. Acts 1:8 is our model for ministry. In that verse Jesus gave us the Great Commission and He told us we are to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. In other words, we are to take our faith outside the walls of the church buildings and make a meaningful difference for His sake out in the world.

In order to accomplish that, we have regularly scheduled church-wide service projects and humanitarian relief work that takes us, as a group, out of the church buildings and into our local community. We also have ministry projects further out in the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as overseas locations. At any given time our entire congregation is always in the process of preparing for one or more of those activities. This helps to keep our focus off of ourselves, and to instead always be thinking about how we can be a blessing to others in the name of the Lord and for the sake of His kingdom.

In James chapter two we learn that faith without works is dead. He means that talk is cheap. It’s easy to claim to be a Christian and it’s not too tough to show-up for services on a semi-regular basis; but it’s another thing altogether to be actively and regularly involved in acts of service to others.

In Isaiah chapter fifty-eight God was speaking through the prophet to the Jews about the kinds of religious activities that were most important and most meaningful to Him. The people were very good at going through the motions and rituals of worship, but many of them were not so good at genuinely living-out their faith. Here’s what God said to them:

“Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and to not ignore your own flesh and blood?” “And if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness and your night will be like noonday.” 58:6-7; 10

Faith without works is dead. A life well spent is a life of service to others in the name of Jesus.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “I life my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; your Protector will not slumber. Indeed, the Protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. The Lord protects you; the Lord is a shelter right by your side.” Psalm 121:1-5 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “This is how you do it.”

The superscript that appears above Psalm 121 tells us that it is “a song of ascents”. It was primarily written as a song for people to sing as they climbed the road leading up to the temple in Jerusalem. It was also a good song to sing on any long journey, especially a difficult one. The Psalm affirms that the traveler will keep putting one foot in front of the other, keeping his head up and his eyes forward, trusting the Lord to protect and care for him as he continues to make progress on his journey.

This is a metaphor for life. Life is a journey. We make progress through it one step at a time, one day at a time. Often it’s a hard journey, like a long steady climb that ultimately leads us to our destination, but which requires tenacity, perseverance, and steady forward progress.

The way you do it is you keep your head up, your eyes forward, and you trust the Lord. You look to Him for guidance and strength and protection. As was noted in a previous message in this series, the Christian life lived well is sometimes referred to as “a long obedience in the same direction”. That’s a good way to see it.

Sometimes when we think about a life that is well spent we can be tempted to conclude that a life is only well spent if the person achieves spectacular things. Not so. Instead, the picture God gives us of a life pleasing to Him is a simple life of obedience. It’s the life of a person who simply and faithfully does the right thing day in and day out. This is a person who honors God, blesses others, and who keeps moving forward in life, always thinking about their ultimate destination.

Living the Christian life well often isn’t easy, but it’s also not particularly complicated either. This is how you do it: Keep your head up, your eyes forward, honor God, bless others, and keep moving.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “For when David had served God’s purposes in his own generation, he fell asleep.” Acts 13:36 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “It’s not over until it’s over.”

Acts 13:36 tells us that King David lived until God was done with Him, and then he died. He didn’t die a day before or a day after – he died when God was done with him. He served God’s purposes in his generation, and then he went to heaven.

This is important for us for a number of reasons. For one thing, God has a purpose and a plan for your life. Second, He Himself determines the number of your days. Third, if you’re still breathing it’s because God isn’t done with you yet. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what the condition of your health is, or what you have or have not accomplished in life up to this point. If you are still alive it’s because God isn’t done with you yet. So each day that you continue to live you should be thinking and praying about what God wants to do in your life now, this day.

Also, every day of life offers a new opportunity to change and to make a fresh start. It’s not at all uncommon to meet someone who came to faith in Jesus late in life, a person who seemed to have wasted many years living far from God and accomplishing no good thing in this world (maybe even doing a lot of damage), but who then comes to faith in Christ, is radically transformed, and then spends the rest of their life making a significant difference for good.

I’m firmly convinced that you cannot determine the full measure of a person’s life until that life has been fully lived. A person might live like the devil for the first 40 years of their life, have a mid-life conversion, and then spend 40 more years making a spectacular difference for good. Or, the best and most productive season of a person’s life might be the last 12 months of their life.

You cannot determine the full measure of a person’s life until that life has been fully lived, and every day that you continue to live is a new opportunity from God to do something meaningful and special.

It’s not over until it’s over. Your life continues to have meaning and purpose right up until your last breath. Regardless of what your life may have been like up to this point, every new day brings with it new opportunities to be the man or woman God wants you to be. Take advantage of your days. Use them well.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord.” Isaiah 37:14 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Bring everything to God.”

Hezekiah was a good king. After years of godless and evil leadership under his father Ahaz, Hezekiah spent years painstakingly leading the nation back to faithful obedience of the One True God. Hezekiah was a good man who loved the Lord and who led the people well. As a result, the nation was blessed by God.

However at one point the army of Assyria came and surrounded the city. The army was huge and powerful and there was no way Hezekiah and Judah could prevail against them. The commander of the army sent Hezekiah a written letter demanding immediate full surrender or else he would destroy the city, slaughter the people, and take Hezekiah captive.

Hezekiah knew the threat was real. There was no way his people could withstand the onslaught of the Assyrians. So he took the threatening letter, went into the temple, knelt at the altar, spread the letter out on the altar before God, and he talked to God about the situation. He affirmed that only God could get them out of this and then he pleaded with God for divine intervention. Well God heard, He responded, and the Assyrian army was defeated.

I love this scene of Hezekiah kneeling at the altar, with the actual letter spread out on the altar before God, and pleading with God for help and deliverance. That’s powerful – and effective.

At Oak Hill Baptist Church we frequently have people come and kneel at the altar as they pray to God about issues they are facing. It’s a symbolic act of surrender and faith, and it is one that God honors.

One of the key aspects of a life well spent is that the person is a pray-er who frequently brings all the issues of life to God in prayer. God is interested in the big issues and in the small ones. He wants us to actually invite Him into all the moments of our lives. Of course He is already aware of it all, but He wants us to actually bring it to Him and ask Him to help us with it. He wants to be asked to be a part of everything we have going on.

I encourage you to bring everything to God in prayer. Pray frequently. Pray with passion and intensity. Actually lay the symbolic letter out before Him and talk to Him about it. The more you involve God in your situations the better your life will be.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “See how the faithful city has become a prostitute! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her – but now murderers! ”Isaiah 1:21 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Don’t get lazy and indifferent.”

In the passage from Isaiah above, the prophet was describing how the nation of Israel had slowly, progressively, and over time, drifted far from God. Once they were God’s pride and joy. Once they had honored Him and He was pleased with them. But the holy city had become a place of spiritual emptiness and despair; the people were indifferent and lazy.

It didn’t happen over night and there were no sudden shifts in the thoughts or practices of the people. The change was gradual and subtle, it occurred in barely noticeable degrees. But over time the people as individuals, and the nation as a whole, drifted far from God.

The problem was that they got lazy and indifferent when it came to their spiritual lives. Once they had been diligent and faithful in the practice of their faith. But times were good, they were prosperous, there was a chicken in every pot and a camel in every driveway, and soon they forgot how much they needed God. They were living lives of comfort and pleasure, many of them were flirting with the fake gods from other cultures, and so they slowly drifted further and further away from the One True God.

A life that is well spent is a life that remains faithful to God in the good times and in the bad times. A person living a godly life knows to seek the guidance, protection, and help of God when they are faced with trials and struggles, but they also remain faithful to God when times are good and they are not struggling.

Pastor and author Eugene Peterson once coined the phrase “A long obedience in the same direction” to describe a Christian life lived well. It means that the person knows what they need to do to maintain a strong and vibrant and relationship with the Lord, and they discipline themselves to stay engaged in those practices – all the time.

Of course that includes things like daily prayer and Bible study, but it also includes regular and full participation in the life of your church. Drifting away from God almost always occurs slowly, progressively, subtly, in small degrees, over a long period of time. The person eventually becomes lazy and indifferent in the practice of their faith and soon they find themselves far away from God.

I encourage you to not let that happen in your life. Stay alert, stay focused, remain diligent and faithful. Don’t get lazy or indifferent.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “Wisdom is found with the elderly, and understanding comes with long life.” Job 12:12 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “You have a lot left to give.”

I’m deeply grateful to God for some of the older people He has strategically placed into my life over the years. They were godly men and women who had lived lives of faithfulness and who had acquired great wisdom through the years. And they were people who loved me enough to use their wisdom and experience to help me learn and grow.

There was Oren and Louise Teel. Oren was my pastor, my father in the faith, and my mentor in ministry. Louise was everyone’s grandmother and I considered her to be my west coast mother. There was Dick DeGrow, a retired pastor who served as a deacon, Sunday school teacher, and custodian in the first church I was the pastor of. Dick was instrumental in helping me to learn how to be a pastor. In another church there was Jane Fish, a pastor’s wife, the former manager of a Christian bookstore, and a writer of curriculum for the Southern Baptist Sunday school Board. She was my prayer partner, fellow book-lover, a confidant, and a great source of counsel.

Over and over again throughout the years, right up until this present day, God has always strategically placed one or two older and wiser men and women to serve as a source of counsel for me. Not only am I grateful to God for providing those men and women to guide and teach me, but I’m grateful to them for remaining available. Not everyone does that in their old age.

All too often I see older people withdraw from life in general, and even from participation in the life of their church. Sometimes they retreat to the four walls of their home and live like a shut-in – when they’re really not. What a great loss! They have so much left to contribute! The church needs your wisdom. We need to learn from your experiences. There are men and women, boys and girls, who need to be around you so they can learn from you.

A life well spent is a life that is fully lived right up until the day it ends. As you age the kinds of activities you can be involved in necessarily change. That’s okay, but don’t retreat from life in general, and certainly do not withdraw from the life of your church. You have a lot left to give and we need you!

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:6-8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “What matters is that you tried.”

When Paul wrote the letter of Second Timothy he was in prison in Rome facing probable execution. During previous imprisonments he always had the expectation and hope of being released, but not this time. Death was close and he knew it.

At that time Paul was an old man nearing the end of his life, the last thirty years of which had been very hard. He had given-up his prestigious life as an up-and-coming Pharisee. He spent it instead as an itinerant evangelist, a church-planter, and as a Pastor helping to establish the new Christian faith. It had been a hard life with no home of his own, no income most of the time, constantly chased and harassed by enemies of the Christian faith, arrested numerous times, jailed, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and more. Now he was old, physically broken, he owned virtually nothing, and he was about to be executed.

Yet in his own estimation his had been a life lived well – it had been spent for a noble purpose and he was confident of his reward in heaven.

Most of us will never be faced with the challenges Paul had to deal with, but we will have to make decisions and choices about how we will invest our own lives. I want to share with you a quote from one of my personal heroes from history, President Teddy Roosevelt. It’s a quote I keep in a picture frame on a bookcase in my office and I review it frequently:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

In life all you have to do is try. Just do your best. Even if you seem to come up short by earthly standards, God observed your efforts and He knows your heart. He knows you gave it your best.

I encourage you to be engaged in meaningful endeavors. Dare to try hard things, things that will make a difference. Just give it your best effort, and trust the rest to the Lord.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “A life well spent”

Our Bible verse for today: “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.” Matthew 25:21 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Invest your life in things that matter.”

I have to admit that I struggled a little bit with the theme for this month. I didn’t struggle with whether or not this was the theme God wanted me to write about, I was pretty sure of that. Last week when I was praying and asking Him to give me a theme, this was what He gave me, and then He confirmed it several times in various ways. So I was confident this is the subject I’m supposed to be exploring this month.

Instead, I was concerned that it might seem repetitive to you. In the past year I’ve written about “Living with no excuses”; “Pushing through adversity”; and “A prosperous life”; all of which are roughly along the same lines as “A life well spent”.

And yet, the theme of “A life well spent” resonated with me personally and I was looking forward to exploring it because I really want it to be true of me. When it’s all said and done and I cross over into eternity, I want to see Jesus with a smile on His face and I want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! A life well spent!”

I’m thinking that’s probably true of you too. You want Him to say that about you too. And so, that’s what we will think about this month – living a life that is spent in ways that really matter. We will think about activities that make a real difference; people whose lives can be influenced by yours; staying focused; dealing with obstacles, disappointments and critics, and much more.

Maybe you’ve heard the story about the man who spent his entire life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and discover the ladder had been leaning up against the wrong wall. What a sad ending – getting to the end of life only to realize your years had been spent on things that ultimately didn’t really matter much.

Let’s resolve that that will not be true of us. Let’s invest our lives in things that really matter.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Being a virtuous person”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Easter means new life”

As I write this it is Saturday, the day before Easter, 2018. Easter Sunday – Resurrection Sunday – reminds us that Jesus defeated death and arose from the grave, just as He said He would. The resurrection is the ultimate miracle and it proves beyond all doubt that He is God and that He has power over life and death. And since He was able to defeat death and arise from the grave (just as He said He would), that makes everything else He said true too.

So based on the fact of the resurrection, it only makes sense that we would place our faith in Him for the forgiveness of our sins and that we would become His disciples. But Jesus didn’t come back from the dead just so He could be admired, worshiped, and studied. He died and rose again so that through Him we can have new life. Not only did He get a resurrection life, but so do we.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul wrote about that new life. There he explained that when a person places their faith in the risen Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, that person becomes a new creation in the eyes of God. In John 3:3 Jesus Himself described it as being “born again”. You were already alive physically, but in the moment of salvation you experience a rebirth and you are born spiritually. Your spirit literally comes alive. In Ephesians chapter two the Apostle Paul described our previous spiritual condition as being “dead in our transgressions and sins.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 describes the moment in which the dead spirit is “born again” into new life. That’s what the resurrection of Jesus made possible for us.

That new life begins in the very moment you place your faith in Christ and it extends into eternity. It is a new life and that should result in a new way of living. The old life is gone, a new life has been birthed and is now beginning to grow and develop. Paul said, “The old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”

Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the new life we have because of His resurrection. We invite you to join us at Oak Hill Baptist Church. At 9:00 we will enjoy an Easter breakfast buffet while the children have an Easter egg hunt. At 10:00 we will move to the sanctuary for our resurrection celebration service. It’s going to be a great time and we would love to have you with us. Come and celebrate His resurrection and your new life.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: