Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!” Romans 8:15 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “We can approach God with confidence.”

Author Philip Yancey frequently refers to himself as a “recovering fundamentalist”. It’s a reference to his childhood. Right on up through his High School years, Philip was raised in a very strict fundamentalist home and church. Therefore he grew-up knowing God as a stern taskmaster and disciplinarian. There were long lists of rules to follow, “church police” to monitor your behavior, and public discipline and shaming for when you violated the rules.

I find it hard to picture Philip in such a setting because all of the best-selling books he has written over the last four decades have been grace-based. They have included titles like “What’s So Amazing about Grace?”, and “The Jesus I Never Knew”, and “Where is God When It Hurts?” among many others. From Philip’s writings I have learned much about the grace of God, and the freedom we have to enter His presence with joy and thanksgiving and confidence, rather than in fear, trembling, and uncertainty.

This was a lesson the Apostle Paul learned too, and he too, like Philip Yancey, lived the rest of his life as a “recovering fundamentalist”. As a leading Pharisee Paul was one of those fundamentalists of his day. He was the stern taskmaster, the church police, and the disciplinarian. Paul’s God was a fearsome and righteous Judge who had to be approached with trembling and uncertainty.

But then Paul met Jesus and everything changed. Jesus introduced Paul to God the Father as He really is. Soon Paul came to know God as good and gracious and merciful, a loving heavenly Father. It wasn’t long before Paul the recovering fundamentalist was calling God “Abba” (which essentially means “Daddy”), and climbing into his lap. Jesus makes this possible.

In Hebrews 4:16 the writer urges us, “Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.”

You see, we don’t have to be afraid of God and we don’t need to doubt whether He welcomes us into His presence. Jesus and Paul both taught us to think of Him as “Abba, Daddy”, and then to approach Him with joy, thanksgiving, eagerness, confidence, and even boldness.

Thanks to Jesus we can always go to the Father with the confidence of knowing not only does He welcome us, but it brings Him great joy that we have come to Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “The glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their gray hair.” Proverbs 20:29

Our thought for today: “Have the confidence to age gracefully.”

She was a bar fly. The woman was in her mid-50s but was trying hard to look 30. Her short dress was way too tight, she wore an excessive amount of jewelry, and she used far too much make-up. Evidently she thought this made her attractive. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the excessive make-up made her look clownish, and the tight dress simply highlighted and revealed all the belly-rolls and varicose veins. Undeterred, she flirted shamelessly with men half her age.

Then there’s the guy, also in his 50s, dressed-out in the baggy pants, pony tail, ear ring, and ball cap on backwards. He’s a white man but he tries hard to act black. “Yo bro, you down with that?”

It’s always a sad spectacle when an older person hasn’t learned how to age gracefully. They look and act ridiculous and everybody knows it (everybody except them).

One of the things a mature Christian faith does for us is it gives us the confidence to embrace and enjoy all the seasons of life – maybe especially old age. While it’s true that as we age our physical body begins to break down and we therefore we experience aches and pains we probably didn’t have in younger years.  But it’s also true that the passing of the years brings with it many advantages and bonuses. For one thing, we should be much more spiritually mature, and therefore experiencing the fruits of the Spirit much more than when we were younger.

Old age also usually brings with it a transition from the working years into some kind of retirement, and that affords us new freedoms and flexibility which we didn’t have in other seasons of life.

And of course, if you are a Christian and you therefore have the promise of eternity in heaven, then each day of life brings you one day closer to your eventual eternal reward.

Many people never have the privilege of growing old. For those of us who do get that privilege, we should be thankful for it and we should learn to appreciate and enjoy it. I remember a line from a poem I read many years ago regarding aging. It went, “Come with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

I encourage you to age gracefully and with dignity. Thank God for the privilege of growing old and then fully embrace and enjoy it.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “Come away by yourselves to a remote place and rest for a while.” Mark 6:31 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “We have to have the confidence to just stop and rest.”

Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest whose work and ministry I have always admired. Henri was not your typical Catholic priest. He was a missionary priest who spent many years working in remote locations of Latin America. He was also a brilliant intellectual who taught philosophy and theology at Harvard. And he was an author of many best-selling books about living the deeper Christian life.

By his own admission Henri was a high-octane over-achiever who spent much of his life constantly on the go. However, he also admitted that all his life there were two competing voices inside his head. One urged him to succeed and achieve, but the other called him to simply rest in the presence of God. Henri said that it wasn’t until the later years of his life when he finally learned to pay more attention to the second voice rather than the first. And when he did, he discovered that resting in the Lord was a lot more fulfilling than constantly striving for achievement.

In Mark chapter six Jesus and his closest disciples were in the middle of an intense period of ministry activities. People were pressing in all around them presenting their needs, looking for help, and keeping them all very busy. In the middle of all that, Jesus suddenly calls a halt to it all, gathers his disciples around him, and takes them away from the crowds and activities to a remote and quiet place so they could simply rest. I’m sure some of the disciples looked at all the pressing ministry needs and felt as if they simply could not in good conscience walk away from it. But Jesus knew that what they needed was rest, and so that is what He called them to.

Many of us don’t have the confidence to simply call a halt to the all the activity and go off for a good rest. We convince ourselves that it’s just not practical, just not doable. There are too many pressing concerns, too many people depending on us. Well, the good news is that the world isn’t really going to end just because you or I check-out for a short time. God is God, and I am not. He can manage things just fine without my constant involvement, and that goes for you too.

No matter how many people might be depending on you, and no matter how many responsibilities you think you have, the truth is that if you don’t take care of yourself you won’t be of much good to anyone else anyway. Sometimes the most effective thing we can do is to simply go get some rest.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “Be gracious to me, God, be gracious to me, for I take refuge in You. I will seek refuge in the shadow of Your wings until danger passes.” Psalm 57:1

Our thought for today: “Even in the worst of times, we can have confidence in God.”

When we think of King David, the greatest King the nation of Israel ever had, we commonly think of the boy who defeated the giant Goliath; or we remember “a man after God’s own heart.” We also remember “The sweet Psalmist of Israel” who wrote the vast majority of the Psalms. And we know him as a mighty warrior, as a very wise and beloved leader, as a talented musician and song writer.

What we sometimes forget is how many enemies David had and how much trouble they brought into his life. As a young man he was pursued and hunted for years by the armies of King Saul. Once he became King he still had many battles with the Philistines and with some of the other hostile nations surrounding the Jews. He was even deposed by his own son (Absalom) and had to flee for his life into the wilderness. And those are just the problems that other people brought into his life. We could spend a long time talking about David’s adultery with Bathsheba, his poor parenting skills which led to rebellion in his own family, the murder of his loyal servant Uriah, and much more.

So David had plenty of troubles in life and there were lots of times when he was faced with difficult and even dangerous situations. Psalm 57 records a time when he was forced to run for his life from King Saul and ended up hiding in a cave in the wilderness.

What we read here are the meditations of a man who had learned through long and hard experience that his only true source of refuge was in the Lord. David knew that his safety and his deliverance would have to come from God. And so, that is who he turned to.

Chances are you are not running for your life from a giant, an insane King, or from a rebellious son. You probably also haven’t arranged for the murder of the husband of your mistress, and you don’t have the armies of hostile nations bearing down on you. But you do have a whole host of other issues and challenges that you have to face (we all do), and just as was true for David, God is your only true source of safety and ultimate deliverance. He is Sovereign over all the situations in your life; He has complete knowledge and total control. And so, He is the one you need to turn to.

And once you do, you can sing with David, “He reaches down from heaven and saves me … My heart is confident, God, my heart is confident.” Psalm 57:3; 7

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

 

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

 

Our Bible verse for today: “Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.” 1 John 3:19 (NLT)

 

Our thought for today: “We must walk the talk.”

 

I’ve known many professing Christians who talk a good game but whose actions are less than convincing when it comes to living the Christian life. If you ask them, they’ll profess to be a Christian based upon some childhood VBS experience, but there’s little evidence in their lives since then that the profession of faith was real.

 

Others have lived a genuine life of devotion and obedience in the past, but at this time in life are not involved in the life of a good church (despite the clear commands of Scripture to do so), and their walk gives all the appearance of having taken them far from God.

 

Still others do go through the motions of practicing the faith, and they do attend a worship service on a semi-regular basis, and therefore they do project some appearance of genuine faith when they’re at the gatherings of the church, but how they live Monday through Saturday paints a different picture. It’s like the singer Jimmy Buffet once observed, “There’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning!”

 

One thing most of those people have in common is that if asked, they’ll give you long and winding explanations designed to convince you that their faith is genuine and sincere even though their actions tell a different story.

 

Those long-winded explanations always remind of the famous line from William Shakespeare, “Me thinkest thou dost protest too much!” In other words, if you have to put that much effort into trying to convince others about the rightness of your choices, you’re probably fibbing.

 

What does all this have to do with our theme of “confidence”? John explained it well in 1 John 3:19. “Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.” If our actions are right and just, if we truly are being obedient to God and living Biblically, we’ll have the confidence to simply stand before Him and we won’t feel the need to try to convince others. We won’t have to. Our actions will speak for themselves.

 

I encourage all of us to consider whether or not we are really walking the talk – are we really living what we profess to believe?

 

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

 

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “The Lord is the One who will go before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.” Deuteronomy 31:8 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “Don’t be afraid to go where God leads.”

Moses spoke the words of Deuteronomy 31:8 at the very end of his life, as he was preparing his replacement, Joshua, to lead the nation of Israel into the Promised Land. Forty years earlier the Israelites had had the opportunity to take possession of the Promised Land but they were too afraid to do so. Even though God had promised it to them, and even though He had assured them of the eventual victory, rather than trusting God and relying on Him, they considered the situation based upon their own strength and abilities, and concluded it was too risky. So they spent forty years wandering in the wilderness instead.

Now here they were, forty years later, and God was giving them a second chance. Moses’ counsel to Joshua, and through him to the nation, was don’t make the same mistake again. Just as was true the first time, God will not only be with you, He will go before you and prepare the way. Trust Him; rely on Him; have confidence in His strength and abilities, not in your own.

This was going to have to be an act of faith on their part. The conditions had not changed much. They were still a wandering group of nomads and the Cannanites were still militarily strong and living in fortified cities. Either they would trust in the Lord or they would fail again.

The great devotional writer Oswald Chambers once observed, “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”

I encourage you to be deliberate about placing your faith in God and trusting Him. Follow where He leads, be obedient to His commands, even if you don’t understand and even if the way forward isn’t clear. Just like with the nation of Israel, your God will go with you, but He will also go before you to prepare the way. Trust Him; follow Him; be fully confident in Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him.” Colossians 1:16 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “You can confidently believe in the Biblical account of creation.”

Most Christians are certain that they do believe the Biblical account of creation, but they are less confident in defending it or publically proclaiming it. Liberal intellectuals promoting the theory of evolution often ridicule belief in the Biblical account of creation, and many Christians wilt in the face of such criticism.

It’s interesting to me that those who promote the belief in life through random chance, and who denigrate the Biblical account of creation, usually appeal to scientific discovery to support their argument. But I’m convinced that scientific discovery actually proves the case for a Creator, not the other way around.

In his book “Rumors of another World”, Christian author Philip Yancey makes the case that earth and all the rest of creation is merely a shadow of heaven. Everything we see and experience in the physical realm gives us a glimpse of eternal realities. And also, the more science is able to delve into and reveal the mysteries of world, the more we see God’s intricate and amazing design.

Take the universe for instance. The more advanced the science of astronomy becomes the more amazed astronomers are about the vastness of the universe and the incredible precision with which it operates. They now know that there are more than seventy billion galaxies out there and if even one of them was one percent different from what they are, it would impact all the rest of the universe.

Through molecular science biologists have discovered that each DNA molecule contains a three-billon letter software code that oversees and regulates all the anatomy of the human body. Who wrote that code? Who designed the universe and put all the pieces in place which such an astonishing degree of precision? These are just two examples of science making the case for a Creator – there are hundreds more.

We have the privilege of living in an age of human history when it’s no longer just the Bible itself that tells the story of creation. Today science makes the case for a Creator too. As Christians we can have complete confidence that God created all there is, exactly the way the Bible describes it. We can believe it simply because the Bible says so, but modern science has also gone a long way in providing physical evidence to support the Biblical truth as well.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

Our thought for today: “Your job is to be faithful; God’s job is to bring transformation in your life.”

If you’re like most of us then you’re probably mildly dissatisfied with where you’re at spiritually. I’ve never met a Christian who could honestly say that they were completely happy and satisfied with the condition of their prayer life. I’ve also never known anyone who felt they knew the Bible well enough. And I’m certain there is no person who could claim to have such a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus that they don’t need to know Him any better.

Spiritually all of us are works in progress and none of us is where we need to be. And, we know it. That being the case, we can easily be left feeling guilty, frustrated, and inadequate. Many of us do.

The answer is to just be faithful and continue to do the things you know you’re supposed to be doing. Faithfully practice the basic and essential disciplines of the Christian life, and trust that God will bring about the spiritual transformation in your life. Author Eugene Peterson once referred to this as “A long obedience in the same direction.” His point was that by means of the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life such as prayer, Bible study, fasting, meditation, worship, fellowship, service, etc., we are to place ourselves in a position before God whereby He can bring about the transformation in us that He desires.

We are not the source or the cause of the spiritual transformation we seek. That comes from God. That’s what Paul meant in Philippians 1:6. God is in the process of doing a great work in your life. He is molding you into the man or woman He wants you to be. However we do have a role to play in the process in that we have to place ourselves before Him and be open to the work He wants to do in us, but the results are up to Him. Therefore our confidence is in Him. You do your part and you can trust Him to do His.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “Stop striving in your own strength and rely instead on the Lord.”

Joshua is an interesting case-study in courage, strength, and confidence. He certainly needed it. Joshua was a relatively young man who was chosen by God to take the mantle of leadership from Moses, the greatest leader the nation of Israel would ever have. Additionally, Joshua was then to lead the nation in the capture and conquest of the Promised Land, which was at that time in the possession of the Canaanites, one of the most advanced and militarily strong societies of that day.

How could Joshua, or anyone else, succeed at such a daunting task? Only by the power of the Lord. Three times in four verses God commanded Joshua to be strong and courageous. First in verse six, “Be strong and courageous …” then in verse seven, “Above all, be strong and very courageous …” Then in verse eight He tells him how to achieve that strength and courage, “This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it.”

Then in verse nine, for the third time, God commands him to be strong and courageous, only this time God includes the caveat, “… for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua could be strong and courageous and confident in the middle of that impossible situation because God was with him. Joshua’s part was to know and obey God’s instruction. God’s part was to give the victory. Therefore Joshua’s confidence was not in his own strength but in God’s.

That should be true of us too. Stop striving to accomplish things in your own strength. Put your confidence in the Lord instead. Know His instructions, obey His instructions, and then go forward with confidence that God can and will bring about His purposes in your life.

Hasn’t He commanded you to be strong and courageous? Yes He has. That command wasn’t recorded simply as an historical account of what He said to the man Joshua 3500 years ago. It is there for you and me today.

“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you.”

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Confidence”

Our Bible verse for today: “In your strength I can crush any army; with my God I can scale any wall.” Psalm 18:29 (NLT)

Our thought for today: “If God is for you, who can be against you?”

I’m thinking you probably won’t have to crush any armies today, nor are you likely to find yourself scaling walls. It will probably only seem that way.

But, you will still find yourself facing challenges of some sort – we all do, every day. Today will be no different. Most of those challenges will be small and you’re already well-equipped to handle them. But eventually (maybe not today but someday), some of those challenges will be bigger, and they will be beyond your ability to handle. Maybe your will lose your job. Maybe the test results will show cancer. Perhaps you wake up and discover your spouse is gone and there’s a note on the kitchen table.

David had been running for his life as he was pursued by the armies of King Saul. He was in serious danger and he knew it. Psalm 18 was written as a Psalm of praise on the day the Lord delivered him from that threat. David’s life was spared, Saul was defeated, and the period of suffering and trials was over. David looked back on it now and affirmed that through it all he had had confidence in God. It was God who had come through and delivered him. And through it all David had trusted that in the end, this would be the case. Psalm 18:29 is an Old Testament version of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Thomas a’ Kempis was a 15th century German monk who wrote the book “The Imitation of Christ”. It is believed that aside from the Bible, this book is the most widely read spiritual work of all time. With respect to having confidence in God to help us and care for us Thomas wrote, “How great peace and quietness would he possess who should cut off all vain anxiety and place all his confidence in God.”

To that, King David and the Apostle Paul would both say a hearty “Amen!”

As you go through your day today, maybe crushing armies and scaling walls, or maybe just typing memos and dealing with difficult bosses, put your confidence in God to help you through it.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim