Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Trusting God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “You can trust God to guide you.”

Christians who love the Lord will genuinely want to know His will and then be obedient to it. However in my years as a pastor I’ve discovered over and over again that well-intentioned Christians often allow themselves to get tied up in knots with worry about whether or not they understand the Lord’s will in any given situation. That then causes them to fret and worry and to hesitate to take any action at all.

Proverbs 3:5-6 is a verse that has helped me personally and it’s one of those Bible promises I frequently point others to. Let’s take a closer look at it. First, Solomon urges the reader to trust the Lord with all your heart. He’s talking about having a heart that is fully and truly surrendered to the Lord. This is a person who genuinely desires to understand and obey God.

He then urges us to not rely on our own understanding of the situation. Our own perspective is often skewed by personal biases, emotions, our own desires, and just plain wrong thinking. Instead we are to think about Him in all our ways. In other words our question needs to be, “What does God have to say about this?” And the way we discover what God has to say about it is through the Bible. We seek His will and His way in His Word. We should also rely on the counsel of a trusted Christian friend or two, and perhaps our Pastor as well.

Then we can trust Him to guide us on the right paths. My friend, God does have a purpose and a plan for you, and He does want to be understood by you. If your heart is right and you are making a sincere effort to understand Him and obey Him, then you can trust that He will not allow you to go astray. You can trust God to guide you.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Trusting God”

Our Bible verse for today: “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “God is sovereign over it all and you can trust Him.”

When we say that God is “sovereign” over all things we mean that He is in absolute and total control over everything. He is aware, in advance, of everything that happens and He has power over it all. There is no event that is too big for Him to control, and there is no issue too little to escape His attention. Also, He directs it all according to His perfect will.

Sometimes God exercises His will directly by intervening in situations and bringing them to His desired end. This is His “direct will”. At other times He simply allows things to occur as a result of the exercise of individual free will, or because of the natural progression of things that happen in a broken and sin-filled world. In those cases God hasn’t intervened directly but has simply chosen to allow things to occur. This is known as his “permissive will”. In other words for His own purposes and in His divine wisdom He “permitted” it to happen. But still, He knew about it and it was within His control the entire time.

What does all this have to do with you and me and our trust in God? Jesus answered that for us in Matthew 10:29-31 and again in Matthew 6:25-33. God is aware of everything about you and about your life, including those two sparrows you can hear chirping in the tree outside your window and the number of hairs on your head. Jesus says that if God cares for the sparrows then He will surely care for you too because as much as He does love those sparrows, He loves you even more.

Life is often confusing and painful. Many times things are happening to us that we don’t understand and we find ourselves fretting and anxious about an uncertain future. At such times we can draw a great sense of reassurance from the truth the God who loves us is also sovereign over the circumstances of our lives. Although we don’t understand, He does. And although much of what’s happening to us is beyond our control, it’s not beyond His.

Because God is sovereign and because He loves us completely and unconditionally, we can trust Him.

God Bless, Pastor Jim

 

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Trusting God”

Our Bible verse for today: “He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

Our thought for today: “Trust God to hold it all together”

Do you ever feel as if your life is coming apart at the seams? Yeah, me too. Some days it just seems as if everything that can go wrong does go wrong and if one more thing goes wrong, my whole life is going to unravel and somebody is going to have to raise bail money for me. Well fortunately, Jesus is in control even when it seems that I am out of control.

In Colossians 1:15-20 Paul takes us into some pretty deep theological waters. In that passage he gives us a peak behind the veil that separates the physical and spiritual realms and he tells us some things about Jesus that are truly mind boggling. First we learn that the Jesus we see on the pages of the Gospels is an image of the invisible God who we cannot see (vs 15). Then we are told that everything that exists was actually created by Jesus (vs 16); He existed before anything was created (vs 17); the entire fullness of God dwells within Jesus (vs 19); and that through Him all things can be reconciled to God (vs 20).

But look at verse 17 again, “and by Him all things hold together.” Not only did Jesus create it all, but He holds it all together too.

How does that apply to our chaotic lives and to our theme of trusting God? Just that if Jesus is able to hold the stars and the planets in their places; and if He is able to hold together all the atoms and all particles in all the substances that make up this world; and if He holds together the very heavens themselves; surely He can hold together the pieces and parts of my life and of yours too.

The things that seem so vexing and confounding to me are small potatoes to Him. In fact while I’m flailing around frantically trying to hold it all together, Jesus already has it under control for me (if He didn’t it would have all flown apart long ago). All of life is lived under His sovereign control. As Paul explained in the book of Acts, “For in Him we live and move and exist …” Acts 17:28 (HCSB)

Jesus governs and sustains all creation, including our lives. He holds it all together, He guides and directs, and He brings all things to their appointed end. Therefore we can put our trust in Him.

 God Bless,

Pastor Jim

 

Good Morning Everyone,

 Our theme for this month: “Trusting God”

 Our Bible verse for today: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.” Romans 8:22

 Our thought for today: “God can be trusted even when we’re groaning.”

 Years ago there was a humorous little book written for high schoolers entitled “If God Loves Me, Why Can’t I Get My Locker Open?” It’s a funny title that expresses an unfortunate truth – we tend to groan and gripe about the littlest and silliest things. And we often blame God.

 Come on admit it, how often do you get irritated and fussy because your own locker won’t open, or because you’re in a hurry and the traffic light is taking a long time to turn green, or you’re in dead zone for your cell phone coverage and you can’t make the call you wanted to make (and shouldn’t be making anyway because you’re driving, remember?) And how do you react during such times? You’re smiling and singing praises to God right? Not! You’re groaning right along with the rest of creation. You’re griping along with everyone else sitting at that long red light.

 God doesn’t like it when we moan and groan and get irritated and fussy over silly things. The Israelites did that, and in Psalm 78:21 the Psalmist reminded them that when they did, God got furious with them and the fire of the Lord raged through their camp devouring people, tents, animals, and provisions.

 Now I don’t mean to suggest that you will be struck with a lightening bolt because you’re sitting there grumbling about the red light, but surely God isn’t pleased with our muttering and grumbling either. The fact is that the light will change, and your cell phone coverage will return, and eventually your locker will open. If we can trust God for the big things like shelter and provisions and health, then surely we can also trust Him for the little things like red lights and cell phone coverage.

 I want to encourage all of us today to make it a point to trust God not only for the big deals in life, but for all those little things as well.

 God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Peace”

Our Bible verse for today: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place. And He was praying there.’ Mark 1:35

Our thought for today: “We have to cultivate the garden of the heart.”

I love the picture Mark paints in Mark 1:35. Here we see Jesus getting up very early, going off to a quiet place, and having time alone with the Father. Apparently this was a habit He had. All four of the Gospel writers make it a point of portraying Jesus at various times and in various places spending time cultivating His relationship with the Father.

Jesus’ times of private prayer that we read about in the Bible remind me of the old Baptist hymn “In the Garden”. “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses; And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, The Son of God discloses. And He walks with me, and He talks with Me, And He tells me I am His own, And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known.”

The songwriter was describing what Jesus was experiencing – a special time alone with God that was rich and deep and renewing.

What’s pictured in both Mark 1:35 and in the hymn I just referred to is an actual garden, a physical place a person can go to be alone with God. However the heart itself has often been compared to that quiet garden in the early morning. It can be a place of solitude and peace, a place of refreshment and renewal. If the garden of the heart is properly cared for and frequently visited, not only does it become the place where the individual meets with God, but it can also become an inner place of calm and peace from which the rest of life can be lived. Brother Lawrence, the famous French monk from the 15th century wrote of this:

“It is not needful always to be in church to be with God. We make a chapel of our heart, to which we can from time to time withdraw to have gentle, humble, loving communion with Him.”

I encourage you to make the time early each morning to cultivate the garden of your heart by spending time with God. If Jesus needed to do it then how much more should we?

God Bless,

Pastor Jim