40 Day Challenge

As most of you know, our church has been challenged by Pastor Danny to set aside 30 minutes a day, every day, for 40 days to read the Word aloud with our families, beginning and ending in prayer. Today I received the following in an email newsletter from author Ray Comfort at Living Waters. I must say that I know too well the “excuses” he mentions, as we have been fighting many of them in this challenge. I hope that his thoughts might encourage you and strengthen your resolve to have a “family altar” time, too.

If you want “godly offspring,” it is essential that you make the time to establish a family altar. Build it out of the unmovable rocks of resolution. You will need to be resolute about this because it will be a battle. Your flesh will fight it, and you can be sure there will be a continual spiritual battle within your mind. “Circumstances” will constantly crop up. Your kids will occasionally groan when you announce that it is time for devotions. Loved ones may subtly, subconsciously discourage you. However, your time of family devotions should be a priority for your whole family. Don’t be legalistic about it, but as much as possible, put all other things aside before you postpone or cancel family devotions.

It will be an altar of sacrifice, as you sacrifice your time, your energy, and sometimes your dignity. For years, our kids heard, “Six o’clock—reading time.” My wife and I dropped whatever we were doing, and the children learned to do the same, and we gathered as a family. Making it a priority for your family’s growth will speak volumes about its importance in their lives.

Again, you will find that there are many excuses for not having devotions. You may be pressed for time, feel tired, or think you are unable to teach the Bible. However, there is one very powerful reasonwhy you should have daily devotions: the eternal salvation of your children. (Adapted from How to Bring Your Children to Christ…& Keep Them There.)

Malachi 2:15 But did He not make them one, Having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.

Birthday Gift

For our grandson’s first birthday I made him a leather covered Bible; that was two years ago. This past weekend was Connor’s third birthday and on Sunday he took, for the first time, his Bible to church with him. He thought it was the best thing of the weekend and kept repeating “my Bible; Pap made Bible for me.”. I was really touched by how Connor loved that Bible. It was very cute to see him carrying it all over the place, looking at the tooling I’d done on it, and leafing through the pages. And add in the sense of pride I got because he understand that I had made it specially for him and, well, it was some thing I’ll never forget.

This made me think about how our Heavenly Father must feel when we spend time in and appreciate His Word. He gave us the precious gift of His inspired Word to guide us and to teach us all we need to know to be reconciled to Him and live this life in the center of His will. We should have the same childlike enthusiasm for that precious gift as Connor showed for his first Bible. And we should hope and pray for ourselves and our families that we never loose it.

Pastor’s Corner

Pastors Corner 4-15-2012

This week I want to follow-up on a Pastor’s Corner that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It was about Making God’s Word a Priority in your life for forty days. If you have not started I encourage you to start and if you have started I want to encourage you to continue. There have been a few days that it has been late and we were tired and it was a challenge to continue. The easy thing would have been to say we will skip tonight because it is late and pick it up tomorrow, but commitment does not work that way. If you are committed to doing something you do it when ever possible or reasonable. The benefits of spending time with God’s word and the family will be far greater that a little extra rest. I will leave you with a funny picture that has happen several times when we are reading God’s word. It seems that Rusty (Sherlene’s cat) thinks that it is the best time in the world to cuddle. He gets up in my lap, purrs loudly and watches and listens to everything. To someone looking in the window, knowing about Making God’s Word a Priority might think, “WOW” they must be serious because they even read to the cat. Continue reading and God bless.

Pastor Danny

In Tune

The other day my wife was mowing the lawn; she always does the mowing since I’m unable to do so. Our grandson, Connor, was in the yard playing while she was working. Every so often he would holler at her or say some thing to her. Every time he spoke to her she paused and replied. I found this a little odd since normally when she is mowing and I need to get her attention it takes a lot more than speaking to her: yelling, waving my arms, maybe even throwing some thing at her is required. Obviously she was much more attuned to Connor than she normally is anyone else while she was working.

The Bible teaches us that if we will draw closer to God, He will draw closer to us. The more open our spiritual eyes and ears are the more apt we are to clearly hear the Lord when He speaks to us. Spending quality time in the Word and prayer is the best way to become attuned to hear His every call and feel His sweet presence.

Pastor’s Corner

Pastors Corner 4-1-2012

Last Sunday I presented the church with a proposal to think about for a week. I’ve had another week to think about it and still think that it is a good idea. The suggestion, I am going to call Making God’s Word a Priority, is intended as a way for the church to get closer to their immediate family while they get closer to God. The proposal asks for a thirty minute daily commitment to reading God’s word for forty days. During this time the family will come together and turn off all distractions (television, phones, computers, back ground music, basically anything that would distract). The family should start out by holding hands and praying before they start reading. Each member of the family should take turns reading out loud. Once you have read for thirty minutes then hold hands again and end in prayer. Depending on your family circumstances your version of Making God’s Word a Priority may be somewhat different. You can start out anywhere in the Bible and do not have to do the books in order. This should give us a way to make God’s Word a priority in our lives and by the end of the forty day I hope that we all look forward to spending these thirty minutes with God and our families.

Pastor Danny

Dealing with Sin

“Forgive us our debts” (Matt. 6:12).
Christians struggle with sin. That surely comes as no surprise to you. As you mature in Christ, the frequency of your sinning decreases, but your sensitivity to it increases. That doesn’t mean you are more easily tempted, but that you are more aware of the subtleties of sin and how it dishonors God.

Some people think you should never confess your sins or seek forgiveness, but the Lord instructed us to do so when He said for us to pray, “Forgive us our debts” (Matt. 6:12). That’s the believer’s prayer for the Father’s forgiveness.

John said, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10). That passage doesn’t tell us how to get saved, as many have taught. It tells us how to distinguish believers from unbelievers: believers confess their sins; unbelievers don’t.

The phrase “forgive us” in Matthew 6:12 implies the need for forgiveness. “Debts” translates a Greek word that was used to speak of a moral or monetary debt. In Matthew 6:12 it refers to sins. When you sin, you owe to God a consequence or a debt because you have violated His holiness.

When you sin as a believer, you don’t lose your salvation but you will face God’s chastening if you don’t repent. Hebrews 12 says, “Those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives . . . . He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness” (vv. 6, 10).

If you are harboring sin, confess it now and allow God to cleanse you and use you today for His glory.

Suggestions for Prayer:

Write down why God’s forgiveness is important to you, then express those thoughts to Him in praise.

For Further Study:

Read Psalm 38.

What physical and emotional ailments did David experience as a result of his sin?
What was his attitude toward God as he confessed his sin?

(From Drawing Near by John MacArthur Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.)

Garbage In…

I was thinking about a couple of projects I did last fall, compared to a couple I’ve done recently, and the results I obtained from them. Last fall I had s couple of small side tables to refinish. I used what I had on hand, as far as paint and things go, and put a fair amount of time into both of them. But the results were, well, less than stellar. This past week I refurbished a couple of old metal utility carts. For these projects I got new paint, a specific type and color for each one, and used new and different primer on them both. I also used a different technique and products for the preparation phase. And you know what? They results were a whole lot better, at least in my opinion, with these carts than I got from the tables. I think the difference was in the products I used: what I had on hand verses getting the specific item that I needed for the projects. I guess this would be kind of an example of “garbage in, garbage out”, as the old saying goes.

This principle is equally true with what we fill ourselves with: if we fill our mind with garbage our attitudes will reflect that. The Bible says

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

. If we feast upon godly things we will produce good fruit in all areas of our lives, fruit that is pleasing to God and useful to His purposes. But if we indulge in the worldly, godless things the product will be far from fruitful; it will be useless garbage.

Accepting God’s Plan

Accepting God’s Plan
by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Job 24:1–25

David, in Psalm 139, makes the appropriate comment, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it” (v. 6). If David lived today, he would write, “This blows my mind.” The vastness of God’s inscrutability has a way of doing that to us—and so it should.

If nothing else, the study of Job reveals that we don’t fully understand God’s ways. We cannot explain the inexplicable. We cannot fathom the unfathomable. So let’s not try to unscrew the inscrutable.

If only the men who considered themselves Job’s friends had acknowledged that. It would have been so much more comforting to Job, sitting in such enormous misery, longing for an arm around his shoulder and someone honest enough to say, “We’re here, but we don’t understand why this is happening any more than you do. God knows, but we’re here to be with you through it. God is doing something deep and mysterious, but it is so beyond us we cannot understand it either.”

May I go one step further? God doesn’t have a “wonderful plan” for everybody’s life. Not here on earth, for sure. For some lives His plan is Lou Gehrig’s disease. For some lives (like Job’s) His plan is a life of pain. For others, heartbreak and brokenness, blindness or paralysis, or congenital complications. For many, His plan is to answer no to their requests for healing. But we don’t like that. Some won’t accept it. In fact, they go so far as to say, “If you believe that, you lack faith.” On the contrary, I say if you believe that, you believe the Bible!

The Bible describes the lives of people who don’t get well, who don’t quickly get over their problems, who don’t easily overcome accidents or illnesses. God’s Word pictures its heroes, warts and all. They hurt. They fall. They fail, and on occasion, by His grace, they succeed.

How well do you accept the unfolding plan of God for your life?

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives(Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Wait and Watch

Wait and Watch
by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Job 2:10

Job’s response to his wife’s suggestion that he curse God and die is magnificent. “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks” (Job 2:10). Hats off to the old patriarch! In his weakened condition, sitting there in the misery of all those sores, not knowing if any of that would ever change, he stood firm—he even reproved her. He said, in effect, “I need to correct the course of this conversation. We’re not going there.”

He went further than stating a reproof; he asked an excellent question. “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” (v. 10). His insight was rare, not only back then, but today. What magnificent theology! How seldom such a statement emerges from our secular system.

Job is thinking these thoughts: Doesn’t He have the right? Isn’t He the Potter? Aren’t we the clay? Isn’t He the Shepherd and we the sheep? Isn’t He the Master and we the servant? Isn’t that the way it works?

Somehow he already knew that the clay does not ask the potter, “What are you making?” And so he says, in effect, “No, no, no, sweetheart. Let’s not do that. We serve a God who has the right to do whatever He does and is never obligated to explain it or ask permission. Stop and consider—should we think that good things are all we receive? Is that the kind of God we serve? He’s no heavenly servant of ours who waits for the snap of our fingers, is He? He is our Lord and our Master! We need to remember that the God we serve has a game plan that is beyond our comprehension, including hard times like this.”

And I love this last line, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (v. 10). There’s absolute trust there. And faith. “Sweetheart, we can’t explain any of this, so let’s wait and watch God work. We would never have expected what happened. Both our hearts are broken over the loss. We’ve lost everything. Well—not everything. We’ve still got each other. Our God has a plan that is unfolding, even though we cannot understand it right now. Let’s wait and watch to see what He will do next.”

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Trust in the Plan

“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Genesis 50:20 KJV)

Joseph endured a lot due to things that others did to him. I’m sure that while he was going through the many trials he faced he must’ve wondered why God allowed the things He did. What really strikes me is how Joseph praises God for the things he endured in Genesis 50:20; instead of lamenting, Joseph says what was done to me was done out of evil intentions but God used that for good.

I think we often wonder why the Lord allows some of the things to happen in our lives that He does. And I think it’s okay to wonder and even expected by Him that we will. What I figure most of us are less apt to do is to thank Him for those things. I know that I can’t always see or understand the “why” but I have the promise that it is ultimately for good. I also know that when I have the perspective that time allows from an event in the past to the present things are often much clearer, as was Joseph’s in the passage I mentioned.

Ultimately we have to learn to trust completely in God’s goodness and righteousness. When we don’t understand how He is working things out or along is the time that our trust and faith are both exercised and grown the most.