No Parking

As we continued our journey down Jesus Road in our Easter message series, U-Turns Allowed, we considered the power of a transformed life in light of the No Parking sign. To help us better grasp this concept, we looked at the life of Peter as an example.

If you read the Gospel accounts of Peter, you find a very passionate and impetuous person. He is the disciple who in one moment is ready fight to the death for Jesus, and literally hours later, denied he even knew Him. Yet after Jesus’ Resurrection, Peter became a completely different person and embodied the qualities of the rock upon which the Church would be built, just as Jesus said. The transformation we see in Peter’s life is extraordinary and shows that there is hope for all of us.

As we make our way down Jesus Road, we will experience various triumphs and tragedies ourselves. The temptation is to park and stay right there. When we experience a triumph, we never want that feeling to end and park in hopes of staying in that moment. On the other hand, when we experience tragedies in life, the temptation is to allow the pain and potential loss of hope to cause us to stop along our faith journey. Stopping in either of these situations is not good for us. We need the mountain-top-type moments to build us up for the valley below, but we also need the valley moments to help maximize the beauty of the view from the mountain top.

The bottom line is the highs and lows of life help make us who we are, and when we can see God’s power and presence in the midst of them both, we experience transformation. The funny thing about transformation, though, is it is almost exclusively understood in hindsight. When we are being molded and shaped, we often do not know what is transpiring in the moment until we have a chance to get a few more paces down the road and can see the difference versus where we were when we began. 

In 1 Peter 3:15, we read that we all should be able to give a reason for the hope that we have in faith. What are the highs and lows in your own life that give you the hope that you have in Jesus Christ? This is the foundation of your story of transformation! Your story needs to be shared with others who are seeking hope that God is still actively at work in the world and in our lives, despite how bleak it might seem at the moment. If we park ourselves after experiencing a victory or defeat, then we scuttle our spiritual development. It is the highs of the mountain top moments that prepare us for the journey in the valley below, and it is the hope that the valley is not our destination that keeps us going. 

So keep trekking in your journey down Jesus Road. There is certainly time for rest and reflection along the way (more on that in a few weeks), but for now, no parking in the midst of your journey, because there are still miles to go and people to meet before it’s all said and done. We’ll explore this a bit further on Sunday in our message, Merge, where I will teach about the necessity of relationships for ministry and service.

God Bless, and I hope to see you Sunday (if not before)!

Pastor Mark 

Slippery Road Ahead

We continued our U-Turns Allowed message series this past Sunday, discussing temptation with the road sign, Slippery Road Ahead (you can watch this message by clicking here). One of the key insights from the message is that temptation does not equal sin. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way, but did not sin. Temptation comes to us from so many different sources and angles, and it is important to have some knowledge and wisdom about temptation. To do this, we explored Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13).

Jesus’ temptation came after a profound spiritual experience – his baptism. You might find it curious that temptation came right after such a profound spiritual experience, but I think this is true for most, if not all, of us. Significant spiritual encounters can leave us feeling invulnerable, which actually makes us more susceptible to attacks from the enemy. Using Jesus’ temptation as an example, we can see three areas where we are particularly vulnerable:

1. Our appetite and cravings for food, beverage, drugs, sex, and other items that can take on a god-like status in our lives
2. Our need to feel important, but we must guard again self-serving methods that are unethical and unholy 
3. Our tendency to take God’s grace for granted by thinking we can give in to our temptations, even knowing when we are wrong, because of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness.

You most likely know the areas in your life where you are vulnerable to temptation as it pertains to your appetites, need for significance, and propensity to take God’s forgiveness for granted. Looking back over your life and past mistakes is critically important to see what kind of slippery road might lie ahead in your journey of faith. As the old saying attributed to George Santayana goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is highly applicable in our spiritual life as well. Our past mistakes, failures, and sins reveal potential vulnerabilities that Satan will use to cause us to slip up in the future. After all, Luke 4:13 gives us the insight that Satan looks for opportune times when we are vulnerable to specific temptations.

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, the Apostle Paul had a great teaching on looking at our past to help us deal with future temptation. In this writing, Paul encourages his readers to be warned from their past, because they had the powerful presence of God right in their midst, yet still succumbed to their appetites, self-serving need for significance, and took God’s grace for granted. Within this section, we get the oft misunderstood idea that God never puts more on us than we can handle. Check out how The Message states this verse, “No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

God is not a tempter, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be tempted. God promises to be present with us to help us through the temptations of life, and this is critically important! God cannot have any part of sin, but his grace is there to hold us up when we feel like falling. And in those times when we do slip up, we can humbly go to the Lord, repent of our sin, make the necessary u-turn, and get right back on Jesus Road.

I hope you will plan to join us this coming Sunday as we continue our U-Turns Allowed message series. This week’s topic is No Parking where we will explore staying on Jesus Road, inviting others along for the journey, and looking back to see just how far we have come!

Right Way/Wrong Way

We have a God who (thankfully) allows us to make U-Turns in life! As we discussed in our Easter Sunday message, repentance is a word that means a literal change in the way we think and live. If you are going the wrong way in life, then make a U-Turn to start living the right way. But know this: your U-Turn is not the destination in and of itself, but the beginning of a brand new journey. This is important for us to acknowledge, lest we think that all we need to do is make a U-Turn and then end the journey right then and there.

As Jesus was teaching and preparing His disciples for His inevitable departure, He said, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me” (John 14:6, The Message). This teaching gives us the explicit idea that Jesus isn’t merely the destination, because He is also the road by which we travel! In our U-Turn, Jesus is inviting us to join Him on His road — Jesus Road — the road that leads to God.

All too often, we have a dead-end experience and we know we must make a U-Turn, but before too long, we are right back on the same road as before. Jesus is intent on showing us the right way, but we still choose the wrong way. The GOOD NEWS is God is gracious and loving and allows us to make another U-Turn to leave the wrong way and get back on the right way…the Jesus Road.

Traveling along the Jesus Road will leave us changed, no doubt about it. This is threatening for some. I can remember sharing my faith with someone years ago who thought that following Jesus meant that we could never have any fun. Sadly, this is an indictment on the way many believers live out their faith; either inconsistently or so woefully lacking joy. Following Jesus isn’t about never enjoying life, because it is about experiencing a life we could never ever dream of apart from Him.

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” There is an inherent paradox in this teaching, which is for those on the path to destruction, the Jesus Road seems so restrictive and constrictive, but in reality, following Christ reveals a whole new path full of life-giving love that we would otherwise never experience. But again, the Jesus Road leaves us changed.

Once we make the U-Turn, leaving the wrong way for the right way on the Jesus Road, we also begin to see things that we never saw previously. The Lord enlightens our hearts, eyes, and ears to suffering in the world, the blight of the needy, and cries of the oppressed seeking truth and life. Our journey along Jesus Road, therefore, becomes one of reaching out in love and concern for those who need it so desperately. Traveling along Jesus Road, we begin to sense the brokenness of the world in ways we never did before, and the Casting Crowns song lyric all of a sudden makes sense: “Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours.”

God is inviting you on a journey to Him down Jesus Road, and He wants you to use your resources and relationships wisely to help others reach their heavenly destination, too. Have you ever experienced a burden well up within you so powerfully that you uttered rhetorically, “Somebody ought to do something about that”? Have you considered that you might very well be that somebody? God wants to use your life as you travel the right way down Jesus Road to help others find their dead-end, make their U-Turn, and join you on the journey to God.

Who has God placed in your life? What burdens has God placed in your heart? What resources has God given you to help you be that somebody who can make an eternal difference for another? Make that U-Turn…get on Jesus Road…help others get there, too! 

You can watch the video for this message by clicking here.

You-Turns Allowed

This past week in worship, as we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, we began a new message series entitled, U-Turns Allowed; you can watch the message by clicking here. The point of this opening message which will carry on throughout the series, is that the Resurrection of Jesus completely changed the world and our relationship with God. As I mentioned Sunday, before Jesus’ Resurrection, the old bumper sticker pretty much summed it up: the one who dies with the most toys wins. But with Jesus’ victory over sin and death, we can find assurance in His words that, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (John 11:25)

Jesus himself proved this to be true on Resurrection morning. As the gospels tell us, Mary was on her way to the tomb to care for Jesus’ dead body. When she arrived, however, she found the tomb empty! This led her to make a U-Turn of sorts and head back to share the news to the rest of Jesus’ disciples.

For you and me, if we find ourselves in a difficult time, oppressed by the same feelings that haunted the disciples – their betrayal, denial, fear, dismay – we can rest assured that the power of God that busted in the tomb to call forth Jesus is the same power that bursts through the rock-hard walls of our hearts to bring us back to life, too! And the good news is it is never too late, and we are never too far gone, for God’s power to be able to work miracles in our lives! All you need to do is accept the power of God, and with faith in Christ as the one sent to free us, receive the blessings of salvation. For as the bible says, “…if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)

Implicit in this message is we need others to help us on the journey of life in faith. We will invariably encounter difficulties, potholes, seeming dead-ends, endless construction, and all kinds of unknown conditions on the road of life, but when we travel together, we find safety, support, accountability, and it is frankly a whole lot more fun.

I hope you will make plans to be with us throughout this Easter season (which runs until Pentecost on May 24) for our U-Turn message series. It will be enlightening, informative, entertaining, and challenging; through it all, though, we will gain a deeper appreciation for how we can make our own individual U-Turns from a dead-end way of living and embrace a new way of thinking and behaving (remember: repentance) that keeps us on God’s path. The remaining topics we’ll cover are:

·       April 12 – Wrong Way/One Way | John 14:1-8 | Salvation

·       April 19 – Slippery Road Ahead | 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 | Temptation

·       April 26 – No Parking | 1 Peter 3.8-16 | Evangelism

·       May 3 – Merge | Romans 15:1-13 | Relationships for Service

·       May 10 – Yield | Romans 10:1-13 | The Lordship of Jesus

·       May 17 – Rest Area | Exodus 20:9-11 | Sabbath

Happy Easter, have a great week, and I hope to see you Sunday (if not before!),

Pastor Mark 

Praise

I taught on praise as a part of our Worship Life series this past Sunday. Just as the meaning of the word ‘worship’ implies a certain physical and emotional posture – bowed and surrendered before God – the word praise carries similar implications. As I mentioned on Palm Sunday, there are seven different words for praise in the ancient Hebrew, and four of them deal with the use of the hands:

• 1. Lifting our hands high to God in praise
• 2. Holding our hands with palms facing upward in prayer to receive a blessing
• 3. Reaching out with our hands to praise God by serving others
• 4. Using our hands to make music in praise of God, clapping included

It is easy to see that when we consider praising God, our words and deeds matter. The Bible certainly gives us clarity as we consider the connection between how we use our words and our hands in praise to God through our Worship Life: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3.17)

The reason I looked at the concept of praise in the Hebrew is because of a very poignant verse found in Psalm 22.3: “The Lord inhabits the praises of His people.” I found myself convicted as I thought about my own Worship Life. How often has God inhabited my words? How often has God inhabited my deeds? Am I using my words and my hands to praise Him? Am I living my entire life in worshipful praise of who God is and what God has done for me in Christ Jesus? How about you? Living the Worship Life means that we seek to praise God with our words, deeds, and very lives!

The Worship Life series has been very helpful in critically exploring how we are living for God. The topics we have explored thus far are: individual and corporate worship, prayer, generosity, and praise. We are not finished with this series, though, because we have two more very meaningful installments as we get ready for Easter. Tomorrow we will celebrate Maundy Thursday with our message, Feasting, commemorating Jesus’ Last Supper and the gift of Holy Communion as a means to remember what Christ did for us. Then on Good Friday, we will consider a life of Faith as our final installment in The Worship Life, commemorating Jesus’ death on the cross to pay the ultimate penalty for humanity’s sinfulness.

Have a great rest of the week, using your words, your hands, and your entire life to give praise to God for what He has done for us in Christ Jesus!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...
(1 Peter 1:3)

Prayer

We explored the concept of prayer as part of The Worship Life this past Sunday. I heard from many of you about how meaningful that message was. If you were not able to be in worship, or would like to hear it again, you can check it out online by clicking here.

I used Philippians 4:4-14 from The Message as the main text for this week’s sermon. There were two big ideas that came out of that text: (1) using prayer as a way to stabilize the soul as opposed to worry; and (2) the connecting power of prayer from relating to God and relating to others. Both of these big ideas are perfect focal points for thinking about The Worship Life, in that we are to keep our eyes fixed upon God all day every day, and allow our prayer life to connect us to the will of God and in loving service to others. This is the essence of 1 Thessalonians 5:17 as Paul writes to pray without ceasing.

Praying without ceasing is a dynamic concept as it pertains to The Worship Life. It means that we live in a continuous flowing dialogue with the Lord as we go about our everyday life. Obviously, we cannot always approach prayer with head bowed, hands clasped, and eyes closed, but praying continuously means we are tuned in to the will of God as we interact with others. From sharing in prayerful dialogue as we drive up and down the road to a simple breath prayer we might lift before talking to someone, shaping a life of prayer in all aspects of life works to unlock the powerful presence of Christ in every interaction. This turns prayer from something that a leader does in worship on Sunday mornings to the deep wellspring of every person’s complete spiritual life!

Unlocking this prayer power also requires us to consider the things in life that inhibit it; on Sunday, I referred to this idea as a barrier to prayer. There are many prayer barriers that we experience in our everyday living, but for the purpose of this article, I want to focus on three.

The first comes directly from our Philippians 4 text, and that is worry. Worry means we have a divided mind. We end up focusing on our situations as opposed to our Savior. As Paul wrote, instead of worrying, we should pray, because it is incredible what happens when Jesus displaces worry at the center of our lives.

The second barrier is busyness. Let’s face it, we are all busy, and the thought of taking even a moment out of our otherwise hectic day might seem impossible. This is a myth and it is terribly destructive. Satan wants us to be busy, focusing on things as opposed to focusing the main thing: God! If you are feeling busy and overwhelmed, prayer is the perfect salve for that. It requires us to pause, but also to unify our divided mind and place the emphasis where it belongs.

The third barrier I want to consider is competition. As humans, our animal-like instincts rely on competition for survival in this crazy world. Where competition can be healthy in some areas, when it comes to our spiritual life, it can be destructive. If you experience a barrier to prayer that emerges when you fear you cannot pray as eloquently as someone else, then you might be tempted to just rely on others to pray for you. God doesn’t care about eloquent words; God wants to connect your heart to His in a constant loving conversation. I think back to when Ethan was tiny and how much I loved to simply hear him say, “Daddy.” There can be few things that bring God as much joy as when we turn to God as the heavenly parent and acknowledge His presence and powerful loving presence in our life. We do not need a master’s grasp on the English language; just use the simple words that share the things in your heart and mind with God.

There are undoubtedly countless barriers to prayer…perhaps as many barriers as there are people. Do not let them keep you from connecting to God. Do not let them keep you from allowing God to connect you spiritually with others. This will unlock and empower your life in unthinkable ways as you seek to live The Worship Life.

Synergy

We continued our new Lenten message series, The Worship Life, this past Sunday. Whereas the first installment dealt with the importance of a personal worship life with God, the second explored the necessity of a corporate worship life with others. In Romans 12:1-5, we see Paul draw a line between one’s individual life of worshipping God to being part of the larger body of Christ, also known as, the church.

The word, synergy, can be defined as the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. To put it simply, together we are all stronger than we could ever be on our own. That might not seem revolutionary on the surface, but when you think about what it means for us to set aside our bent toward aiming to meet our own selfish ambitions, well, it is transformative! Beyond Paul’s metaphor of the various parts of the body working together, there is likely no greater biblical example of synergy than in Jesus’ words as recorded in Matthew 18.20: “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

Let’s face it, we are an imperfect people called together to do a perfect work. For some (if not many), the perceived imperfections of individual people might be enough reason to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater when it comes to being part of the church. No matter how hard we look or want it to be so, there is no such thing as a perfect church. True, we see problems abound anytime people get involved in things, but I think therein lies the message. When we acknowledge that we gather in the name of Jesus, recognizing others’ imperfections while acknowledging our own, then some beautiful synergy occurs! We see the importance of grace and forgiveness – that which we need to receive and that which we need to extend – being lived out in the midst of our imperfect relationships to truly be an example for others as to what it means to live a life of love, even when it is difficult. Jesus’ promise to be in our midst when we gather with others – in spite of how much we might agree or argue – provides the synergy we need to continue in our perfect work amongst life’s imperfection.

Difficult? Yes, indeed. A life of faith is difficult, but we can’t go it alone, even though there might be a definite temptation to do so. How many times have you heard or thought that you don’t have to be in church to worship God? I know I have felt that from time-to-time, admitting that some of my most spiritual moments have happened in the Rocky Mountains, at a Canadian lighthouse, on the surf in the Gulf of Mexico, and even in the self-proclaimed Happiest Place on Earth. I cannot minimize that fact that it is technically true one does not have to be in church to worship God, it overlooks the incontrovertible truth that life and worship isn’t just about us as individuals, but what we bring to others, synergized with the powerful presence of Jesus.

We need the church and the church needs us. So once we move beyond our risk aversion and actually get into community…as messy as it can be…then the synergistic presence of Jesus joins us, fills in the gaps, and encourages us to press on to be a living example of forgiveness and grace, spurring us on in, and to show, others the miraculous power of love.

I want to close with these encouraging words from Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” May we not give up on meeting together, because we need it and so do others. May we remain inventive in ways to show love for others, even when it stretches. This isn’t just about us, it’s about extending the blessings of the Kingdom of God for others, and it’s about the synergy we enjoy when we gather together in Jesus’ name and see the ordinary become extraordinary right before our eyes.

Have a great rest of the week, and I hope you’ll join us Sunday as we consider The Worship Life and prayer.