Speak your mind

One of the Elders in our church, Bob, shared some thoughts with us the other evening. One of the scriptures he mentioned struck a chord with me. It is several thousand years old, but it speaks clearly to our society. We live in a world where far too many have dismissed the idea of moral or ethical values or constraints.

 

We live in a world where more and more people feel they have “A RIGHT” to do or say whatever they want, whatever feels good to them without restraint. They teach, “Have sex with whoever you want, we’ve made abortion clinics available for everyone”. “Have homosexual relations, we changed the laws and it’s legal now”. “Cheat just a little on your taxes, or anywhere you can, it won’t really matter.” “Speak your mind, as crudely and as loudly as you want, no one can stop you”. “Participate in all of the worldly things you want… drink just a little, gamble just a little, party just a little… it’s your right!”

 

The problem is that the world has tried this before, (more than once), and it always has the same results. Notice what God says about this through his spokesman, Isaiah.

 

“Now go and write down these words. Write them in a book. They will stand until the end of time as a witness that these people are stubborn rebels who refuse to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions. They tell the seers, "Stop seeing visions!" They tell God’s spokesmen: "Don't tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies. Forget all this gloom. Get off your narrow path. Stop telling us about your 'Holy One of Israel.'" 

 

Notice how God responds to this line of reasoning: This is the reply of the Holy One of Israel, Jehovah God: "Because you despise what I tell you and trust instead in oppression and lies, calamity will come upon you suddenly; like a bulging wall that bursts and falls. In an instant it will collapse and come crashing down. You will be smashed like a piece of pottery; shattered so completely that there won't be a piece big enough to carry coals from a fireplace or a little water from the well." (Isaiah 30:8-14).

 

I’m convinced that the reason some of the “Modern churches” are growing today is because they no longer speak for God. I visited a church awhile back and sadly I never heard the scriptures read or mentioned during the whole service. The preacher instead gave a book review of the latest motivational book. Tell us lies the people said, Tells us only nice things, Forget all this gloom. It’s surprising that so many “Church Leaders” are listening to people like that. It has become all about numbers and money, not the truth.

 

Let me suggest to you that just because the government approves of something doesn’t make it right. Just because something is now socially acceptable doesn’t make it right. If we don’t begin to follow God’s word, “The Holy One, Jehovah God’s” instructions for our lives we will eventually be broken into pieces just as he did to Israel. Could it be that you need to make a change, maybe take a stand for what is right in God’s sight?

 

--Russ Lawson

God's Will For Me: Worship

INTRO: Hebrews 10:24-25. It is God’s will that you worship with other Christians, every week. 1) The Aim of Worship: the target, 2) The Approach to Worship: the archer, 3) The Principles of Worship: the arrows.

1.      The Aim of Worship: the target

a.      Praise God

b.      Worship is the idea of expressing our love and devotion to God.

c.       In the Old Testament, we see many examples of people falling before God and bowing down to Him, in relation to worship.

                                                              i.      This was to show reverence and respect to God. You are lowering yourself and lifting God up, showing He is worthy of honor and praise.

d.      And while there are certainly times today when it may be appropriate to literally fall on our knees before God, what God wants in the public worship is a mental state of bowing before Him, with respect.

                                                              i.      “Praise the Lord! Praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” – Psalm 150

                                                            ii.      When we worship God, we are praising Him for who He is, what He has done for us, and what He is going to do.

e.      Encourage each other

f.        Although worship can and should be done in private, God has designed the worship assembly to be reciprocal – for the mutual benefit of the congregation.

                                                              i.      Hebrews 10:23-25

                                                            ii.      1 Corinthians 14:26 – “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.”

g.       In either case, it is not a question of “what am I going to get out of worship?”

                                                              i.      Worship is not about my preferences. Worship is not about how it sounds, looks, or feels to me. Worship is not about the traditions we make, the songs we like, and sermons that make us feel good.

1.      Worship is NOT about us.

                                                            ii.      However, if we worship correctly, we will be affected by our worship.

                                                          iii.      If we will worship to praise God and encourage each other, it will sound good and we will feel good. Our worship will transform our lives, build us up, and make us better followers of Christ.

                                                           iv.      1) The Aim of Worship is to praise God and encourage each other.

 

2.      The Approach to Worship: the archer

a.      John 4:23-24 – “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

                                                              i.      The truth must be there. We must worship how God said and only how God said, AMEN?

                                                            ii.      But there must also be spirit. We must have the right attitude.

                                                          iii.      Hebrews 10:22

                                                           iv.      We can do everything right when it comes to worship: we can worship for the right reason and in the right way – but if our heart is not in the right place, our worship will not be acceptable to God.

b.      Malachi 1:6-8, 14 – “A son honors his father… If then I am a father, where is my honor, O priests who despise my name? But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar… When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?... Cursed be the cheat who… sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King… and my name will be feared among the nations.”

c.       Spencer Shaw points out that: too often we come to church because we’re supposed to, but our minds are on something else. We are thinking about relationships, something at work, what’s for lunch, or a football game – and our hearts aren’t in it. Worship is not just blindly going through the motions. We are to worship God with our hearts.

                                                              i.      In Matthew 15:8-9 Jesus quotes Isaiah saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

d.      When we worship God, we need to give God our best. We give God all we have, not just our leftovers. We need to be fully focused on Him.

e.      When God called us to be His servants, He called us to give up everything and to be fully devoted to Him.

f.        1) The Aim of Worship is to praise God and encourage each other. 2) The Approach to Worship must be with our heart.

 

 

3.      The Principles of Worship: the arrows

a.      Just like an archer is nothing without arrows, worship is nothing without action.

b.      There are 5 main acts of worship: singing, studying God’s word, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and the contribution.

                                                              i.      Each of those we have or will talk about in the focus of a separate sermon… but those are not the only things that matter in our worship.

                                                            ii.      Other than those things, how can I put my worship into action?

c.       Attendance

d.      Since one aim of worship is to encourage each other, we must attend worship services.

                                                              i.      Hebrews 10:25 (NASB) – “not forsaking our own assembling together…”

                                                            ii.      God wants you to worship with other Christians. You cannot do that if you are not here when Christians meet.

                                                          iii.      This includes assemblies authorized by the eldership: such as the second Sunday service, Wednesday devotionals, Vacation Bible School, Gospel Meetings… Whenever it is possible, we need to be in attendance.

e.      Of course there is a big difference between missing the assembly and “forsaking” the assembly. The difference simply depends on your reason for not being here and how often it happens.

                                                              i.      One commentator notes “Some folks need to give serious attention to the fact that if the ox keeps falling into the ditch, they need to cover that ditch!”

f.        What is it that keeps you from attending? Is it temporary or does it seem to happen often? Is it something you have no control over or can you do something about it?

                                                              i.      Hebrews 10:26-27

                                                            ii.      When the doors are open, we need to be here.

g.       Appearance

h.      What does a person’s appearance say about them?

                                                              i.      When you see a guy in a suit what do you think? That he must have something important to do. That he is going to be around someone important. That he cares about what he does.

i.        What would you wear if you were going to your mother’s funeral? Or being interviewed for a job? Or going to visit the president?

j.        Doesn’t God deserve more respect even than the president?

                                                              i.      Colossians 3:23-24 – “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

k.       There is not anything in the New Testament that tells us specifically how we should dress when we come to church…

l.        But since worship is for God and must be done with our heart, all aspects of our lives follow that principle: our money, our time, our focus, our voices, our minds, and even our clothes.

                                                              i.      Our attendance and our appearance reflect our mindset, so we should be here as often as possible and look as nice as we can when we’re worshipping.

m.    1) The Aim of Worship is to praise God and encourage each other, 2) The Approach to Worship must be with our heart, 3) The Principles of Worship include our attendance and our dress.

 

CONCLUSION: God commands and expects us as Christians to worship Him. And how we worship God is a matter of eternal importance. How important is worship to you?

Do you worship God with the aim of praising Him and encouraging others? Do you approach worship with your heart? Do you attend worship as often as possible? Does your appearance honor God?

Andrew Schwarz

 

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Keith Wishum informs us that Lucy Richardson moved to a house near the state capitol building in Frankfort, Kentucky.  Lucy’s elderly neighbors got her interested in gardening, and soon she had a yard full of beautiful flowers.  She enjoyed seeing passing tourists peek through the fence to see all the blooms.

 

To maintain the gardens, Lucy often found herself working outside from sunup to sundown.  She enjoyed being outdoors, though, and she especially enjoyed seeing the pleasure her flowers brought to others.  She sometimes delighted a stranger by picking a bouquet and handing it across the fence.  She even gave flowers to street people, common in her urban neighborhood.

 

Early one morning, Lucy was working next to the sidewalk when a homeless man who was a regular in the area passed by.  Normally, he just shuffled by, but on this morning he stopped and spoke.  “Excuse me, lady,” he said.  “May I tell you something?”

 

"Sure," Lucy replied, expecting a compliment on her flowers.

 

Instead, he said, “Whoever owns that house works you way too hard!"

 

Lucy found that amusing.  The gentleman didn’t understand that she was working hard, not from a sense of duty, but out of love.  To Lucy, working in her gardens was not a chore, but a privilege. *

 

You and I are called by God to be saved from our sins and to serve Him.  God doesn’t want us to serve sin because it separates us from Him and leads to death (Isaiah 59:1-2; Romans 6:16, 23).  But since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), we all find ourselves under sin’s cruel bondage.

 

But God can set us free from the bondage of sin so that we can serve Him!

 

“Serve God?” someone may ask.  “That sounds like forced labor, too!”

 

Consider 1 John 5:3 – “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.  And His commandments are not burdensome.”

 

“‘Keep His commandments.’  That still sounds like forced labor!” says the objector.  But notice, John adds “And His commandments are not burdensome.”  How so?

 

One reason is because of the great love that God has for us.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  Why?  So that we can be saved from our sins and serve Him instead – not out of dreaded duty, but from a heart filled with great gratitude!

 

As Keith Wishum astutely states: “The more we comprehend the great debt from which God releases us, the more we see serving Him as an honor.”

 

God will deliver from the bondage of sin and death and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

 

So how does YOUR garden grow?

 

Won’t YOU accept God’s offer of salvation and eternal life on His terms?  Won’t YOU dedicate your life to serving Him, motivated by the tremendous Price that He paid for your salvation?

 

-- David A. Sargent

 

* Keith Wishum, “For the Love of God” in A Word from Williams Road (1/10/17). 

New Year - 2017

In This New Year…

 

We are several days into the New Year – 2017.  How are you doing with your resolutions?  Did you make any?  It is a common practice.  Have you ever wondered when the practice began?

 

In an article by Sarah Pruitt in History.com, the author gives this historical background to the practice of making New Year’s resolutions: “The ancient Babylonians are said to have been the first people to make New Year’s resolutions, some 4,000 years ago.  They were also the first to hold recorded celebrations in honor of the New Year — though for them the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted.  During a massive 12-day religious festival known as Akitu, the Babylonians crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king.  They also made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed.  These promises could be considered the forerunners of our New Year’s resolutions.  If the Babylonians kept to their word, [it was believed] their (pagan) gods would bestow favor on them for the coming year.  If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favor — a place no one wanted to be.”

 

Pruitt identifies a similar practice established in ancient Rome when Julius Caesar established January 1 as the beginning of the New Year.  “Named for Janus, the two-faced god whose spirit inhabited doorways and arches, January had special significance for the Romans.  Believing that Janus symbolically looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future, the Romans offered sacrifices to the deity and made promises of good conduct for the coming year.”

 

Pruitt also references the practice of “watch night services” in some religious denominations that often include readings from Scripture, hymn singing, prayers, and making resolutions for the coming year.

 

If Pruitt is correct, the practice of making New Year’s resolutions has been around for 4,000 years and has roots in religious practices.

 

Although the Scriptures are silent about an established practice of New Year’s resolutions, the practice of examining ourselves and seeking to follow God more closely is certainly Scriptural – and necessary!  See 2 Corinthians 13:5.

 

Yet, despite our best intentions and our best efforts, we fall short.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  We struggle with always doing the right things while shunning the wrong.  We struggle with sin.

 

But God loves us so much that He gave His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins (John 3:16; Ephesians 1:7).  Through Jesus, we can have the forgiveness of our sins and receive the gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23).

 

God will cleanse from sin and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from sin in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse those who continue to strive to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

 

And as a result of God’s mercy and grace, we should resolve to follow Him every day!   Our primary motivation should be that of gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ.  “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15).

 

Won’t YOU accept God’s offer of salvation and life, and then resolve to follow Him faithfully?

 

-- David A. Sargent

 

* Sarah Pruitt, “The History of New Year’s Resolutions.”  www.history.com.  12/30/15.  See also Neal Pollard’s excellent reflections on Pruitt’s article in “The Religion of Resolutions,” Daily Bread (12/28/16), an e-mail ministry of the Bear Valley church of Christ in Denver, CO.

 

David A. Sargent

Frank Charles Laubach

Each One Teach One

 

Are you familiar with the name Frank Charles Laubach?

 

According to “The Frank Laubach Story” on the Laubach Literacy of Ventura County, Inc. website, Time magazine once called him “Mr. Literacy.”

 

Laubach became passionate about literacy while serving as a missionary and working with the Muslim Maranao tribe in the Philippines.  He realized literacy was a necessary tool for improving their lives.  Literacy would become Laubach’s all-consuming mission in life.

 

Consider some excerpts from “The Frank Laubach Story”:

 

At first he was not accepted bv the Maranao.  They were suspicious of this white foreigner.  So he just lived among them, listened to them, learned their language.  They seemed such a sad people.  He learned that they were sad because when loved ones moved to another village there was no way to for them to keep in touch: they had no written language.  Dr. Frank saw his mission: to devise a written language!

 

Since he had done graduate work at Teachers' College in New York, he had some idea about teaching language.  He was able to sort out the 16 sounds of the Maranao language, using our Roman alphabet.  He assigned one letter to each sound: 12 consonant sounds and 4 vowel sounds.  And he devised a "Key Word" system to help students identity and remember the sounds of the letters, what he later called "Visual Puns.”  He associated the initial sound of an object's name with the letter-sound to be learned…

 

The results were amazing!  People learned to read and write in two weeks or less!  Dr. Laubach soon had a corps of paid teachers teaching others in their own and other village.

 

But, when the depression led to funding cuts, Dr. Laubach told the chieftain he couldn't carry on with the program.  The chieftain, who had been taught to read, even though he was an old man, knew that learning to read had, and would help his people to prosper.  He declared, “If I can learn, anyone can learn.  Let each one who learned to read, teach someone else or die!” *

 

From that chief's decision the “Each One Teach One” concept was born, and became the motto and emblem of Laubach’s literacy movement which impacted over 100 countries in more than 300 languages and dialects.  Many, including my Dad, have used The Laubach Way to English to teach the English language to others.

 

The most tragic illiteracy is not knowing about Jesus, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).  If we don’t know Jesus, we’re lost and we will die in our sins (John 8:24).

 

The Bible, God’s Word, teaches us that God loves us so much that He gave His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins (John 3:16).  Through Jesus, we can have forgiveness of our sins and receive the gift of eternal life (Ephesians 1:7).

 

The Word teaches us that in order to be saved and receive the gift of eternal life, we must place our faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from our sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and be baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  Then, as we continue to walk in the light of His Word, the blood of Jesus will continue to cleanse us from sin (1 John 1:7).

 

Once we become “literate” about Jesus and accept His offer on His terms, let’s “each one teach one” – share the Word of life with others.

 

It all begins by learning to “read and heed” God’s saving message of Jesus.

 

Won’t YOU accept His offer of salvation and eternal life?  Won’t YOU share the Good News with others?

 

-- David A. Sargent

 

* “The Frank Laubach Story” on the Laubach Literacy of Ventura County, Inc. website, http://www.laubachventura.org/about/the-frank-laubach-story.html

 

David A. Sargent

Reverence in Worship

The reverence that is necessary for proper worship is not based on externals such as dimmed lights, etc. The proper reverent attitude that is to characterize every worshiper of God comes from within the individual.  While this attitude must come from the heart of each person there are a few things that would aid worship and help develop the reverence needed. Here are a few suggestions to help us improve in our worship:

• First, prepare your mind mentally for worship. Know what you are doing and why you are doing it. Read a passage from the Bible, look over some of the songs that are to be sung or pray a silent prayer for strength and focus.
• Second, keep the use of the rest rooms by you and your children to a minimum during the worship period.
• Third, be aware of toddlers to teens. They are never too young or too old to worship.  Remember, attitudes learned while one is a youth are carried into adulthood.
• Fourth, be as well-rested as possible. You will then be physically and mentally alert.
• Fifth, concentrate on what is going on. Put all other things out of your mind.

Many other things could be suggested but if we use these guidelines and determine in our heart to offer worship that is well-pleasing to God, it will reap great benefits for us in this life and the life to come. Let us all learn to truly serve our merciful Father in spirit and in truth.

- by Gene Taylor