Hey...He Was Talking About Me!

I think I would have rather had a tooth pulled than write this post. In fact, I did everything possible to avoid writing this all week, including reorganizing my entire sock drawer (which, though very important, was far from pressing). I did this primarily because I did not want to relive Sunday's sermon. I’ve heard teachings and lectures on the Seven Woes of the Pharisees before, and honestly I was expecting more of the same going into the service. But Nate’s message was not more of the same. It was personal. It wasn’t about the leaders of Jesus’ day. It was about me.

Because I am a Pharisee.

I am guilty of every charge Jesus brought against the religious elite of his time. I am selfish, blind, arrogant and proud. I am full of all manner of lust, greed, slander and envy. And this is not hyperbole, friends. I see this play out in the decisions I make each and every day: decisions to gossip about someone to be part of the crowd; decisions to be showy when being discreet would do the job; decisions to ignore God altogether because why bother when I’ve got me?

I am a Pharisee.

And this is why I wanted no part of reliving Sunday’s sermon. Because I get it. I'm a Pharisee. I'm horrible and selfish and want all the glory for myself. I'm a Pharisee, ok? What do you want from me? I know I'm a sinner and guilty on all accounts. I live with it every day. I don't want to sin, yet I repeatedly choose to do so. And there are days where I have thought that I am never going to change, that I should just give up altogether because what’s the point?

The Judge has spoken. The gavel has dropped. The ruling is clear: “Guilty.”

What do I do now? How do I respond to that, other than “yep?”

It took me until midweek to realize my mistake. While all this is true, it is only half the story.

There’s more.

The beauty of the Gospel is there is always more grace. Just like the prodigal, we have a Father that is forever waiting at the gates for us, ready to run out to meet the poor, disheveled soul who thought life would be better if he did things on his own. I cannot tell you how many times I have been that poor, disheveled soul. It seems like a billion, billion times. And every time I come crawling back to God, embarrassed to even show my face to the Father I so quickly deserted, He does what he has done so many times over: He embraces me. He takes me back. I am unworthy to receive Him, but He does not count my sin against me. That penalty has been paid.

All because of Jesus.

This is the Gospel we claim as ours. Even in our sin, we can confidently approach God because we come as sons and daughters. Most of the time, we’re too distracted by our sin to remember this. That’s exactly what the enemy wants. As long as the focus is your sin, you are of no threat to him. But instead of spending all my time focusing on my sin, I’m learning to spend all my time focusing on Jesus. Sin is my problem, but Jesus made it his problem by dying in my place. And grace covers a multitude of sin.

I am a Pharisee. But by the grace of God, that is not all that I am.

Blog entry by: Dominick Baruffi

Prove it, Again?

            Have you ever thought a sermon totally didn’t apply to you, but then all of the sudden, WHAM, you remember something you were thinking like a week ago?  Yeah, that happened to me this past Sunday…and I was a little embarrassed when I thought of the context in which I was ‘judging the Judge.’  

            The week before Christmas, my two daughters caught a nasty cold.  It lingered, and a few days later my husband caught it as well.  I was completely sure that I would inevitably catch this cold.  And I was angry about.  Angry about how sick I was going to be (with this cold that I hadn’t yet caught).  It was Christmas, for crying out loud.  I could just picture myself on the 25th, with watery eyes, sneezing and coughing uncontrollably, trying to nurse and care for my seven-month-old, while also disciplining my rammy two-year-old. 

            As I waited for my self-fulfilling prophecy to come true, I realized that my anger was not just towards the situation, but actually more towards God.  He controls all things, right?  So couldn’t He control this cold hitting my family at Christmas?  Couldn’t He have kept us healthy at least until the day after the holidays? 

            As the days went by, I kept not getting sick.  I expected to wake up with instant strep throat, but every morning as I opened my eyes, I felt fine.  As Christmas Day approached, I felt torn.  Was God being gracious to me, the mommy who carries so much weight for the family?  Was He sparing me and caring for me, knowing I couldn’t handle being sick myself while trying to care for my sick family?  Or was He just cruelly waiting until the very last second to slam me on Christmas morning?

            I know this all sounds a little ridiculous, but I’m not exaggerating these thoughts.  I really had them!  I even told my husband about this struggle.  My thoughts were honestly dominated by wondering about my fate: would I be sick or not sick?  ‘Is God being extra kind and good in sparing me, or is He being completely mean and malicious?’ I thought.  As you can imagine, I felt far from God during worship time on the Sunday before Christmas and on Christmas Eve.  I was waiting for Him to prove Himself before I’d say anything good about Him.

            Well, after all of this internal struggle, I ended up not getting sick.  You would think I was settled in my mind, then: God is extremely kind and gracious, giving us what we don’t deserve and not giving us what we do deserve.  Nope.  Not me.  I actually forgot about it.  As each day passed without sneezing, the struggle faded more in my mind.  I’m not even sure if I ever even said, “Thanks, God, that I didn’t get sick.”  My lack of sickness didn’t actually prove God’s goodness in my mind.  I felt okay to open my heart to Him again, but not cemented in my belief in His care.  

            So in the end of the sermon last Sunday, when I heard these lines: ‘I’ll follow God when He makes it more clear,’ ‘I can’t follow God until I have it all figured out,’ and ‘I’ve found a loophole about Him,’ I saw myself the week before Christmas.  Delaying my declared love for God until I figured it out and saw the end of my story.  I was willing to be thankful and have an open heart to God IF I didn’t get sick, IF He proved, yet again, that He was good.

            The answer that Jesus gave to the third ‘test’ in Matthew 22 really stood out to me.  The religious leaders asked Him which was the Greatest Commandment, and He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”  You know what Jesus, with that answer, says to me?  He says, “Guess what? I might not choose to prove Myself in every situation.  Every situation is not a fresh test of My goodness.  There may be times when you can’t outright see My goodness and care.  But I still demand your love, Sarah.  I still call you to worship Me as good, to declare My faithfulness and care for you, even when you can’t see it.  Enough with the tests!  Enough with the having to prove Myself over and over and over again.  Love Me with all you’ve got…and loving Me includes every day stuff!  Even when you might have simple cold.  Love me there.  One way it’ll look is believing and declaring that I’m good in any situation you encounter.  You don’t have to wait for me to prove Myself again.”

            So I’m taking this and running  Maybe you’ll join me, too.  So whether in sickness or in health, let’s love the Lord our God…who is good in every situation.  Whether we see it or not. 

Blog entry by: Sarah Howard

Faith and the Art of Waiting

This past week's sermon had to do with things I've had to do a lot: asking and waiting. More specifically, it was about prayer. The promises and conditions of "whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith." (Matthew 21:22)

I got all kinds of hung up on that "Big Condition" of faith. 

Because when the burden is fully on God's capable, eternal, all-knowing shoulders, I can start to grasp that maybe I'll “receive.” But when my faith is the deciding factor, let's not hold our breath. I’m not known for moving mountains and, frankly, placing that kind of responsibility on my faith isn’t something I’m very comfortable with. After all, when it comes to rearranging geography and such, aren’t those matters best left up to God?

That’s where my asking and waiting comes in. 

I've realized over the past few weeks that while I may ask, I rarely wait. Or at least the waiting I've been doing lately has been pretty non-participatory. It’s waiting room waiting. The kind of waiting that doesn’t require much of me and puts all of the initiative and responsibility on the other party.

I ask God to reveal something. No answer. I ask God again. No answer. I'm a fairly stubborn person (to say the least) so this can continue indefinitely and that’s not really my point.

I’m talking about what happens to the rest of my life while I'm waiting for that answer. I've taken God's lack of answering as it's own solution - that I'm not budging until I hear his answer. Or, in other words, until I get what I want. Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues and my life stays apathetically on hold. Putting off decisions, dodging commitments and keeping everything else to a bare minimum. Because, let's not get too comfy, I know this is only temporary until I get my answer

The Bible gives plenty of examples of people who were called to wait until God answered them (emphasis on the “calling.”)  But my waiting has been more like a stake-out, or maybe one of those union protests at a building site. I’ve got my lawnchairs and a 20 foot blow-up rat and I’m staying put until God decides to be more reasonable.

And that's not really the same thing as faith, is it?

Faith looks more like what's described in Hebrews 11:13-

"Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world." (The Message)

In the light of those examples, it seems like waiting for an answer isn't faith at all. It seems more like my excuse to do nothing. To be faithless. Most importantly, my waiting has allowed me to ignore everything I’m called to in the meantime.

In the words of Pastor Nate, my active faith aligns myself with God to receive. Active faith. Faith that's still busy loving, serving, listening, obeying and worshipping a Holy God, not just sitting on the couch waiting for him to call me back and give me what I want.

It seems that it takes as much faith to ask as it does to continue faithfully honoring everything else God has put in my life, while I wait. That I would wait in the midst of my active faith, instead of the other way around. 

So even if I don't have "in hand what was promised", I do still have a promise to base my faith on: that He always keeps His word. Maybe I’ll never get my answer; maybe my answer is still a long way off. Or maybe I already have my answer to be faithful and committed in what I’ve already been given. But ultimately, my faith still rests in a good God, never in just the answer itself.

 Blog entry by: Jess Noblett

Scars

What do Candy Lightner, Donna Whitson, Bill Wilson, and Robbie Parker all have in common? 

• Candy Lightner –  lost daughter in a drunk driving accident - founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving
• Donna Whitson – daughter kidnapped and murdered - co-founder of the Amber Alert
• Bill Wilson – suffered with alcoholism - co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
• Robbie Parker – lost a daughter in Newtown shooting - a light to others during the tragic loss of his child

All of these people experienced extreme pain and sadness. All of these people turned their sorrow into love in action.

Every single one of our lives is full of hurts of one kind or another.  There is no one exempt from brokenness.  So situations come into our lives.  We experience pain.  We have scars from that pain.  What do we do with those scars?  Do we just cover them up? Do we become bitter and angry? What we do with the pain we’ve experienced is pivotal. 

Baron Batch, Pittsburgh Steelers running back puts it this way. 

 “God gives us scars sometimes to remind us where we’ve been and more importantly how he’s healed us.  Once we have those scars we can show people and say, look, this is what God’s done for me. “

Pastor Nate’s message last week taught how we should Love All.  He defined love as a big deal, in action, with a specific target.   We can easily become overwhelmed by pain, either our own or by the world’s. We can’t fight the fight for every single battle that exists. God created us with limits. But as Mother Theresa put it, “If I look at the masses, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”

Look around you. Look at the one. Who is hurting? Who is hurting like you’ve hurt? How could God be calling you to Love All through your scars?

Blog entry by:  Sherry L. Rhone-Engel