Hello All, I've Missed You!

Carmel Christmas 12/2010

Carmel Christmas 12/2009

 Happy new year to all of you! I hope that it has been a wonderful start to the year for you so far. It seems like things are "settling in" a bit—for awhile starting in late November until recently I started joking that I wasn't going to plan more than an hour ahead because things were happening and changing so fast!

For those of you who have "followed" our family traditions, I post for your enjoyment the third year of our traditional Carmel Christmas picture with my folks. Of course, the only ones looking any older from year to year are the girls. The prior two years pictures are included. Won't Heaven be wonderful where all who have made Jesus the Lord of their life will be able to fellowship and share together, and we won't have to be bound by distance! (And, I'll bet the coffee in Heaven is going to be amazing!)

Carmel Christmas 12/2008

Speaking of coffee, I have begun brewing some "Cowboy Coffee." I read about it in a novel I was reading and it intrigued me, so I let it be know I wanted to try it and my folks got me an enamel coffee pot that can go right on a fire. It has been fun boiling water and just putting the grounds in it, but Mary Ann is still pulling towards the more traditional approaches. Any tips or suggestions out there on making the best cup of cowboy coffee?

The first Sunday in January marked my 11th year of pastoring, and I am beginning a couple of new things this year in my study. Last Sunday I started teaching on the Kingdom of God/Heaven—a topic that I am more and  more convinced was the framework and core of the message shared by Jesus and the disciples. I have been studying on this for 6-9 months and I am very excited to share about it. We have such an amazing calling as God's children, and I believe that the enemy has eroded that calling and good news so down that we just "get saved" and then try and hold on until Heaven. To the contrary, I believe that we are part of an "invasion" from Heaven to earth, part of God's work restoring a people to Him, of plundering that which the enemy has stolen. If anyone wants to follow the series I will be trying to put the mp3 files of each Sunday up on our church's web page by the Wednesday after each teaching (hopefully the first teaching in the series, which I gave yesterday, will be up by tomorrow night). You can get to our church's audio download page by clicking here, or by going to the "About Me" page of this blog and clicking on the link near the bottom of it.

Also new, our family has begun going through the book of Acts in our morning Family Worship time. I am enjoying the discussion back and forth and hearing the girls' thoughts. It is amazing to me how the Apostles were with Jesus three years, they had the most chance of anyone to understand the Father's heart as revealed in Jesus, they had the Holy Spirit from when He breathed on them, and they still needed to wait for the Holy Spirit to come over them at Pentecost before they could have power for ministry. Wow! If that doesn't remind us how important the Holy Spirit is to our work then nothing probably will. I wonder how much we do on our own strength that God is just waiting to help us with if we would simply ask and wait, and make sure our lives are fully surrendered and that we aren't grieving or quenching the Spirit by what we do/think (or fail to do/think).

God bless you all. I look forward to sharing so much more with you in the coming weeks. Until then, stay in touch!

The "Rest" in Work . . .

Last night at Youth Group, and this morning at Family Worship, we talked about God's call to Moses from the burning bush. In Exodus 3:2 it says, "And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed." (Moses is in the desert because he fled Egypt for killing an Egyptian and Pharoah wanted to kill him.)

The account tells us that Moses turns aside to check it out and God speaks to him from the bush and tells him that He has seen the plight of His people enslaved in Egypt, and heard their cry. So far, so good for Moses, I would imagine. Then God says in verse 10, "Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."

Up to this point I imagine Moses is really glad God has seen and heard the people's problems and situation . . . but suddenly when God wants him to be the solution things suddenly aren't so good. You probably know the rest—Moses gives reason after reason why he's not the best guy for the job, and God replies to each one basically the same things:

1) I will be with you.
2) I am sending you.
3) I will take care of what you need (power, signs, words, etc.)

Towards the end, when all of that is not enough, God gets angry at Moses' fear and doubt and reminds him of Aaron, and Moses reluctantly goes ahead with it all.

The thing that always intrigues me in this is that God never answers Moses' question, "Who am I?" He simply says, "I'll be with you." As I told the youth (many of whom have been on the school softball team I've coached), "If I sent you in to a critical position in the field during a game and you expressed doubt about yourself I'd build you up, remind you of all you have practiced, pump you up with encouragement, tell you how amazing you are, etc." But, God doesn't do that—He says, "I'll be with you."

What more do we need to know? Really? Knowing God is sending us, and we are doing His work, what more do we really need to know? This is the God who saw simply a vast void of blackness. He envisioned a universe with galaxies and nebulae and cosmic swirls and asteroids and infernos called suns; and He envisioned an earth with amazing coral reefs and sea life, with birds that fly with hollow bones, with crazy creatures like giraffes and hippos; and He envisioned a man with a mind more amazing than the most amazing computer and an eye more complex than the most complex telescope . . . and He envisioned that and, with simply a word, He brought it into existence from nothing. He is so completely awe inspiring and amazing and worthy of our praise and worship that when we know that He is at work through us (which obviously means He is with us) what more do we, truly, need to know?

The whole key is going where we are sent—doing what we are told to do. Because when we are yielded and He is working His work through us as His hands and feet and mouth we don't have to wonder if He is with us, because it is His work He is working. As Philippians 2:13 says, "for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." God places His desires in us, for what He wants to see done, and when we yield to those it is in fact He who is doing the work to bring His desires to pass. That means, of course, that He is with us, and that His full resources are working through us—and we can "rest" in that, because . . . what more do we really need to know?