January 29, 2012

Christ’s Love Builds Up

1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and Mark 1:21-28

          A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, “Lord, I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.”

          The Lord led the holy man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man’s mouth water.

          The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly.  They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms, and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. But because the handles were longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

          The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, “You have seen hell.”

They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was a large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man’s mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The Lord said, “This is what heaven is like.” The holy man said, “I don’t understand.”

          “It is simple,” said the Lord. “It requires but one mindset. You see they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves.”

          Considering that the scripture from 1Corthians today is regarding food, this illustration of how we learn to live out Christ’s love is very applicable.

This is a good time of year to talk about food. Isn’t everyone on a diet? January of every year, most everyone is trying to be more healthy, especially after the holidays. Too many cookies and sweet breads have been consumed and we know that we become what we eat. Most of us don’t want to look like a cookie or a loaf of banana bread.

A squirrel walked into a psychiatrist’s office. Lying down on the couch, he says to the psychiatrist, “When I learned, ‘You are what you eat,’ I realized I was nuts!”

In today’s illustration about heaven and hell, however, the issue is not really the pot of stew in the middle of the table. The issue is selfishness, the ‘me first’ attitude.

The people in the room representing hell were trying to make sure that they were nourished first before anyone else. As a result of their selfishness they were dying. The people in the room representing heaven were making sure others were saved first. As a result, they were living abundantly.

The people in the room representing heaven were following the example of Jesus Christ. The Son of God left his heavenly home to live and die here on earth so we might live. His death and then his resurrection brought about the victory over earthly sin and eternal death. God raised him from death back into abundant heavenly life, where He sits at the right hand of God, in Trinity with the Holy Spirit. 

God chose to love his creation this sacrificial way. God chose to love us in a sacrificial way. I believe it is God’s desire that we love one another in the same way: that we choose love and personal sacrifice over pride and selfishness.

This is the problem that the Apostle Paul addressed in his letter to the church in Corinth. Some of the members of the church who are strong in their faith have become so prideful about what they know and what they’ve done in the church, they have forgotten what it was like when they were new believers, weak in their faith.  Paul is addressing what he witnessed in this church as pride and arrogance, and the lack of wisdom, little tolerance, and little love.

Paul’s statement is clear. The first 2 verses in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 tells us what this chapter is about. “Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.”

Paul knows that love is more important than knowledge. God knows when we put love before all else. He knows us. The knowledge that Paul is referring to concerns knowledge and belief about ‘food sacrificed to idols.’ Paul reminds those who ‘possess knowledge;’ that is those believers who understand that this meat is just food and nothing more: and those who have ‘weak consciences;’ that is those believers who are worried about eating this meat which has been sacrificed to idols: ---

---that they all share one common belief. “Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” (v. 4)   “—for us there is one God, the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” (v.6)

Paul reminds the church that there is one God in whom the church believes and exists and they are all a part of the body of Christ. In Paul’s day there were false gods, represented by man-made statues, which were worshipped and sacrificed to. Paul points out that some individuals are so accustomed to idols, which they have worshipped in the past, that even if they have converted to faith in Christ; even if they have now come to believe in Jesus Christ as the one true Son of the one true God and that Jesus is the Savior of the world; they may be influenced in a detrimental way if they ate meat that has been sacrificed to idols.

The tradition in Greece was to sacrifice an animal to a pagan god, burn some of the flesh on the altar, and then eat some of the remaining meat in a festive meal. Kind of like a worship service followed by a barbecue.

 The remainder of the animal was then sold to the meat market, and merchants would turn around and sell it to the public. For most residents of Corinth, this was no problem. But for Christians who did not worship pagan gods, there was serious discomfort about eating a meat that had been part of the sacrifice to idols ceremony. This meat was widely distributed: in the market and in homes of non-Christian neighbors and public festivals where people gathered and personal, political and business connections were made.  

The strong believers, those who recognized that the meat had nothing at all to do with the actual worship of idols, weren’t bothered by eating this meat. However, the weaker believers might think that eating such meat would actually be sinful in God’s eyes and it might weaken even further their new found faith.

 Last week I reminded you and myself of this. “It is a tremendous challenge to try to forget your past and change your life, when your past is what has made you who you are.” (Julie, The Lazarus Project, 2008)

Keeping this thought in mind, Paul addresses his words to believers whose faith is not threatened by eating meat that had been offered to idols. Although idols were phony, and the pagan ritual of sacrificing to them was meaningless, eating such meat offended some Christians with sensitive consciences.  Paul said, therefore, that mature believers should avoid eating meat offered to idols if it would threaten the faith of weak believers.

Paul writes this in verse 13, “Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.”  In this statement we find our lesson for today. –

Christ’s love builds up, it does not tear down.  In other words, A disciple of Jesus Christ, who truly loves Jesus and strives to love others in the way Jesus loves, will seek to never cause another disciple to stumble and fall. A disciple of Jesus Christ will instead put their own desires aside to meet the needs of another.

How do we do this? How do members of this body of Christ build one another up in our faith and in our everyday life? How do we overcome our human instinct for our survival first? How do we live for Christ and for one another? The scripture from Mark this morning reminds us where we get our power from; the power we need to overcome our sinful desires.

We can only be whom God calls us to be through the divine power of Jesus Christ.  Jesus clearly demonstrates his power in his first exorcism of an evil spirit in a synagogue in Capernaum. “---Jesus rebuked him (the unclean spirit), saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” and the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” (Mark 1:25-26)

This was a demonstration of God’s power in Jesus Christ. Those who were there recognized something powerful going on. “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” (v. 27)

It is this amazing divine power of Jesus Christ which allows you and me to overcome the evil influences in our life. We all have a human tendency to be selfish and self righteous and to want our own way instead of God’s. It is only through the power of Christ that we can overcome this attitude. Sometimes I think there are other organizations that do a better job of building one another up and supporting one another, than what the church does.

Alcoholic Anonymous may be an organization which does this. Phillip Yancey wrote of an example of this in the devotion for January 27 in Grace Notes.

Phillip asked his friend to name one quality missing in the local church that AA had somehow provided. His friend stared into his coffee for a long time and then he said softly this one word: dependency.

“None of us can make it on our own—isn’t that why Jesus came? He explained. “Yet most church people give off a self-satisfied air of piety or superiority. I don’t sense them consciously leaning on God or on each other. Their lives appear to be in order. An alcoholic who goes to church feels inferior and incomplete.”

His friend continued, “It’s a funny thing. What I hate most about myself, my alcoholism, was the one thing God used to bring me back to him, Because of it, I know I can’t survived without God. I have to depend on him to make it through each and every day. Maybe that’s the redeeming value of alcoholism. Maybe God is calling us alcoholics to teach the saints what it means to be dependent on him and on his community on earth.”

Phillip Yancey goes on to reflect on his friend’s insight. “From my friend’s experience, I learned the need for humility, total honesty, and radical dependence—on God and on a community of compassionate friends. As I thought about it, these qualities seemed exactly what Jesus had in mind when he founded the church.

Alcoholics Anonymous came out of a discovery by Bill Wilson. On his own, Bill had stayed sober for six months until he made a trip out of town, where a business deal feel through. Depressed, wandering a hotel lobby, he heard familiar sounds of laughter and of ice tinkling in glasses. He headed toward the bar, thinking “I need a drink.”

Suddenly a brand new thought came to him: “No I don’t need a drink—I need another alcoholic!” Walking instead toward the lobby telephones, he began the sequence of calls that put him in touch with Dr. Bob Smith who would become AA’s cofounder.

Phillip Yancey concludes, “Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, “I don’t need to sin. I need another sinner.” (Church, Why Bother? (51-52) (page 47 of Grace Notes)

Organizations like AA try to build one another up, being careful not to influence a falling away. The first step is to recognize that we can’t do this on our own. We need a higher power.

For the Christian church this higher power is Jesus Christ. It is through His power that the church can build one another up in our faith, which results in living like Christ day to day, one day at a time.

Christ’s love builds up. If we are to be Christ’s church, let us strive to build one another up. Let us build one another up through our kind and compassionate words. Let us not insist on our own way, but be willing to work with one another for the good of this body of Christ. Let us share our vulnerability so that others will be willing to share theirs. Let us not be afraid to be dependent upon one another, that others will feel free to be dependent upon us.

          Lord God, help us to be your body here on earth. Help us to love and to sacrifice for one another as you chose to love and sacrifice yourself for us. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

January 29, 2012

January 29, 2012

No, Yes, Maybe Later

Jonah 3:1-10 and Mark 1:14-20

          No, yes, maybe; If you have children or you have had children in your home think about these responses. Before they are 2, children don’t speak much. But beginning about 2 and on into 3 and sometimes even 4, they have learned the word ‘no’ very well; mostly because grownups and older siblings have said ‘no’ to them hundreds of times. Beginning about 41/2 or 5 until probably 9 children say ‘yes’ to things that are asked of them, they try to please.  From age 10 on until 21, however,’ maybe later’ seems to be the response to the request to ‘take out the garbage, clean their room, or pick up their dishes and put them in the sink!

Today we are going to look at these responses ‘no’ ‘yes’ ‘maybe later’ from a Biblical point of view. Remember we are all children of God.

First we’ll look at Jonah, a rebellious child. The story of Jonah and the big fish is one that is known by most everyone. The big fish has become known as a whale, which is not possible, since a whale is a mammal, not a fish. But the story of Jonah and his saying ‘no’ to God and the consequences that ‘no’ brought; and then Jonah said ‘yes’ to God and the consequences that ‘yes’ brought; then Jonah’s reaction to those ‘yes’ consequences is a story to be pondered and studied.

          We only read the 3^rd chapter today, but even if you think you know the story of Jonah, I encourage you to go back and read it again. It is only 4 chapters long. As you read it again, look for things you might have missed.

 Jonah’s ‘no’ to God, and his rebellion, brought out the faith of the pagan sailors. And do you know why Jonah said ‘no’ at first?  Jonah didn’t think the people of Nineveh even deserved God’s attention, much less God’s mercy!

Jonah’s ‘yes’ to God and his dire warning to Nineveh brought about the repentance of an entire city of 120,000 plus people. The people’s repentance was all God needed to spare the sinful city and yet when they were spared notice Jonah’s rebellion once again, this time rebelling against God’s grace so freely given to people, who were not Jews.

Jonah’s story is not about a whale. Jonah’s story is about how humans sometimes think they can tell God how to be God! Jonah’s story is about when God calls us to bring the Good News of God’s love, mercy and grace to people outside of our little group of Christians, we tend to judge if those people even deserve God’s love, mercy and grace.

Think for a minute. Don’t we tend to judge those outside of the church?

Joe and I watched a movie the other night called the Lazarus Project. It was a thriller and quite odd. The gist of the story was how people tried to give a man a second chance at life when he was suffering from the consequences of his sins. One of the main characters was a counselor, who made this statement,

 “It is a tremendous challenge to try to forget your past and change your life, when your past is what has made you who you are.”

          You and I and the people we are today because of whom we have been in the past. We had no control of where and into what family we were born, or how we were raised. When we became young adults we began to make our own choices about our future. We’ve all made good and bad choices, and I believe that God has loved us through them all. Rejoicing when we’ve made the right choices; weeping when we’ve had to suffer the consequences of the wrong choices. But God has loved us through it all.

          When God forgave Nineveh and spared the destruction of the city, Jonah didn’t think it was fair. God was his God, the God of the people of Israel. Why should his God care about a people of Nineveh? They were evil and to be feared. In Jonah’s judgment, they were not to be forgiven and given a second chance.

 God’s ways are not our ways.        “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” (v.10)

          When you finish re-reading the story of Jonah, turn ahead in the Old Testament two books, and read the book of the prophet Nahum. Find out what happened to Nineveh about 100 years later.

          Jonah, whose occupation was prophet of God, responded to God when God called him with a ‘no.’ He eventually changed his mind after suffering the consequences of his sin. Now we turn to the New Testament and contrast the response of the disciples.

 Jesus calls people to follow him. The first disciples, whose occupation is fishing, responded to Jesus with an immediate ‘yes.’ Jonah only had to do what he was supposed to do, be a prophet of God. The fishermen had to give up everything they knew, to follow God’s call.

          Jesus begins his calling of the disciples much like Jonah did in Nineveh, calling everyone to repentance, turning from sin and receiving God’s forgiveness and grace.

 Jesus calls us first to repent. “Now after John (the Baptist) was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (vv. 14-15)

          This proclamation by Jesus would be both exciting and dangerous. This was what the people of Israel were waiting for; the kingdom of God to free them from the tyranny of the Romans. That news was exciting! Yet this announcement meant danger as well. It also meant challenging the Romans. For the first century Jews, “the kingdom of God” meant a violent revolt against Roman power. Jesus meant it quite differently.

The Good News that Jesus brings; the Kingdom of God Jesus is referring to, is not just for the Jews. It is for all people. Indeed, for Jesus, the coming kingdom was a sign that God was going to do something on behalf of all of creation, redeeming people from all nations from sin. God, through the power of His Holy Spirit, and as Jesus the Savior of the world, would defeat the evil of sin and death.

          Through Jesus’ birth, life, death and glorious resurrection, sin and death would no longer have power over God’s creation. This was the Good News Jesus announced that day by the Galilean lake, as he called the first disciples to follow him.

          Jesus began his ‘fishing for people’ that day. He began by inviting Simon and Andrew to join him in his work. James and John were next, leaving their undoubtedly astounded father by the boats with the hired help as they too, set out following Jesus.

Traditionally, many readers of the gospels assume that these fishermen were poor, destitute individuals with nothing to lose, who follow Jesus to try and break the monotony of their everyday lives.  A close reading of Mark reveals quite a different scene.  The truth is that these four fisherman were likely quite prosperous. We learn later that Simon and Andrew had a house and an extended family (Mark 1:29-31)

 In reading the verses for today closely, we understand that James and John, along with their father Zebedee, were wealthy enough to be able to hire additional help for their fishing business. Chances are that with this kind of background these men had some kind of education. These weren’t desperate drifters with nothing to lose, but well-established businessmen in a culture where prosperity and family were everything. Following Jesus, then, was no small disruption of their lives but a complete change of course. Following Jesus meant leaving their security, their reputations, and their livelihoods.

Jesus calling them disrupted their lives.  Jesus was looking for people who were willing to say ‘yes’ to him regardless of the personal cost. They said ‘yes’ and they changed the world. Their lives would not be easy, for they were who they had been brought up to be. They were their past and yet their lives were changed when Jesus became part of them.  

Which brings us to the ‘maybe later.’ Jonah said ‘no’ to God. The disciples said ‘yes’. What do you and I say?

When God calls us to reach out to an ‘unbeliever’, someone who maybe has made poor choices and is suffering the consequences of those choices; do we say no, yes, or maybe later?

When God calls us to give all that we are and all that we have to the furthering of His Kingdom, do we say no, yes, or maybe later?

In reality I am like Jonah. It is my job to obey God’s calling on my life. It is my job to reach out, not only to those who come within these walls, but also to those who do  not know, have not heard, or have rejected the Good News of Jesus Christ. And yet I do not always say ‘yes’. There are times when I am tired and discouraged and wonder if I’m making any difference at all in people’s lives.

Just share what you know. What I’ve learned is that with Jesus, all I have to do is share what I have been given, the love and grace of God. This is the Good News of God’s Kingdom.

With my daughters I share how reading God’s Word and giving my life to Christ healed me and my marriage. With my grandchildren I share children’s books of the stories of Jesus. With friends I share how Jesus is the answer to their fears and their pain. With the man from India, whom I sat next to on the flight from England, I shared how I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the Word, and if we believe in Him we will go on to eternal life. I shared my faith with him, even though he had told me he was Buddhist. 

In reality you are being called to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and to share the Kingdom of God as well.

Many of you have discovered that being a disciple is not easy. It is not supposed to be. It wasn’t for the first disciples and it isn’t for us.

Maybe you haven’t yet given your heart, mind and soul to Jesus Christ. Maybe your answer in the past has been ‘no.’ I can’t tell you that when you say ‘yes’ it will be easy. It won’t. Giving your life to Jesus means you give up selfish and self centered ways. It means looking at things and people differently. It means understanding that although Jesus loves you just the way you are, no matter what you’ve done; he does expect you to change when you give your life to him. Changing who we have been is a difficult challenge and can only be done through the power of the Holy Spirit of God.

Maybe you have given your heart, mind and soul to Jesus Christ. Did life get easier when you said ‘yes’ to following Jesus?  It doesn’t, does it? Relationships with family change because you know what they need to live joyful productive lives and yet family sometimes is the hardest to convert. Relationships with friends change. You now understand how to relieve your friend’s pain and suffering and fear, and yet friends sometimes turn away when we begin to share our faith with them.

And how about those people you have casual acquaintances with; your neighbors, the people at work, on the street, or in the stores? Isn’t it easier to just say, ‘maybe later,’ when God nudges you to share His message of redemption with people who might not care at all what you say about your faith?

The truth is that God gave his only Son to redeem the whole world. The truth is that God is counting on us answering ‘yes’ to His call upon our lives.

Jesus is always calling to our hearts. How will we answer the call? ‘yes’ ‘no’ ‘maybe later.’

Our last hymn this morning is “Jesus Calls Us” The last verse is this, “Jesus calls us! By thy mercies, Savior, may we hear thy call, give our hearts to thine obedience, serve and love thee best of all.” (UMH #398)

The invitation today is to answer, ‘yes’ to Jesus’ calling. Answer ‘yes’ to allowing Jesus to be a part of you. Answer ‘yes’ to allow Jesus to work through you, that people you know and meet may hear and believe the Good News of God’s love, mercy and grace,

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

January 22, 2012

January 15, 2012                                      Messes to Miracles

                                                                      by Annastasia VanKleek

James 3:2-10

We all stumble in many ways

–if anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man

Able to keep his whole body in check

We put bits in mouths of horses to make them obey us

So then we can turn the whole animal.

Or take a ship

Although ships are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever a pilot wants to go

Likewise the tongue is a very small part of the body, but it makes great boasts – Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.

The tongue also is a fire – a world of evil among the parts of the body

It corrupts the whole person – sets the whole course of his life on fire and is itself set afire by hell.

All kinds of animals and creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by man,

But NO man can tame the tongue – it is a restless evil full of deadly poison.

With our tongue we praise the Lord our Father and with it we curse man who is made in his image and likeness

Out of the same mouth comes blessings and cursing, beloved this should not be

From Messes to Miracles                       by: Annastasia Van Kleek

Oh man, I feel horrible – I think I’m getting sick –

What’s wrong with you - are you stupid?

I hate (so-n-so) – I just can’t stand them

I can’t do anything right – nothing I do turns out good

Confessions 

When I mention the word Confession – what comes to your mind?

In preparing for this message when the Lord directed me to confession as the topic – Well, my first thought was negative: it was this.

“Oh Great - what am I going to have to confess and to the whole Church no less…” and the Lord softly said  “No Annie” - not confession of sin – confession of faith – and what comes out of your mouth.

Confession,

Here’s a fact: in the ancient languages of Greek and Latin the radical – far out there meaning for the word confession is "an acknowledgment or profession of”  -   keeping that in mind;

You know, we have what we say – As believers…

That’s a Vital Biblical truth – Really - it tells us that in God’s Word.

In Mark chapter 11 Jesus says  – “have faith in God, and if anyone says to this mountain – go throw yourself into the sea – and does not doubt in his heart but believes what he says will happen – it will be done for him.

2

–So, whatever you ask for and believe that you receive it, it will be yours.”

Jesus tells us the same thing again in the book of Matthew

 – Chapter 21 “if you have faith and do not doubt -Only ask and you shall receive.”

We have what we say – As believers – the catch is we either speak

Confessions of faith –or- Confessions of sin

The Blessing or the Cursing

And we live in a sin filled world

You know we as humans often let our mouths slip us up

We allow ourselves to begin talking like the world instead of the Word.

In fact in the book of James chapter 3 verse 10 it says:

“Out of the same mouth comes blessings and cursing,

 My beloved, this ought not be.”

Now I don’t know about all of you but as for me,  I’ve had a problem with my mouth my entire life, in fact it has gotten me in trouble more times than I care to count or remember. Y’all know me (many of you)

And it wasn’t until I started getting the revelation of the Word specifically what Proverbs 18:7 means.

A fools mouth is his destruction and his lips the snare of his soul. Proverbs 18:7

3

Here’s a statement – just food for thought

Whatever we have in our lives – whatever’s going on

- is a direct product of what we’ve been saying

(Remember we live in a sin filled world and negativity runs rampant)

but in order to change what we have - we must change,

 what comes out of our mouth.    - In other words -

To head our lives in a different direction (from the curses to the blessings as found in the Word)

To go from:

 Death to life

From sickness to health

From failure to success

From the cursings to the blessings

The 1^st thing we must change - Is what comes out of our mouth

 We need to take charge of our words… Family….

Well Annie – you might say “that’s a lot easier said than done” – well don’t I know it

 But that’s the key:

In God’s Economy (his way of doing things) It must be said to be done.

4

So, where do we start?

We start, by realizing that it cannot be done in the natural.

Or the human realm

Why is that?  - Because it’s a spiritual law… and it must be handled with spiritual power.

Come on, are you with me family? Let’s get to the Word:

James 3:7-8 say that the tongue cannot be tamed by the same power in which man tames animals and that it takes God’s wisdom from above.

God’s Word is his wisdom

 Proverbs 2:6 says: for the Lord gives wisdom and from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding

God also says His Words are Spirit and Life so what that means is that it takes God’s Words to tame our tongue.

Maybe we could do something like this:

Instead of saying:

Oh man I feel horrible; yep I’m getting sick,

Why not say:

Yeah, I might not feel the best right now but by the stripes Jesus took I am healed & I‘m feeling better every moment - I Peter 2:24

OR,      a merry heart doeth good like medicine. Proverbs 15

5

Or how about this, Instead of saying:

  I can’t do anything right nothing I do turns out good

Why not say:

I am Gods workmanship, created in Christ to do good works which he prepared in advance for me to do. - Everything I set my hand to is blessed – out of Eph. Chapter 2 & Proverbs 31

OR This - Instead of saying:

I hate (so-n-so) – I just can’t stand being around them

Why not say:

God because you love me, I know I should love other, help me to love

 others and enjoy the time I spend with them – Matt. 22 & I Pet. 3

From Messes to Miracles

1^st thing - We must take charge of what coming out of our mouth

NOW -

The 2^nd thing we must do – is repent and ask God to forgive us for letting our tongue be used for anything other than by the Holy Spirit

Then give Jesus your mouth and ask him to keep a watch over it as it states in Psalm 141:3 And be determined to speak God’s Words of love, joy, hope, peace, grace and faith. 

Speak – Confessions – of - faith

6

Confessions of Faith stop the fiery darts of the devil it tells us that in the book of Eph. 6 where it talks about the armor of God.

And Now,

The 3^rd thing we must do is to do what Jesus tells us in Mark 4:24:

He tells us to:      “Take heed and listen to what you hear”

– Listen to yourselves

-Listen to what you are saying…

and think, Think - “Do I want what I just said to come to pass?”

If the answer is NO – then stop and change what you’re saying

– Right then !  Not later.

Replace those negative words with positive praises

That’s what Ephesians chapter 4 tells us to do.

Replace the Cursed words with Words of blessing.

Confessions of Faith

& be mindful and take heart in what Hebrews 4:12 tells us:

“The Word of God is living and active – it is sharper than any two edged sword, it penetrates even unto dividing the soul and the spirit.”

7

My beloved family,

If you are like me and sometimes you let your mouth overload your … …..life!

By the words you speak carelessly

And

In your life,

at times, you end up with a really big mess –

Change the course of everything today - by changing your words.

Use Confessions of Faith – The Words of God

Put the power that is in your tongue to work for you

 instead of against you

AND

Stop using it to make messes and start using it to make miracles.

BECAUSE

There’s a miracle in your mouth!

8

So,

Along with the message today I’d like to share a few confessions of faith that have changed my life.

-as I have literally spoken them out loud over my life

(over and over and over again and still do.)

And, without going into details know this – (as many already know)

 many things in my life had predestined my negative mouth which directly produced negative fruits in my life.

But these confessions of faith (and many, many others)

Have taken my mouth and my life from the messes of my past into the miracle you see standing here today!

And, Oh yeah,

 by the way my family I think I’ll just sing them for ya instead of recite them because sometimes it’s easier to remember the words of a  love song..

But just the same I have put the confessions of faith on paper with the scripture references for anyone who is interested

- they can be found out on the table in the fellowship hall.

Confession of Faith with Scripture References

Chorus

What would my life be…. if I did not believe..

That I …  would see …… Gods glory……………….

Gods glory in my life, what would my life be like

If I … did not.. believe……..  (psalm 27:13)

(1)

Jesus died for me…. He died to set me free (1^st Thessalonians .4:14)

He hung upon a cross that I might live (John 3:16)

They laid him in a tomb --- when light then filled the room

 (Mat. 27:59 & Matt. 28:3)

he rose again …. Bought life.. Eternally……. (Luke 24:6 John 3:36)

Chorus

What would my life be…. if I did not believe..

That I ….. would see …… Gods glory

Gods glory in my life, what would my life be like

If I … did not.. believe…….. (Psalm 27:13)

(2)    that Jesus took those stripes…..  just so I could cry….

That by the stripes he took I know I’m healed….. (1^st Peter 2:24)

They whipped him and he bled, place thorns upon his head

 (Matt. 27:26&29)

He died ,up on the cross….  to set me free…….

(Matt. 27:50 & John 8:36)

Chorus

What would my life be…. if I did not believe..    

That I …… would see …… Gods glory

Gods glory in my life, what would my life be like

If I … did not.. believe…….. (Psalm 27:13)

(3)

That, Jesus took my sin,  a new life I begins … (Romans 5:8-9)

he’s always had a plan,  and it is good……. (Jeremiah 29:11)

He leads on his path, will never turn his back (Ps. 23:3 & Duet.31:6)

I’ll never be… alone.. he walks with me……(ps.23:4)

Back to Chorus & 2^nd ending of:

Gods glory in my life, what would my life be like

If I … did not.. believe…….. (Psalm 27:13)

January 8, 2012

Life Begins

Genesis 1:1-5 and Mark 1:4-11

At the age of 30 he was lost, drowning in a sea of alcohol. Finally he admitted that he was powerless over his drinking. He asked God to release him from bondage to alcohol, and God answered his prayer.

          Rod has become a sober, productive member of society. God has blessed him with a caring family. By relying on the grace of God and the help and inspiration of many sober friends, he has been blessed with the opportunity to marry, raise children, and watch his grandchildren grow. He was able to be with his mother and hold her as she died a few years ago. None of this would have been possible in his old way of life.

          Rod’s mother and father took his brothers and him to church regularly when they were children and teenagers, and at church he heard that God is loving and powerful and that God wants a personal relationship with each of us. He heard that if he approached God with childlike faith and asked for help, he could be reborn. Finally, after many years, Rod came to believe all that he had heard is true. Rod has been reborn. 

          Rod Scott from Arizona shared his testimony in the January 3, 2012 devotion of the Upper Room Daily Devotional. The last sentence of Rod’s testimony is this; “This offer of close relationship with God is open to everyone.”

          A new beginning for Rod: life; fully productive, joyful life began when Rod understood John 3:17; “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (NIV)

          Rod’s story gives us hope that no matter what mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, God’s mercy and grace covers us and God wants to heal us. Stories like this are found in the daily devotionals we have available here at the church. They are free to you, but if you’d like to contribute to their cost, you may.  Daily devotionals help us to be in God’s Word every day and they inspire and encourage us.

                We’ve just come through Advent and Christmas and we are in the 8^th day of 2012. These are the first days of the rest of our life; a new year, a new beginning; essentially the rest of our life begins right now with this breath we breathe.

          We can’t go back and change our past. We hopefully have learned from our mistakes and our successes, but we can’t change either one.  Often I will encourage the family members at a funeral to remember the good times and forget the bad.  Bad memories only make us sad. The hurts or mistakes that have happened in the past need forgiveness and grace; and to dwell on them and live our lives in hate or sorrow or bearing a grudge against someone only stops the growth in our faith. Is this what life is all about? NO. Life is about living and making new beginnings every morning. As long as the world keeps spinning and the sun comes up, life begins again every morning as we rise.

          Life Begins with Creation      Our physical earthly existence began in Genesis 1:1-3 “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light..” (NRSV)  

 Life doesn’t begin with humans. Life begins with God. God speaks light and life into existence and in doing this, God reveals his self to us. “God is light,” says the writer of 1John, “and in him there is no darkness at all.” (1-5) The glory and truth of God is revealed in God’s presence by His own light.  In the beginning, life begins!

          Life Begins with Incarnation           In the gospel of John, the writer takes this understanding a lot further by connecting the Incarnation of God in Jesus to both God’s Word and to God’s presence as revealed when life begins at creation. Like Genesis, the book of John begins “In the beginning,” and tells us that Jesus was God’s ultimate “Word” spoken to the creation, a light created to pierce the darkness of sin and death. God’s light which cannot be overcome by the darkness of sin and death.  Jesus’ life—God himself—was “the light of all people” (John 1:4)When we read Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1:1-5 next to each other, it’s easy to see how the themes run together. God speaks, and the darkness and chaos of the earth are put in their places. Jesus, God incarnate, arrives and God’s light becomes human and shines into the darkness of sin and death. “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” “In Him was life was the light of men.” (John 1:14,4)

          Life begins with Baptism       Jesus’ life always was with God.  The Word, which was at the beginning of creation, began His earthly life with the incarnation, the human birth in that stable in Bethlehem.  Jesus’ ministry begins as an adult at his baptism in the Jordon River, administered by his cousin John.  Baptism is a sign of a new beginning.

          The scripture reading from Mark today tells us that with Jesus’ baptism, he began his ministry. This is the moment, as he is baptized, that the world hears God’s voice. “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”(Mark 1:10-11 NRSV)  There is only one other time in the Bible where we hear God’s voice declaring Jesus to be His Son. This happens during the Transfiguration, when Jesus appears with Moses and Elijah on the mountain. “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”’ (Mark 8:7 NRSV)

                What more could we ask of our amazing God then His identification of His Son to us, that we might believe in Him and be saved from sin and death!

          You and I have been given this incredible blessing of choosing to begin life anew in our baptism. Baptism is a sign that we pledge allegiance to a different kingdom—the kingdom of God. Baptism marks us, sets us apart as different from the world’s idea of power.

          When the great reformer Martin Luther found himself tempted to sin, he would often put his hand on his head to remind himself that he was baptized—that he was different, that he could resist temptation because of his connection with Christ. Our baptism into Christ calls us to be different, peculiar and passionate people who are sent out to be like Jesus and to change the world.

          Back in 1592 Pope Clement VIII preformed a baptism that I’ll bet you never heard of. During that time coffee was considered by many Roman Catholics to be a heathen beverage, because it was introduced into Europe by Arab traders.  Pope Clement VIII was urged by petition to ban coffee, but after tasting a cup the pope instead chose to ‘baptize’ the beverage, and in 1592 issued a formal edict that recognized coffee as a “Christian” drink. Ahh- life begins for those of us who need our cup of the “Christian” drink, -coffee-, to start our day!

For those of us who have been baptized and understand that baptism is a choice to accept what God can do in our life; we recognize that baptism is a sign of God’s love and grace.  Baptism is something that God does when we are willing to receive the love and grace God offers.

Whether we were baptized as an infant or as an adult, someone declared repentance from sin and acceptance of God’s grace. These questions were asked: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races? (UMH p. 34)

Whether you answered these questions or your parents and sponsors answered them for you; Satan was put on notice at this time, that you have become a child of God. God is now going to work in your life, always pursuing you with his love and grace, and protecting your heart and soul from Satan’s power of sin and death.

          Life Begins – our Christian life, our identity in Jesus Christ, begins with our baptism.          Whether we are baptized as an infant or an adult, when we are baptized our life in Christ begins. In our baptism we become identified as followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are people reconciled with God by grace. Whether our parents made the commitment for us, or we made it for our self, these words were spoken. “Through baptism we are incorporated by the Holy Spirit into God’s new creation and made to share in Christ’s royal priesthood. We are all one in Christ Jesus. With joy and thanksgiving we are welcomed as members of the family of Christ.” (UMH page 37, my emphasis) ---This is the truth about our baptism: our life in Jesus Christ begins.

          In our baptism we begin to become the voice, the hands, the feet of Jesus. As we strive to be like Jesus, we begin to put God’s will first in our life and when God’s will controls our heart, mind, and soul; our eyes are opened to the needs of the world. We can be instrumental in bringing God’s kingdom right here and right now.

           Today, January 8, 2012, we remember and give thanks for God’s Son Jesus. We remember His baptism and God’s voice declaring that this is His Beloved Son. We remember that in this moment the Trinity, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit are revealed to us. We remember and we rejoice! In honor of this remembrance you and I will remember our baptism. We are invited to come forward, dip our hand into the water of the baptismal font and recommit our lives to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.     

          Reaffirmation of our baptismal vows: from UMBOW page 112-113

Let us pray: Eternal Father: when nothing existed but chaos, you swept across the dark waters and brought forth light. In the days of Noah you saved those on the ark through water. After the flood you set in the clouds a rainbow. When you saw your people as slaves in Egypt, you led them to freedom through the sea. Their children you brought through the Jordon to the land which you promised.

 In the fullness of time you sent Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb. He was baptized by John and anointed by your Spirit. He called his disciples to share in the baptism of his death and resurrection and to make disciples of all nations.

Leader: --- Pour out your Holy Spirit, and by this gift of water call to our remembrance the grace declared to us in our baptism. For you have washed away our sins, and you clothe us with righteousness throughout our lives, that dying and rising with Christ we may share in his final victory.

People: ---- “All praise to you eternal Father, through your Son Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever. Amen”

          The God of all grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ, establish and strengthen you by the power of the Holy Spirit,  that you may live in grace and peace.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

January 8, 2012

January 1, 2012

Where Does One Look for Jesus?

Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

We three kings of Orient are; bearing gifts we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star. O--, star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light. (#254 UMH, v.1)

We sing that song once, maybe twice a year. Written by John H Hopkins Jr. in 1857, it tells a great story about seeking Jesus, the one whose birth was foretold by ancient prophets.

 It’s a great story song. These learned men have been sitting around studying for years; studying history and the universe, and now God sends them on an adventure. They pack up their camels with their bed rolls and beef jerky and set out on a quest: following a star to a place they’ve never been before. They encounter a King in Jerusalem, who tries to trick them. They carefully guard their presents of great material wealth; gold, frankincense and myrrh. Through the moors, over the mountains; they encountered all kinds of people and dangerous animals along the way. What an adventure they had! Kind of makes you want to go on a trip, doesn’t it?  I wonder if the writers of Indiana Jones took some of their ideas from this great adventure story.

Were they actually three kings from the Orient? Scholars don’t think so. Scripture tells us they came from eastern lands, but they could have been descendents of the Jews who had been deported to Babylon centuries before. It is thought that they were astrologers who studied the stars and ancient writings.  Did they show up the day after Jesus was born? No, they traveled thousands of miles and it would have taken them 11/2 to 2 years to find what they were seeking. Too bad they didn’t have my GPS. They might have arrived in shorter time. I can hear it now. ‘You should have taken a right at the last oasis; recalculating, recalculating.’

 Were there three of them? We don’t know. We assume that because they brought gold, frankincense and myrrh; three gifts -- three wise men, seems logical.  And why did they stop in Jerusalem? Why didn’t the star lead them directly to Bethlehem and avoid King Herod all together? Could it be that God wanted the Jewish leaders, who would have been in Jerusalem, to know about Jesus’ birth? Do you think this may have been all a part of God’s plan to announce to the whole world that what the prophets had foretold in the Old Testament was now coming true?

I love the study of scripture. The way the Word of God tells stories and the rhythm and the flow of the whole picture of God’s plan for His creation; from the beginning, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) to the end “He who is the faithful witness to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all.” (Revelation 22:20-21)

Scripture is where we read the stories of our faith, where we find the answers to our questions. And the question for the first day of 2012 is: “Where Does One Look for Jesus?”

The first answer, of course, is ‘We look for Jesus in God’s Word, in Holy Scripture.’

Now, if you’re keeping track of ‘end-of-the-world’ predictions; 2012 is going to be the last year of earth’s existence as we know it, ending on 12-21-2012, according to the Mayan calendar. I don’t believe it. But who knows? Only God knows. But if you believe it, than you only have 356 days to find Jesus, because this is a Leap Year.  Open your Bible and look for Jesus. He’s there; in great stories and adventures and lessons. There is no better place to start, when you looking for answers to life’s questions. The answers are there, and there you will find God’s plan for salvation of the world through His Son Jesus.

The second answer to the question, ‘Where Does One Look for Jesus?’ is here, in this place.  Here in the gathering of the body of Christ of this church: to worship, to hear the Word of God preached, to pray together for one another, to raise our voices in praise, to bring our tithes and our offerings, and to serve our neighbors. This is where we come together to look for Jesus and to find Him. This is where together we can grow in our faith and learn to love God better and to love and serve our neighbor better. If we don’t come honestly seeking to find Jesus, we won’t. But if we come with our heart opened and willing, we will find Jesus here.

There are some people who come to church Sunday after Sunday, year after year and do not find Jesus, because they don’t seek Him here. They are content to know about Jesus, but they don’t know Jesus personally. Can you feel His Spirit here? Are you open to His Holy Presence in your heart, in your soul, in your life? There is a beauty in gathering together to praise God and to seek a relationship with Him. 

There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. One of the saddest responses I hear to the question, why don’t you come to church? Is, “I don’t need church. I can be a Christian by myself.”  I don’t believe it. Jesus gave us the example of how to be his follower. And he didn’t live his life in solitary. He didn’t do it by himself.

 Jesus gathered 12 disciples around him. He didn’t travel alone. They worshipped God together. They ate together. They discussed their feelings and their questions about life and God. They disagreed and settled their disagreements. They sought to know Jesus better and Jesus taught them to love God and to love one another.  Why would anyone, who would dares to call himself a Christian, a follower of Christ, dare to think they can be a Christian alone? It is impossible. We need one another. The Apostle Paul wrote this to the early church in Ephesus and it applies to the church today, “He (Jesus) is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-13)

          It is our responsibility as this body of Christ to build one another up so that we might become equipped to do God’s work in this world. Right outside the doors of this church building are people who are seeking answers to life’s questions and we have to be able to help them find the answers. People are lost. People are hurting. They don’t know how to live or how to love. It is our job as followers of Christ to help one another become equipped to draw others into the body of Christ.  2012 is another chance for us to be the voice, and hands and feet of Jesus Christ and we need one another to be Jesus for the world.       

          Which brings us to the most important answer to the question, “Where does one look for Jesus?” If we are calling ourselves Christians, believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, people should be able to look for and to find Jesus in us. People are watching us.

 Do they see Jesus in our lives? Do they see Jesus in our words, in our actions and in our reactions to life? When someone hurts us with words or actions, how do we react? Are we actively seeking to love one another, and love the unlovable as well, or do we find it more comfortable to ignore the hurts around us?  Do people see the light and joy of Jesus Christ shining in our eyes, in our laughter, in our love? Do people see in us something they might want?

          The answers to the question, ‘Where does one look for Jesus?,’ are ‘Look for Jesus in Holy Scripture.’ ‘Look for Jesus within the body of Christ.’ And ‘look for Jesus in my life.’ I will show you Jesus in how I live and in how I love.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. For my resolution, in 2012, I resolve to help others find Jesus. I have this wonderful children’s book I’ve been reading to my grandchildren that I’d like to share with you. We are all children of God. Hear with your heart, how others who are looking for Jesus can find him in you.

If Jesus lived Inside My Heart by Jill Roman Lord,

If Jesus lived inside my heart, would other people know? Perhaps he’d use all parts of me to love and shine and glow!

 If Jesus used my eyes, I think he might just recommend, that when I see a child alone, I’d try to be her friend. I’d offer her some bubble gum or ask if she might like, to shoot some hoops of basketball or try out my new trike.

Would Jesus use my mouth to say, “I’m sorry” when I’m wrong? Or offer kind encouragement for friends to get along?

I think he’d use my arms to give big warm and snuggly hugs, and hold my baby sister when she’s scared of creepy bugs.

My hands could make nice cards to send to Grandma far away. I’d also rub Mom’s shoulders when she’s had a busy day.

I’d use my gifts and talents that God’s given me to share. I’d play a song for Grandpa and his friends to show I care.

I’d always try to do what’s best, so someone else might see. That Jesus lives inside my heart and works through little me!

And if there were one cookie left, I’d know just what to do…I’d split it with my brother ’cause he’d want a cookie too.

I know I sometimes make mistakes. I’m messy and I spill. Then, what does Jesus think of me? Does Jesus love me still?

I think he’d say, “I love you, child, more than you’ll ever know. Since you have given me your heart, I’ll never let you go.”

“I’ll work through you and shine through you, just like the brightest light. I’ll guide each precious step you take and help you do what’s right. “And though I live inside of you, I’m here for all to see. When others see your acts of love, they’re also seeing me.”

          Lord, help your light to shine through me into the darkness of our world. When they ask the question, where does one look for Jesus; may my life lead them into your Word and into your church, that more may find their way to you. I pray this in your name, precious Jesus, Amen.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

January 1, 2012

December 25, 2011

The Real Cost of Christmas

Psalm 98:1-9 and John 1:1-14

          It was Christmas. The snow that gently hugged the tips of the mountains and the paper lanterns that graced the homes and business establishments in the desert Southwest told her so. But it was not Christmas in her heart. Her children were busy with their holiday parties, but for Janet simply baking the Christmas cookies was a chore. You see, tragedy had struck her family just four months earlier by way of the untimely death of her oldest daughter, Kristen.

          Much to Janet’s surprise, her life continued, but on a surreal leave. “How will I get through the holidays? How can I be strong for my family?” Janet wondered.

          Christmas was just two weeks away, Janet’s parents decided to fly out and join them.  They had not weathered the death of their grandchild well. It was good that they would all be together for this holiday.

          The family was together in the living room when they heard the doorbell. Janet’s son Nick ran to the door to see who had come to visit them so late in the evening. When he opened the door, there was a beautiful white candle covered in a glass dome. The fire of the candle danced merrily, and they quickly bought it inside. There was no one to be seen and the family wondered, “Who could have given them such a nice present? Why didn’t they stay so that we could thank them?” So many questions!

          The following night, after a particularly stressful day, they once again heard the sound of the doorbell. This time, a basket of freshly baked ginger cookies was left for them. They were still warm and covered with a clean red-checkered dishtowel. Nick quickly ran out onto the porch and into the driveway. No one was there.

          Janet wondered out loud, “What is going on? Who could be doing this? And how could they disappear so quickly without a trace into the night?”

          On the third night the family waited in anticipation. Nick had a plan that he felt would be foolproof. He would be ready this time if the doorbell rang. He camped out in the foyer, directly in front of the door. Sure enough, this time there came a knock. Before anyone had a chance to respond, Nick swung open the door. However, much to his chagrin, He wasn’t fast enough. Nestled among delicate green foil were two crystal tree ornaments. They were filled with fragrant, spicy potpourri.  Janet’s father’s eyes sparkled with life, and her mother’s face was lit with a happy smile as well. “How wonderful,” Janet thought. “Someone is bringing life back into this house by playing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas on us.’”

          The fourth night arrived, accompanied by a storm. Wind and snow lapped against the windows with a fury and they were certain they would not receive a visit from their Christmas Ghost on such a dreary and cold night. They were wrong. Right on schedule, the front door rattled with a knock, and this time, two tiny, wooden angels with starched lace wings were left behind for them to behold. The children ran to the end of the porch. Nothing could be seen, not even a footprint in the snow. Such a mystery!

          On the fifth, sixth, and seventh nights, they received tall honey wax candles, a nut bread bursting with cherries and almonds, and a tiny nutcracker carved from clothespins and held together with pipe cleaners. Now it was time to get down to serious business. Their curiosity was piqued.  They simply had to know their mysterious benefactor.

          “No,” Janet’s father said. “Whoever it is does not want to be seen, and it is our responsibility to keep it that way. This is part of the gift. This giving angel is also receiving a gift, the pure and obvious joy of giving.”

          On the eighth night, they waited. No one came. Disappointed and tired, they went to bed. They had come to look forward to the nightly visits and they wondered why they had stopped. Morning dawned brightly, and when Janet’s husband stepped outside to retrieve his paper, there were two gifts: a red Poinsettia, and a lovely Christmas Cactus that was preparing to bloom. Their mysterious friend had caught them off guard. The eighth and ninth day gifts had been quietly left outside their door sometime during the night or early morning.

          On the tenth night they received an apple pie, steaming hot and carefully wrapped in red and green napkins. On the eleventh day, brown and white handmade coasters appeared.

          Christmas Eve was upon them, and it happened so quickly that the family had forgotten their sad spirit which had enveloped them at the start of the season. Their sweet angel had taken their minds from their loss and had treated them to a very different kind of Christmas. It was one they had never anticipated. Each night, the children had run outside in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of their benevolent friend, and yet, on the twelfth night, they still had no idea who had so diligently and kindly bestowed them with the sweet blessings. 

          On the twelfth day-Christmas Day-they sat in the living room. All of their gifts had been exchanged, and they had enjoyed a quiet family dinner. It had been a good Christmas, after all, loving and joyous. Right on cue, their secret Santa came and then disappeared into the night, leaving behind a small white envelope. Upon opening it, they found a message, neatly written in a child’s hand. It read:        

I am the spirit of Christmas

          Which is PEACE

          I am the spirit of gladness—HOPE

          I am the heart of Christmas, which is LOVE

          Have a Merry Christmas

          The family was changed from that night on. They began to heal. Going on with their lives seemed a bit easier. They never found out who left all those wonderful gifts. They did learn how important it is to bring a bit of light into dark places, not simply at Christmas, but all year through. *

          I love this story. It’s about giving with our heart. It’s about sacrificing a bit of our self so that something good can happen. It’s about giving without expecting or even wanting something in return. It’s about being willing to pay the price of our time, our effort, our money, and not count the cost. It’s about giving out of love. The part that really touches me is that the mysterious benefactor never did reveal who she/he was. They didn’t feel it was  necessary to receive a thank you, because their joy was in the giving.

          I wonder if God felt that way when He gave us His Son?  God didn’t give himself with great fanfare so that we would stand up and applaud. He came softly into the world in a humble setting. He appeared mysteriously on the doorstep of Bethlehem. The mysterious gift of Jesus arrived through the labor pains of a human woman, not with great fanfare descending from heaven. The Savior of the world arrived on a starlit night, with only a human mother and father present. Animals would gaze in wonder at this tiny human being in their bedroom, in their feeding trough. Humble shepherds would learn the news from a heavenly chorus, while they watched their flocks on a remote hillside. They would come to see and then go to tell others of this wondrous gift.  The gift of God himself; incarnate, God in human form, given out of love. The world was changed from that night on.

          “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

 There came a man who was sent from God; his name is John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God---children born not of natural descent, not of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1: 1-14)

          The gift of God himself; incarnate, God in human form, given out of love. The world was changed from that night on.

          God knew that we would not appreciate His gift. He knew that tiny baby who lay in that wooden manger would in 33 years cry out with pain upon a wooden cross. And yet God gave. He gave himself at a great cost. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

God gave out of love, never expecting or even wanting a thank you. It cost God dearly, and yet he did not count the cost.

          You have given and received gifts this Christmas. Some of those gifts required wrapping paper or a gift bag. Some of those gifts were handmade, which required the cost of time and effort. Some of the gifts may have been the gift of relational time; time taken for tea or coffee or lunch, or baking cookies with children or grandchildren. Some of the gifts were given to the church ministry. Planning and working at the neighborhood dinner and gift giving. Planning and working at the Christmas worship services to make our celebration of God’s gift meaningful. I hope that your gifts were appreciated, but I hope that you didn’t give for that reason. I hope that you gave for the sheer joy of giving. I hope that you received your gifts with grace and joy.

          When you have truly received Jesus into your heart and life, you don’t worry about the cost of time, effort and money of your giving. You don’t worry about being recognized for your effort. You know the true joy of giving without expecting anything in return.    

          God’s gift, Jesus the Christ, the Savior of the world cost God a great deal; a piece of himself. And yet this gift was given for one purpose, so that we might be saved from our sins and might receive eternal life in God’s presence.  What a glorious gift we have been given!

          What does God expect in return?  Jesus tell us that God desires that we love Him above all else and that we love our neighbor. God asks us to give what we have been given; the gift of love.

          Whatever is in your heart this Christmas Day, God want his gift of love to fill your heart with the light of Christ, that His gift may be shared with all the world, beginning with the people God puts into your life right here and right now.                 

          Lord, help me to give to others as I have received. Help me to re-gift the love you have so freely given at such great cost to you. Help me to know the joy of sharing my time, my energy, my money with others, expecting the joy of giving to be my only reward. I thank you and praise you for your love given to me in that baby in Bethlehem that night so long ago. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

December 25, 2011

Sources: *The Twelve Days of Christmas, Janet K. Brennan, page 123-126. A Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas.2007 John T. Canfield and Hansen and Hansen LLC

December 18, 2011

Restore us with Love

Psalm 89:1-4,19-26 and Luke 1:26-38

It started way back in third grade,

I used to sit beside Emmy Lou Hayes,

A pink dress, a matching bow, and her pony tail,

She kissed me on the school bus, but told me not to tell.

Next day I chased her round the playground

Across the monkey bars, to the merry-go-round

And Emmy Lou got caught passing me a note,

Before the teacher took it, I read what she wrote

Do you love me, do you wanna be my friend?

And if you do, well then don’t be afraid

To hold me by the hand, if you want to

I think this is how love goes, check yes or no*

The song brings back memories of grade school when we all experienced our first romance. Remember when you sent or received your first love letter? You may have passed a love note through your friend or in the class room from two rows over when the teacher wasn’t looking. Written in the admirer’s best penmanship, these unforgettable words were as sweet as a sonnet:  I love you --Do you love me?-- Check Yes or No

Those were the days of falling in love one week and falling out of love the next. I remember when David, the boy I thought I was in love with, decided he was in love with another girl. Before we went out to the playground for recess, I stopped at the drinking fountain and put water on my cheeks so it would look like I had been crying; trying to get some sympathy from David.  It didn’t do any good, but at the time, with my 3^rd grade reasoning, it made perfect sense.    

Love is a funny thing. We all crave it: there’s not one of us who doesn’t crave the kind of love which accepts us for exactly who we are; with all our quirks and all our faults. We want someone who loves us unconditionally.

But when we love, when we are on the other side of the spectrum, most often we want to love someone who is perfect; who caters to our every need, who makes us feel special, someone we can be proud of. We know this is true because we are flush with advertisements that tell us so. The perfect clothes, the perfect hair color, the perfect makeup, the perfect body, the perfect car, house, computer, IPhone, etc. -  results in perfect love.

Unfortunately, people fall for this myth. Every couple, who gets married, believes that their partner will be perfect forever and that their life together will be like a fairy tale. Inevitably the perfect fades, and 55% of couples who marry, get divorced. If there are children as a result of the marriage they find out that love is not forever, love is only if you and life are perfect.

Human love is often fickle. Human love often turns and runs when the hard times come. When illness strikes, there are spouses who can’t deal with it. When financial crisis hits, some react by running away, when the challenges and obstacles of everyday life sets in, some seek excitement in the arms of another.

There are not many like O. D. and Betty Smith, who loved each other for over 63 years.  Betty honored her marriage vows; going with O.D.  to Alaska to live out his dream and living there for 35 years. She also honored the vows of ‘loving in sickness and in health.’ When O.D. became ill, Betty remained at his side, loving him, caring for him. Betty’s love and faithfulness is an example of what human love in marriage should look like. O.D.  passed away this last week. He is no longer in pain. He knows the joy of being in the presence of his Savior. We pray for strength and peace for Betty and her family.

 I know there are others who have done the same. They have loved well. They have loved as God loves, even when life is not perfect. If you are one of those, I believe your heart must have a connection to the God of faith-fullness and steadfast love.

 God’s love for the world is unfailing and unending    The psalmist sings God’s love song for the world in our Psalm 89 today. “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. With my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, “Mercy shall be built up forever. Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens.” (vv. 1-4) 

God’s unbreakable covenant is proclaimed. God’s steadfast love will be recklessly poured out on God’s beloved, his children. Psalm 89 is filled with action verbs, reflecting a God in motion, unstoppable because of the power of this love. God will set a crown, anoint with oil, always remain and strengthen. Humans will put up obstacles to love, but God is prepared. God will not allow the enemy to overcome or destroy his beloved children.

This is not a fairy tale, unrealistic love. This is a relationship that will be tested by daunting obstacles of human choice. We humans, are imperfect and we will be disobedient and turn away from God, but the faithfulness of God will continue forever.

          In this enduring covenant, God promises “my faithfulness and steadfast love.” The beloved, the ones who turned away, will respond to the lasting relationship with the heartfelt cry, “You are my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation!” (v.26) This is what God would do for love—God enters into the relationship wholeheartedly and without reservation. God declares unending love. God will never abandon us, even though many times we abandon him.

          God’s love is an “Always Love,” the psalmist assures us that God is steadfast in devotion and faithfulness. This is not a conditional love. It is not a careful love. God is willing to give Jesus the beloved on behalf of this fickle, unappreciative world.  God will offer that which is most precious.

          This love arrives in a deceptively simple package, laid in a manger, approachable by all who wish to encounter him. This gift and promise of God is for everyone. One could mistakenly believe that Advent is about a soft adorable baby. Yet this child who is born to us, this Son who is given, is the Savior of the world. This Advent season asks us to prepare our hearts to receive a love that is humbling in its passion and amazing in its depth.

Christmas love is courageous          This kind of love demands courage: courage that we humans most often do not display. As we celebrate Advent and Christmas, we’re fully aware of where God’s love is leading us. The love might begin in the softly starlit manger, but it inevitably will lead to the harsh noon-day sun reflecting on the Cross. God knows this, but does not shy away from the pain that is coming. God’s extravagant love is demonstrated in God’s willingness to give sacrificially to imperfect human beings.

 God bestows the most precious gift, God’s Son, knowing that this offering will not be appreciated, honored, or at times, even recognized. Yet God gives himself freely, knowing that this is the love which will lead His beloved children home. God gives us the choice to choose his love: Do you love me? Say yes or no. And when we chose yes, we become his adopted children, whom he will love unconditionally with his faithful steadfast love. This is God’s gift to us.

 The gift of Christ, the bundle of love wrapped in cloths and laid in a lowly manger. God gives His gift, His Son, to the poor, the meek, the lowly. It does not come to a perfect place, even though it is the perfect gift which draws us to our perfect God.   

It’s a gift:     That makes the angels sing

                             The shepherds jump to attention

                             The magi travel many miles to worship

                             That changes the world forever

          And it’s the gift that continues to bless us today.

God’s love does not fade, weaken or diminish. It’s offered to us fresh and new every day. What are we asked to do for this love? Simply say ‘Yes’ to God who is always willing to give us more.

Mary says yes to God. Mary, in our gospel reading this morning, is looking forward to marriage to Joseph. She is young and in love and planning as a young bride plans. Everything will be perfect: the dress, the ceremony, the reception, their life together as husband and wife.

But, God intervenes with His plan for Mary and Joseph, and their lives. The love of God supersedes and directs the love of human beings.

 “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” (v.28)

 Mary may not have felt "blessed" or "favored." She had to accept first that all her life plans were about to be changed forever. She would bear a child, under truly unusual circumstances, and be transformed by that process in ways she could not imagine.
          Despite the tumult that welled up inside her heart, Mary's response to the angel Gabriel's message is straightforward: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (v.38).

Mary obeyed willingly and her life, although she would know terrible sorrow, would ultimately bring hope, peace, joy and love. Because of Mary’s willingness to receive the love of God and then to share that love with the world; you and I may be restored with that love; restored into God’s presence once more.

We will gather together December 24 and 25 to celebrate the coming of the Lord. We will sing carols and praise God for His gift of love, His Son Jesus. It’s a celebration which occurs every year and yet we soon forget what this divine gift is all about.

Our lives as human beings are not easy. Loving one another is challenging. There is not one of us who is perfect. However, if we say ‘yes’ to God’s love, we can love better, we can re-gift the gift we have been given. If we allow ourselves to be restored by the love of God, our lives will exemplify hope, peace, joy and love.

Restore us with love. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, tells us this in 1John 4:7-11. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the sacrificial atonement for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Let us pray: God of mercy and of love. Restore us with your sacrificial love; that we might love one another better. This is an imperfect world because we are imperfect people. Only your love can bring perfection. Only your love can help us to be the people you created us to be. We ask this in the name of Jesus, your beloved gift of love. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

December 18,2011

                                   Sources: Check Yes or No; sung by George Strait  

                                              and written by Dana Oglesby & Danny Wells

December 11, 2011

Restore Us to Joy

Psalm 126:1-6 and John 16:16-24

          Christmas, the season of joy! It’s been a few years since we’ve had little children at our house for Christmas. Having our oldest daughter and her two young children living with us while her husband is deployed in the Navy has given us the gift of having young children around at Christmas again. We are having great fun! Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we will have our other daughter and her three young children with us as well. What fun!

Christmas is children and music and joy!

          Isn’t that what the first Christmas was all about? A child was born, The angels sang in the night sky, a mother held her first born baby and her heart was filled with joy.  Every year we remember that joyous night which took place over 2,000 years ago. We remember and we rejoice at the birth of the Savior of the world.  We read the story and we remember.

          Think for a moment what you remember as your favorite Christmas. When I asked myself what my favorite was, it wasn’t when we had small children in the house; it was when I was a child myself! My parents didn’t have much money and I wanted to downhill ski. All I wanted for Christmas was downhill skis. All my friends were skiing and we lived 15 minutes from the Porcupine Mountain ski hill. I was about 10 or 11 and I didn’t really understand why there wasn’t money to buy skis for me.

I remember waking up on Christmas morning, going out to the living room where the Christmas tree was and there beneath the tree were skis and boots and poles. I don’t know how my parents did it, but I’ve never forgotten that morning. It was the best Christmas ever!  From then on, every winter Saturday I was on the slopes.

          What was your ‘best Christmas ever?’ I’ll bet there is one Christmas, and I’ll even bet it was when you were a child, which sticks in your mind as the ‘best Christmas ever?’

Remembering is good. I know that some memories will bring tears and remind our heart of times in the past which were sad. I also realize that remembering good times in the past may bring sadness because the loved ones we enjoyed those happy moments with may no longer be with us.  Life is a journey of ups and downs, laughter and tears.

Try for just a moment to remember one good Christmas. My hope is that no matter what you are going through at this very moment, you have at least one joyful memory of Christmas. Remembering a joy filled moment can restore our heart and encourage us for life’s journey.

Christmas remembering and celebrating. We remember that child born to Mary in a humble stable setting. We remember that baby wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a manger. We remember that in this simple, yet miraculous, act of giving life, God restored us to Him and gave to us not only his Son, but through Him, the gift of eternal life in God’s presence. We celebrate the love of God come down on Christmas. We celebrate the joy of Jesus.

 On this third Sunday of Advent, as we light the candle of joy, we remember and we celebrate that God loves us unconditionally and that God creates within us this desire to be restored to Him. God seeks for us to remember who we are and whose we are.

God desires for us to remember that only in His presence is true joy. Not just happiness, but true joy. There is a difference. Happiness depends on something. Joy depends on someone, Jesus.

God has always been about restoration.

We read Psalm 126 this morning. This is one of the psalms of “ascent,” or a musical piece that pilgrims would sing on their pilgrimage up to Jerusalem—to Zion and the temple to worship. It is a psalm of remembering and celebrating what God has done and what God will do in the future.

 The first part of the psalm brings back memories of the past. Back in the past things were great. It was a good dream.  Everyone laughed and shouted for joy and the people of Israel had a reputation among the other nations as those for whom God had done “great things.”

“Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations.  “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”’ (vv.2-3)

          The people of Israel are rejoicing that God has shown them favor. Some theologians believe that this Psalm may have been chanted in remembrance of the return of the people from Babylonian captivity in 539 B.C. Some theologians believe it was a psalm sung at the beginning of each planting season, or it may have been a combination of both.

          The second part is about restoration as well. It is clear that this psalm is about joy. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.” (v.4) The Negeb was a desert and semi-desert region of southern Israel where annual rainfall ranged from roughly 12 inches  near the Mediterranean to as little as 2 inches of rain in the Arabah Valley.  They depended upon the region floods during the winter rains, to provide much needed water for agriculture and transforming the dry areas into areas of sudden verdant growth.

          The people were hoping for good fortune, for joy. Verses 5&6, “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy carrying their sheaves.”   

The psalmist and those who would sing it are rejoicing in what God has done and will continue to do. Their faith in Yahweh is strong. There were times when the people would sow their seeds at the beginning of the planting season, not knowing if there would be enough rain to water the plants, that they would be able to harvest the crops. Famine was a regular occurrence in ancient times.

The reason for this psalm may be debated, but the unspoken message of this psalm is the anticipation of God’s provision, the anticipation of good times, the anticipation of joy. We all love being surprised by what God can do; answered prayers for our self or a loved one. God always has surprises for us.

God restores what is broken. God’s ability to restore life is beyond our understanding. Forests burn down and are able to grow back again. Broken bones heal. Relationships can be restored when God’s presence is welcomed into the situation. Even grief is not a permanent condition. Our tears can be seeds that will grow into a harvest of joy because God is able to bring good out of tragedy. God is willing and able to bring new life and joy out of sorrow and tears.

Mary Graham, a Christian writer, shares with us, how God surprised her with joy when she first went off to college.

“For the rest of my life I will be indebted to God and to a woman He brought into my life; Faith Myatt. When I was in college, for the first time in my life I felt lonely and afraid. I was nineteen and desperate.

My sister made contact with a woman named Faith who taught Sunday school at a local church with her husband Cal. The very next day, scared to death, I wandered into this class. There were a hundred or more college students laughing and singing, full of life and joy. I felt like a fish out of water. I’d never felt so out of place. Not only was I the saddest person in the room, I seemed to be the only one who was sad at all.

I felt invisible and terrible insecure. Faith walked up to me and as far as I could tell thought she’d just met the most wonderful person she’d ever known. She treated me like she’d waited all her life to know me. I was stunned!

Immediately she drew me in, and, as a result, I found the joy those other students knew. They’d learned (from Faith and Cal) to walk with Christ, abide in His love, and keep His commandments, and I realized I could learn that as well. I didn’t know it would change my life forever. I didn’t expect the joy of knowing Jesus Christ to transform me; that Faith’s love for me was like the Father’s love for her. In time my joy was full. From then on I kept an eye on the door. I wanted to be sure to notice any who were lonely and afraid and invite them to come with us on this joyful journey. *

The joyful journey: joy, true joy, can only be found when we journey with Jesus.

In our passage from the gospel of John this morning, we find Jesus not at the beginning of his earthly life, but rather nearing the end. His disciples are bewildered, not understanding what he’s talking about when he tells them in verse 16, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while and you will see me.”  

Jesus tries to explain it using the comparison to the difficulty a woman goes through when she gives birth. “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.”(v.21) 

The disciples will only understand Jesus’ words after they have experienced the pain and sorrow of the crucifixion and then the ultimate surprise of joy when the resurrected Jesus stands among them and they are able to see and touch the dead brought to life by the power of God.

 They will remember the pain of the crucifixion, but that won’t be the focus of their life. Jesus tells them and us, “So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (v.22)

The focus of the disciples’ life after the resurrection will be telling the good news, spreading the joy of Jesus Christ throughout the world. God knows in our world of sin and sorrow, we desperately need the Joy of Jesus.

Jesus knows that to know the joy of His presence we need to stay connected to him. He tells us in John 15 that we must be connected to him as ‘a branch is connected to the vine.” (v.1-5)

In the John 15:11 he says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Complete Joy in Jesus

When you are connected to Jesus, he instills deep with you - joy. You see things differently. We all know people who are either anticipating disaster in their life, going through some disaster in their life or recovering from some disaster in their life. These people are not connected to Jesus. When you are connected to Jesus, you see things differently. You know you are never alone. You know that Jesus will give you everything you need to get through the day. You know that He is a Friend who sticks closer than any blood relative. You know that He is your Shepherd when you feel lost and afraid. You know that He is your comfort when you desperately need to know someone cares. You have faith that He is the true, lasting joy.

Joy Is The Word

                               --John Kendrick Bangs

 

Today, whatever may annoy,

The word for me is Joy, just simple joy;

The joy of life;

The joy of children and of wife;

The joy of bright, blue skies;

The joy of rain; the glad surprise

Of twinkling stars that shine at night;

The joy of winged things upon their flight;

The joy of noonday, and the tried

True joyousness of eventide;

The joy of labor, and of mirth;

The joy of air, and sea, and earth—

The countless joys that ever flow from Him

Whose vast beneficence doth dim

The lustrous light of day,

And lavish gifts divine upon our way,

Whate'er there be of Sorrow

I’ll put off till Tomorrow,

And when Tomorrow,

And when Tomorrow comes, why then

“Twill be Today and Joy again!

                                               

Almighty God, giver of all things. As we anticipate the celebration of the gift of your Son Jesus; restore to us your joy. May the Joy of Jesus become our way of thinking, and speaking and living each day. Fill our hearts with your presence, restore our joy. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut          

 December 11, 2011

Sources: *Mary Graham, Day 1 Joy Woman’s                               

                 Devotional  Bible, page 1322

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 4, 2011

Restore Us with Peace

Psalm 85:1-4, 8-13 and John 14:1, 25-27

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and picture a place where your heart finds peace. Not just where you feel peaceful, but a place where your heart finds true, deep, lasting peace.

Where do you see yourself? Are you on the beach; napping in the warm summer sun, or sitting around a fire at night, with the starlit heavens declaring the glory of God? Are you taking a walk in the woods, with the wind gently rocking the branches of the hemlock trees, which are frosted with snow? Maybe you picture yourself in your favorite chair, the house quiet, the clock ticking in the background. Or do you see yourself lying down to rest in your bed, taking a deep breath, praying for your loved ones and drifting off to sleep. Maybe you picture yourself right here in this sanctuary allowing your heart to open to the mysterious movement of the Holy Spirit filling you with peace. Can you picture the place where your heart finds true, deep, lasting peace?       Do you have such a place?

          I may have lost some of you with that exercise. If I hear snoring, I know that you find your true, deep, lasting peace right here! 

          Today’s theme is peace. We pray for peace in the world, but that will not happen as long as Satan rules the hearts of humans. Wars have been and will be; we are a sinful human race. But we don’t have to give in to despair and anxiety because of our world or even because of whatever circumstance we find our self in at the moment. There is a peace which passes all understanding. It is the peace that God sent into the world through His Son Jesus, whose birthday we will celebrate on December 25.

God is the place of peace. After all is said and done, the only peace that is real and lasting comes from God. You can make peace with your spouse, but you will quarrel again. You can make peace with your friend or your sibling or your child, but there will be misunderstandings again. Peace with God is different. God made true, deep, lasting peace available to each of us through Jesus.

We have begun our Advent season. Last week we prayed, “Restore us with hope, O God,” and then we lit the first candle. The presence of Jesus Christ brings hope to our life. This Sunday we prayed, “Restore us with Peace, O God.”, and then we lit the second candle. The presence of Jesus Christ brings peace to our life.

God restored the people of Israel. Psalm 85 begins with a line that was spoken by the people of Israel, back in their homeland after a time of exile in Babylon: “Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob” (v.1) The people are thankful that their long captivity is over, and that God has forgiven their turning from Him. God has forgiven them for allowing the world surrounding, to influence them. He has forgiven them for allowing the things of this earthly life to take God’s place in their hearts.  “You forgave the iniquity of your people: you pardoned all their sin.” (v.2)

 But still something is missing. The emptiness they felt is very similar to the void that remains deep within us when we have achieved worldly success and own every

thing we want, and yet there is something missing. We wonder why all the material things in this life give us everything but a sense of peace. There remains a void.

 Our restless hearts find peace only in God. True peace cannot be found in power, in success, in things. It comes to us as a gift from God, and it includes forgiveness of sin and the restoration of our relationship with the Lord. St. Augustine had it right when he said, “You have made us for yourself. O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (Confessions, Book 1 Chapter 1)

The psalmist writes the truth when he writes, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.”  What a beautiful truth. When you and I turn to God in our hearts, not just recognizing that He is God and that we believe in him: but, really giving all of who we are to him, His deep abiding peace fills the void.

 When we accept this gift of peace, we enjoy many more treasures. “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.”  (vv. 10-13)

 These verses contain the entire character of God: Steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, peace and goodness. All of these qualities are intertwined, since love is connected closely to faithfulness, and true peace is always dependent on the presence of justice and righteousness.

 It would be a lie for a man to say he loves his wife while he is having an affair with another. It is impossible for peace to exist in a church where there is gossip and selfishness, or in a community that is marked by injustice and unrighteousness.  Look at the lack of peace in our world. As one culture seeks to destroy the other, there is no justice, there is no righteousness; there is no peace.

Peace cannot come through conquest and force. Peace, true peace, must come from the presence of God in our heart and in our life.  It is only in the presence of the Holy that we find hope. It is only in the presence of the Holy that we find true, deep, lasting peace.  

          Remember the story of the little girl who asked to be alone with her new baby brother. The parents left the nursery somewhat reluctantly, not really knowing how their 4 year old daughter, who had been the only child, would react to the intrusion of a new baby brother into the household. Mom and Dad stood by the nursery door, which they left ajar so to be able to hear and see what the now big sister was going to do.

          They were surprised when they watched the little girl bend over the bassinette and they heard her whisper to the baby.  “Remind me what God looks like, and what God’s voice sounds like. I’m starting to forget.”

          We begin with the Holy-You and I begin in the presence of the Holy God. Unfortunately, as human beings, we soon forget the Holy. We become engulfed in earthly living. We become busy, we become anxious about: health, our family, our community, our nation and the world in general. The presence of the Holy in our life is soon obliterated; not only with earthly, cares, business and sin; but also with the lies we’ve been told that we can do this life alone, and we don’t need God.

 However, we find that our heart longs for something more. Our heart longs for the return of the Holy.  We will spend this Advent Season asking God to restore his presence to us: that we may come to him like a little child once again.  Remind us, O God, of who you are.

Patricia Hickman had bought into the lie that she could do this life alone. She rose early for work and stayed late to do more work and she worked weekends.  Patricia had swallowed the lie that if she were to ‘make it’ in this world she had no other options. Fatigue, ambition, and stress became her way of life. She shares with us how Christ restored her with His peace.

“I remember the night Christ in His compassionate manner led me gently back to His Word. As I drank in the Scriptures, they flowed into my desert of a heart like a slow pleasing trickle of delight. I spoke candidly to God as though He held me close to Him, snug in His everlasting lap of grace and mercy. I told Him how sorry I was for fashioning my life in my own image. In a blink He obliterated my guiltiness and instantly restored me. Peace was mine again – free for the asking. Christ took hold of my ready heart of clay, and over time formed the life He had intended for me all along. In that single defining moment I had an astonishing revelation. Simple trust had been the missing factor in my spiritual equation. To know peace, all I had to do was trust God for the outcome. Complete trust equals complete peace—ecstatic peace. *

          Jesus is the Holy Presence of peace. He tells us in the gospel of John, “Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.  (v. 27)

          Jesus is reassuring his disciples in this passage. They had been in Jesus’ presence. They had found hope. They had found peace. There was this sense of Holy they had come to know with their Master.

          You and I can know the peace of being in the Master’s presence as well. It is ours for the asking, but our complete surrender is required. Are you ready to be restored with the peace of Jesus Christ?

          ‘Lord Jesus, take my heart, take my life. I am sorry for allowing this world to cover your presence in my life. Restore my heart with your Holy Peace. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut                                                                               December 4, 2011  

                                                              Source:* page 665, Women of Faith

                                                         Devotional Bible, 2003 Thomas Nelson, Inc.

November 27, 2011

Restore Us with Hope

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 and 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Thanksgiving is over. Some of us worked all day in the kitchen, only to have the food we prepared consumed in a manner of minutes. Some of us just appeared at the table when it was time to eat. Those people had clean up duty!

We’ve eaten our fill of turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie. Some of us had a noisy Thanksgiving dinner with a house full of people. Some of us ate a quiet dinner with our spouse or a friend. Some of us may have spent the day alone, remembering, with a bit of sadness, the previous Thanksgivings with young families, which have now grown and gone to make their own Thanksgiving turkey. I hope that each of us has memories, which make us smile, of Thanksgivings past or present.

I remember when our oldest grandson, who is now in his senior year of high school, was in a high chair. He loved black olives. He would pick them up and put one on each of his fingers and then eat them. Time flies, he’s grown, but we still remember the ‘black olive baby.’

Good memories are things which make us smile. Bad memories, however, are things which bring tears to our eyes and sometimes pain to our heart. Sometimes the holidays are difficult, if families are not getting along. Families haven’t changed since the beginning of time. There are some families which love easily and some families which are consumed in pain. People are people, and although we are created in God’s image, we are human. Adam and Eve are our ancestors. We are basically selfish sinful creatures. It takes effort and willingness to be the people God has created us to be. Relationships can be difficult.

One of the things which is so important to building relationships is communication. In this day of cell phones, texting, tweeting, email, blogging, and face book; you’d think we’d be getting better at communicating. In some ways we communicate in amazing ways. My daughter and her husband are able to communicate seeing each other’s face on the computer screen using Skype, while he’s on his Navy ship in the middle of the Arabian Sea and she and the children are sitting at my dining table.

It seems that communicating with one another is easier today than ever and yet even with all the technology we have at our fingertips, there is nothing like sitting down ‘face to face’ with someone and having a conversation.  Looking them in the eye, seeing the expression on their face, recognizing their body language as they speak and listen; being in their presence is what intimate communication and intimate relationship is all about.  

Today we begin the season of Advent: the season of hope, peace, joy and love. It is the time of year when we anticipate the celebration of God’s love come down in human form, to have some ‘face time’ with his created in-his-image beings.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God’s way of communicating hope, peace, joy and love.

Advent is about ‘face to face time’ with God.  “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14)

 Advent celebrates the incarnation, the ‘Word-becomes-flesh’ God. Advent announces that God was not willing to have a distant, arms-length relationship with us. Advent is all about God’s willingness-even insistence—to be accessible, reachable, and attainable. Advent breaks down the barriers between the created and the Creator.

God chooses the perfect way to communicate with us. We would have been intimated by the idea of the Master of the Universe, the omnipotent, omniscient Creator speaking up. But place a baby in a manger and even the hardest of hearts will begin to melt and make baby talk. Invite passersby to come, worship and adore and a relationship is born. Could God have fashioned a better way to introduce His love and grace to us?

We long for God’s intervention in our lives. As we traveled in England on our Wesleyan Pilgrimage we were reminded how that longing for God’s intervention in our lives figured prominently into the history of that country: the huge cathedrals, the wars between the Catholics and the Protestants; the Crusades, even the pilgrims and the founding of the colonies in America. Throughout the history of man, we have longed to get to know God better and we long for his intervention and his help in our earthly struggles.

 Psalm 80 lays bare our need for God’s intervention. The psalmist repeats the heartfelt need of God’s children throughout this prayerful song: “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” (vv. 3,7,19)

This is a cry for a relationship; for personal interaction, for “face time” with God. These people are longing for hope. Restore to us hope, O God.  In the Life Application Study Bible I have, the translation is “Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.” The psalmist is crying out for God’s help in restoring the relationship with Him. The psalmist knows that humans are not capable of this restoration themselves. We need God’s help, we need God’s intervention.

This prayer of the psalmist echoes the hopeful yearning of God’s people yet today. “Let your face shine that we may be saved,’ is the call of people who may receive hundreds of texts every day but who still feel unheard. It is the yearning of the human heart which does not want simply to be told of love, but needs to be transformed by love and we hope for nothing less.

Hope shines into the darkness of our lives. The psalmist calls out “shine,” and throughout the season of Advent, the Good News of Hope is the first thing that we recognize which shines in the darkness. God’s Light in the darkness is proclaimed by the angel Gabriel in his proclamation to the young woman Mary. The birth of God’s Light is announced by heavenly messengers to startled shepherds, and a star led worshippers to the child’s cradle in the stable in Bethlehem.

God’s face not only shines in the baby Jesus but also in the obedience of Mary, the willingness of Joseph, the amazement of the shepherds, and the faithfulness of the three kings. Advent is the invitation for us to receive the gift of hope, which if received, is our salvation.

Restore to us hope, O God. The good news is that God’s face does shine in our darkness of today. We can be restored by God’s grace. God’s answer to the pleading of the psalmist and our plea yet today is:

Yes, I hear your cries for my intervention and presence in your life. Yes, I will come and save you. Yes, I will restore our relationship which has been broken by your turning away, by your sin. Yes, my hand will be upon you, my mercy and grace will cover you. Yes, you will know the strength to get through each day. You will know the strength of the living God.

God is faithful in pursuing us; wanting to give us hope. In our scripture reading from 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul gives thanks for God’s faithfulness in pursuing us, trying to restore hope in our lives. “God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (v.9)  Paul himself had been restored by the presence of Jesus Christ in his life. He celebrates here that relationship which is available to each of us.

Eugene Peterson in his daily devotion (Living the Message Daily; Help for Living the God-Centered Life) points out that what a lot of people call hope is in reality something different. It’s wishing, not hoping; and wishing and hoping are not the same thing.

            “Wishing is something all of us do. It projects what we want or think we need into the future. Just because we wish for something good or holy we think it qualifies as hope. It does not.

 Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing.”  Peterson goes on to say that we can picture wishing as though it were a line coming out from us with an arrow on the end, pointing into the future, pointing toward the thing we want most to posses or to happen. Hope is just the opposite. Hope is a line that comes from God out of the future, with its arrow pointing toward us.

            Hope means trusting and being willing to be surprised, because we don’t know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed. Hope is living in anticipation of what God is going to do next. Hope is restoring a trusting faith in God’s plan for our life.

            We will explore how God seeks to restore us to him in the next few weeks. We will discover how God, through the giving of his Son Jesus, restores us to hope, peace, joy and love.

            The world is struggling today, as it has from the beginning. Relationships between human beings are still difficult. But our hope, our peace, our joy, and our ability to love one another is what God is seeking to restore in us.

            As we begin this Advent season, may the God of restoration be very real to you. Open your heart to receive what our God of hope desires for you to have.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

November 27, 2011

November 20, 2011

The Shepherd King

Psalm 100: 1-5 and Matthew 25:31-46

                   It has been an amazing two weeks. I have been on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of John and Charles Wesley.  Before the pilgrimage even started Jane Dickow and I walked for three days in London, seeing the sights of that international city of 7 million people. When the pilgrimage began on Monday November 7 we began the planned travel time, we had already walked at least 15 miles.

During the pilgrimage we walked about 60 miles and rode on a bus for an additional 1,800 miles. This doesn’t count the trip on the plane across the ocean and back.

The group consisting of deacons, pastors (some with spouses) and lay leaders in the United Methodist church, came from 23 states and numbered 33 pilgrims. Our leaders were members of the Global Board of Discipleship and the Board of Ordained ministry in Nashville, Tennessee.  

Jane and I are planning to have a presentation of our trip sometime in January. She stayed in England for another week to visit some relatives there, and with Advent upon us our time will be busy. For those of you who are interested, we will have an English tea with scones sometime in January and give a detailed account, with pictures, of our Wesleyan Pilgrimage 2011.

On the last evening of our pilgrimage the group gathered together in the chapel at St. Katherine’s Retreat Centre in London to share communion and to reflect upon what we would take away with us from our pilgrimage. My answer was that I have been reminded why I am a Methodist in the first place and that I will take back with me a renewed desire to live out our doctrine and theology in my life and my work in the church.

 This morning the scripture speaks of both Charles and John Wesley and resonates with their God given gifts and the desires of their hearts. Psalm 100 speaks of making a joyful noise to the Lord, worshipping the Lord with gladness and coming into his presence with singing. I didn’t realize we would be learning so much about Charles Wesley on this trip. The songs for this Sunday were planned to go along with the scripture this morning, and they were set before I left. Unfortunately there are none which were written by Charles. He did write about 9,000 songs 67 of which are included in our United Methodist hymnal.

The scripture from Matthew 25 speaks to us about how we are show the love of Christ to others, and how we will be judged in the manner in which we live our lives. This is John Wesley. His concern with the poor and the spiritually lost was really the reason he did what he did. John believed that love and grace were to be lived out every day of a believer’s life.

An excerpt from John Wesley’s journal tell us how adamant John was about reaching out to the poor.

Journal (John Wesley in his 81st year)

Tues, January 4, 1785. At this season, we usually distribute coals and bread among the poor of the society. But I now considered they wanted clothes as well as food. So on this and the four following days, I walked through the town and begged two hundred pounds in order to clothe them that wanted it most. But it was hard work, as most of the streets were filled with melting snow which often lay ankle deep, so that my feet were steeped in snow-water nearly from morning till evening. I held it out pretty well till Saturday evening, but I was laid up with a violent flux which increased every hour, till at six in the morning Dr. Whitehead called upon me. His first draught made me quite easy, and three or four more perfected the cure. If he lives some years, I expect he will be one of the most eminent physicians in Europe.

At the age of 81 John Wesley was tramping through slushy streets to beg money to clothe and feed the poor! He truly lived out his faith. He truly lived out this scripture from Matthew 25 which we read today.

“--for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirty and you gave me something to drink I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. (vv.35-36)

But, how did John Wesley get from being the son of a priest in the Church of England, to being a priest himself, to separating from the Church of England and forming the Methodist Church. This was our journey for the past two weeks.

We first visited Epworth. John and Charles’ lives began in Epworth England. Their father Samuel was an Anglican priest and together with their mother Susanna they had 19 children. Because Samuel was gone quite a bit in his priestly duties, Susanna was responsible for the raising of the children. She taught both the girls and the boys to read and write and do math. They also learned discipline and faith. She made it her practice to spend one hour alone with each child per week, so that each of her children had individual time with her. John in later years would speak of how precious that hour per week was when he had his mother’s undivided attention.

          Next we toured Oxford University, one of the oldest and best regarded universities in the world. From Epworth the boys of the family went to preparatory school in London. They left home between the age of 8 and 10. From preparatory school they attended college at Oxford University. There are 35 colleges within the cover of Oxford University. John and Charles attended Christ Church College. After graduating John was ordained deacon and then elected a fellow (tutor) at Lincoln College. While there he was ordained priest. It was during this time that the “Holy Clubs” were formed.

These gatherings of a few students were against the grain of college life. College life is partying with a little studying thrown in. The Holy Club participants were made fun of. They were termed Bible Moths taking part in strict methods of daily discipline and the study of scripture, which evolved into Methodists. Part of their discipline was to take turns visiting the prisons in the area. Each one would be assigned a day to visit and to bring comfort, and the good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ. They even took it upon themselves to help pay of the debts of those who were in debtor’s prison and to stand with those who went to the gallows for the crime they committed.  

          John and Charles thought petty much of themselves at this point and they embarked on a mission trip to the newly formed colonies in America to convert the Natives there. Their time in America was a failure and God used this time to humble them and to prepare them for His plan for their life.

They returned to England and both Charles and John had a heart converting experience from which they emerged people whom God could then use to be Christ’s hands and feet of love. The church in their day had become a church of the rich. The poor were thought not worthy to attend, nor to even be taught the Gospel. God readied John and Charles hearts to change that theology and the practice of people who call themselves Christians.

They came to believe that a person first had to give his/her life entirely to Christ, holding nothing back; a heart warming experience. After giving one’s heart and life to Christ, the King of Creation; that person’s faith must be evident in the “Holiness of heart and life.”

They never wanted the Methodist societies to separate from the Anglican church of England. They only wanted to reform the church, which had become so inaccessible to the people who were poor:  the people who labored in the mines and the factories and the fields. Both John and Charles declared that they were Anglican Priests till the day they died. The Church of England saw it a different way, however, and declared that they were nonconformists and excommunicated them from the Church of England.

There is much more to their story. On the pilgrimage we visited Bath, the sight of the Roman Baths and where John preached to the rich. We visited Bristol where the poor worked in the mines and John preached to the poor. It is in Bristol where the Methodist Church was really formed, because at this point the Church of England had banned John and Charles from preaching within their walls. John then went to preaching in the fields to crowds of 3,000 or more people. People were hungry, not only for food to feed the body. They were hungry for news of a loving God. John and Charles brought them this loving God.

They preached salvation, a turning from sin and repentance of heart and soul. But they also preached grace; and people who were hungering for grace came and were fed.

Our pilgrimage ended in London at Wesley’s Chapel and House on City Road. It was here that the Methodists ministered to the people in London. There are many details I have had to omit in the consideration of time today, but there are two points I want to make.

 Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday. This was the first point that John and Charles came to believe. Christ must be the King of our hearts. If we do not give all we have been, are and will be to Christ, we cannot call ourselves Christians, people who go by Jesus Christ’ name. We must come to Christ completely.

The title of my sermon is the Shepherd King. This is what I believe. When we allow Jesus Christ the Son of God to be the King of our heart and life, His grace covers us and His love and care for our soul warms our heart and inspires and enables us to share His grace and His love with all people. When we become the sheep of Great Shepherd Jesus we hear his voice, we heed his direction for our life.

John Wesley’s fear was that the people called Methodist would become like the established church and forget the poor and the lost.  “That they would become a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.”  We must not allow ourselves to be dead, but rather alive in Christ. Christ must live and love in and through each of us to all our hurting world.  

Next week we will begin the season of Advent, the anticipation of the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Son of God. May we take this time to ask our self: Are we alive in Christ? Is Jesus truly the King of our heart? Do we allow Christ to shepherd us, directing our heart and our life? Is our life a reflection of Christ the Savior of the world?

John Wesley’s prayer: “Seeing there is in Christ Jesus an infinite fullness of all that we can want or wish, O that we may all receive of his fullness, grace upon grace: to pardon our sins and subdue our iniquities; to justify our persons and to sanctify our souls; and to complete that holy change, that renewal of our hearts, whereby we may be transformed into that blessed image wherein thou didst create us.”  Amen

Pastor Rosemary  DeHut

November 20, 2011

No

PROPHESY, JEWS AND JESHUA HA’MASHIAH

By Ron Singer

November 13, 2011

In the words of Francis of Assai as he passed brother Dominic on the road to Umbria – “HI”         

          In the fourth chapter of Luke as we just read, Jesus enters the synagogue to teach those who are gathered there, and tells them, today this prophecy has been fulfilled in your hearing.  This was told to the people of his own town of Nazareth.  The prophecy that Jesus had read was from the book of Isaiah chapter 61. This is but one of over 300 prophesies concerning Jesus in the Old Testament. 

          Here are just a few from the book of Isaiah.  There are many more found in the Old Testament.

                   Isaiah 49: 1-7, 42: 1-9, 50: 4-10, 7:14, 9: 6-7.           First though let’s find out who this Jeshua Ha’Mashiah is. If you do not recognize the name from reading or hearing others speak of it that is most understandable, as there are not many of the Jewish faith in the UP

Jeshua Ha’Mashiah is the name of Jesus the Christ or Jesus the Messiah.  These come from the pages of Messianic Bibles, which have the Words of the New Testament, and also from a book written by a Messianic Rabbi.  Messianic, meaning a complete or converted Jew is one who has come to believe that Jesus is, in fact; not only the Saviour of the gentiles, but also of the Jewish community as a whole.  As of the writing of the book there was only about one percent Messianic Jews in the United States.                                By now you also know that the first Messianic Jew was none other than Jesus.  And the next 12 were his disciples.  The word Messianic meant nothing to me until a couple of years ago.  Although I had moved from a community down state only a short distance from a mainly Jewish community.  I do not; however, know from what sect they were, or if they were believers or not.  What you hear today comes from books, magazines, Bibles and the mouth of Pastors.

            I would like to pass some of this information on to you, as I believe there is more to discover about Jesus and the Jewish people from the Old Testament, by learning from the prophesies in the Bible.  Although they probably won’t jump right out from the pages of scripture at you.
          First, the Jewish population from before the time of Jesus to the present does not believe he was anymore than a prophet and certainly not the Saviour of the world.  They also do not believe that those who do are any longer Jewish.  They are now considered Christians as we are.

          The fact of the matter is; the only difference is that one is now a converted or complete Jew; one believing in Jeshua HaMashaish, and the other is not.  Still a Jew, but now a completed Jew whose eyes have been opened and their blinders removed they can now see who Jeshua really is.  Their blinders and eyes, like ours are not completely opened, as we still have a long way to go to be as Jesus was, is and will always be. 

A book I am reading called:  A Rabbi looks at Jesus of Nazareth, has been very informative concerning not only his conversion some 30 plus years ago; but also stories he has added to the pages of the book concerning Jesus and the Jewish population.

          One of the stories to share with you is from a friend of his who has been converted, although his father is not.                                                     My father told me never to bring the New Testament into his house.  Being as I respected his wishes, I went and talked to the Rabbi where my father worshipped.  I then gave him a Bible to sign for me so, that when it was read to my father he would know it was not the New Testament. 

          We set down and I began reading to him.  When I had finished he was furious.  He said,  “I told you never to bring the New Testament into my house.”  It was then that he was shown the Rabbi’s signature and the fact that it was not the New Testament.  His comment to me;  “I never trusted that Rabbi anyhow.”

          This is what was read to his father:

          Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord

been revealed?  He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

          Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by GOD, stricken by him and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us have turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
          He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth, he was lead like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  By oppression and judgment he was taken away, yet who of his generation protested?   For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was punished.  He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth.

          Yet it was the LORD’S will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

And though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.  After he has suffered he will see the light of life and be satisfied, by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

          If this doesn’t sound like anything you have read in the New Testament, that is because it is not.  The reading is from the Old Testament  the 53^rd chapter of the book of Isaiah.

          The entire chapter is a prophesy about the life of Jesus from youth, even to his death and resurrection.

          The fulfillment of this prophesy is found in 1 Peter 2:22-25, Romans 5:6-8, and Phillipians 2: 6-11.

1^st Peter 2:22-25 as follows: 

          He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.

          When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.  Instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds, you have been healed.”  For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

Again in Romans 5:6-8,

          You see at just the right time while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But GOD demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  AMEN!!!!!!

Let’s look now to the book of  Philippians 2:6-11.                                         Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with
God something to be used to his advantage; rather he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the

name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

          There are so many more prophesies in the Old Testament Bible to look at that can be found to come to fulfillment in the New Testament.  Remember though that Jesus, the disciples and Paul, after his conversion by Jesus, preached everything about Jesus from the words of the Old Testament as the New testament had not yet been written.

The Jews at the time of Jesus had false Messiahs whom they were convinced at the time were the real thing.  One in particular, who was captured by some of the Islamic faith, told him he would be killed unless he converted to Islam, he decided that he would rather live.  Not my idea of a Messiah.  There are others, but they too did not live up to being Messiahs either.

There are lies that have been put out about Jesus in both the Old and New Testaments.  Here are a few of them.

1.                           Jesus appears only in the New Testament.  As was said earlier, there area more than 300 prophesies about Jesus in the Old Testament although the name Jesus is not mentioned there.

2.                           The Jewish people rejected Jesus as their Messiah.  How about the 12 disciples or the 120 in the upper room.  Then there are the 3,000 who came to faith on the day of Pentecost, which than grew to 5,000 according to Acts 4:4.

3.                           The Jews killed Jesus.  That is true only to the extent that there were only a few leaders from the synagogue along with the high priest Ciacphus who wanted Jesus crucified.  They were worried that if he lived they would loose everything that they had going for themselves.  Greed comes to mind as the big thing.  It was not the Jews or the Romans who had killed Jesus, but the sin of all mankind.

4.                           Jesus Christ is the God of Christianity.  The Jewish concept that Jesus is the God of Christianity is one that many Jews are raised with.  The Jews believe in only one God, whereas, we Christians believe in three gods.  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, still only on God.  This is a deception as well as a stumbling block for Jews, who even if not religious that there is but one thing they know:  That there is but one God. 

The truth is, Jesus Christ is not the God of Christianity.   

He is Jeshua Ha’Mashiah  -- Jesus the Messiah, the Messiah of all peoples.

5.                           Jesus began a new religion.  Jesus was born a Jew, died on the cross as a Jew and on the day he was resurrected he was still a Jew.  He did not start of religion called Christianity.  In fact, the first mention of the word being used is found in the book of Acts chapter 11, verse 26 and refers to the disciples being called Christians.

There is more than that which has just been told, although; I’m sure you understand the concept of what was said.

          One more thing needs to be told, though.  Jews have been told for a long time that the New Testament is Anti-Semitic.   It is not.  A Bible that I own, New Testament only called the “Tree of Life”, written by the Messianic Jewish Family Bible Project, has in the book of Hebrew Introduction that Hebrews was written for the first century believers in Jeshua.  The author is quite concerned for the faith of the Jewish followers of Jeshua. 

          The book of Hebrews was not written to tell the women who it was that made the morning coffee!

          In closing is this story of some Jews.

Aaron the tailor was rushing down the street, when he passes Moshe, the banker.  Moshe says to Aaron, “can’t talk now, I am very rushed,  go to synagogue, talk to Rabbi, bye.”  Aaron says, “Moshe a terrible thing has happened.  My son has become a Christian.”  And Moshe says, “Let me tell you a very funny thing.  My son is a Christian.”  Quickly the two of them rush down the street toward the synagogue, where the pass Herbie, who owns the grocery.  They say to Herbie, “Can’t talk now, in a rush, go to synagogue, talk the Rabbi, a terrible thing has happened, our two sons have become Christians.”   Herbie directs them to a doorway, peeks out to see if anyone is coming, and says, “Let me tell you a very funny thing, my son too has become a Christian.” 

          The three of them rush down the street to the Synagogue, knock on the door.  Rabbi comes out says, “Aaron, Moshe, Herbie come in and wait here, no worship.  Rabbi we have catastrophic news in our families.  All our sons have become Christians.

          Rabbi looks at the three and says “Good God”.  He rushes the three into his office, tells them to sit, goes behind his desk, sits down, puts head in hands and after a long pause says, _____________________,  “Let me tell you a very funny thing.”  My son is a Christian.  No said Aaron and Moshe.  Herbie says, “Rabbi, what are we going to do, we have no one else to turn to.”  “Yes we do,” says the Rabbi.  He marches the three down to the sanctuary, to the alter, and says, “Kneel down, shut up, I talk.”

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of  Israel, God of the Prophets, WHAT’S GOING ON?”  All thy Judaism is going down the tube.

Everybody is becoming Christian. Yahweh give us a voice.  Speak a voice to us.  Long pause_____________________________________and finally God says, _________________________________________________                                                                                      “Let me tell you a very funny thing.  My son too has become a Christian.”                                                    

vember 13, 2011

November 6, 2011

Are you Ready?

Ready for What?  When Richard and I are going to meet our daughter Jill, she always asks, “are you on regular time or Whiteman time?”  Whiteman time means we will be late.  The usual answer, “Your Dad is on Whiteman time.  My Mother-in-law has been known to be 3 hours late for Thanksgiving dinner.  The bad thing is, she is usually bringing the turkey!!!  This morning we will talk about being ready for whatever God asks of you.  I don’t know what that will be for you.  I don’t even know what it will be for me.  But the scripture this morning clearly tells us to be prepared.

There are 3 steps toward being prepared:

Make a commitment. 

Joshua 24 talks of the people of Israel making a commitment to the Lord.  After much discussion, and after being told the “rules”, in verses 21, and 24, they give their final answer “We will serve the Lord”.  The final answer for that day

I remember as a teenager, a few occasions when my Dad would sing a solo.  I think he did it once in each appointment.  Twice a year the officers get together for training sessions and worship sessions.  Sometimes the Divisional Commander would ask him to sing at one of these worship sessions.  He would sing a simple hymn from our songbook.   I only remember one song that he sang, he used it in church on many occasions.  Here are the words to the chorus:

By the love that never ceased to hold me,

By the blood which thou didst shed for me,

While they presence and they power enfold me,

I renew my covenant with thee.

To renew a covenant – you have to have made one in the first place.  Isn’t that a fabulous memory to have  of your father – Him renewing his covenant with God.

Do you remember where and when you made your commitment to the Lord?  I’ve made several.  Once as a teenager in Grand Rapids.  Once as an adult in Hancock, and every other day.  And each time I ask forgiveness as I renew that commitment.

As a teenager I had no idea what might be asked of me.  As an adult, I still don’t know.  I have learned to listen to the Lord more, for those promptings, or calls to action.  In my Wednesday discussion group, we discussed reasons why we think God may have made a mistake in calling us to a particular task.  One of them is, I’m not smart enough, trained enough, brave enough etc.  Moses didn’t feel prepared either, and look at all he was able to do for the Lord.  He led a huge group of people out of Egypt, after standing up to Pharoah, and guided them through the wilderness.  We have the skills and personality to do what God asks of us.  But we need to be prepared, we need……..

A time of training.

            I have a friend who comes up to the area once a year.  We met when he was a customer in my shop, and every year when he is in the area, he comes in to see me and do a little shopping.

            Dave is in his 70’s and has a pronounced limp.  Doctors have cured the pain, but the limp remains.  He has trouble walking, yet he has figured out a way to go  and collect rocks.  He takes a small folding step stool and a cane, and uses them to let himself down on the ground where, laying down he collects his rocks and puts them in a bucket, then he uses the stool to get up again.  He uses this procedure each time he wants to move to a new location.  Now that’s a serious rock collector.  He is positive and fun, and never lets his problems or physical disability get him down.

            The more notable thing about Dave is his knowledge of scripture.  He usually comes in the door saying “This is the day the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24).  And during the course of the conversation, he will use many more scriptures.  Not a conversation about church or God, just general daily conversations.  They are peppered with the word of God.  Maybe I should say salted.  Not in  a forced way, its just how he thinks.

            I asked him how he came to know so much scripture.  He explained, about 5 years ago, as his health worsened each year, his eyesight worsened, he realized he would reach a point where reading his Bible would be difficult.  So he decided to memorize his favorite verses.  Every day he recites from memory 300 verses from the Bible.  I asked how he could remember them.  He went to the car and got his Bible.  Inside there were several, maybe 10 pages, folded up, with Scripture references on them.  He would go down the list, and recite each one.  The pages were kind of dog-eared, marks on them, kind of dirty from being handled so much.  Dave is prepared!!!  He has been in training.  He does other Bible reading and study too, but I’m telling you, his knowledge of the Bible is impressive.  As impressive as his knowing the verses, is the ease with which he weaves them into conversation.

            How did he pick his verses?  (See, now I’m picking his brain).  When he did his daily reading, if a verse struck him somehow, the beauty of it, the message, something he really liked about it, how it spoke to him, well, then it makes it on the list.

            If you grew up in the church, maybe your training began a long time ago.  I am sometimes very diligent, very disciplined in my Bible study and devotions.  Other times, not so much.  Some times, I can let the pressures and to do lists of my day crowd it out, especially in summer.  This is usually the time of year when I get back on track, when I go back into a time of training.  Not so much this week.  I’ve been caught up in all the things I need to have done before surgery.  I have to admit there were times when I wondered, what I was thinking to preach right before surgery.  Thanks Ron for switching dates with me, and then back again. 

I have always been good at knowing “somewhere in the Bible it says something like this”, and giving Guinevere’s paraphrase.  Well, I’m decided to try a Dave’s list.  Will I get to 300 Bible verses?  I don’t know.  Time will tell.  So here is my “Dave’s list”.  My biggest challenge is remembering the reference.

God uses many things to teach us, to prepare us.  There is a Salvation Army Expression “Always have a sermon in your pocket”.  So where do these sermon’s come from?  In my case, daily Bible study, Books I’ve read, Ideas from the radio, conversations, other sermons.  Basically, God uses all these things to instruct me, and the sermons come from whatever God is currently teaching me.

Charles Weigle's most famous song, No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus, was the product of one of the darkest periods of his life.  He spent most of his life as an itinerant evangelist and gospel songwriter.  One day after returning home from an evangelistic crusade, he found a note left by his wife of many years.  The note simply said she had had enough of an evangelist's life and was leaving him.

He later said that he became so despondent during the next several years that there were times when he contemplated suicide.  He even wondered if anyone really cared for him, but after a time, his faith was again restored and he became active for the Lord again.  Soon he felt compelled to write a song that would be a summary of his past tragic experience.

From a heart that had been broken came these words that God gave to comfort him. 

Out of his time of training, his time of being comforted and guided by God, we are left with his song of inspiration to help us.

I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus
Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true;
I would tell you how He changed my life completely,
He did something that no other friend could do.

Ev'ry day He comes to me with new assurance,
More and more I understand His words of love;
But I'll never know just why He came to save me,
Till some day I see His blessed face above.

CHORUS
No one ever cared for me like Jesus;
There's no other friend so kind as He;
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me.
O how much He cared for me!

When we made our decision for Christ, when we entered our time of training, we probably didn’t realize that our decision would affect generations to come.  My dad’s parents were Christians, So was Grandma Dixon.  My parents, Glendora and I.  The next generation is still deciding.    When our children and grandchildren see us in training.  See us at church.  See us with our Bibles in our hands.  They are watching and they will remember.  Maybe it will help them to make that commitment “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”, and start their own time of training.  While we are in training, we are also in a time of waiting.

Our gospel this morning is from Matthew 25 and it talks about a time of waiting.  I read the story earlier, there were ten virgins who took their lamps to meet the bridegroom.  The foolish took no oil for their lamps.  I imagine there was oil in the lamps themselves, but they had to have extra oil for when they ran out.  Maybe they didn’t want to carry the extra oil.  Maybe they just didn’t think they would need it.  Maybe they just didn’t think about it.  But the five wise virgins took oil in vessels with their lamps.  But the foolish ones were unprepared.

When the bridegroom was delayed they all slept.  But when he came, some were ready, others were not.  We hear in the news, this group and that, predicting the end of the world, which to us means the coming of Christ.  Time after time, there is a prediction, a delay, and then nothing.  But we are told in the Bible that “man does not know the hour when the Son of Man comes again”.  And so we wait.  But while we are waiting, are we prepared.  Are we ready? 

Are we ready to hear the words “well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
Are we ready for our daily tasks for the Lord?  He has a to do list for us.  He has a training plan.  He has a plan for our lives.  We may not see the details now, but he is in charge.  May we be willing to renew our commitment to follow him, may we train ourselves in his Word,  as we wait, for what he has for us today, and for his second coming.

Guinevere Whiteman

November 6, 2011

October 30, 2011

Practice Makes Humble

Joshua 3:7-8, 14-17 and Matthew 23:1-12

The world doesn’t revolve around you. Wow, that’s a statement none of us wanted to hear when we were children!

 We are blessed these days to have living with us our oldest daughter Jenny and her two children; 41/2 year old Alexis and 2 year old Jacob. Their father is in the Navy and on deployment, so the family came to bless our home with their presence.

          Alexis goes off to school 4 mornings a week, so she is expanding her horizons. Two year old Jacob still thinks the world revolves around him. You hear the phrase “the terrible twos,” and every parent will tell you those aren’t easy years. It’s not that the child is “terrible” at that age. It’s just that they have found their mobility; they can move at lightning speed and the world awaits them. They have exploring to do and things to learn and they want everything right now!

          Jacob’s favorite word is “me.” He has discovered the way to get attention is to scream at the top of his lungs. The other morning his mother and his sister were outside waiting for the school bus and Jacob was downstairs in the playroom, playing quietly. All of a sudden we heard this high C scream and then we heard it again. I recognized it as a ‘get attention scream’ so I didn’t run, but I did go downstairs to see what Jacob was screaming about. I found him standing in the room where we keep the hats, jackets and shoes. He was just standing there screaming, waiting for someone to come and dress him so he go outside to be with Mommy and Alexis.

          As Jacob gets older he’ll find out that the world does not revolve around him. Hopefully he’ll learn that love and service to others is the way God wants us to live in this world.

 Some people never learn that the way to be happy is to be humble before God and before others as well. We are not born with humility. It takes practice to be humble. When we do learn an attitude of humility, we understand that putting God first and others second is the only way to be truly happy.  

1 Peter 5:4b-6, “And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.”

Leonard Berstein was once asked which instrument was the most difficult to play. He thought for a moment and then replied, “The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm—that’s a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have not harmony.” *

Learning humility is the way to live our faith. When adults live out their faith, children watch and learn.

  ---- A man had a habit of grumbling about the food his wife placed before him at family meals. No matter what she cooked, he always found fault with it. After complaining about the meal his wife had lovingly prepared for the family, he would then ask the blessing.

One day after his usual combination of compliant and then prayer, his little girl asked, “Daddy, does God hear us when we pray?”“Why, of course,” he replied. “He hears us every time we pray.”

 She paused for a moment, and asked, “Does he hear everything we say the rest of the time?”

 “Yes, dear, every word,” he replied, feeling proud that he had inspired his daughter to be curious about spiritual matters. However, his pride turned to humility….

When his daughter then asked, “Then which does God believe?”**

As adults what we say to do, we must do; otherwise how will the children God puts into our lives; whether they be family or neighbors or children we meet on the sidewalk, learn to walk and live in God’s instructions of loving Him first then our neighbor. We must practice what we preach and we should be preaching love and humility with our lives.

 If we are to live our lives through Jesus Christ who humbled himself to dying on a cross that we might be forgiven and live; then our lives must be lives of humility as well.

It takes practice to be humble. We are not naturally that way. Jesus points this out clearly when he is speaking to the crowd of people using the illustrations of the religious leaders as how not to live your life.

Jesus says to his followers in Matthew 23:2-3 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it: but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”  

Jesus goes on to site examples of what not to do:

·        They make the laws so heavy a burden that people cannot follow them, but they don’t follow their own laws.

·        They do righteous deeds in public so people will compliment them

·        They dress so people will know they’re important people

·        They expect to be seated in places of honor for they are important

·        They expect to be called Rabbi and be exalted by men, when indeed only the Messiah is the great teacher, the great Rabbi.

Jesus then goes on to say, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”(v.12)

          Now that we know what not to do; let’s look at what we should do to:

Focus on exalting God rather than our self.

          We are learning to do this in our Bible study, Crazy Love by Francis Chan. People are starting to say, “ I think about God all the time now.” What’s happening is that as we seek to love God more than ourselves, God permeates every area of our life. We fall asleep thanking him for the day and our blessings. We wake up thanking him for another day of life and asking His guidance and will for our life. In every thought, word and deed, God is the focus of our life.

When we don’t exalt God first above our self, we mostly give him the leftovers. The money that’s left over after we have paid for our needs and our wants; the time left over after we’ve filled our hours with what we think is important; and  left over love and service to God and others, after we’ve have accomplished our earthly goals.

Exalting God above everything else in our life is the first step in practicing to be humble.

Seeking to help others – This is the second practice step.

          This is a tough one. It’s easy to help others when our lives are in order, when we have everything we desire and when it is convenient. Seeking out others to help when they need the help, not when it is convenient to us, is what happens when God is the focus of our life and our attitude is one of humility.

          Do you know what is happening in the life of the person sitting next to you this morning; or in the life of your neighbor? Do you know the plight of children and families in our community, in our country or in other countries around the world? Are you aware of the needs of others? You and I don’t have to do anything for others. God calls us to, but we don’t have to. We can hoard our time and our money. After all we have problems of our own.    But taking the time to be aware of what others are going through; making an effort to say to someone, “God bless you today” or “Let me pray with you that God would give you the strength to deal with your suffering”; or “Did you know that Jesus loves you just the way you are?” or

“ Let me help you with that bill. I know your struggling with making your payments.” These acts of humility and kindness help us learn to be humble.

Practice makes humble

          We don’t learn things overnight. If we practice the life we want to live, it will happen. I love the story of Joshua. He and Caleb were the only two in the nation of Israel who were brought out of slavery in Egypt and who would enter the Promised Land. Joshua’s story is one of humble obedience to God. Humble obedience, which he practiced day after day from the moment he left Egypt until the day he died.

          He exalted God above himself. He trusted God to be with him in everything. He served his fellow Israelites willing and sacrificially. He modeled Moses humility and obedience. Because of Joshua’s humble love and service, God makes him the successor to Moses as the leader of the Israelite people. God tells Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.” (v.7)

Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 25:21, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Shouldn’t that be our goal? That God would give His approval to our life? That others will know we are Christians by our love and service?

          Every day you and I are given opportunities to practice being humble before God and before others.

·        Do not insist on our own way.

·        Do not put our wants before others’ needs

·        Forgive when we’d rather strike back

·        Trust God when we are afraid

·        Always speak the kind word

·        Do everything in love

Do you know what happens when we practice being humble by exalting God first and seeking out others to help? We find our true worth. As we live our lives through the presence of Jesus Christ in our heart, we discover who God created us to be and we find our true worth.

Jesus says, “The greatest among you will be your

servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”(v.12)

          Gracious and loving God, help me to be humble before you and before others. May my life, which you have created for your purpose, follow the example of your Son Jesus Christ; who in humble obedience came to earth and died that I may live.  Lord, strengthen me for love and service to you and to others. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

October 30, 2011  

Sources:

 * http://elbourne.org/sermons/index.my?illustration+2803.

  ** broadcaster. Org. as/section2/jokes/christianjokes.html.

October 23, 2011

Rich and Deep

Philippians 43:1-9 and Matthew 22:34-40

          “He (Jesus) said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”(Matthew 22:37-39)

 These verses in scripture are often quoted. They may have become almost trite or commonplace, because they are used so often; and yet Jesus makes clear “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”-(v.40)

As I was reading these verses, along with the passage from Philippians 4, the word ‘relationship’ kept surfacing in my mind and in my heart. I began to think about the relationships in my life.  Let’s examine for a moment the relationships we have:

·        Upward relationship with God

·        Inward relationship with self

·        Outward relationship with others

Last week we looked at what kind of a Christian we are; how much we really love God. I don’t know about you, but self-examination was tough. I get so busy trying to do good works for God that I do become lukewarm in my passion for God. There is danger in this. God has a passion for each of us and he desires that we love him in the same way.

Our upward love, or passion towards God is hindered by a few things.

I think one thing is FEAR. Fear of God is sometimes instilled at an early age in our lives. I’ll never forget the response of a small child when I asked her ‘who Jesus was.’ This child came from a family who did not attend church. The mother told me later that she didn’t believe in God and the father admitted to me that they were living together and had children together while he was still married to another woman, so even though he did believe in God he didn’t want anything to do with God.

This child,  in reply to the question of ‘who is Jesus’ replied, ‘Jesus sits up on a cloud looking down at us and when we do bad things he punishes us.’

 If we are afraid of someone, do we want a relationship with them? If we see Jesus as someone who sits up ‘there’ watching us, waiting for us to make a mistake so he can punish us, would we want to have a relationship with this person? Of course not!

Are you afraid of God? If you are then you do not know the God I know. Oh, I have a healthy fear, a deep respect for the God of creation. But I know that instead of punishing me when I sin, he loves me enough to allow me to suffer the consequences of my sin and then he is there to hold me and to love me when I’m suffering.

The prophet Nehemiah in his writings in 9:28-31 tells us, “But when all was going well, your people turned to sin again, and once more you let their enemies conquer them. Yet whenever your people cried to you again for help you listened once more from heaven. In your wonderful mercy, you rescued them repeatedly!---what a gracious and merciful God you are!

God’s love for all human beings is full of amazing grace and we will find forgiveness and mercy when we ask. We need not fear.

Another thing that may keep us from a rich and deep relationship with God is APATHY. We know of God, but we do not know God. We addressed many of these issues last week. Many of us are like Mary Beth.

Mary Beth grew up attending church and Sunday school. In her teen years, she was active in youth group.  She continued attending church on and off through her adult years. By the time Mary Beth was 31, she had two small children. A friend from another church invited her to attend a crusade. Mary Beth isn't sure why she agreed, but she did. She heard the gospel message and learned what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It struck her as though she were hearing it for the very first time.

The next day, Mary Beth attended another service with her friend. . Following the second service, Mary Beth had some questions for the guest preacher. She shared with him, "I've just realized I've been playing religion all my life," she said. She told how she was active at her church and how she even served on committees. "I've heard about the Crucifixion so much since I was a child that I've been numb to it," she explained. But then it struck her, "I realized today," she admitted, "that I don't have a relationship with Christ. I don't want to play church anymore! I don't want to play any more games."

Playing church, being religious, does not build a rich and deep relationship with God.

Being a lukewarm Christian, as we examined last week, is not what God wants from us. God wants all of us; our heart, our mind, our soul. Until we come to Jesus Christ and offer all that we are, our relationship with God will not be rich and deep.

          Does this mean we need to leave everything we have and live in the street, go on a mission to Africa, depend solely upon the mercy of others for our well-being?  I don’t know, maybe. But I believe that what God wants is that we give our heart, our mind and our soul to him and pray for his will to be ours. In some instances, like Janine Maxwell, the woman we encountered at the Win-Some Women retreat, we will be asked to give up everything to do God’s will. Janine gave up a successful business and comfortable life to be a missionary in Swaziland, Africa.

In other instances God may direct our steps to be Bill Gates, who through his wealth is helping millions to better lives, or Rev. Billy Graham whose evangelism has converted millions to Christ. Or maybe we’ll be called to be a lay leader in our local church.

          Loving God first with everything that we are and everything we have; giving our lives to Christ combats apathy and allows God to use us for his will and his purpose. When we love God this way we come to an understanding of how precious we are to God.

Inward relationship with our self.  We are precious to God. We are created in his image. God so loved us that he came to us in the form of His Son Jesus, so that we might know how precious we are and that God desires a rich and deep relationship with us.  “For God so loved the world he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Luke 12:6-7, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

If you and I do not love who we are, then maybe we are not who we should be in Jesus Christ. If we are afraid of asking ourselves tough questions about who we are, maybe we should examine our life in Jesus.

-------Leroy Cannady shares his testimony of coming to the understanding of how precious he is to God in the Gideon magazine for October 2011. Leroy grew up in a home where both his mother and father were alcoholics. His sister was suicidal and his brother died from a crippling disease at a very early age. At the age of 13 Leroy witnessed the stabbing death of his father. All these traumatic experiences caused him to harden his heart against the world. He got involved with drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.

          Leroy’s aunt tried to help him. She would come by Leroy’s house and take him to church. He went reluctantly. He soon began stealing money from the collection plate to support his drug habit, and when he was caught, Leroy didn’t have any more use for that church.

          Looking for the answer to the emptiness Leroy felt inside of him, he got more involved with sinful destructive vices. Nothing seemed to fill the void so he decided that joining the military might be the answer. However, having gone AWOL twice within eight weeks, he ended up being thrown out. By the age of 31 he was on his third marriage. His wife was a Christian and she would tell him how Jesus was waiting for him, loving him and wanting to change his life. Leroy didn’t believe her and made trouble for her when she invited other Christians to their home. Finally his wife said, “I can’t live like this anymore” and she packed up her things and left him.

          The next day sitting on a park bench Leroy began reviewing his life and thinking about the things that people had said about him. “You are useless,” “You are no good,” and “You will never amount to anything.” As those thoughts continued to run though his mind, he came to the conclusion that he would be better off dead. Leroy decided then to go home and commit suicide.

          There was a Gideon in the park that day. The man walked up to Leroy and asked, “Do you know Jesus?” Leroy replied, “No, and I don’t’ want to.”  The man began to tell Leroy that Jesus loved him. Leroy told the man, “If you knew all the things I’ve done, and all the people I’ve hurt, you’d see that nobody could love me.”

          As Leroy pushed the man aside the Bibles he was carrying fell to the ground. Leroy picked up one and his eyes fell on the Scripture passage in Isaiah. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.”

          Leroy says that that passage did ‘surgery on his soul,’ and he began to cry. That day Leroy learned how precious he was to God and that there was nothing that could separate him from God’s love. He prayed for Jesus to come into his heart to forgive him his sins and to clean up his life and make him somebody. The Lord heard and answered Leroy’s prayer. His dependency on drugs was instantly taken away.

Leroy returned to his wife and reconciled with her. He now makes disciples for Christ by sharing his testimony with others who do not know of the saving grace of Christ.

From a rich and deep relationship with God we are able to know a rich and deep relationship with our self. We must know our worth in and through Christ in order to have a rich and deep relationship with others. If we don’t, then all relationships will be superficial.

Outward relationship with others.

A rich and deep relationship with others is what love is all about. If we do not love God and we do not have a healthy love for our self; we cannot love others. What we want is the rich flow of love that comes from deep within us and overflows to others. If we try to love without this upward and inward love; our outward love is superficial.

Look at the Apostle Paul. He came to a point in his life when he put Christ first. He then realized that the life he was leading to spread the gospel was an important one. In fact in verse 9 he writes confidently, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.”

Paul begins by telling them he loves them, calling them his brothers and sisters. He then calls them to help those in the church who are in a disagreement to be reconciled. Paul understands that relationships within the body of Christ must be loving and true. There must not be superficiality in the Body of Christ. He tells them how to build rich and deep relationships.

“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.” (v. 5) ------Treat one another with gentle love and understanding.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (v.6)  ----- Focus on praying for one another, especially when you don’t agree.

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (v.7)  ----There will be peace. There will be love and through those rich and deep relationships we can do God’s work here on earth. We can’t do it if we are judging one another, or criticizing one other. We can only be an effective Body of Christ if we love one another.

We must become vulnerable if we are to enjoy rich and deep relationships. The walls around our hearts must be broken down and the love we are meant to experience must be allowed to nourish our lives.

It is scary to be vulnerable. There are times when we will be hurt; never by God, but maybe by other humans.  All of us can think of times when we have cried and wanted to strike back because someone has hurt us.

          Paul tells us, to focus on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy; and when we do the God of peace will be with us. (vv.8-9)

          It is through this peace of God that you and I can enjoy rich and deep relationships: with God, with our own heart, and with others.

Upward, inward, outward; may our relationships run rich and deep that we might know the love and peace of Christ.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut                                                                                 October 23, 2011

October 16, 2011

Lukewarm?

Psalm 139:1-6, 23-24 and Matthew 13:44-46

“May our lives be impassioned only by faith..,be influenced only by God…be taught only by Christ…” –Max Lucado

          This Max Lucado quote is on the wall in my home office and I see it as I work.  When I find myself overwhelmed by work and the world, these inspirational words help to bring me back into focus. They remind me what a treasure I have found in Jesus Christ.

          Do you see the word only repeated three times? Only by faith, only by God, only by Christ; not sometimes or often, but ONLY. Too often we put Christ on the shelf, take God for granted, turn to our faith only when troubles arise in our life. God says put me first, love me ahead of all else. But do we?

          At Ironwood Wesley we are in the midst of a wonderful Bible Study using the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. The book begins by reminding us how magnificent God is, and how amazing His love for us is as well. It then goes on to teach us how we are to love God in return. It is a great study Those who come will tell you we’ve had some great discussions and revelations about how God loves us and how we love or do not love him in return.  

          This past week we read chapter 4, Profile of the Lukewarm. It’s an in-your-face chapter about how we really love God. We may say we do. We may call ourselves Christians, but are we really loving God the way Christ calls us to?

          In 2 Corinthians 13:5 the Apostle Paul tells us, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” 

          Today we are going to do just that. We are going to examine ourselves to see if we are living out what we profess.  I was uncomfortable with this self-examination. I expect you will be too. But that’s okay. How are we to grow closer to God if we don’t find out where we are now? God knows you, as we are reminded by the reading from Psalm 139 this morning. How well do you know yourself? Are we really impassioned only by faith, influenced only by God and taught only by Christ; or are we lukewarm?

          Revelation 3:16, “So, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Lukewarm Christians: attend church fairly regularly. It is what is expected of them, what they believe, “good Christians” do, so they go.

Isaiah 29:13, “The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only by rules taught by men.’”

Luke warm Christians: give money to charity and to the church …as long as it doesn’t impinge on their standard of living.

Luke 21:1-4, “As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ‘I tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’”

Lukewarm Christians tend to choose what is popular over what is right when they are in conflict. They desire to fit in both at church and outside of church; they care more about what people think of their actions, than what God thinks of their hearts and lives.

Jesus tells us in Luke 6:26, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”

Lukewarm Christians are moved by stories about people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act. They assume such action is for “extreme” Christians, not average ones. Lukewarm people call “radical” what Jesus expected of all His followers.

James 1:22, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

James 4:17, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t’ do it, sins.”

Lukewarm Christians rarely share their faith with their neighbors, coworkers, or friends. They do not want to be rejected, nor do they want to make people uncomfortable by talking about private issues like religion.

Matthew 10:32-33, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”

Lukewarm Christians gauge their morality or “goodness” by comparing themselves to the secular world. They feel satisfied that while they aren’t as committed to Jesus as so-and-so, they are nowhere as horrible as the guy down the street.

Luke 18:11-14, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.---Jesus says to this attitude—“for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Lukewarm Christians love God, but they do not love Him with all their heart, soul, and strength. They would be quick to assure you that they try to love God that much, but that sort of total devotion isn’t really possible for the average person; it’s only for pastors and missionaries and radicals.

Matthew 22:37-38, “Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.”         He was speaking to everyone!

Lukewarm Christians love others but do not seek to love others as much as they love themselves. Their love of others is typically focused on those who love them in return, like family, friends, and other people they know and connect with. There is little love left over for those who cannot love them back. Their love is highly conditional and very selective, and generally comes with strings attached.

Matthew 5:43-44, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

Lukewarm Christians will serve God and others, but there are limits to how far they will go or how much time, money and energy they are willing to give.

Jesus tells the rich young ruler in Luke 18:22, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Lukewarm Christians think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven. Daily life is mostly focuses on today’s to-do list, this week’s schedule, and next month’s vacation. Regarding this, C.S. Lewis writes, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Lukewarm Christians do whatever is necessary to keep themselves from feeling too guilty. They want to do the bare minimum to be “good enough’ without it requiring too much of them.

Matthew 13:44-46, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

Lukewarm Christians feel secure because they attend church; made a profession of faith at age twelve, were baptized, come from a Christian family or live in America. Just as the prophets in the Old Testament warned Israel that they were not safe just because they lived in the land of Israel, so we are not safe just because we wear the label Christian or because some people persist in calling us a “Christian Nation.”

Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me,’ Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Lukewarm Christians do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to.  They don’t genuinely seek out what life God would have them live—they have life figured and mapped out. The truth is their lives wouldn’t look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.

Luke 12:16-21, “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself” this is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Today is not a ‘feel good about ourselves’ message. It is meant to help us examine ourselves, our life and our faith. It is, however, “a feel good about God message.”

 God loves us so much he never gives up on us. He wants to draw us close and He wants to be the one our heart is passionate about. His love is not lukewarm. Our love for Him must not be either.

Are you in the Bible every day: seeking God’s will for your life, searching scripture for the truth? Jesus is very clear about what it takes to follow Him. Do you know what that is? Have you found the treasure yet?

---------Lord God, help us to be honest with ourselves. Empower us by your Holy Spirit to be willing to love you with all our heart, soul and mind, that we might not be Lukewarm Christians, but live our lives impassioned by our faith, influenced by your word and taught by Christ’s words, and example. Help us to understand the treasure we have found in you.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

October 16, 2011

Sources: chapter 4 of  Crazy Love by Francis Chan,

                                  published by David C. Cook,

                                 4050 Lee Vance View,

                                 Colorado Springs, CO

October 9, 2011

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Psalm 23 and Matthew 6:25-34

Worry; it gets to us. We worry about finances. We worry about our children and grandchildren. We worry about getting older. We worry about what we’ve done to offend someone. We worry about what we’ve not done to help someone. Worry, worry, worry.

My mother says that it isn’t worrying that keeps her up at night, it’s just concern for everyone and everything. I say, if that concern is keeping you awake in the middle of the night than call it what it is: worry!

          Jesus tells us clearly in Matthew 6:25-27, “So I tell you, don’t worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes.  Doesn’t life consist of more than food and clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Can all your worries add a single moment to your life: Of course not.”

          The question is as timely today as when Jesus posed it 2,000 years ago. Does worry do us any good?

          It would be good to know if worrying does do us any good, because we put huge amounts of time and energy into worrying about all sorts of things that might happen, most of which never actually come to pass.  What do we have to show for our worrying?

 Jesus asks us, “Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

Consider these two contrasting stories.

Two monks on a pilgrimage came to the ford in the river. There they saw a girl dressed in all her finery, obviously not knowing what to do since the river was high and she did not want to spoil her clothes. Now the monks had taken a vow to never have close contact with women. However, seeing the need of the young woman, one of the monks took her on his back and carried her across the river setting her down on dry ground on the other side.

          The two monks then continued on their way. But the other monk after an hour started complaining, “Surely it is not right to touch a woman; it is against the commandments to have close contact with women. How could you go against the rules of monks?”

          The monk who had carried the girl, walked along silently, but finally he remarked, “I set her down by the river an hour ago, why are you still carrying her?’ *

          Contrast this story with that of a carpenter, as told by the man who hired him.        

The Carpenter I hired to help me restore and old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence.

On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face broke out in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss.

Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.

"Oh, that's my trouble tree", he replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing for sure, troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and my children. So I just hang them on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again."

"Funny thing is", he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there ain't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before."

          Worrying, can it add a single hour or day to our life? No, it can’t. In fact worry and anxiety subtracts hours and days from our life: Proven by the results of a study, which were published in the December 2006 issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings medical journal.          

As far as we know, the researches didn’t have Jesus’ point in mind—that worry cannot add even a single hour to one’s life—yet the study’s conclusion suggests that Jesus was right. Imagine that, the King of the Universe, the Savior of the World was right! We could probably save a whole lot of money on these types of research projects if we’d just believe in the Word of God!

          The test was done with 7,000 students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The students took a personal inventory to see if they were optimistic or pessimistic. In other words, was their glass half empty or half full? The test began it the 1960s. Over the next four decades, 476 of those who had been in the test died, from causes ranging from accident to illness to suicide to homicide.

          By tracking and collating all this information, researchers determined that the pessimists had a significantly greater likelihood of dying sooner from any cause than did the optimists. Those students who scored as pessimistic on the test died sooner than the optimistic individuals. The report also said, “The current results replicate those of earlier studies that suggest that optimism is associated with increased survival.”

          This brings us back to Jesus and his stating simply that worrying isn’t likely to add even an hour to your life; get rid of the worry, and you’ll live longer!

          Now I will admit that pessimism and worry are not identical. Pessimism is an outlook in general that life is always moving toward negative outcomes. Worry is a response to the possibilities of a particular situation.

          Yet when you look at the root of the anxiety in both pessimism and worry we find a shortage of hope and trust. We find a void of faith in God and his plan and provision for our lives.

          Trust in God - In this passage from the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus posed this question about adding to our life span through worry, he went on to make clear that what he was calling for instead was for us to trust in God. He pointed to the birds that do not sow or reap the fields but are fed by the heavenly Father. He pointed to the flowers that do not toil nor spin but are clothed in beauty by the heavenly Father.

          I think it’s important that we understand that Jesus was speaking to people who worked for a living. They did have to sow, to reap, to toil and spin, and he wasn’t telling them to stop doing this work; he simply wanted them to understand that their lives were a lot more than the sum of their sowing, reaping, toiling, and spinning.

          Seek God First - Jesus points out that those who worry don’t trust their Heavenly Father. Jesus tells us, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (v. 33)

          Seeking first God’s kingdom: Giving God the first priority in our life turns our hearts and our lives from pessimism to optimism; from worry to faith and trust. God’s kingdom is the ultimate reason for optimism and hope. God’s kingdom triumphs over hurt. God’s kingdom triumphs over evil.

          Striving for God’s kingdom; Seeking God’s kingdom: striving, seeking these are action verbs. They mean to exert a lot of energy and effort toward a goal. In other words, love God, give him our heart and our life and then love our neighbor, by spreading God’s kingdom; through our testimony, our sharing the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus is saying we should actively work for the spread of the kingdom of God. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray this. But are we actively trying to make it happen?

          None of this is to say that we won’t have some normal worries. We can’t love someone without worrying about threats to his or her well-being. We cannot be sensitive persons without occasional concern that we haven’t done all we should. We cannot listen to the news without some uneasiness about the direction many things in the world appear to be going.

          Offer anxieties and worries to God - But when we seek God’s kingdom, God’s will and direction for our life; and when we have faith in God’s faithfulness; instead of wringing our hands in worry, we clasp our hands in prayer; offering our worries and our anxieties to God who promises to be with us through it all.

There is a reason Psalm 23 is the most loved Psalm in the Bible. That is because, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.” (v. 4) There will be troubles in this world, we will have dark days of suffering. People we love will die. Businesses will fail. Our friends will betray us. Illness will strike our vulnerable and temporal bodies. But through it all God is promising to be with us, to carry our burdens, to comfort us through His Holy Spirit. And in the end, good triumphs over evil, Jesus wins. If you have trusted Jesus with your life, you win too!

There is no pain, no suffering, no situation that Jesus Christ cannot conquer in our life. He is always there waiting for us to seek him and trust him. So why worry, be happy.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy -  Nadine Stair, age 85, put it this way.

If I had my life to live over:

 I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.

I’d relax, I would limber up.

 I would be sillier than I have been this trip.

I would take fewer things seriously.

I would take more chances.

I would take more trips.

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.

I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had it to do over again. I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else, just moments. One after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I’ve been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a rain coat and a parachute.

If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter next time.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

I would go to more dances.

I would ride more merry-go-rounds.

 I would pick more daisies. **

          Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”

 The goodness and the mercy of God is right here with us, following us every day of our life. Living our lives in his presence now and eternally is God’s promise to us, if we would only give our hearts and our lives to Him. 

Worry steals our joy of Jesus. Jesus wants us to know His joy. He said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” John 15:11

          Do you trust God’s faithfulness? Do you know the joy of Jesus in your heart and your life? I invite you today to give your heart and your life to Jesus, so that you may come to a place in your faith journey that you can say: ‘Don’t worry, be Happy!’

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

October 9, 2011

Sources: * Irmgard Schloegl, The Wisdom of Zen Masters

                             **Author Unknown, Chicken Soup for the Soul,   1993

October 2, 2011

The Heavens Declare His Glory

Psalm 19:1-14

          1-4a--The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

          All of creation declares God’s glory. It is said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Think about the picture we are seeing all around us. One cannot drive anywhere in this area and not have their breath taken away by the beauty of the fall colors. I do a lot of driving and I’ve lived here all of my life. You’d think I’d be used to the autumn colors. I’m not. As I drive, I’m constantly saying out loud, “Wow! Thank you, Lord.”

          God didn’t have to create the many colors for us to enjoy. He could have just made everything grey. The animals cannot enjoy the color we see, but you and I are made in his image and God has given us the incredible ability to see color, so he creates this incredible color to see. How great is our God!!

          4b-6-- In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.

          This is a poetic rendition of the orderliness of God’s creation. The Psalmist, David, from his knowledge of the way the days and nights; and seasons happen, uses an illustration that he, as the author and the readers as well, will understand and appreciate. The sun brings warmth and light and life. A bridegroom takes himself a wife and from their union comes life. The bridegroom is to provide for his family. He is to be strong and joyful in what he has been given to nurture and grow. For a poet trying to express his awe of God and his creation, this is an illustration that can be understood.

          7-10--The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is pure enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether; More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

God’s laws declare God’s glory.    The psalmist David has figured it out. Obedience to God’s laws makes up, truly happy. Why is it that we can’t see that? Why is it that we are always slipping back into disobedience? There are only ten we have to obey. God gave us ten fingers to help us remember what they are. The first 4 have to do with loving God and the last 6 have to do with loving our neighbor. If we all practiced the Ten Commandments, wouldn’t we be made wise, wouldn’t our hearts be rejoicing? Wouldn’t the world be a better place?

Love God above all:

Do not worship anyone or anything but God

Do not make idols of any kind

Do not misuse God’s name

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

When you think about it, wouldn’t our relationship with God be on a deeper level if we were to observe these first four of God’s laws? If our relationship with God is on an intimate level, wouldn’t we be happier and more fulfilled? Wouldn’t we be better able to love one another?

          Love your fellow human beings

                   Honor your father and mother

                   Don’t kill one another

                   Don’t cheat on your spouse

                   Don’t steal each other’s belongings

                   Don’t tell lies

                   Don’t always want what another person has      

Why is it so hard for us to see that if we treated God’s laws as perfect and pure as honey dripping from the honey comb that we would be happy?      

11-13--Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

Salvation declares God’s glory.  God’s love revealed to us in and through his Son Jesus Christ is the kind of love that is hard for us to understand. 

The gospel of John1:1,14 tell us how salvation declares God’s glory.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,---And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus Christ, God himself incarnate, made flesh so that he could look us in the eyes that we might know him; placed his hands upon us that we might be healed; spoke words of wisdom that we might return to obedience; and died for our sins, that we might be saved to eternal life. Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world reveals God’s glory.     

This is how salvation declares God’s glory. If you and I are not right with God, are not our hearts troubled? Are we not anxious and worried and afraid? Can we really have peace of heart if we are running from God instead of having an intimate relationship with him?

The only way to be truly joyful and fulfilled is to turn from being anxious, worried and afraid; and turn to Jesus Christ. Coming to Jesus, asking forgiveness for the things we do against God’s will and giving Jesus our heart and our life is the only way to be fulfilled, the only way that our lives can declare the glory of God.

14--Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Our two lips must declare the glory of God.  When we recognize that God’s glory is all around us in God’s creation; that God’s laws truly reveal His glorious love for us and; that Jesus Christ is God’s revelation of His glory in human form; than we cannot help but declare his glory with our thoughts, our words and our life.

------ Sandra sat in her favorite rocking chair looking out at the spring rain. The day was as dark and bleak as her thoughts this morning. She had slept late, not wanting to get up and face another depressing day. It had been a long winter for Sandra. Her husband had died last October after a long illness and she just hadn’t been able to pick up her life again. Friends had tried to encourage her, but she just couldn’t see any reason to smile. She had stopped going to church because it was too painful to sit by herself. She wondered where God fit in her life. She felt alone and lonely and her heart felt cold and dead.

As Sandra sat rocking gently, quiet tears running down her cheeks, the sun began to peak out from the rain clouds and a ray of sunshine fell on her Bible which she hadn’t opened in months. Sandra picked it up, dusted it off, and opened it. It fell opened to Psalm 19. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”(vv. 1-4a)

Sandra glanced up and looked out her window. The rain was clearing now and the raindrops were sparkling on the baby leaves and fresh green grass. There was a bright patch of blue sky breaking through the rain clouds.  The sun began to stream through the window and Sandra felt it warm upon her cheeks. Her tears began to dry and she felt herself admiring the vista outside of her window. Silently the day changed from dark and dreary to bright and sunny.  Sandra felt her heart began to warm. As winter turned to spring, her heart began to turn as well. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’

Then she saw it. There in the corner of her back yard Sandra spotted a bit of color. She recognized the tulips her friend Marcy had planted for her last fall.  Red, pink, yellow; as if someone had dabbed paint among the new green leaves.

She glanced again at the ever widening blue sky and then back at the tulips. The heavens do declare the glory of God, Sandra thought. Maybe there is hope for tomorrow.  She felt her heart began to warm and Sandra took a deep breath as she reached for the phone.

Sandra dialed Marcy’s number. When Marcy answered, she found herself saying. “Hi friend, let’s have lunch, I’d like to tell you how God revealed himself to me this morning.”---

The heavens do declare God’s glory: Spring, summer, winter and fall. In obedience to the orderliness of God’s creation, the beauty of all creation speaks and we hear.

The question for each of us this morning is this: what do our hearts, minds and lips declare? Our thoughts, actions and words should declare God’s glory as well. Do they?

          Lord God, Almighty Creator. Help us to not only recognize that all creation declares your glory, that your Son Jesus Christ declares your glory, but that our lives should declare your glory as well. Amen

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

October 2, 2011

September 18, 2011

Exercise Our Faith

Philippians 1:21-30 and Matthew 20:1-16

          Exercise is good for you. It is good for you physically, it is good for you psychologically, and it is actually good for you spiritually as well. I go to the Fitness Center usually 4 mornings a week. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have the energy that I do. I wouldn’t have the ability to think and concentrate that I need to have, and I wouldn’t be able to serve God the way He has called me to.

          Of course there are some mornings when I feel like Ben. Ben describes his early morning exercise like this, “I have to talk to myself when the alarm goes off. I say –Ready, now, Up—down, up—down, up--down.  After two strenuous minutes of workout I tell myself, O.K. Now let’s try the other eyelid.”  

          Physical exercise is good for us; but this morning I want to talk a little about exercising our faith. Let’s look at the scripture reading from Philippians 1:21-30.

The Apostle Paul is sitting in a Roman prison when he wrote this. I don’t know what kind of physical exercise he was getting, but in his writing to the early Christian church in Philippi Paul encourages them to exercise their faith, to keep moving forward.

Paul knows what the presence of Jesus can do for us.

Paul himself is torn about what he desires for his own life. “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (v.21)  This is a statement of faith! Paul has found complete joy in knowing Jesus Christ; not just knowing about him, but really knowing Jesus with every fiber of his being. He lives and breathes Jesus Christ. He is exercising his faith by preaching and teaching and living in the Joy of Jesus. His life is fulfilled and yet he knows that when he dies he will be with Jesus, his Lord and his Savior. He’s ambivalent. To live—to die; in Christ is all joy and glory. Even in the prison, from which he writes this letter, he finds joy and fulfillment. He encourages the church in Philippi this way.

          Exercise 1 – Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ

“Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” (v.27)

          Paul knows that one of the most powerful evangelistic tools is the way Christians actually live their life. How do we act and react to everything that happens to us? How do we love our neighbor? And how do we work together to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ?

 Paul also knows that an even more powerful evangelistic tool is the example of the life of our church, our community of faith. The first exercise challenges us to live in a manner that matches the good news of Jesus Christ and to perform this exercise not only individually, but also as a community of faith.  Our actions speak so much louder than our words.

          A few years ago, there were a couple of Christians who decided to get up off the couch and exercise their faith, by living it in a big way. Mark Gornik and Allan Tibbles moved into the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, a desolate area filled with abandoned houses. They had no plan or program, but only the conviction that the church is God’s community, with a mission of, “pursuing justice at the point of greatest suffering in the world.”

          They started a church called the New Song Community, and worked on improving housing, education and healthcare in the neighborhood. Then they put into place an effective employment strategy. Every one of their successful steps, says Yale theologian Miroslam Volf, “required a miracle of courage and persistence.” Over time, a hopeless city block became a street teeming with life—all because of the efforts of Christians determined to live their life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

          Every church can do this. We can exercise our faith by living out the gospel of Christ: Loving the un-loveable, working tirelessly for justice for the oppressed, caring for widows and orphans. Do you know how many grand-mothers are raising their children’s children? Do you know how many families are struggling to pay the electrical bill, buy clothing or put food on the table or gas in the car, if they have one? Sometimes one parent is working, but the job is low paying with little or no benefits and they can barely pay the bills, if they indeed can pay them at all. We need to exercise our Christianity by opening our eyes and our hearts to those in need, who are all around us.        

Exercise 2 –Stand firm in one spirit

“Then, ----I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.”  (v.27)

          Neither Gornik nor Tibbles could have done his work alone. Tibbles, in particular, faced the challenge of being a quadriplegic with a wife and two daughters.  But they knew that the church community could be a powerful force, especially if it were a church for others and with others—especially the neediest. The success of New Song has come from the exercise of standing firm in one spirit and doing “thousands of little things right over a period of many years.”

           Sometimes we think the needs of this world are too overwhelming, we can’t really be of any help.  But as Christians, we can work together to show others God’s love in tangible ways. Some of those ways are: providing Christian education for children and youth while reaching out in love to their parents as well. We must make ourselves aware of the programs within our church and our community where we can help.  Drugs, alcohol, abuse, poverty are all around us. Do we see it? How can we combat the evils of this world? Doing one thing at a time and standing firm together in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

          I attended the Ontonagon County Clergy and the Gogebic Range Clergy meeting this past week. Clergy get together have a meal and fellowship and share our joys and our concerns. We learn from one another. Before we leave the table we take turns praying. We pray for one another and our families. We pray for our churches. We pray for our communities, our nation and the many needs of this world. We pray for God’s strength and guidance in our ministry. We know if we stand firm in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, great things will happen.  

          Standing firm in one spirit in unity and becoming a force for Christ comes from walking in the path of Christ’s self-giving love and moving the whole community toward the peace of God’s new creation.

Exercise 3 – Know that it is a privilege to go through the sufferings here on earth and to believe that Christ is with us through it all

“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him,--“ (v.29)

          Most Christians see the value of believing in Christ, but few consider it a privilege to suffer along with him. No one likes to suffer!

The success of the New Song church and their ministry in Baltimore came not from the few people who moved to Baltimore to start it, but from the many who didn’t abandon it during hard times. Christians who consider it a privilege to suffer along with Christ are the ones who cross the finish line. Those who drop out when the race gets tough are long gone before God can do His work through us.

          In every church, opportunities exist for members to suffer with Christ. Jesus says in order to follow him, we need to take up the cross. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)

          To suffer for Christ means to stand up for Jesus. It means to forgive those who hurt us. It means to put Jesus first when we are tempted to put him last. To suffer for Christ, means to keep going when the going gets tough, believing that God has us firmly in his grip and that God is in control. When illness or loss tempts us to give up, we hang on, we believe through our suffering.

          When we exercise our bodies we may say, “No pain, no gain.” When we exercise our faith, sometimes we have to go through times of trial and testing in order to be strengthened.

          I haven’t touched on the gospel reading this morning, because I really wanted to address exercising our faith; not giving up when things get tough and stepping out of our comfort zones to be the hands and feet and voice of Jesus Christ in our needy world. I believe that earthly living is going to get harder for many people and I believe it will be the Body of Jesus Christ, the Christian church which will have to step up and live out the gospel.

But I do want to spend just a couple of minutes on the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

 God told the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” We can see that clearly in this parable of Jesus.

For the workers who were hired at the beginning of the day, it was unfair that those who were hired at the end of the work day received the same wage. They protested and we might protest along with them. Life is not fair.

 Why is it that some people have more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime and other people don’t have clean water to drink or enough food to eat? Why is it that some live in mansions and some live in cardboard boxes? Why is it that the young die and the old sometimes come to a time of just existing rather than living?

Jesus makes it clear in this passage that in the kingdom of God, God is sovereign. It is he who makes the decisions. It is he who is in control and we as mortals are not meant to understand God’s thoughts or God’s ways.

Jesus says, “So the last will be first and the first will be last.” (v. 16)  I believe this is a warning to the church, to this Body of Christ.

We need to exercise our faith. Our Christian faith is not for our pleasure, it is for God’s. We pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In God’s kingdom the first are last and the last are first!  If we are to have God’s kingdom here on earth we need to stand up for Jesus, we need to live our lives so that people will be able to recognize us as followers of Jesus and we need to be willing to suffer in order to be strengthened in our faith.

Let us get moving!

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

September 18, 2011

September 4, 2011

Put on Jesus

Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew 18:15-20

          It’s a clothing smorgasbord out there these days: What to buy, where to buy? Do I buy summer clothes, which are incredible bargains right now, even though there are not a lot of choices? Do I buy fall and winter clothes, which are appearing in all the stores. But it’s 70 degrees, how can I think of winter? Do I buy locally, travel out of town, or take advantage of the free shipping on many items if I shop the internet? Do I visit St. Vincent or Goodwill? And if you are trying to clothe children for school, you add a whole new dimension to the what to wear – where to buy dilemma. Decisions, decision: what to buy, where to buy.

The question is do I really need any new clothing? Or maybe the question should be, how many items am I willing to donate to Goodwill or St. Vincent DePaul; those things that have been hanging in my closet or stuffed into my dresser drawers that I haven’t worn in a very long time, but I’m still reluctant to part with, maybe because there is a memory attached to it or just because I like the way it felt and looked ten years ago, when I could fit into it.

Maybe I should choose something to donate that I like, because as an act of love and sacrifice, it may be good for my soul to donate it to someone else. Or maybe I should take someone shopping, who doesn’t have the money for new clothes. Instead of buying myself a winter jacket just because I think it’s cute, not because I really need it; I should buy someone a warm winter jacket because they don’t have one.

We all have our own way of thinking about what we wear, where we buy what we wear, and how important or unimportant our clothes are. It works the same way with our Christianity. We all have our own way of thinking about how our lives are lived out when we declare that we are a follower of Jesus Christ.

Put on Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us this morning in his letter in Romans 13:8-14, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” (NIV) or “—put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”(NRSV)

This passage in Romans isn’t the only passage which speaks of putting on or clothing ourselves in Christ if we declare that we are Christians. Galatians 3:27 “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Ephesians 4:24, “And to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” And Colossians 3:12, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothes yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

 Love for neighbor – When we put on Jesus we find ourselves wanting to obey God’s commandments, wanting to live a life trying to please God instead of our self. We love God above everything in this world and loving our neighbor near and far becomes a desire of our heart as well. The Apostle Paul tells us in verse 8-9 “Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet;” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “love your neighbor as yourself.” The Apostle Paul reaffirms in this passage what was written in Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself,”  We read of Jesus repeating this Old Testament Law in the Gospels of Matthew, 5:43, 19:19 and Mark 12:31. “The second greatest commandment is this: “love your neighbor as yourself.”

          Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Does this mean that first you buy the coat for yourself and then you buy a similar coat for your neighbor?  No, it means that because I have given myself wholly to God, I have “put on Jesus Christ,” my first thought is that I buy the coat for my neighbor who does not have one, and then I trust God to provide a coat for me.

 The phrase, “as yourself” refers to someone who has presented her life to God as a living sacrifice; Someone whose mind and heart and life have been renewed by “putting on Jesus.” It is this act of giving oneself to God that influences the ability to love our neighbor.

A light in the darkness - Our first desire as humans is not to love our neighbor, nor really to love ourselves in God’s way. Our first desire is to give in to what the world tells us is important. Paul knew this and he warns us that we need to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,” (v.12) not giving in to our sinful nature of wanting what we want, when we want it; no matter the consequences to our self or others. People aren’t any different today than they were back then. We still cheat on our spouse, get drunk, fight, covet what others have. Paul says stop it. If you are a follower of Jesus you should be a light in the darkness of sin.

 In my NIV Study Bible the interpretation is “Shed them like dirty clothes. Clothe yourselves with the armor of right living, as those who live in the light.” (v.12) Paul tells us when we put on Jesus, really clothe ourselves in Christ, we will not give in to the sin of this world, but rather be a light in the sinful darkness: The darkness of sin which destroys relationships and people.

If only we Christians were a light in the darkness of this world. What if people could see past the clothing that we wear, which doesn’t really matter, and see Jesus Christ in us? What if people would be able to see what is in our heart, by the way we treat one another in our church, our neighborhood, our family, and our communities? What if the real us came through to others as people of truth, whose life portrays, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience?

-------During World War II, a young serviceman struck up a “pen pal” relationship with a woman he had never met. Their correspondence had begun as a result of a book he had checked out of a public library. Its previous owner had penciled some notes into the margins of the book. The insightfulness of the comments, the clues into the heart and soul these notes offered and the beauty of the handwriting inspired the lonely young man to seek out the woman whose name was written in the book.

The day after he wrote his introductory letter to her, he was shipped overseas. But for the next year, the two corresponded regularly and with increasing pleasure. Though the man asked for a photograph, the woman declined. Still their feelings for each other grew.

Finally, it was time for the man to return to the States. He and his pen pal decided to meet. A 7 p.m. rendezvous was arranged in Grand Central station. He would know her, she wrote, by the red rose she would wear in her lapel.

Shortly after entering the station, a tall, beautiful, blonde in a pale green suit sauntered by him. Almost magnetically, the lonely young man was drawn towards this woman and her alluring vitality and sensuality. She smiled a tiny inviting smile at him and even murmured, “Going my way, sailor?” as she strolled past.

But her spell over him was broken when he suddenly saw behind her a woman wearing a red rose on her lapel. His heart sank as he saw she was as plain as the blonde had been stunning. She was an older woman, roundish, grayish, but with eyes that twinkled warmly in a gentle face. As the blonde walked away, the young man resolutely turned his back on her beauty and strode to the simple woman wearing the red rose. Looking at her, he faced the disappointing realization that this relationship would never be one of romantic love- yet he was buoyed by the memories of their letters and the prospect of having a new lifelong friend-one whose wit and intellect he already knew from all their correspondence.

The young man introduced himself and suggested they go out for dinner. But the woman just smiled with amusement and told him, “I don’t know what this is about, son, but the young lady in the green suit who just went by begged me to wear this rose on my coat; and she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should tell you she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test.” ---

You and I are always being tested by this world. In our decisions, do we pass the test?  Doing the right thing becomes our desire if we have truly ‘put on Jesus.’

Power of Unity in Jesus - Jesus knew that doing the right thing, not giving in to our sinful nature is not easy for us and he has given us direction for dealing with those who sin against us, in our reading from Matthew 18:15-20. This scripture is dealing specifically with relationships within the church body, relationships between Christians. Jesus knew the church must be unified in order to survive and to grow. When disagreements happen or one of us sins against the other, Jesus tells us how to deal with it.

He tells us to go to the person and talk to him or her. Tell them how they have hurt you. If this doesn’t work and the hurt or sin continues, take another person with you and speak to them, so that there are witnesses. As a last resort get more of the church body involved. Hopefully the issue can be resolved and the church can be a unified light in the community in which it lives.

My heart is breaking for a church in Ontonagon, where there has been conflict for over a year. Last Sunday the pastor of 12 years resigned because of it. I don’t pretend to know all the details, but I do know there was church killing gossip, judging and un-forgiveness. Because of these sins another light in the darkness has been extinguished. It will take a long time before the pain that Christians have inflicted upon one another is healed.

Jesus tells us clearly, “—if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father I heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matthew 18:19-20)

This is so powerful! If we agree and we ask God in agreement for anything, it will be granted! When we pray together for healing, when we pray together for guidance in our ministry in the community; when we pray together for God to bless our church and our country; God hears and answers our prayers: if we are in agreement and pray as one body.

It is vital, if we are to be a light in the world around us that we are unified in our ‘putting on Jesus’, ‘clothing ourselves with Christ.’ The unity in our church must begin with each of us giving our heart, mind and soul to God.

          Have you put on Jesus? Are you clothed in Christ? Only God and you know the answer.

          As we begin to change our wardrobe from summer to fall, getting out those sweaters and long pants, the invitation this morning is that as we change our wardrobe,  we contemplate whether our lives have been truly changed by the presence of Jesus Christ.  It is not enough just to know about Jesus. We need to know Jesus.

May you ‘put on Jesus’ and know the warmth of His love, his guidance and his peace.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

August 4, 2011

August 28, 2011

Holy Ground

Exodus 3:1-15 & John 4:1-10

Earth is crammed with heaven

And every common bush afire with God;

And only he who sees takes off his shoes—

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries

                                                A poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

          Obviously, Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew what many of us are unable to see; that all around us is Holy Ground, if only we were able to recognize it.

What do you consider holy ground? Or have you even thought about it? For most of us, when asked that question we think of the church here, specifically the sanctuary and even more specifically the chancel and altar area. These, we have been taught, are holy places in which we are to dress and behave respectfully; these are places where God lives or at least may show up to visit at various times.

Of course there is that story where a homeless man walked into a church on Sunday morning and sat in the back row. He was unshaven, raggedly dressed and didn’t smell too good either. One of the ushers, who was dressed in a suit and tie, approached the man and asked him to leave, saying that he was not dressed properly for church.

The homeless man, hungry and thirsty and feeling rejected got up and walked outside. As the congregation began to sing the first hymn of the service, he sat down on the front step feeling very lost and alone. Soon a man came up and sat beside him and comforted him saying. “Hi, my name is Jesus. Don’t feel badly about not being welcomed into that church. They don’t let me in either.”

Yes, a church should be holy ground where God lives and moves. Too often a church is a social club and not holy ground at all. I think we need to be very careful to keep our focus on allowing God to create holy ground here in our church. Holy ground where God lives and moves: where God directs the ministry here and our individual lives as well.

Finding holy ground -  I believe there are other times and places in our lives, which we fail to recognize as holy ground. 

·        Have you ever taken a walk when an idea occurs to you about some change you need to make in your life?

·        Have you ever been reading a book when something you read suddenly comes alive for you and you feel inspired?

·        Have you ever been in the midst of an argument with a family member when something clicks inside your head and heart and you remember that you love this person you are so angry with at this moment and you are sorry for the argument?

·        Have you ever been snowed in and unable to go to work and you become frustrated because you have so much you need to accomplish, but then suddenly it dawns on you that you have been given a gift –a day to find yourself again.

·        Have there been times when you are busy with the responsibilities of the day when a child asks you to read her a story, or a friend or neighbor, who just needs to talk, stops to see you?

·        Have you ever been in the midst of trouble or are depressed over the things that are happening in your life and you receive one of those, “I’m thinking of you” cards from a friend, or a phone call asking how you are?

I am a firm believer that with every breath we are given we are also given an opportunity to live a holy life on holy ground. I believe we should live as if God the great I AM is right here with us. Why? Because he is!

Analyzing instead of believing---Too many times we tend to analyze our lives instead of believing that God is with us at all times, ready to meet us if we’d only recognize his presence.

The women at the well at first did not recognize the holy ground on which she was standing as she encountered Jesus the Son of God, whom she did not recognize either.

Consider the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well. He asks her for a drink of water which leads to a conversation about living water, spiritual sustenance. Then Jesus says to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink; you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

          The woman’s response, however, shows that she has no idea that she is on holy ground. Instead of opening her mind to believe, she analyzes the situation trying to fit in into her human understanding. “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water?” (John 4:11)

          There are times when we miss our encounter with Jesus because we are analyzing it away. ‘But, in our understanding, it must be like this.’ We leave God out of it and we miss the holy ground experience.

          The Samaritan woman at the well eventually realized that she was in the presence of Jesus, the Messiah the Jewish people have waited for, but only when he convinced her that he had been with her in every breath she has taken, in every circumstance in her life. He knew all about her.

          We need to open our heart and mind to the opportunities of being on holy ground in every day circumstances. We need to stop trying to analyze away God’s presence in our lives. Why is it we tend to blame God for everything that goes badly in our lives, most often because we have done something and are suffering the consequences; And yet we fail to recognize answered prayers or to thank God for all the blessings?

          We fail to see God in every day and we tend to analyze him away when we do encounter him.

          Moses did both: he at first failed to see God in the everyday circumstance of the burning bush on Mount Sinai. And when he saw the bush burning without burning up, he walked over to it to try to analyze why it was burning the way it was. “Amazing,” Moses said to himself.  “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go over to see this.” (verse.3)

“When the Lord saw that he has caught Moses’ attention, God called to him from the bush. ‘Moses! Moses!     

“Here I am!” Moses replied. (verse 4)

                 “Do not come any closer,” God told him. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.” (verse 5)

                This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. For me, growing up on the shores of Lake Superior, when I can take off my sandals and walk in the clean sand on the shore, I know I’m standing on holy ground. I often think, these grains of sand have been and will be. It is I who has come and who will go. I thank God for allowing me to feel the sand between my toes, the sands of God’s beach on God’s Lake Superior.

          When I can spend time on the shores of Lake Superior, I sometimes don’t want to leave. I feel close to God there, on holy ground, and I am reluctant to go back into the world again. Much like Moses, I resist God’s instructions to ‘Go to work.’

          We are reluctant to leave our holy ground when we find it.

          I think this is a danger when we do encounter a holy moment on holy ground. We want to stay there. The presence of God can fill us and our heart remembers from whom we come and we are reluctant to leave.

          This may have happened to you. Perhaps you went to a retreat, a conference, a renewal service or some other event where you experienced the presence of God in a special way, a kind of spiritual high. But then the event was over, and when you came home, still in the afterglow, nothing seemed as changed as you were. Not even going to church enabled you to recapture that same spiritual high point.

          From time to time, God invites us onto holy ground for spiritual renewal and growth. I believe that God then sends us back into the world to help others recognize God’s presence in their lives and that they as well as we have holy ground all around us, on which God expects us to stand; to live and to preach the gospel with the way we live, as well as with the words we speak.  God expects us to go back into the world and go to work for Him.

          God told Moses, I have heard the cries of my people and I’m sending you to lead them to freedom. (verses 7-10)  Moses asked God, “But who am I to appear before Pharaoh? – How can you expect me to led the Israelites out of Egypt?”  (verse 11)

                “Then God told him, “I will be with you.” (verse 12a) 

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, ‘I will be with you.’  God never asks us to do anything that He is not with us in.  When he gives us relationships, family or friends, he is with us to strengthen and guide us.  When he calls us out of our comfort zone, to work and to serve, he is with us as well.

Whether we recognize it or not God is with us with every breath we take. He never abandons us nor forsakes us. It is we who turn away and suffer the consequences of abandoning God. But God is there waiting for us to turn back around, waiting to embrace us.

          Have you had a holy ground experience? If so, what was it?

 Maybe the birth of a baby, God’s gift to you. Maybe a sunrise or a sunset, maybe a hug or a smile, maybe a time during worship when you felt God especially near, or maybe just sitting in your favorite chair at home, reading and meditating on God’s love for you as told so beautifully in scripture.

          There is holy ground all around you. The invitation this morning is that you open your heart and mind to recognize it. I encourage you to not analyze the holy ground experience, but to just take it in; to just be in the presence of God. And then go to work, as Moses did, helping others to recognize the holy ground in their lives, helping to free others who are still suffer the slavery to sin.  Go forth to share what you have found with those who have yet to experience God’s holy ground.

Pastor Rosemary DeHut

August 28, 2011

August 21

Church for All People

Mission Trip 2011

Missionary team: David Anderson, Joshua Smith, (from Ironwood Wesley UMC) and Paige Kleinhuizen, Karsten Varecha, Zachary Potvin, (fromWhite Pine Community UMC) Pastor Rosemary and Joe DeHut

Saturday August 6 - We left Pastor Rosemary and Joe’s house in Ontonagon at 6:20 a.m. . We arrived in Columbus, Ohio at 8:15 p.m. We drove 771 miles in 14 hours to get there. Margaret Madison, the Community and Outreach Missionary from the United Methodist Church for All People met us at the church and led us to the Hospitality House where we stayed. We ate pizza and went to bed about 11:00 p.m.

Sunday August 7 – Up at 7:00 a.m.  We went to the church where we joined others for a Free Breakfast. After breakfast we moved into the room where the Sunday morning service is held.

The service was different than we are used to. They had a full drum set, a lead and a base guitar, a key board and three singers. The service was more informal than ours. During the joy and concern prayer time someone moved around the room with a microphone so that everyone could hear what the joy and concern was. Most people began singing a song when they said their joy or concern. This took about 15 minutes.

After the service we went upstairs of the church to meet the youth of the Church for All People: Craig, Juan, Christopher, Rachael, Lynn, and Kayla. The adult leader of the youth group is a doctor and also leads the choir.

We then all went to Schiller Park for pizza lunch. We had a time to just walk around the park, goof off and get to know each other.  Kristy, Christopher’s stepmother joined the group and spent the rest of Sunday with us and worked with us on Monday as well.

We then went back to the church to make paper chef hats for Vacation Bible School; our least favorite thing to do.

When we arrived at the church we found two ladies who had sat in their car in the church parking lot all day: they didn’t have gas to go home. Margaret gave them $3 for gas and yet they sat in their car in 90 degree heat all day so they could go eat dinner at the Salvation Army.

We all went to dinner at McDonalds and got to know each other a little better.  

Closing prayer that night was thank you for meeting new people, having new experiences and let us get a good night’s sleep tonight so we can help change people’s lives tomorrow.

Monday August 8 - We woke up way to early

We had breakfast at our house and then went to work. We worked at two houses which have been rehabbed, doing landscaping: pulling weeds, laying fabric and putting down mulch.  It was hot, dirty work in 96 degrees heat. All the youth from both churches worked together. We worked very hard and finished the landscaping at the two houses then had lunch of Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches and chips and fruit.

The houses have 3 bedrooms, Two and ½ bathrooms; selling for $70,000 because of the neighborhood they are in. The agreement between the United Methodist church for All  People and National Children’s Hospital, various banks in Columbus and various government grant programs is that they all work together to rebuild and stabilize the neighborhoods in Columbus. One by one the houses are rehabbed, or torn down and new houses built. Good, available housing is changing the face of the city as the standard of housing and thus the standard of living is improved.

After lunch we finished the cleaning up at the two house job and then went to Momma D’s. Momma D lives with her adopted son Juan, who is a part of the youth group from Church for All People. Momma D has diabetes: she has lost one eye and one leg and now has to go for kidney dialysis three mornings a week. She’s a black woman who is praising God one moment and swearing the next minute.

Joe framed in her new air conditioner, in her bedroom. They just moved into a rental home that is appropriate for a wheel chair and walker. She would get her refrigerator and stove on Wednesday.

The girls helped Momma D unpack some of her things and the boys did the yard work: trimming trees, raking, mowing. We dug out the weeds and grass in her front flower beds and planted flowers.

We were starving by the time we finished at Momma Ds.  As we left we sang songs with her and she prayed for the group. “That God would bless the group and that we would be prosperous. She was thankful for us being there.” She began to cry.  We kids thought Momma D was awesome.

We picked up McDonalds for supper and took it back to the house to eat, as we were too dirty, tired and hungry to cook.

Tuesday August 9  – We got to sleep in, then ate breakfast at the house and went to the church for the church service  before the Free Store opened.

The service was short with a message of hope and conviction. Some people were there to worship, some were not. Some people were using the church just because of the Free Store and didn’t exactly go to the church service. Some people came in late so they wouldn’t have to actually participate in the church.

On Tuesdays the church also distributes free fresh produce given to them by the Ohio Food Bank.

It’s good that the church offers a service before the free store opens so that the good news of Jesus can be preached and hopefully heard. “You can live your life without Jesus, but you will be hollow inside. Jesus will fill that hollow place,” was the message that morning.

After the service we drove to a house to do painting on a front porch. The residents in the duplex were a mother, whose partner lived with her and had a low paying job; and a mentally challenged woman and her partner, also mentally challenged. They had just had their baby taken away from them because the state felt they were not capable of taking care of it.

For lunch we walked to Stowe’s Mission for hot dogs, beans, pasta salad, cookies, ice water or coffee.  Stowe’s Mission is a church which serves free lunch Monday through Friday to anyone who comes. The mission itself is supported by Columbus Metropolitan Baptist Churches. Volunteers from 30 out of the 150 of all the different churches in Columbus Ohio take turns providing the food and manpower to offer the free lunch.

After lunch we walked the six blocks back to the house we were painting to finish the job. Even though we were not able to finish the job, because we ran out of paint, we were proud of the job we did. Melissa and her children: Loren, Alexis and Jovan appreciated the job.

The Michigan youth group hosted the Ohio youth group for spaghetti dinner at our hospitality house. After words we went downtown Columbus to play in the water fountains. The city invites families to come to the fountain area each summer evening to cool off and play.  We had a great time cooling off and having fun.

They are developing The Sciloto Mile named after the Sciloto River.  In 2008 they built the only one arch bridge over the river and they are rehabbing the downtown area with new apartment buildings and businesses, all aimed at rehabilitating the city of Columbus. It is a beautiful city. Nationwide Children’s Hospital has a great deal to do with the rehabilitation.

Wednesday August 10 – We ate breakfast at the house and then went to the church.

We did yard work at the church parking lot. We noticed the paramedics stop to treat a man lying on the grass on the corner of the street near the stop sign.  They woke him up and helped him to stand. Appeared that they discovered he wasn’t sick or hurt and they went back to the ambulance laughing. He stood there with his head bowed and his hands clasped together, looking like he was praying and then he laid back down on the grass.   This incident made us feel sad and angry.  We felt sad for the man and angry at the paramedics for the way they seemed to treat him.

We took a break to make a run to the ice cream store.  Thank you to those who contributed extra money for ice cream.

After working a bit more, we went back to the house for left over spaghetti and then we returned to the church to work in the Free Store.

 Working in the Free Store was fun, okay, and interesting. Some of us worked carrying boxes of clothes, some were sorting hangers, some were hanging clothes, and some brought books up from the basement to put on the shelves. We also helped the shoppers. The basement was full of clothes and stuff that people donated for the Free Store. Sharon Allen the director really cared about people.

Sharon’s rule for working at the Front Desk (where the people come to check out their items) is that “The love of Christ must flow through you to the customers’ If you can’t serve, not judging, but loving like Jesus, don’t work at the front desk. You can work sorting and hanging clothes in the back room.” John Edgar the pastor of the Church for All People calls the Free Store, “Holy Ground” 

It’s been 12 Years and they are on their 3^rd store, each bigger than the previous. They now have 115,000 members. To become a member you have to fill out a registration sheet and you get “a blue card” When you come ‘shopping’ they record what you buy and there are rules as to how many of each item you can get each month.

School supplies: The Free Store (C4AP) packs up individual packages of appropriate age school supplies and hands them out to 1,600 school students.

Christmas: The C4AP provides for 500 children – 7 toys each, 1 new outfit and new underwear. Sharon says there are always kids who don’t get anything for Christmas.

That evening we served a free meal to people who came to the Celebrate Recovery service.  Someone had prepared a casserole dish and then we served bread and mini muffins, coffee and juice.  We especially like the cute children. The people who were served thanked us for being there.  After words there was a church service and then the people went into their small groups.

Thursday August 11 – we drove to Muskegon, Michigan where we stayed in a house owned by the Life Change church. Burt and Rhonda Scouten, members of the church hosted us and cooked hot dogs for us that night.

          Life Change church is involved with annual mission trips to Guatemala, both the high school youth group and the adult groups make trips to work on houses and churches and to do Vacation Bible School.

Friday August 12 was our day at Michigan Adventures.

We had a great day of fun going on the rides. Burt and Rhonda Scouten bought pizzas for us and we met them back at the house for supper that night.

Saturday August 13 – We left Muskegon at 8:30a.m. and traveled back home, arriving about 7:00 p.m. We traveled a total of 1,811 miles for this mission trip.

Thank you to all who helped us to go on this mission trip. We not only feel as if we helped people by doing the work we did, we had fun together and learned about living our lives loving one another in the same way Jesus loves us.

August 7, 2011

Psalm 105