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April 4, 2012
Resurrection
Reflections
The art of silence and thought is all but lost in
our times, that is, unless you make a time, a place,
and you discipline yourself to think. To me, the
greatest implication of the Resurrection is the
assurance that God is in control and His promises of
a forever future with us is true.
Luke tells us that at Christ’s death the multitudes
that had followed him left the scene “beating their
breasts” because they thought their hope had died
with Christ. Good had lost, their Messiah was dead,
the end. But God had a different plan. Paul tells us
in Romans 8:35-39, “Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or
sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face
death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be
slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more
than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am
convinced that neither death nor life, neither
angels nor demons, neither the present nor the
future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.” What great assurance to the
believer, even in the middle of trials or troubles,
“Nothing in all of creation will be able to separate
us from the love of God.”
You are someone’s child; we all are. Regardless of
how old, how handsome, how beautiful, or even if
your parents are still alive, you are still their
child. If they were to try to disown you for any of
the above reasons or others, or if you tried to
disown them for the same, you are still their child.
When we become God’s child by agreeing with Him that
we are sinners and in need of forgiveness, we are
accepting God’s righteousness. He has applied the
price Christ paid on the cross for our sin to our
sin account; it is paid in full; we are His child
forever! “No one can snatch them out of My Father’s
hand.” Praise God.
Ron, for the Pastoral Team
April 11, 2012
Sin!
Our study of the life of David, “a man after God’s
own heart,” takes us this week to the story of
David’s sin with Bathsheba. I’m sure that there
isn’t a person alive that has ever had the slightest
interest in spiritual things that has not heard of
the story of David and Bathsheba. So you ask why
will we discuss it again? Simply because we are so
prone to sin in our humanness and the only way to
help us conquer it in our lives is to remember it’s
terrible consequences and look to our Lord and
Savior for strength to stand against it.
One of my jobs as a pastor is to remind all of us of
the dangers and long term effects of sin. It reminds
me of a story about sheep. Through the centuries
shepherds have strived to keep their sheep safe.
Walls, fences, and corrals have been built in order
to keep sheep in and predictors out. In Yorkshire,
England they use metal grates placed over the ground
eight feet wide around where the sheep are kept. The
hoofs of the sheep catch in the grid which makes it
impossible for them to walk across. What a great way
to keep the sheep where they were supposed to be,
safe and sound. The neighbors yards and gardens were
also equally safe and sound. It only took one crafty
sheep to figure out that by laying down and rolling
over the grid they could have the choice of the
neighbors gardens and yards. All the rest soon
followed and, alas, chaos.
Isaiah was right when he said, “We all, like sheep,
have gone astray; each of us have turned to his own
way.” The good news is that even when we sin; even
when we roll over the protection He gives us, we
have a Savior willing to forgive and re-establish
us, Isaiah 53:6, “Because the Lord has laid on Him
(Jesus) the iniquity of us all.” He will forgive and
re-establish us but we will bear the bruises, scars
and problems of sin for our lives. It is best to
stay in the fold!
Ron, for the Pastoral Team
April 18, 2012
Reacting To
the Obvious
For years while I was in high school and college my main mode of
transportation was a 1951 International pickup. It
had a 3-speed manual transmission, 220 cubic inch
Silver Diamond 6-cylinder engine capable of going
from 0-60 mph in fifteen to twenty minutes going
downhill with the wind at your back. The speedometer
went all the way to 80 mph and the dashboard lit up
with gages-oil pressure, gas, amp meter and
temperature. If something was wrong with the engine
I would have to see the gages registering in the
negative range, so if I wasn’t paying attention it
would have been easy to miss a possible problem. I
would probably smell, hear, or cease moving before
the gages would warn me.
The truck I drive today has automatic everything. When any one of the
three on board computers even sense a problem, a
veritable Christmas tree of lights, accompanied by
bongs and beeps invade my sleepy senses. I must act
on the problem because the next move on the part of
my truck is to shut itself off. I relate all this
mostly useless information in order to ask you this
question: If you were to ask the great King David,
before he was the great king David as a young man,
if he thought there was any chance that one day when
he was successful and popular he would commit
adultery, father a child out of wedlock, and murder
an innocent man, what would he have said?
The gages were reading negative for David’s love toward God. His wife
and concubine count was in the red and when the
opportunity to shut down the engine came he
disregarded all advice and went full speed ahead for
a lifetime of regret!
Ron, for the Pastoral Team
April 25, 2012
The Win And
Loss Of Temptation
Consideration of temptation is like considering life at one of its base
points, a base point that touches all of us everyday
at one time or another. We will begin our look at
this subject and the wisdom of James by first
defining trials and temptation and contrasting the
two. James begins his letter to Christian Jews who
were scattered throughout the world by discussing
trials. Trials are ordeals, times of hardship that
befall us and test our faith. They are not the
result of sin but are presented to us for our
growth. There is nothing in the trial that is
immoral or sinful as we experience it. Some examples
are:
Job experienced losses in every area of his life, except life itself.
(Job 1,2)
Elijah experienced deep depression when his life was threatened. (1
Kings 19:1-4)
John was banished to the island of Patmos-loneliness was constant. (Rev
1:9)
In each of these cases trials were a result of circumstances, not sin on
their part.
In James 1:13 he gets to the hot topic of temptation. This is our topic:
trials are meant for our growth but temptation has
the end result of death. Webster defines temptation
as “to entice to do wrong by promise of pleasure or
gain.” As Christians we are called to fight moment
by moment to ward off temptation. We can’t remove it
from our lives but we are called to react to it by
not giving in.
I’ll leave you with some insight and profundity from Shel Silverstein
about preparing for temptation.
Always Sprinkle
Pepper
Always sprinkle
pepper in your hair,
Always sprinkle
pepper in your hair.
For then if you are
kidnapped by a wild barbazzoop,
Who sells you to a
ragged hag
Who wants you for her
soup,
She’ll pick you up
and sniff you,
And then she’ll
sneeze “achooo,”
And say, “My tot,
you’re much too hot,
I fear you’ll never
do.”
And with a shout
she’ll throw you out,
And you’ll run away
from there
And soon you’ll be
safe at home-a sittin’ in your chair
If you always,
always, always,
Always, always,
always, always,
Always, always
sprinkle pepper in your hair.
Ron, for the Pastoral Team
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