Remembering

May 25th, 2010

The power of music is amazing. When music I listened to as a teenager starts to play on the radio, I’m taken back to another time. I know anytime I hear a song by the 70s and 80s band Boston, I am reminded of Mike, a friend from high school. He loved to lip-sync and play air guitar to More than a Feeling.  One evening a group of us played an “air concert” as we lip-synched and pretended to play instruments to Boston songs as they played on the stereo.  Yes and Jethro Tull pull me back to my college days.  John Denver reminds me of my days backpacking in the Sierras of California.  Jim Croce songs fill my mind with images of friends from high school.  Music speaks to our emotions. Up beat music will cause us to start tapping our feet and bring a smile to our face. Dreary music can turn our mood sour. 

Have you noticed how the words to songs we haven’t heard for 30 years can suddenly pop in your mind when you hear the music? I have been very excited about what is happening in children’s ministry. Over the last several years I’ve noticed music for children’s ministry has gotten better and better. The curriculum writers have also started using scriptures as the lyrics for songs. This spring our children learned Galatians 5:22-23…the fruit of the Spirit.  Earlier they had learned a passage from Joshua.  Scripture memory is so important, and when our kids learn it to music, it will stick with them for the rest of their lives.  When I was in high school, the youth group I attended had a musical version of I John 4:7-8.  I have no problem at all repeating the words of those verses, as I think about them, the music floods my mind.

So, what about you and scripture memorization?  Are you learning scriptures?  Have you discovered the power of knowing the Word of God in your heart and mind?  Psalm 119 says, Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.  I Timothy 3 says, 16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.  The Scriptures are such a blessing for us to learn.  I know it’s hard to set aside the time and energy, and to make the effort to memorize Bible verses.  But you will be amazed how important those verses will become to you.  I challenge you to commit 5 minutes each day to learning a verse or two of scripture.   Choose one each week.  Commit it to memory.  Use those 5 minutes to repeat it to yourself over and over again.  Then after a couple weeks, start testing yourself.  Try to write down this weeks and last weeks verses, or as many verses as you can remember.  You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll start to know your Bible.

Chad

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Not so normal investigations

May 21st, 2010

When I was a child, I believed that monsters lived under my bed.  I tried to make sure they couldn’t grab me, so every night I would get into bed by running and performing a diving leap into bed.  I believed that if I went airborne six feet from the bed, then the monsters would not be able to grab my ankle and drag me under the bed and eat me.  I am happy to report that my acrobatics worked and I was never eaten by a monster.  But I did have a very scary moment in my life.  It was when I was sixteen years old.  My family had just moved to Southern California.  My father and mother were in process of moving and my older brother and I were sent on ahead to get the house ready (i.e. painting and cleaning).  On my first night in the new house, my older brother decided to go out with some friends he’d made….leaving me at home…alone….in a strange house…in a strange community….at night. I think you can sense how I was feeling.  Well, I was sixteen and completely unsupervised, I wasn’t going to bed until after midnight!  About 11:30 a horror film came on.  It started with the sound of a woman screaming and then the words, “Don’t worry, she won’t scream any more.”  OK, I was more than a little creeped out.  And just as I decided it might be time to change the channel, I heard this hideous, monster like growlthat did not come from the TV.  My blood ran cold; my heart started pounding so hard I could hear it beating in my ears.  I knew I had to find out what on earth made that unearthly noise.  Besides if I was eaten by a monster, my brother would get in trouble for not watching me properly….so it wouldn’t be all bad.  Well, I began to creep though the house, trying to hear some sign of the monster….it was nearly impossible to hear anything but the blood beating against my ear drums.  I made it to the kitchen, and heard the hideous noise once more.  I looked out the window where I thought the noise was coming from.   And there to my horror was a big old tom cat, crying out his love song.  Mmmrrrrreeeooooowwwww!.  Well, I suddenly found great confidence and boldness and faced this terrible foe.  I opened the back door and threw a rock at the noisy beast.  It fled into the darkness of the night, only to begin his singing in the neighbor’s back yard.  After that brush with death, I learned how to face my fears and now keep a baseball bat behind the couch in case any more monsters come calling.

There is a fascination with spooky things.  Haunted houses get packed near Halloween, and zombie and vampire movies never go out of style.  With this in mind I was not surprised to see that there are at least six different television shows which focus on the paranormal these days.  The shows play off our personal experiences with the unexplainable…the mysterious clunk we hear in the house when no one else is around…the shadowy figure we see out of the corner of our eye, that isn’t there when we turn and look…or the popularity of Dancing with the Stars.  Some things are just mysteries.  So we shouldn’t be surprised with the popularity of these paranormal shows.  To make sure I was giving paranormal investigations a chance I decided to conduct one myself.  So after proper training (watching Ghostbusters five times back to back, and checking out a few Casper comic books), I grabbed my Power Rangers flashlight and walked around my house in the middle of the night.  Other than stubbing my toes and tripping over the ottoman in the family room, I found no evidence of anything out of the ordinary.  I know some of you are thinking what about all the hidden voice stuff….you know…you play a tape recorder and listen to the noise that sounds like someone blowing their nose, but you say, “Wow, there’s a ghost saying ‘The river will flow backwards on the blue moon if the red fish will dance with a goat named Steve.’”  Well, I decided my old tape recorder wasn’t in very good condition….but my dishwasher sounds a lot like that noise on those ghost shows.  So I sat and listened to my dishwasher.  I am happy to report that after 17 loads of dishes, the only message I received came not from the other side….but my wife who asked, “What are you doing?”

I am not an expert in the occult nor the paranormal, but I know that the Bible says something about death and what happens afterward.  When speaking to the criminal next to Him as they were being crucified, our Lord Jesus says, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”  The Apostle Paul wrote, “To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.”  We are told “It is apportioned for a person to die once, and then judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27)  It seems pretty clear to me what the Bible teaches us.  Our world is full of things we cannot explain.  But we have a God who is over all.  God has promised us that through Jesus Christ we will have eternal life with Him.

I Corinthians 15 says, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ 55‘Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?’  56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Praise God for His victory!

Chad

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Along for the ride

May 18th, 2010

Several years ago I was at a conference where one of the speakers took the podium and said,  “I have an urgent announcement for all of you.  Everyone please listen carefully.  There is a God and you are not Him!”  Of course there was some laughter after that “announcement”, but it wasn’t a hardy laugh, or even a delighted snicker.  What was heard was that uncomfortable laugh you hear when someone has been trying to hide something and their secret has just been revealed to the world.  And rather than screaming “Nooooo!”…they pretend that it was just a silly little secret and now that it’s out why don’t we all have a little chuckle about it.  Well folks, guess what….it’s true.  There is a God and you are not Him.  Now I know many of you will dismiss this statement as crazy talk.  After all, you never claimed you were God.  You know you aren’t omniscient, how else can we explain the C- in Chemistry.  You know you are not all powerful; otherwise Duke wouldn’t be this year’s national basketball champs.  You know you are not omnipresent, because no matter how hard you try, you always seem to be late for something.  Yes, you know you are not God, you just need to remember that when it comes to controlling the events and people in your life.

Yes, I’m looking at you!  You are just like everyone else.  You want to control the way the world works.  You want to be able to fix all problems, right all wrongs, and correct my spelling and punctuation (Yeah, good luck with that!)  We know we aren’t God, but we keep trying to carry the burdens of the world.  It is hard for us to accept that in some way we are not in control.

My father was a bit of an aggressive driver.  If you rode in a car that he was driving, you placed your life in his hands and in the hands of the guy who invented safety belts.  I noticed that when my father drove, most people in the car grabbed onto one of the grab handles mounted on the interior ceiling of the car.  Their grip would go several steps beyond “white-knuckled death-grip” to something that would leave permanent indentations in the grab handles.  For a while I did that too, but I realized all my attempts to cling to life by grabbing onto the handles, and all the sharp inhaling through my teeth as he weaved in and out of traffic, were not going to prolong my life.  So I started to realize….for better or worse, I was going along for the ride.  I gave up trying to control the car’s speed and direction with my telekinetic powers – they really don’t seem to work anyway.  I decided I was there….so I tried to enjoy the scenery that rushed by, tried to calmly warn about lights that had changed to red, and slowly breathed deeply to avoid either hyperventilating or my blood pressure sky-rocketing and causing a stroke.  I had to accept that I was along for the ride and not in the driver’s seat.

We all need to get a little bit of that knowledge.  We are along for the ride and not in the driver’s seat.  We can not always control what our children will say during the children’s sermon.  We can not control who gets sick and who doesn’t.  We cannot control the economy, or our boss, or our neighbor’s dog that likes to dig in our petunias.  Some times we just have to breathe deeply and try not to hyperventilate.  We are along for the ride…but who is doing the driving in your life?   Are you still grabbing at the steering wheel, trying to be God’s GPS….turn right in 50 feet?   Or have you decided to let God steer and enjoy the scenery doing and serving as you can?

Chad

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Transforming

May 13th, 2010

One of the signs of a great blogger is staying power.  You know, able to write more than just a few blogs before they run out of things to say.   Well, I’ve run out of things to say.  I’ve spent the last week combing news reports and the Bible looking for something profound and entertaining (ok, profound or entertaining….or even just space filling), but I’ve come up empty.  So I decided, why not write a blog about not having anything to say.  BRILLIANT!  It will take up space and be a total waste of the reader’s time.  Yes!  My job here is finished.

I thought I was in serious trouble, nothing to say, nothing to do…but then I stumbled upon a book title that gave me pause.  Alice Mann wrote a book entitled, Can Our Church Live?  It’s a book about churches that start to decline in membership, and conflict arises as the church and its leadership tries to address the decline.  It’s an interesting book, and in some ways a frightening book.  But its title asks something relevant for all of us.  Can our church live?  I’ve been told there are different levels of living.  There is existing – maintaining, keeping the heartbeat going; and then there is thriving – living with interest, flair, enthusiasm.   I have known churches that do one of the other.  So the question which comes to my mind is….How can we thrive and be an active engaged dynamic church, and not just exist?  I believe the answer lies within the heart of each member.  Are we as individuals engaged in our world?  Are we involved in ministry?  Are we working with energy and enthusiasm to bring Jesus Christ into the world?   Do we come to worship expecting God to speak to us through the prayers and songs and message?  Or, do we sit on our pews and sing our hymns and leave from worship the same as when we came?  Do we expect committee work to be dull and ineffective?  Do we expect our small groups to be lifeless?  Or do we expect that where two are more are gathered together in Jesus’ name, we will be present and working among us.

The old saying goes, “For God so loved the world, He didn’t send a committee.”  And yet, it is by committee, or task force, or leadership team, or ministry group (whatever you want to call it…it’s still a committee) that most church work is accomplished.  When we join together not to get a job done, but to do ministry, we can resuscitate our church experience.  We are not making sandwiches, we are feeding the homeless.  We aren’t collecting food, we are feeding the poor.  We aren’t sitting in church, we are worshipping and in relationship with the Triune God.  We aren’t going to a Bible Study, we are gathering to study God’s Word to us so we might be changed.  The truth is, I’ve run out of things to say in this blog….but God isn’t finished with you or with me, yet.

Ezekiel 37 reads The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’

Chad

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Don’t give up

May 6th, 2010

Perhaps you saw the report that Cha Sa-soon, a woman from South Korea, finally got her driver’s license.  The 69 year old took the written test nearly every day for 4 years until she could finally pass it.  She then passed the driving part of the test on the 10th attempt.  In all, she made 960 attempts to pass the tests.  I am amazed at her determination.  I don’t know if I would keep trying that many times.  Most of us are pretty good at second tries and third attempts.  But after a while, we find it’s easier to give up then to press on.  I’m not a very patient person when it comes to doing things.  So I don’t do well with repeated attempts.  In some ways I’m very much like the child who sits at the piano, bangs on the keys, and then wanders away grumbling that the piano wouldn’t play the song I wanted to hear.  Many skills require us to learn and practice in order to do them well.  Playing an instrument, playing sports, speaking a language, brain surgery; they all require study and practice.  Not many of us are brave enough to let a person operate on us if they haven’t had years of experience.  I can’t imagine a doctor telling his patient, “Well, I’m pretty good at whittling so I thought I’d try my hand at surgery.”

Patience, determination, and practice are all important things.  For Cha Sa-soon, patience, determination and practice rewarded her with a driver’s license.  We are called to persevere even in the midst of trials.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Church, “…we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”  (Rom. 5:3-5)  With patience and perseverance we can over come many obstacles.  We are told to pray without ceasing, but we will give up if we are impatient.  I remember back in the early 70s I had a friend named “FX” who used to say farewell to people with the words, “Keep the faith, baby!”  Yes, I know, but it was the 70s and I lived in Southern California.  I believe they should be explanation enough.  While FX wasn’t particularly talking about faith in Christ, as we think about patience and perseverance I believe it is appropriate for me to close with FX’s salutation….so my friends, “Keep the faith, baby!”

Chad 

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Renovation

May 3rd, 2010

Have you noticed that we love to fix things?  We also love to watch TV shows where people, places, and things get fixed.  The biggest loser is about people losing weight.  There are shows about giving people new styles and looks.  DIY is an entire network on fixing up your home and yard.  There are also shows on fixing up old, broken down cars.  I watched a show done by MTV about owners of cars that had been fixed up on their show, Pimp My Ride.  The episode brought back a variety of cars and their owners to see how things were going.  Had the fix up job helped change the life of the driver?  A handful of the drivers saw the car fix up as a start on a new life.  These drivers decided to become more responsible in their work and personal lives.  Unfortunately, there were some drivers who were bad drivers and irresponsible people before the show.  After their car receiving tens of thousands of dollars in upgrades, fixes, and a makeover, they didn’t change their way of life.  One car in particular entered the show with dents all over it.  The driver had been in multiple accidents.  When we got to meet the driver and see the car on the “reunion” show…the car was a mess with damage once again from multiple accidents.  The inside of the vehicle was dirty and had floors covered in litter.  One quick look and you could see that the beautiful paint job, body work, and high end electronics hadn’t changed anything in this young man’s life.

I wonder… how many of us have changed since we’ve been through our soul makeover?  In Jesus Christ our history of sin and evil is undone.  By His grace God has restored, renovated, and redeemed our hearts and lives.  The dents of poor choices and reckless living are straightened out.  As people of God we are called to repent, to change our lives, to “bury the old self”, to be dead to sin and alive to Christ.  We are to be changed.  But how many of us have changed?  How many of us have broken away from our favorite sin?   How many of us have chosen to live with God in a new and lasting relationship?  I know that it’s not all that easy.  We are prone to sin and failure.  We are easily led astray.  We seek after the very things that would destroy us.  We are weak.  Yet God calls us to live a new life.  He calls us to stop our reckless living.  He calls us to let the change He has made in us lead us to further and better changes.  God offers us His Spirit to help us.  We have a community of faith- our local church- to guide and encourage us.  We have one another to pray for, and to hold one another accountable.  Let us live a life worthy of the gift of God’s grace.

1What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6

Chad

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Tyranny of the Urgent

April 25th, 2010

Are you busy?  I know in between naps I hardly have time to eat or get a snack.  Life is so very busy.  But not all our busyness is important.  Many of us get wrapped up in stuff that is pretty meaningless.  Oh, it seems important at the time.  In fact it seems down right urgent.  But aren’t our days filled with nothing but urgent things?  Stuff that needs to happen RIGHT NOW?  Stuff like… finding acetone to unstick your fingers after gluing them together with ultra-glue;  spraying your car with air freshener after you forgot about the half burrito that rolled under your seat two weeks ago; returning that DVD you rented two months ago, and for some crazy reason put in the cheese drawer of your fridge; tweeting all your friends to tell them you found the acetone and your fingers are no longer stuck together, and did they know if acetone can be used on lips?;  filling out that job application to become the next crocodile hunter; reorganizing your spice rack; checking the cracks in your couch for change so you can take your family out for ice cream; replaying level one of Fondue-dancer on your video console for the eightieth time so you can try to get a perfect score.  Yes, there are so many things that scream out, “Take care of me now!”  Life is full of unfinished things each crying out.  Charles Hummel called this “The tyranny of the urgent.”  Hummel writes that he was told, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.”

Too often we are guilty of just that, letting the urgent crowd out the important.  It’s not that we have a shortage of time, but we fail to recognize what is important and what just seems important or urgent at the moment.  The phone rings…we get a text…an email appears in our inbox….do we have to immediately abandon what we are doing to respond?  Can’t it wait a few minutes until we accomplish the work at hand?  We can get so wrapped up in looking for the best ring-tone, or stalking Hanna Montana’s facebook page to see if she’s changed her relationship status, that we forget to stop and take care of the important things.  There are people around us who need a word of encouragement.  There are those we know in need of prayer.  There is someone who needs to hear about Jesus.  There are words of love that need to be spoken.

Ecclesiastes 3 says, 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:  2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,  3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate,  a time for war and a time for peace.

May God help us always see clearly what is important and what is simply a distraction.

Chad

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The War Within

April 19th, 2010

On a walk this evening I saw a bird sitting on a bracket of a school bus.  The bracket held a couple mirrors.  The bird had somehow seen its reflection in the mirrors and decided that its reflection was another bird who had tried to move in on its territory.  The bird jumped and fluttered and pecked at the mirror.  Over and over again it attacked its own image.  It made me think about how often we are at war with ourselves.  I have all kinds of good intentions, but I notice I’m really good at sabotaging good intentions.  If good intentions were reality; I’d be slim, strong, and intelligent; our yard would be a showplace of flowers; and each blog post, sermon, and newsletter article would offer humorous yet truly insightful and inspirational teachings.  My intention is to lose weight, but I keep making poor choices about food.  I want to be athletic, but I heard I’ll need to get off the couch for that.  Intelligent?  Well, ok, there’s nothing I can do about that.  As for a showplace yard, most of you know I have a black thumb.  That’s right; I can kill a plastic plant.  The people at the local garden nursery call me “the Executioner.”  Every spring the new flowers added to our gardens are planted into “death row.”  At times I think I should just concrete over the whole yard and spray paint it green.

Sorry, I got a little side tracked there.  Like the bird, we are often at war with ourselves.  We want to be more faithful, but temptation pulls us away.   It can get to the point we wonder if we are slaves to sin…doomed to fail again and again.  We want to have a better devotional time, but we find ourselves easily distracted over the concerns of the day.  We hope to be a more loving and giving person, but we find that everyone else has decided to be more mean and selfish.  It’s like our New Year’s resolutions, we are full of good intentions, but reality sets in pretty quickly.  We find we are the same old person we tried to get away from.  In Romans 6 the Apostle Paul challenges us to recognize that through Christ we are set free from our captivity to sin.  …count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…  We don’t have to be at war with ourselves. By giving ourselves to God, repeatedly and unreservedly, we can find a new and deeper walk with Jesus Christ.  The choice is ours.  God calls us to quit warring and surrender ourselves to him.

Chad

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Is There a Monster Among Us?

April 16th, 2010

I remember my first time at Universal Studios in California as an exciting event.  There was this life-size statue of Frankenstein’s monster standing right outside the gate.  As you walked by it, it almost seemed real…in fact…it was.  Well, sort of.  The statue was actually a person in make up and costume with 3 inch platform boots.  Every once in a while, some unsuspecting tourist would stop and stare at the “statue”, only to have the statue suddenly lean down from its foot high pedestal and growl.  This caused the unsuspecting tourist to jump back and scream, much to the delight of those looking on.  Sometimes people would try to get a picture of them standing next to the monster, and find that right when the photographer said “Smile,” the monster would reach down and put his hand on the head and shoulder of the person standing near him.  It was all great fun….as long as you weren’t the one getting scared.  One family in particular sticks out in my mind.  There was a family with five or six children.  The monster waited until the mother was almost next to him, when he suddenly leaned out and gave his monstrous groan.  The mother screamed and jumped backwards, knocking three of her children to the ground.  The mother and children were so disturbed; they chose to leave the site.  They marched back to their car and left.

I was wondering if there are any times we chase people away from church.  In the May Pastor’s article I mention that there are many people who have left the church because of something that happened.  It’s been weeks since I’ve leaned forward and groaned like a monster at a visitor.  Visitors frequently tell me of the warm welcome they received from our members.  But I wonder, are there things we do, that keep people away?  Are we keeping people from experiencing the love and grace of God because of an attitude expressed in worship?  Are we selective in showing our appreciation to guests?  How can we better welcome and receive those who visit us, without compromising our commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  Most of you have heard that Fort Bragg will be expanding, and this will cause some growth in the Fuquay area.  Are we ready to be the welcoming family of Jesus to those who enter our doors?  I encourage you to pray for us as we seek to become the Body of Christ.

Chad

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Pirate Treasure Any One?

April 12th, 2010

Have you ever wanted to be a treasure hunter?  Exploring the dark dangerous places?  Is there an Indiana Jones inside you waiting to get out?  If you are screaming, “YES!” and you’re looking around for your fedora and whip, have I got a treat for you.  There is a group of like minded individuals who have taken the technology of GPS and the internet and combined it with the adventuresome spirit of a renegade seeker of antiquities – without the snakes, spiders, and barbaric natives.  This activity is called “geocaching”.   It’s a treasure hunt/easter egg hunt for people of all ages all around the world.  Whether you are in Fuquay Varina or Timbuktu there are caches to find.  All you need to do is log into www.geocaching.com choose where you want to go looking, choose a treasure and start the hunt.  Most caches have a sign in sheet, so you can add your name to the adventurers who found the treasure.  So looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon?  Go geocaching.  Going on vacation and want to make visiting a park a little more interesting?  Geocache.

Why post this?  Well, as summer is coming, lots of people are going to be looking for things to do.  Also, this year’s VBS will have a pirate-like theme.  So I’m hoping this gets people in the mood for helping out at Bible School.  So have fun.  And enjoy the day.

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, Rejoice

Chad

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