Mcbcwog

02/13/2019

Barren Shannon | Feb 12, 2019   My route to work is the same every morning. I pass the same landmarks. I see the same fields and the countless trees that line the road. Although the wildlife is ever-changing, I usually see a variation of squirrels, birds, cattle, horses, and even a pig every now an...

02/07/2019

BORROWED LIGHT

FEBRUARY 2019

Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors to the world. I’m putting you on a light stand – shine!
Matthew 5:14 –16 (The Message)

My grandfather is the pastor of a small church in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland. His church building is not fitted with high tech equipment and perfectly balanced sound systems. There is no electric keyboard, elaborate drum set or perfectly posed lighting staged for televised replays of the services. Instead, the ornate, cherry wood pulpit is aged and worn, with scratches etched into the podium table top from years of steady use. There’s a boxed fan to the left, intended to help cool the sanctuary in the heat of summer and a radiator to the right to warm congregants in winter. A piano, with keys that sound some notes slightly off pitch, anchors the space with reverent dignity while the voices of not quite a dozen members echo off the hollow walls. The seating is arranged in rows of hard, wooden pews and the brown walls are softened by the delicately colored intricacies of stain glass windows – each one a unique gallery of transparent art work through which the outside light of the sun filters.

I’ve been in his church a dozen times or so over the course of my lifetime. Some of our family’s yearly visits to see him (and my grandmother when she was alive) have overlapped a Sunday. Whenever the dates have aligned like this, we’ve gone to church. We’ve filed into the pious symmetry of history and faith that align within the narrow building and listen to my grandfather lead people whom he has served faithfully for nearly five decades.

There’s a warmth and simplicity (or maybe a warmth because of the simplicity) that quiets my soul and refreshes my heart.

I was just there this past Sunday, watching my eighty-nine-year-old grandfather play at the piano as the sun’s light danced through the multicolored stain glass windows. The light spilled in like a carefully crafted kaleidoscope. The colors – rich and deep – cascaded in even as my grandfather bellowed a hymn over the sparse congregation gathered that morning. The pattern would shift ever so slightly as the position of the sun changed outside, creating a pattern brand new and altogether different. I admired the diversity, beauty, and creativity of the borrowed light of the sun, reflecting through the unique individuality of the windows’ prisms.

Uniqueness is what made them beautiful.

Your uniqueness is what makes you beautiful.

Each of us – you and me and everyone else – is designed intentionally individual. We are each designed with intricacies in our physicality and personality that are divinely crafted to become a prism through which the brilliant glory of God is displayed, splashing His glory across every corner of the globe. Our individual lives and every aspect of it are fingerprints, so distinct and diverse that they cannot be duplicated and should not be despised. Not by us or by anyone else. For we have been “fearfully and wonderfully made” inside and out. Just like a stain glass window in an old, holy sanctuary, each life has been designed to be a filter through which the light of our God can make its unmistakable mark on the world. The unique bents, interests, ideas, experiences and expressions of each gender and of every culture reflect and display a kaleidoscope of His beauty to those with whom we cross paths. Even our weaknesses and frailties, brokenness and imperfections become part of the testimony.

Thankfully. Miraculously. He uses it all – making each nuance of our lives a prism for His light to shine through.

The more we settle into our individuality – celebrating it, enjoying it, accepting it and allowing God’s Spirit to transform and illumine it – we become, by His grace, a conduit of His light and love to the world. When we are tempted to conform to the pressure of peers and the mundane boredom of sameness, we quiet our God-given uniqueness until it is barely noticeable. We rob the world of the mark God intended to make through us. Just like an intricately designed stain glass window, no aspect of our creation is a mistake or unintended detail. Even tiny cracks and fissures, evidence of age and toll, become part of the unique reflection. It was created – you were created – and intended to display the light of God that shines with distinction the only way that it can through you.

Stop dulling your uniqueness, sister friend. Comparing and competing as if you do not bear the image of God. Resist the urge to quiet your individuality and blend in. You weren’t made for that. Even the sharpest curves and roughest edges of your past and present can reflect Him in a breathtaking way to those around you.

Determine to be a holy display of His light – borrowed and then expressed through the beauty of your uniquely created, spectacularly distinct life.

Amen.

02/06/2019

09/15/2018

02/26/2018

Provider

The wedding was moving. The guests were celebrating…but the wine was gone. Back then, wine was to a wedding what cake is to a wedding today. Can you imagine a wedding without cake? They couldn’t imagine a wedding without wine. To offer wine was to show respect to your guests. Not to offer wine at a wedding was an insult.
What Mary faced was a social problem. A foul-up. A snafu. A calamity on the common scale. No need to call 911, but no way to sweep the embarrassment under the rug, either.

When you think about it, most of the problems we face are of the same caliber. Seldom do we have to deal with dilemmas of national scale or world conflict. Seldom do our crises rock the Richter scale. Usually the waves we ride are made by pebbles, not boulders. We’re late for a meeting. We leave something at the office. A coworker forgets a report. Mail gets lost. Traffic gets snarled. The waves rocking our lives are not life-threatening yet. But they can be. A poor response to a simple problem can light a fuse. What begins as a snowflake can snowball into an avalanche unless proper care is taken.
For that reason you might want to note how Mary reacted. Her solution poses a practical plan for untangling life’s knots. “They have no more wine,” she told Jesus (John 2:3, NCV). That’s it. That’s all she said. She didn’t go ballistic. She simply assessed the problem and gave it to Christ.

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved,” John Dewey said. Mary would have liked that, for that’s what she did. She defined the problem.

She could have exploded: “Why didn’t you plan better? There’s not enough wine! Whose fault is this anyway? You guys never do anything right. If anything is to be done right around here I have to do it myself!”

Or she could have imploded: “This is my fault. I failed. I’m to blame. I deserve it. If only I’d majored in culinary art. I’m a failure in life. Go ahead; do the world a favor. Tie me up and march me to the gallows. I deserve it.”

It’s so easy to focus on everything but the solution. Mary didn’t do that. She simply looked at the knot, assessed it, and took it to the right person. “I’ve got one here I can’t untie, Jesus.”

“When all the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine’” (John 2:3, NCV).

Please note, she took the problem to Jesus before she took it to anyone else. A friend told me about a tense deacons’ meeting he attended. Apparently there was more agitation than agreement, and after a lengthy discussion, someone suggested, “Why don’t we pray about it?” to which another questioned, “Has it come to that?”

What causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first? I can think of two reasons: feelings of independence and feelings of insignificance.

Sometimes we’re independent. We begin to think we are big enough to solve our own problems…

Other times we don’t feel independent; we feel insignificant. We think, “Sure, Mary can take her problems to Jesus. She’s his mother. He doesn’t want to hear my problems. Besides, He’s got famine and the Mafia to deal with. I don’t want to trouble Him with my messes.”

If that is your thought, may I share with you a favorite verse of mine? (Of course I can, I’m writing the book!) I like it so much I wrote it on the first page of my Bible.

“Because he delights in me, he saved me” (Ps. 18:19, NCV).

And you thought He saved you because of your decency. You thought He saved you because of your good works or good attitude or good looks. Sorry. If that were the case, your salvation would be lost when your voice went south or your works got weak. There are many reasons God saves you: to bring glory to Himself, to appease His justice, to demonstrate His sovereignty. But one of the sweetest reasons God saved you is because He is fond of you. He likes having you around. He thinks you are the best thing to come down the pike in quite awhile. “As a man rejoices over his new wife, so your God will rejoice over you” (Isa. 62:5, NCV).

IMAGE_ALT
Excerpt from
Jesus
by Max Lucado

New + Only at LifeWay

© 2018. Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission.

02/18/2018

Creator

He chose to create.

“In the beginning God created…"

With one decision, history began. Existence became measurable.

Out of nothing came light.

Out of light came day.

Then came sky…and earth.

And on this earth? A mighty hand went to work.

Canyons were carved. Oceans were dug. Mountains erupted out of flatlands. Stars were flung. A universe sparkled.

Our sun became just one of millions. Our galaxy became just one of thousands. Planets invisibly tethered to suns roared through space at breakneck speeds. Stars blazed with heat that could melt our planet in seconds.

The hand behind it was mighty. He is mighty.

And with this might, He created. As naturally as a bird sings and a fish swims, He created. Just as an artist can’t not paint and a runner can’t not run, He couldn’t not create. He was the Creator. Through and through, He was the Creator. A tireless dreamer and designer.

From the pallet of the Ageless Artist came inimitable splendors. Before there was a person to see it, His creation was pregnant with wonder. Flowers didn’t just grow; they blossomed. Chicks weren’t just born; they hatched. Salmons didn’t just swim; they leaped.

Mundaneness found no home in His universe.

He must have loved it. Creators relish creating. I’m sure His commands were delightful! “Hippo, you won’t walk…you’ll waddle!” “Hyena, a bark is too plain. Let me show you how to laugh!” “Look, raccoon, I’ve made you a mask!” “Come here, giraffe, let’s stretch that neck a bit.” And on and on He went. Giving the clouds their puff. Giving the oceans their blue. Giving the trees their sway. Giving the frogs their leap and croak. The mighty wed with the creative, and creation was born.

He was mighty. He was creative.

And He was love. Even greater than His might and deeper than his creativity was one all-consuming characteristic: Love.

Water must be wet. A fire must be hot. You can’t take the wet out of water and still have water. You can’t take the heat out of fire and still have fire.

In the same way, you can’t take the love out of this One who lived before time and still have Him exist. For He was…and is…Love.

Probe deep within Him. Explore every corner. Search every angle. Love is all you find. Go to the beginning of every decision He has made and you’ll find it. Go to the end of every story He has told and you’ll see it.

Love.

No bitterness. No evil. No cruelty. Just love. Flawless love. Passionate love. Vast and pure love. He is love.

As a result, an elephant has a trunk with which to drink. A kitten has a mother from which to nurse. A bird has a nest in which to sleep. The same God who was mighty enough to carve out the canyon is tender enough to put hair on the legs of the Matterhorn fly to keep it warm. The same force that provides symmetry to the planets guides the baby kangaroo to its mother’s pouch before the mother knows it is born.

And because of who He was, He did what He did.

He created a paradise. A sinless sanctuary. A haven before fear. A home before there was a human dweller. No time. No death. No hurt. A gift built by God for His ultimate creation. And when He was through, He knew “it was very good.”

But it wasn’t enough.

His greatest work hadn’t been completed. One final masterpiece was needed before He would stop.

Look to the canyons to see the Creator’s splendor. Touch the flowers and see His delicacy. Listen to the thunder and hear His power. But gaze on this—the zenith—and witness all three…and more.

Imagine with me what may have taken place on that day.

01/29/2018

4 Life Lessons From the Disciples' Calling

In mentoring our role isn’t to call every person to give up his or her job; God doesn’t call everyone to full-time ministry. However, He demands first place in our lives. The first commandment makes that clear: anything that keeps us from wholeheartedly serving God is an idol that must be forsaken (see Ex. 20:3). In the mentoring process we’re called to make God the priority of our lives and to lead others to do the same.

In the last stage of the disciples’ calling, Jesus chose twelve men to be apostles, a word that means “ones sent with a message.” These were the disciples Jesus would most closely mentor:

During those days he went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God. When daylight came, he summoned his disciples, and he chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles (Luke 6:12-13, CSB).

We can learn a lot from Jesus’ choosing the Twelve.

1. Jesus prayed—all night long, in fact. From His larger group of followers, Jesus then selected His mentees. Prayer is an important part of the mentoring process because we want to invest in the people God selects for us. He might direct us in prayer to people who surprise us—mentees we had never considered.

2. Jesus initiated the relationship. He didn’t wait for mentees to come to Him. He intentionally sought the men who would walk most closely with Him.

3. Jesus selected ordinary men. They weren’t religious leaders or trained teachers. Rather, they were uneducated and unknown.

4. Jesus called His disciples for a purpose. He would send them out, and they would carry His message throughout the Roman Empire. Mentoring would result in ministry and mission.

01/22/2018

4 Important Questions We Should Ask

I love sports. But here is a sporting experience I would never want to have. Imagine being thrown into a game without knowing when it started, when it will finish, what the objective of the game is, or what the rules are. What would you do? You would probably ask the other players around you to answer those four questions for you.

What if they responded with many different answers? Or what if they simply carried on playing, uninterested in your questions and looking at you oddly for asking them? Next you would look to a coach for help, but what if the coach was standing there looking at the chaos and yelling, “Great job, guys! You’re all doing great! Keep going! We’ve got a first-place trophy waiting for all of you!”

Now imagine the conversations about the game on the drive home. They would be completely meaningless. It is our knowledge of the start, the finish, the objective, and the rules of a game that provides us with the freedom to play it and enjoy it in a meaningful way.

Sadly, this is not just a game; this is a reality for many who are struggling to live a meaningful life in our culture. As a society, we are losing the answers to these four crucial questions.

1. ORIGIN: Where did I come from?
2. MEANING: Why am I here?
3. MORALITY: How should I live?
4. DESTINY: Where am I going?

Your answers to those four fundamental questions form the basis of your worldview—the lens through which you experience and interpret the world around you, which therefore influences the way you choose to live.

We all need answers to the deepest questions of life. Our aim in Jesus Among Secular Gods is to put Christianity alongside the other major ways of seeing the world, in a respectful way, so that people can make an informed decision about what to believe and how to live.

01/15/2018

http://www.joshuastraub.com/2018/01/08/5-ways-prioritize-family-2018/

01/10/2018

January begins the new year! New goals are set, and new groups are started! So here are some tips and encouragement to help your group start off the new year with some fireworks! Look for simple, fun ways to meet your new group and help them get to know one another. Creative questions and icebreaker...

01/08/2018

Jesus Is Our Ultimate Prize

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!

Ephesians 2:4-5

People will do almost anything when something threatens what they cherish. God so patiently delivered me from this type of entanglement. My freedom didn’t come as a result of God giving me everything I wanted and was jealous for—I know you’re surprised. Rather it came in discovering that everything I truly longed for was found in Jesus and His provision for me. God’s words in Scripture absolutely brought healing and transformation to me and will do the same for you. His words will meet you where you are, and your story of deliverance will be uniquely yours.

We used to be people who were “carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts” (Eph. 2:3). This was before our old nature was put to death with Christ when we believed in Him as our Savior. While a spiritual battle is still active within us, we’re no longer controlled by our cravings and lusts. We’re no longer bound to jealousy and revenge and bitterness when we don’t get what we want, when we are mistreated, or when we experience loss. Why? Because Jesus Christ is our ultimate prize, and the far lesser things that vie for our attention are nothing compared to who He is and what He can do for us.

We don’t always feel as though our sinful nature has been crucified, nor do we always feel raised up and alive in Christ, as Paul stated in Ephesians 2. But these are true realities for those who know Christ as Savior. As believers, claim the truths of Scripture even when you don’t feel them. No matter your wounds or unmet longings.

Excerpt from
No Other Gods (Revised & Updated) Bible Study
by Kelly Minter.

© 2017. LifeWay Christian Resources.
Used by permission.