Jim Barnes - Sharing my Faith

02/25/2024

01/06/2024

Providers said demand for services in the area has more than doubled, citing the cold and lack of available shelter space. They fear this winter could be deadly.

12/31/2023

Sunday morning worship 12/31/2023

10/08/2023

Sunday morning worship 10/8/2023

07/01/2020

Let's start at the beginning. In the beginning was God, nothing else. just God filled to brimming over with love and life. In fact, He was so filled with all this love and life that He could no longer hold it in. He had to let it come out. Have you ever felt like that? So filled with life, joy energy, excitement, love that you couldn't hold it in any longer. So what did you do? Chances are the first point of outlet for all that was your mouth. You had to squeal, shout, say something. Well, according to the first book in the Bible, Genesis, God wasn't a whole lot different. He opened His mouth and out of it began to flow all the pent up life and love. And when all that life and love got loose and got to work, behold, creation. It just naturally wanted to make something, something big, something beautiful, something that makes all that love and life visible, something to knock your eyes out.
Among the millions of shinning little things filling up that open space, he makes what we call a world. Included in this "world" is a source of energy, heat and light, surrounded be very meticulously placed planets. Among those planets, at precisely the right spot, He places the earth, carefully arranged to get exactly the right amount of heat, light and all the other chemical, biological, physical and environment elements to provide the perfect place for the most precious thing He has to let loose, not just any old life, but His life, just the way it was inside of Him. The further He went with this creation, the more excited and remarkably creative He got. Until, finally He got close to completion. He needed to come up with a creature that would have the same excitement, the same joy, the same love that He had when He looked at what He had created and thought, "That's Good." He needed a creature that could be His personal representative, perhaps even look and act a bit like Him in the midst of all this creation, to be on site to help Him to keep it "Good." So with great care He scooped up a big handful of all the materials He had made the creation out of (dirt) and began to form it, ever so carefully, with His own hands, into a human being. The more He formed, the more of His own loving perfection He put into this special human creature. When all the incredibly delicate, perfectly balanced systems that made up this human creature were done to His liking, He breathed a last full measure of His love into it's nostrils and behold, it sprang to life. In utter delight, God looked on His human creature in the midst of all His creation and said, "It is VERY GOOD!"
Then I turned on the TV news, scratched my head vigorously and said, "What on earth happened?" More to come.

06/29/2020

Not uncharacteristically, God is up to something here in His beautiful state of Maine. In the course of looking for help for an aging couple in the area who are struggling with health problems and loss of housing, God has moved me to a delightful little apartment in a "Retirement Living" place, where I will be able to continue ministering to the couple as a neighbor. Meanwhile the "Retirement Living" community I'm living in is populated by a lot of "old fogies" like myself who have been looking for someone who could help them get a little closer to the Lord. So God has provided us with a small chapel here, where we can gather for worship, prayer and the Word on His day, and begin to form a little Kingdom outpost here.
We have spoken a lot about how God in the "heavenly realms" and his people here on earth communicate with each other. We have seen how God is so eager for such communication that He has come, himself, among us, or, from time to time, has lifted one of us up, briefly, to chat with Him there. We have also talked about how He moves His troops around here on earth as needed to carry out His battle plans.
Such seems to be happening here right now. God has heard the prayers of His faithful here for help. In response, He has deployed one old soldier He has been preparing to provide exactly the help that was needed..
One of the things He has taught and is teaching me in the process is discipline. As one English poet puts it, "nor harsh, nor grating but with ample power to chasten and subdue." It reminds me of a time as a very young man when I was in great need of discipline. I was called on the carpet by a Sunday School teacher who said to me very sternly, "the Bible says you must "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." She was referring to a passage from the Apostle Paul's letter to the believers at Philippi. Only the part of the passage that was quoted to me was only the first half of the sentence, and by itself it sounded grim and frightening to me. It conjured up a picture in my young mind of an angry God, hovering over me, checking everything I did, ready to pounce at the first misstep. As I got a little closer to God, I found that the words "fear and trembling" could also have been translated "awe and reverence". That in His great love for us, God wanted to remind us how serious the matter of our salvation was to Him, That He needed us to understand how it grieved His heart when we chose to walk away from Him.
As a matter of fact, the passage the Teacher was quoting to me doesn't end with the "fear and trembling" admonition, but goes on the say, "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.'' Can you see what a difference it makes when you add that part? God saw our "fear and trembling" before we even felt it. He had already worked our salvation into us before He told us to work it out. He knew our tendency to keep that salvation hidden down inside us, buried under fear and guilt and a penchant for "having a little fun." Jesus died on that cross to accomplish our salvation, and then He rose, victorious over death, and came back to plant it in us firmly, if we would have it. For we who have believed in Jesus, our salvation is in there, planted firmly. No one can take it out, but we can throw it away, or we can let it come out to the surface, in the way we chose to live, where all the world can see "His good purpose."

06/21/2020

In his letter in the New Testament called Galatians, the Apostle Paul presents us with two very distinct ways of living. It seems to be his contention that when all the different lifestyle possibilities are boiled down to the basics, these are the only choices left - live by the flesh, or live by the Spirit. Living by the flesh, Paul tells us, is letting your actions, choices, decisions be guided by whatever your mind, your body and you emotions tell you. Living by the Spirit Paul defines as scrapping those three sources of direction, and letting your actions, choices and decisions be guided by God alone. You might well ask, how on earth does that work, taking your directions only from God? I believe Paul would say, before you take any action, choice or decision you check with God and do only what He tells you.
Wouldn't that be pretty awkward? It could sure slow down the decision making process a whole lot. I would agree. In fact I would warn you not to try this at home without practice and a little help from someone who has been there and done that. There are three main ways I know of getting your orders from God and they are: 1) getting to know well who He is and what He's done through God's own Word, the Bible (if you think what's written in the Bible originated with the guys whose names are on the books, you haven't read through it carefully enough to recognize that it's all written by the same author); 2) spending a good chunk of time every day with Him yourself - opening up your unbelief, your doubts, whatever you have against Him right to Him, challenge Him to mess with your heart, draw you toward Him, wait in silence for Him to find a way to get through to you; 3) talking and listening to some folks who are already strongly biased in His favor, folks who are already close to Him.
In the 5th chapter of that letter to the believers in Galatia, Paul lays out a bunch of the ultimate results of "living by the flesh" Those of you who have spent a few years in the flesh-directed life style will probably recognize them. In contrast Paul then describes the ultimate results of "living by the spirit" - "fruit of the spirit" he calls it. There are nine of them: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Now I challenge you to try to produce any of those in your own life, by your own power. It would be kind of like an apple tree grunting and groaning to push out apples. No, like the apple tree, we can only get our roots down deep in the soil of God's Word and God's people, lift up and spread out our hearts and hands to the Son, who shines His love and pours out His life to nourish us, and the fruit will start growing out of us on its own to provide nourishment for many.
I pray that the longer you wrestle with the choice to "live by the flesh" or to "live by the spirit" the quicker you will discover the wonder and beauty of love, joy, peace, patience kindness faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in your life.