Heart Scan

This is a Journal entry from our Church website…

“I’m going to write on something other than our reading today. I’m sitting here in my office, drinking a cup of coffee and reading my Bible. At the same time my heart is hurting for this church. It is during tough times that you see the character of a person. When things go well, we tend to have good attitudes; however, when things are difficult our true colors will shine through. I want to point us to a part of scripture that Paul talks about his time of weakness. In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 he writes, “But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” What Paul is saying is that he is strongest when he’s at his weakest because he is relying on God’s strength, not his own.”

“Don’t you think that should be our attitude as well? Rejoice in budget cuts? YES!!!! Rejoice in having no pastor? YES!!!!! Rejoice in people leaving the church? YES!!!! Do I believe that at this moment our church is boasting in our weaknesses? No I don’t. Why can Paul do it and we can’t? The truth is we can do exactly what Paul is doing. Our attitude can be the same as Paul’s. The reason it’s not is because we don’t believe God’s grace is sufficient. For the most part we are a church who can talk about God, but we have no idea who He is. We are a people who wallow in our weakness instead of a people who rejoice in it. We have become people who pray because we are in trouble, but we failed to seek God when things were going well. I’ve heard a number of people say that “we need God to intervene so that we can get back to where we used to be.” MAYBE GOD ALREADY INTERVENED BECAUSE HE DOESN’T WANT US TO BE WHAT WE USED TO BE…Just maybe God wants us to be weak…. Maybe God wants our weakness so that we no longer rely on our own strength in abilities, but instead Christ’s power rests on us.”

“Do we want to be a strong, healthy church? I do. If so, we need to embrace the fact that we are weak, because when we are weak, we are strong. If people want to leave because of hardships, God bless them, God has something in store for those who stick it out, those of us who aren’t ashamed of our inability, but who are confident in God’s ability. We do need God to rescue us as a church, but it’s not from finances or anything else. We need God to rescue us from ourselves. When we move out of God’s way we will see amazing things happen. We are seeing amazing things happen now in certain areas of this church. We have potential of being a great church. I don’t mean a big church or a wealthy church, but a great church. Great churches are churches who are focused on God and God alone, who are constantly in the community serving those around them, who are humble enough to admit their inadequacies and allow God’s power to carry them. Do we want to be that? I hope so.” (From “Daily Connection Journal” Shane Collins)

I do have one problem with this journal entry…I didn’t write it.
May God bless Grace & allow us to be worthy of His blessings.

Vern

Running

(Question) “Is it a common thing to have a passive Christian that knows what he needs to do, he knows he needs to fight the good fight of faith against the devil but he doesn’t fight enough because he becomes passive lazy? I find myself fighting passivity on a regular basis.”


I wish it wasn’t, but it is very common. It happens to a lot of Christians. It’s cool you brought up “fighting the good fight” a well known quote of Paul, a man who though he was a strong apostle he had his times of struggle as in Romans 7, like all Christians do. But Paul also told us how to stay strong in our faith & how not to grow weary & lazy in doing good. “…run in such a way as to get the prize.” (1 Corinthians 9:24) Paul tells us to run to win. Often we just run with no true goal in mind…we’re just out there running. I found out once that running is not my thing; I was a random runner & also realized that if you run a mile away from the house, it’s also a mile back. Who knew? But we often accept Christ like that, & then we get lazy in what it takes to grow & see it as being hard & loose focus on that prize.

Now Paul goes on to tell us that, “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training”. Look at it this way, when a person is training for a race, he has to eat right & exercise, if he didn’t eat well & he gorged out on junk food & didn’t exercise at all or just half way did it when he did, then he would feel bad physically & would feel more like laying around watch TV than running a race. It’s the same thing with us spiritually. When we don’t read our Bible & spend time in pray or maybe we do but half way do it, then we get spiritually lazy, which in turn often causes us to get physically lazy as well. As Christians we have to be strict in our training, to run the race of the Christian life.

So it often comes down to us having to get with God, & like David, ask Him to search our hearts & show us where we are & then get back to where we need to be with Him to be able to run that race properly. It takes Bible study & prayer for us to grow…the closer we get to God, the more He will teach us, the more He will use us & the more we will be able to run this race through Him & win.




Vern

Jim's Truck

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

(2 Corinthians 5:17)

Jim had an old beat up truck that he worked on constantly…it seemed like he worked on it more than he drove it. Jim had this truck for years, it was old and worn out when he got it, and seemed destined to stay that way, no matter how much time he poured into it. 

Jim took this old truck touched it up with some paint, put new seat covers on the old ripped up seats, replaced the tires and rims…but the motor was shot and Jim just didn’t have the money to replace it. No matter how much Jim fixed it up on the outside, the truck was still a problem and he had to keep on spending most of  his Saturdays as a shade tree mechanic.

One Saturday morning Jim woke up to find his truck under the shade tree where he had left it the day before, planning to do some more patch work on the motor, but today the truck had some other parts sticking out from underneath the front end…it was the legs of his father who had just finished installing the new motor that Jim couldn’t afford to buy.
“Dad, I’m going to do everything I can to pay you back for that motor.” Jim said. His father just smiled and said, “Son I didn’t purchase this motor expecting you to pay me back, I purchased this motor as a gift because I love you and because I could.” Jim hopped in the truck started it up, he and his father took her for a test drive, the truck was just like new.

When we come to Christ, we can’t fix and repair our old nature…but it does become just that…our old nature. No matter how much we fix ourselves up on the outside we can’t be new until our spirit, is replaced with a new one, the Holy Spirit, then and only then can we become a “new creature” in Jesus Christ.
It’s not improving on the old nature, but living in the new one.

Vern