One Thing Remains the Same

Watching the news accounts the last few days; the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson... I started feeling old, thinking back over 50 years and the changes in the world in that time. In my reflections, I thought about how I've now been serving Jesus for 28 years and this song came to mind. No matter what else changes, my love for Jesus will always be the same. Well, maybe not, because my love for Jesus is even stronger today than it was back then.

A Re-post

A conversation at church last night brought to remembrance something I blogged about a couple of years ago. I came home and looked it up and decided to re-post it. This is from April 7, 2006.

God Smacks Me Upside the Head This Morning

I just got around to reading Rick Warren’s “Ministry Tool Box” for this week, and I found an article that just smacked me right between the eyes. What is funny is I have talked about some of these very things he mentions, but somehow hearing the words come from someone else… well, it was like the Holy Spirit just turned up the volume and it really sank into me.

The article is titled: “How To Recognize Spiritual Receptivity In Your Community.” In it, Warren starts out by saying: “Pastor, you’re surrounded by dirt. To be more precise, you’re surrounded by soil – all kinds of soil. In your community, you have people who are ready to respond to the Gospel and people who aren’t. Your job is to isolate the good soil and plant your seed there.”

He uses the parable Jesus told of the Sower and the Soil to show how some people are open to receiving the Gospel message and others are not.
He stresses that to maximize the effectiveness of our ministry we must focus our efforts on the good soil.
He states, “No farmer in his right mind would waste seed, a precious commodity, on infertile ground that won’t produce a crop.”
But isn’t that what we usually do in the church?
We spend our time, week after week, month after month, year after year trying to coax the same people back into the church that they keep drifting away from. We think we are being good pastors and shepherds… but in reality, we are not. Rather than bringing in a harvest, we are consumed with recycling the same tares over and over.

A statement Warren made in this article that gripped the spirit within me was this: “It usually takes about five times more energy to reactivate a disgruntled or carnal member than it does to win a receptive unbeliever.”

He goes on to say:

“I believe God has called pastors to catch fish and feed sheep – not corral goats! The truth is that some of your inactive members probably need to join somewhere else for a number of reasons. Growing churches focus on reaching receptive people. Non-growing churches focus on re-enlisting inactive people.”

I have been sitting here thinking about the church where I pastor, and I have to confess, most of our efforts (that means me first and foremost) have been on the “wrong soil.”
I have wasted countless hours (months!) trying to corral goats.
Hours are spent each week trying to chase down those that have missed that week, the week before and who show up once a month. (Read the previous article on this blog)

I believe the Holy Spirit has been dealing with me about this for the past few months, and the conversation yesterday which led to my last blog post and this article I read this morning by Pastor Warren have served as the catalyst I needed to get out of the field full of the wrong soil and to start sowing the seed into soil which is receptive to the seed and to reap that harvest.

I will close this with one more quote from Warren’s article: “The message of Christ is too important to waste time, money, and energy on non-productive methods and soil.”

Posted by Darrell at Friday, April 07, 2006

One Step From State Run Television?

OK, we all know that the mainstream media was in the bag for Obama during the election, but this latest maneuver is going WAY over the top. The ABC network has decided to run a prime time program which will allow Obama to promote his government run health care plan to America. ABC refuses to allow a Republican counter opinion, even refusing to allow paid commercials which oppose the Obama plan.
Folks, this is pretty darn close to a state run television such as we have been seeing in Iran. ABC is clearly siding with the Obama camp. A quick fact check shows that since Obama has taken office, ABC's World News and Good Morning America have aired stories that have featured Obama or supporters of his health care plan 55 times, whereas they have only had 18 appearances by those who opposed his plan. (BMI)

The show will be a question and answer type program, which sounds fair, but the fact is, ABC admits that they have already preselected which questions will be asked. Still, ABC claims the program will be a fair and balanced look at the President's plan. This is not a Presidential address which will be aired on all networks and allowing an opposing opinion to be aired. No, this is a blatant attempt to sway gullible, uninformed Americans toward a disastrous health care plan which will cost tax payers more than 1 Trillion dollars and will absolutely strip Americans of choice of health care providers and take us into socialized medical care. If you have not taken a good look at what socialized health care will do to America, you need to do so now, not later. It only takes a cursory look at the Canadian health care system and you will find, for example, that a simple procedure that a 30 minute out-patient proceedure that you can go to your doctor and have the procedure scheduled and performed in about one month here in America, will place you on a waiting list under the Canadian plan, that if you are lucky, you will have done in about 3 years. This is what socialized medicine does. The only way the government can control costs under a socialized plan is to limit the number of procedures done per year, thus creating the long waiting lists. Why do you think Canadians regularly slip into the United States for medical care? Socialized medicine just does not work. But here we are in 2009 under the Obama administration, not crawling toward socialism, but running at break-neck speed toward becoming a socialist nation. In 6 months we have seen the government taking over the auto industry, most of the banking, trying to take over insurance and much more that I don't have time to go into.

America, wake up. Our freedoms are eroding faster than the soil on the bank of a flooded river. ABC is manipulating people and this upcoming broadcast is absolutely wrong. I hope people will begin to boycott the advertisers of ABC. This is the only voice we have, to pull our dollars from companies who back this nonesense.

Stop Complaining!

The following is adapted from something an friend emailed to me. Like so many things forwarded around the net, the original author is unknown, but I liked this and made a few adaptions.

"Do all things without complaining..." Philippians 2:14 NKJV

If somebody were to give you a dollar every time you complained and you had to give one to them every time you showed gratitude, would you be rich or poor?
Many of us would say, "If you had my problems you'd complain too."
The Bible says: "Do all things without complaining," because the more you complain the worse things get.

Some things we need to take notice of:
(1) Complaining is addictive.
The cycle goes: You've a problem; you complain and remain stuck in it; you feel bad, so you complain even more and you end up with stress, not solutions. How foolish is that?

(2) Complaining robs you of God's blessing.
Instead of committing it to God, you're doubting His wisdom and His provision. God put 23,000 Israelites to death for doing that.
"Do not grumble, as some of them did - and were killed...These things...were written down as warnings for us..." (1 Cor 10:10-11 NIV).
Don't just check your attitude, change it!

(3) Complaining affects your health.
"A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body..." (Pr 14:30 AMP).
Be honest, how many calm, undisturbed complainers do you know? Instead of complaining, work on your attitude. Start counting your blessings.
A wise man once said, "I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

Consider what author Barbara Johnston speaks about: "A hand-lettered sign nailed to a telephone pole said, 'Lost dog with three legs, blind in left eye, missing right ear, tail broken, and recently castrated. Answers to the name of Lucky.'"
The Bible says: "In everything (notice, it doesn't say for everything, but in everything) give thanks; for this is the will of God" (1 Thes 5:18 NKJV).

Emotional Roller-Coaster

Just a short blog today. My family and I have been on vacation for the past week. We've been to Gettysburg, New York City, Philadelphia and we are wrapping up the whirlwind tour yesterday and today in Washington D.C.. It has been an interesting trip. As we've visited these places, I've laughed, cried, rejoiced and gotten mad. My heart just ached as I saw the unbelieveable amounts of homeless sleeping in the streets and subways. I could not hold back the tears when I witnessed a woman take an entire meal and throw it in the trash because her daughter changed her mind about what she wanted, so she went and got her another meal. As soon as she walked away from that trash can, a man reached down into it trying to retrieve the burger and fries that had spilled out into the trash. My emotions just went out of control and I found myself wishing I was wealthy so that I could help these people. Last night as we walked back from the Washington Monument, we passed dozens of homeless people making their place to sleep on the sidewalk, within eye sight of the White House, the Capitol Building and our nations monuments. I'm thinking, "Something is wrong with this picture!" I wept as I saw a mother covering her small children as they lay down on the concrete sidewalk across the street from a 5 Star Hotel. It was just gut wrenching. Living in Galesburg, I have encounters with homeless folk, but not on this level. I could go on and on about all the homeless, there just are not enough words to express what I am feeling.

Actually, as I sat down to write this blog, I had no intention of writing any of the above, but I wanted to talk about an experience while touring one of the American History Museums yesterday. We saw so much that was interesting, even fascinating; but as we turned one corner, there was some of the wreckage of the World Trade Center, and a display set up telling of that fateful day of 9-11. As I stood there and looked at the twisted metal, I began to feel sick to my stomach and then anger welled up in me and then I began to choke up and I had to fight back tears. Looking at these images with my wife and kids, who are now almost 19 and 16, all of the emotions I felt almost 8 years ago resurfaced. I experienced the heart break all over again as in my mind I watched my then little boys body tremble and shake as he stood before the television sobbing uncontrollably and he fell into my arms and said, "Daddy, I didn't know people could be so cruel." That day, my little boy lost his innocence. He's never been the same. Neither have I, nor any of us here in America. As we've toured the various sights and gone through the tight security at so many, I've said several times, "This is what the terrorists wanted. They've won." They have stripped us of something that will never be returned.

It Just Breaks My Heart

OK, so I'm talking with someone today whose life is really a mess. I mean messed up. This person has known Christ before. In fact, she had a powerful walk with God at one time. Somewhere along the line she started making some bad choices, one after until now the cords of her life have unraveled and her life today would not even pass for a shadow of what it once was. She's bound by addictions, had several broken relationships, divorced, now a single mom and she can hardly take care of her children because of her drug use. A once beautiful young woman has been ravaged by her drug use and hard living and she looks much older than she is. I could go on, but suffice it to say, her life is literally in ruins. And today I run into her and we talked. She was fairly honest about her life, not completely, but fairly honest. I confronted her with the fact that she was leaving out, and while obviously miffed, she acknowledged what I was saying was true. So I just asked what to me was the obvious question: "Why are you doing this?" Her response took me a bit off guard. She said, "I'm just enjoying life for awhile and then I'll come back to church." I told her that I nor God was particularly worried about her "coming back to church" but rather her coming back to Jesus. She replied that when she was done having her fun, she'd make her peace with God. I sat there, stunned, for a little bit and I asked her if she was really having fun. I asked her if it was really fun to have STD's? Is it really fun to live with one guy after another and parading men in and out of her children's lives? Is it fun to have to do anything and everything to get the drugs she needed? Is it fun to look in the mirror and see her beauty fading away?
There were several other questions I added to this list, but you get the idea. She looked at me with cold, empty eyes and told me that I was just jealous of the freedom that she had. I left her shortly after that, and as I walked away, I was thinking, "they exchanged the truth for a lie" (Romans 1:25) How truly sad. This young lady really does not see the truth anymore. I don't believe she see's the dullness of her skin, eyes and hair. She is not able to see that no respectable man really wants anything to do with a woman like her as she is. And I know she has no clue that she has taken the devils bait and swallowed it hook, line and sinker and she has chosen to make her dwelling in the pig pen and she does not even recognize where she is. All day I have just been stunned at the choices this woman willingly makes, and I wonder, how will she fell defend herself as she stands before the Lord and all she will be able to say is, " I just wanted to have fun." I pray before that great and terrible day she wakes up and gives her heart back to Jesus. I pray she has that chance. I'm just beside myself tonight, wondering, how in the world does someone, anyone, drift so far away from God that they honestly think they are having fun when their life is being stolen from them?

What's Your Price?

I recently read a story of how there was a huge portion of land in the northern part of Australia that once belonged to the Aborigines, who are a very superstitious people. Apparently that land was absolutely covered with massive amounts green ants. The Aborigine people believed that those green ants were sacred descendants of their pagan gods, so they would not harm the ants. In the early 1970's a mining company discovered huge deposits of uranium in that region, and they approached the Aborigines about purchasing that land and mining the uranium. The Aborigines refused, explaining that if the mining company destroyed the land of the sacred green ants, that their gods would place a curse upon them and that they would face years of drought and famine.

Guess what happened?
In 1974, they ended up selling the land to the mining companies.
Do you know what changed their minds?
8.3 million dollars!
Someone said, “They may be gods, but for 8.3 million they can find another place to live!”

When I read this story, it got me to thinking, at what price are my convictions (or your convictions) for sale?
I can tell you, I have known a lot of Christians who have sold out for a lot less than 8 million dollars. Some sold out for a few minutes of sex. Some have sold out for a little bit more on their tax return. Some have sold out for recognition. I could go on and on, but I just wanted to pose the question today for us to think about: At what price are your convictions for sale?

Just for laughs

No need for explanations. Enjoy.