We just had the awesome opportunity to visit Pastor Cam and his family up in Lakewood, Washington and hear about the ministry of Calvary South Sound. Here you can watch our interview and learn more about what has been happening in the church and how you can be praying for this wonderful family and their ministry in Washington state.
We live in a culture of instant gratification. We want new, and we want it now. I remember being told many times that patience is a virtue. Maybe it’s a virtue we’ve lost. I know that I can speak for my generation when I say that we want to get results fast. We’ve got streaming video, constantly updating facebook, instagram, and twitter feeds. Our smartphones keep us in touch with the now, and we like it that way. We want the body of action hero’s in the time it takes to microwave a tv dinner. Those things don’t go together.
Things take time. If you want to loose weight, you have to be diligent in working out, and eating right, and no those abs are not going to appear overnight. It’s a work in progress. Your mindset is changed, and you’re committed to change, but the results are not quite there yet. Time is a funny thing. Some days we want to slow down, and sometimes we want to speed them up. But we’re stuck. Time will not pass any faster or slower for you. We have the time that we have.
In the movie “Click” Adam Sandler plays an overworked architect. He has a wire and two kids that love him, but he’s always working. He promises and promises that once he makes partner in his firm that he will have the time to spend with his family. So, he gets impatient. He starts wishing he could just fast forward life, and get to the point he has been working so hard for. He meets Christopher Walkin’s character and receives a universal remote. One that can actually fast forward his life. Of course things get out of control and Sandler ends up an old man in about 20 minutes and his whole life has flashed. He ended up ruining everything he was trying to build.
Sounds like a cool thing to have at first. A remote that could just fast forward time to the place we want. Problem is, we need all of this time. We cannot be like Jesus instantly, and we can’t expect others to be either. Jesus works on us over time. Like a master sculptor, He chisels away at us. Breaking off pieces until we are a masterpiece. That takes time. Paul says, “I am confident that He who began a good work in you, will complete it until the day of Jesus.” Philippians 1:7. Jesus starts a good work in us when we turn to Him. But, perfection is something that we will not see until the day of Jesus. It’s a process. We are an unfinished work. God’s not finished with us yet. He’s not finished with any of us yet.
Sometimes it seems like we let our desire of instant gratification to take over. We see Jesus changing people and wonder why He is not changing us, just like them. We should all realize that we are all messed up in our own special little ways. You are unique. My Pastor , Pat Kestell, explained it like this, “If someone is a drug addicted axe murderer, maybe Jesus takes care of the axe murdering part before the drug part.” Makes a lot of sense.
We are a work in process, and God is working on our hearts and lives every second of every day. There is no reason for us to be anxious. He will change you, if you let Him.
In Him,
Pastor Cam
Matthew 6 is a chapter FULL of assumptions. By assumptions, I mean that when Jesus is teaching, He is not saying that giving, praying, fasting, spending, and living are optional. Far from it! He is assuming that you will do all of these things, and then He tells you how to do them well.
The second of these assumptions is found in verses 5-15.
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
When you pray...
When you pray, pray like this...
The “Lord’s Prayer” (found in Matthew 6:5-15) has received much attention and rightfully so. It has so much to say, yet this will be just a few thoughts on two highlights that I hope will bless you.
Hypocritically literally means "behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case”.
The example Jesus gave of praying hypocritically was of people who prayed publicly in the synagogues and on street corners. By calling them hypocrites, He was implying that this was their ONLY and PRIMARY prayer time - when others could see.
Praying publicly is not the problem here; the problem is a heart that prays only to be seen by others. We desire affirmation from people, but Jesus tells us to have our motivation be one that values God’s opinion and not people’s.
“Do not heap up empty phrases… for they think they’ll be heard for their many words.” Jesus was saying that other people think they’ll be heard by God if they pray long… or loud… or eloquently.
Jesus says that you are not heard because of any of these things, but because you are God’s child. God hears us because, by the blood of Jesus taking our sinful state and replacing it with His rightful Sonship, we are now children of God - and a good parent listens to their child. Jesus' “example prayer” for us begins with “Our Father”, and this is in direct reference to why we even get to finish our prayer before God. It is because we are His children.
Please don’t merely read about prayer, but take some time to pray. Go to God and pray - He wants you to. And as you pray, do so for God, to enjoy the relationship you have with Him.
Here’s a breakdown of the rest of the prayer to help outline your own. Don’t worry about how you say it, just say it. God wants to hear His child (you) and doesn’t want you to merely repeat another child’s “ideal” prayer. He wants YOU to come before Him and talk.
Praise God for the good God that He is. He is holy (far different and set apart from us) and is to be acknowledged as so.
His kingdom. His rule. His reign. His way. Pray that God’s will would be done. One beautiful way to imagine this is to imagine heaven. Heaven is where God’s rule and reign is perfect. No more wars, sickness, sadness, pain, etc. God is glorified by all people’s and we enjoy His light and love perfectly. Pray for that to be here on earth as much as it can be until we reach heaven.
It is good to ask God for things, however so often we ask for things that would feed our flesh and not our souls. We are told to be content with today’s blessings and provision and to not be anxious about tomorrow.
We need to have repentance to be a part of our prayers! As Martin Luther wrote: “A Christian’s life is one of daily repentance.” However, Jesus takes this opportunity to remind us that we too are meant to forgive. He emphasizes that point to the extreme of telling us to pray that God would forgive us just as we’ve forgiven others. Do you want to be forgiven only to the measure with which you forgive?
Pray for strength and guidance against temptation. Jesus told His disciples to “watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” And to Peter, Jesus said that Satan desired to sift him like wheat, but to not fear for He had prayed for him. We are to actively pray against future situations, ones we expect to encounter, and we are to pray that we will be free from temptation and evil in our hearts during the many surprises of life as well.
…this.
….these moments.
…these collections of things and people and places and conversations and actions and chores that make up our lives each day.
We can’t afford to miss that this is it.
The work we do.
The daily life we live.
The streets we drive.
The songs we sing.
The relationships we have.
The smallest of moments we live each day…
…this is church planting.
And I want to remember this.
The small times.
The seemingly insignificant times.
The days when a team of five adults and two kids can set up for church in just over an hour.
The days of hauling equipment out of a back closet.
The days of taking an empty, uninviting space and turning it into a place where people come to meet with Jesus.
The days of one tiny kids room in the back, only separated from the sanctuary by a pulling divider.
The days of folding chairs and folding tables and black curtain dividers.
The days of wiping play mats on hands and knees.
The days of ten-year-olds holding hands with three-year-olds and learning about Jesus together.
The days of events that take every person in the church to accomplish.
I want to remember the small days and the small moments and the big things Jesus did in and through all of the smallness.
I want to remember this and I want to be thankful for it now, in the midst of the smallness. I want to remember and celebrate that God is somehow working through all of the small.
I want to remember that all these small things are the big things…that they are what church planting is made up of.
Church planting is all the little things that happen in the little moments of life that we can so easily miss if we don’t take the time to notice and celebrate.
Be blessed,
lesha
Matthew 6 is a chapter FULL of assumptions. By assumptions, I mean that when Jesus is teaching, He is not saying that giving, praying, fasting, spending, and living are optional. Far from it! He is assuming that you will do all of these things, and then He tells you how to do them well.
The first of these assumptions is found in verses 1-4.
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Jesus ASSUMES that you will give. He assumes that you will give generously. He assumes that you will give to the church, to family, to friends, and to complete strangers. The question isn’t if you should, but HOW you should. Jesus starts with a summary of the problem:
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” -Matthew 6:1
Jesus does not condemn us for wanting a reward for our giving. However, He is saying that you only get a reward from either God or man, but not both.
So often people think that doing something for the reward or result is wrong, but Jesus doesn’t say that. When His disciples argued over who was the greatest, He didn’t rebuke them for desiring to be great. Far from it! He instead told them how to be great in God’s Kingdom. (Luke 22:24-30).
We see the same concept here: Jesus isn’t upset at our desire for reward, but He warns us that to gain a heavenly reward, we need to remove our desire for early ones.
When we give, we need to have the mindset of showing God’s love to others. When we give, we need the priority of doing God’s work on earth. When we give, we need a heart of gratitude for all that God has first given to us.
On the flip side, an extreme view of "giving in secret" can be damaging to many Christians. They take this passage to mean that if anyone finds out you gave, then all rewards from God are gone. This leads to people who are constantly in fear of their reward being stolen away and are trying to cover up their tracks in order to preserve their reward. Was this the kind of obsession Jesus meant to create?
I think not.
Jesus emphasized that the problem comes when people give in order that “they may be praised by others.” People in His day, and ours as well, would give with trumpets sounding before them and with other large demonstrations. This was all to gain the praise of men.
The issue isn't if someone finds out, but what the motivation is. You could have a heart of desiring someone to catch you putting money in the tithe box, but then no one does. The Bible teaches that your reward in heaven can be taken away even if no one sees you give, because it’s a matter of the heart.
So what do we need to take away from this?
1) We are expected to give.
2) We only get a reward in heaven if our motives and desires reflect the heart of God.
3) With all of these expectations we are given by Jesus, we need to remember that they all require the power and working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Money is naturally a snare because it feeds our sinful hearts in whatever way we desire. Power. Pleasure. Security. Fame. Popularity. Etc. When reflecting on what God would desire you to do with the money He’s given you and how He would desire you to use it, make sure you leave time to pray and seek God’s wisdom, guidance, and power to act in a way that will glorify Him.
Here at Redemption Church, we have a heart to further the Gospel and share the love of Jesus with the world, and one way we do this is by supporting both local and international church plants. One of these church plants is in Sydney, Australia where the Henderson family has moved to serve at Anchor Church. Anchor Church just celebrated their 1 year anniversary and has put together an AWESOME SHORT FILM that you will want to watch to see how the Lord is using them and the ministry of Anchor Church to reach people with the love of Jesus!
Please continue to lift up the Henderson family in your prayers as well as the pastors and ministry of Anchor Church. To learn more about them, you can visit their website at http://anchorchurch.com.au
I spend so much time listening to the input of the world around me…
I check read a summary of world news in my email.
I click on articles in my Facebook feed.
I see the lives of characters during my favorite tv show.
I pause at headlines of magazines and newspapers.
I listen to the conversations of friends and coworkers.
I glance at my sports app and my news app.
I read articles and articles and articles every day…
I don’t have tv. I don’t listen to the radio.
And yet I still have an overload of information coming at me all the time. A plethora of voices and opinions and philosophies and worldviews.
Because whether I recognize it or not, every piece of information I consume is tinted with an opinion, a set of beliefs, an idea of how things are or should be.
And I’ve learned that I have to have a filter, because there is noise everywhere.
I have to filter the thoughts and opinions and beliefs that are subtly slipped into my social media and my news sources and my entertainment preferences.
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
1 John 4:1
I cannot, nor should I, limit the noise coming at me so far that I can keep everything I see and hear and read perfectly pure and true. But I must learn to see the truths and lies presented me at every turn and be able to differentiate between the two.
And the only way I’ve found to keep my filter strong is to intentionally and consistently feed myself a steady input of truth.
Studying God’s Word
Listening to truth spoken and sung
Spending time in prayer
Reading books and articles that point me to Jesus and proclaim His good gospel
“There is always noise.”
There are always ideas and thoughts and opinions and worldviews being preached loud to you, so will your filter be strong enough to differentiate between the truths and the lies?
Your filter needs to be built of truth in order for you to be able to identify truth.
I’m seeking to stay close to Jesus and I’m praying that He will give me wisdom as I intentionally build my filter.
What does your filter look like?
Be blessed,
Alesha
