Glimpses of Glory

Around the spring and autumn equinoxes, from the mailbox of Christview Ministries Center, we can on a clear day look across the King's River Valley and see the sun rising over the distinctive hills that mark Berryville on the horizon. I assure you that the real scene is far more glorious than this photo can convey. Some days, the glory is beyond taking in, no matter how deeply I spontaneously inhale. I cannot imagine why I do not time my arrival at the mailbox to glimpse it each day.

There are constant glories to behold in this creation. The evening of September 27, as Judy and I ate supper, looking across the Keel's Creek Valley, we saw monarch butterflies passing overhead on their migration to Mexico. As sundown was nearing, we grabbed a camera and headed out to see if any of the intrepid fluttering pilgrims would choose to spend the night at Christview. Sure enough, some of them picked the southeast side of an oak tree, bordering our power line as it comes off C.R. 309.



The next morning I waited for the sun to get full light on the tree and caught a few sluggard monarchs still in bed, waiting for the warmth to strengthen their wings for flight.


But those lie-a-beds were one-by-one, stretching and mounting up with wings like...well, like monarchs, rulers of the earth, riding upon the winds toward their far-off goal.

Actually, Judy and I founded Christview in order to see such glimpses of glory in our guests and among those to whom and with whom we minister. Our founding text is 2 Corinthians 3:18: "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another...."

The source of the transforming glory is described in 2 Corinthians 4:6: "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Look to Jesus and glimpse the glory!

Grace and peace,

John

Loving God with All Your Soul

Sermon delivered September 26, 2010

Matthew 6:25; 10:37-39; 16:24-27

The Greek word psyche (sookhay, which in English we pronounce sykee) can be translated into English according to context by many different words. Life, soul, and self are three of the possible translations. Jesus tells us that we must love God with all our psyche (our life, our soul, or our self). We need to remember that Jesus is quoting the most famous passage in the Old Testament where the equivalent Hebrew word is nephesh which has a very similar range of meanings. Whether in Greek or Hebrew, this word is not just some little, invisible part of us. In the passages I will read in this sermon, every time you hear life or soul, it means more than we might assume. It means our whole living, breathing, feeling, thinking, loving being.

But this sermon is not an essay on Greek and Hebrew words. It is about what we most love, about what we most trust, about what makes us most anxious, about what costs we are willing to pay, about what burdens we are willing to bear, about what rewards we are likely to receive. Listen closely to the Word of our Lord:

Mark 12:30 “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

What or who do you most love? You are in church, and so you know that the right answer is “God.” But how true is that really?

If you were not in church and it was not a preacher asking you, if instead it was your best friend, the friend with whom you can be totally honest with no fear of judgment, asking you, “What do you most love?,” what would your answer be?

Do you love God more than family, more than country, more than money, sex, or power, more than work, more than your vehicle, more than your latest toy, tool, or techno-gizmo, more than romance, more than your friends, more than entertainment, more than food or drink, more than feeling high, more than the Razorbacks? Uh-oh, there I went to meddling, and on a day when that is a sore subject (after the loss to Alabama).

Let’s be clear. Love is not a feeling. It is a deep commitment to the well-being of what or who is loved. The Bible repeatedly asks us to make that kind of deep, all-out, nothing-held-back commitment to the glory of God, to help the world see how holy, loving, good God is, how worthy of our deepest worship and service God is.

But that is often not the case even for people sitting in worship services. Shawn Wallace, the relatively new pastor of First Christian Church in Rogers, during his first summer was brave enough to serve as a counselor at our regional Chi Rho camp for sixth through eighth graders. He reports what he saw there. A tiny, short sixth grade boy fell head over heels for a tall and sweet 8^th grade girl. Besides the age difference, the height difference, and the maturity difference, there was the fact that the girl’s friends were aghast that she allowed this runt to show his admiration for her, but she was admirably undeterred in her kindness to the smitten young man. Not all was so admirable. Because the odd young couple sat directly in front of him, Shawn unavoidably watched during a worship service through the prayers, the songs, and the sermon that the boy’s entire body was continuously turned sideways toward this girl of his dreams, his love-struck eyes fixed on her every move and action.

He was missing what was far more important and was simply unaware of it. Shawn asks, Do we ever come to worship, sing the songs, pray the prayers, listen to the message, all the while centering our hearts and minds elsewhere…perhaps on someone with whom we think we are in love, but maybe it is our job or our anxieties, maybe it is on who just dared to say, “Amen,” or how we could have stated something better than someone leading worship. Indeed, there is a proper focus for the kind of undivided attention the sixth grade boy was paying to the eighth grade girl. When we worship God, we should be as enamored with God, as focused on Jesus, as the boy was with the young woman of his dreams. Nothing should be able to steal our attention from the One who in Jesus Christ has shown such receptive attention to us beyond all our deserving.

Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Jesus has a knack for posing one sacred item against another. There are people and relationships that we really ought to love and treasure and honor. None are potentially more important than those with whom we are in family covenant. God ordained the marriage covenant to be a firm anchor around which healthy family life can be built and through which we can live out our loyalty to our Creator, and we are to model Christlike love in our relationship to our spouse. We are commanded to honor our parents and to care for them in their old age. We are commanded to nurture our children, training them up to live godly lives with a wise blend of discipline, teaching, and mutual enjoyment. Jesus is not taking any of that back when he asks us to love him even more than we love these cherished family members. Nor is Jesus being egotistical in wanting to be first in our hearts. It is not about him. It is about our need to get our priorities straight. If God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is not first in our hearts, nothing else will work right.

When Judy and I got married, like most of you, we did not have good and mature understanding of how to build a solid Christian marriage. We did a lot of things the wrong way, and scars on our hearts are the cost we paid. But one thing we had right, and without it our marriage would not have survived. We knew that we could not look to each other to fill the holes in our souls, that only God can do that, that we had to put God first. We know that even more clearly today. In our advanced years, we are still learning, but we know a lot more about how to let God fill those holes. We know a lot more about putting God first. The most loving thing we can do for our spouse, our parents, our children, or for anyone, is to love, honor, and obey God first, and then to help them see and experience God’s love coming back through us ever more deeply for themselves. Unless God is our first love, we will not have hisa full love to offer to others.

Matthew 10:38 “And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

There is an initial cost to putting God first. A person who puts God first will often be misunderstood and sometimes punished by the world. Jesus describes that cost as taking up our cross to follow him. He urges us to sit down and to count the cost before we set out on the path of discipleship. The rich young ruler had wealth, social standing, and religious expertise and influence. He had to be willing to junk those in order follow Jesus. He was not ready to pay the cost and walked away sadly. Jesus sadly watched him go. I want to think that he came back later. But we do not know that. Some people who walk away never come back. The things for which we walk away from putting Jesus first never fulfill what we hope from them. They are always disappointing in the end, painfully and bitterly disappointing, but sometimes it takes a lot of living to discover that. It is far better if we simply see from the first how surpassingly more worthwhile Jesus is. So far as I know, the Apostle Paul was never wealthy, but, prior to his awakening to Christ, he had social standing and religious expertise and influence equal to that of the rich young ruler. Yet when he actually met the crucified and risen Christ, he was so deeply impressed with the surpassing worth of Jesus that he junked his entire upwardly mobile life and accepted his calling to become apostle to the Gentiles, of all things the most reprehensible thing he could have imagined before. He put it this way in Philippians 3:7-8: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” And in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul paid a real cost. There was social loss, emotional loss, physical loss to be paid. He was frequently beaten and jailed. In the end he was martyred. In deciding to follow Jesus, he really paid a price. But, after Jesus himself, no human being has more than the Apostle Paul to do with the fact that we Gentiles are gathered here this morning in the name of Jesus. At the end of his life, even as he was being poured out like a drink offering, he could be legitimately proud that he had fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith, and he could delight to know that he was departing to be with Christ in eternity. Oh, that we might share even a portion of his passion for Jesus! Paul, in losing his life for Christ, found his true life, his true soul, his true self.

Matthew 16:26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

If God is not the center of our life, our soul, our self, then we have sold God out for the pursuit of something that will ultimately disappoint us. If we have sold God out for passing emblems of worldly success, there will come the time when we are called to give account for where we have directed our attentions, energies, and aspirations in life. We will too late want back the one thing we have most needed, but have traded away for nothing that lasts.

Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?.... 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

What Jesus is saying is that our true and enduring psyche, our true and enduring life, soul, and self is found only when we surrender it to God’s reign. We give it away and it comes back to us loaded with blessings valuable beyond the measuring of them.

There is a great relief available to us when we put God first and seek first his reigning love, power, and righteousness. When we trust God, we are relieved from constantly worrying about lesser things. But more than that, there is in the end the great reward of a psyche, a life, a soul, a self, that cannot be taken away from us, not even by death.

Trade everything in to God and get back more than everything.

That sounds like a bargain too good to pass up. Go for it!

Perhaps, when yo professed your faith and walked into a baptistery and were immersed—or, if you were baptized in another tradition before you were a believer, but later were confirmed—perhaps you did not recognize that you were supposed to be dying to sin and self and coming alive to God, loving God above all else, loving God with your whole life and soul.

What do you do about that now? You claim the benefit of your baptism by redirecting your life to the total love of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—above all and with all. You say to God, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord to Thee…Take my love, my Lord I pour at Thy feet its treasure store; take myself and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.”

Loving God with All Your Heart

Sermon Delivered September 12, 2010

Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 2 Timothy 3:1-5; Mark 12:28-34

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he (Jesus) answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Love is the governing word in this passage. The Hebrew word for love (ahab) used in the Old Testament passages that Jesus quotes was a general word with meanings as broad and varied, as good, neutral, and bad, as the meanings of our English word love. But, in these particular passages, it seems to me that the meaning of love is governed by the much more specific Hebrew word (hesed) that means steadfast love or covenant love, the kind of costly, involved love God shows for us when he comes as our divine kinsman redeemer and gives of himself to restore us as children and servants of God, members of his covenant community. The New Testament writers could not find a Greek word that adequately conveyed that meaning of love, so they chose a seldom used word for love (agape), which they redefined by the example of God’s self-giving and redeeming love in Jesus Christ, the kind of love that makes us God’s people and servants.

Here is the practical point: when we are talking about how we ought to love God and neighbor, we are not talking about just any old kind of love. We are talking specifically about the kind of love God showed to us, totally loyal love that seeks the best for the loved ones. We are to return that kind of loyal, self-giving love to God, seeking in all we do to glorify him, and we are to pass that kind of loyal, self-giving love along to other human beings.

The most basic text in all Judaism is the Shema, the “Hear, O Israel,” which commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus calls it the most important commandment, and he expands its wording just a bit, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

If Jesus says that this is the most important commandment, then we ought to pay close attention and ask ourselves how we are doing on keeping this commandment, on loving God with all we are and all we have.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the terms heart, soul, and might or strength—perhaps even mind--were all broader in meaning than in popular English usage. They overlapped, and their combined effect was to emphatically reinforce that we are to love God with everything in us. Today we will focus on the command, “Love God with all your heart.” We will get to the other ways we are to love God in future sermons.

In the Old Testament, the heart is the center not only of emotion, but also of thought, loyalty, desire, and will. The heart can be refreshed or hardened, rejoicing or grieving, courageous or fearful, pure or corrupt. In short, in Old Testament thought, the heart is where the foundations of our decision-making reside, where our character is formed. So to love God with all your heart is not just with all your feelings, although that is certainly included, but to love God with the core of your being, from that place within you where what makes you who you are is being determined.

What is it the makes you who you are? What is it that makes what comes out of you in your words and actions either good or bad, constructive or destructive, loving or not loving?

Jesus says that it is what you desire. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, he says that what comes out of our hearts is what defiles us. His list includes: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. These kinds of thing happen because we think that our worth in life comes from the wrong things and we set our hearts on those wrong things rather than on loving God.

In Matthew’s Gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests that where we invest the things we treasure determines where our hearts end up. How do we use our time, our energy, our resources, our money? Where do we invest these treasures? Toward what end do we direct them? If we aim for the perfect goals of God’s eternal purposes, if that is where we put our treasures, then our hearts will become godly.

Jesus’ brother James says that what comes out of our mouths and what comes out in our relationships comes from what goes into our hearts. If we have placed God first and made God’s wisdom the spring welling up from our hearts, then what comes out will be peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial and sincere. It will produce a harvest of righteousness. But, if God is not at the center of our hearts, then what comes out will lead to every vile practice, notably jealousy, selfish ambition, disorder, quarreling, murder, war.

Paul warns Timothy to avoid being influenced by people who are lovers of their own pleasure rather than lovers of God. Not loving God above all produces selfishness, greed, pride, arrogance, abusiveness, disobedience, ingratitude, unholiness, heartlessness, continual dissatisfaction, slander, lack of self-control, brutality, inability to love good things, treachery, recklessness, conceit, and so on. When we do not love God first and foremost from the formative place at the center of our lives, then nothing else will go right. If our heart is not right, then nothing else will be. To set things right in our lives, we must love God first.

A week ago Saturday evening, our youth group watched the movie, To Save a Life. The PG-13 rating should be taken seriously; this movie is not for children, but for teens with mature adult guidance. Warning: What I am about to do would be called by some a spoiler for those who have not seen the movie, but my conclusion is that this movie is not about suspense anyway; it is about portraying reality. My summary may call some key moments to your attention when you see them. The lead character was a popular star athlete named Jake. It looked like Jake had everything, but, in fact, he had traded in a better self for the shallow image of success. He had deserted a childhood friend who had saved him from being hit by a car by taking the hit for him, and Jake said nothing as his new friends made fun of his crippled ex-friend. The suicide of this ex-friend started a wake-up process in Jake. Eventually he showed up at a youth worship service led by a youth pastor who had befriended him in troubles that Jake had brought on himself. He observed that the youth at the worship service were not serious about the important message the pastor was laying before them. Jake, in an unpolished manner, confronted the other youth asking them, “If you are not here to change the way you live, why come?” Through a two steps forward, one step backward process, Jake eventually made a commitment to Christ and was baptized. He who had been the most popular kid in school began to make a difference in reaching out to socially excluded kids and to young people contemplating suicide. Then, his world collapsed: his pre-conversion sexual activity with his girlfriend had produced a pregnancy; his father was caught in an affair; his parents were divorcing; his old friends were turning against him; in his focus on his own problems, he had let down one of the socially excluded young men he had befriended. He was not sure that there was anything to this Christian life thing.

He went to the youth pastor to tell him that he was about to give up on faith. I don’t remember the exact words, but my summary of what the pastor said is, “God is not a vending machine. There are no formulas or guarantees that things will be easy in Christian life. But, Jake, you already know that the alternative does not work, that it is empty, shallow, destructive. Why not give God a genuine chance to lead you through this troubled time? God may not make it easy, but he will not desert you if you continue to trust him.”

Jake prayed that God would show him the right way to approach his problems and to give him the courage to make the needed sacrifices to actually do the right things. And that is what happened. The movie did not put a rosy, glowing, “everything is great now” ending on the story, but it showed costly, positive steps toward a better life. In the end, you had the definite sense that Jake was committed to loving God from the center of his being, from the place where he was in the process of being shaped into an ever new and ever better Jake.

That is what I want for myself. That is what I want for every one of you. Are you here to learn how better to love God from the center of your being with everything you have? Are you here to fulfill the most important commandment? Are you here to be transformed into an ever more effective agent of the gospel of Jesus Christ? If not, why are you here?

What might hold you back? The thing that holds more people back than anything else is not being sure that God is real and personal and trustworthy. For many church-goers, God is a name we give to what we think will help us live a socially acceptable life. For many other church-goers God is a name we give to what we think assures us that our sins are forgiven. But for many church-goers, God is not the holy, loving, reigning, intervening God of the Bible who has a definite revealed purpose for our lives, a God who loves us and wants us to enter into a loving, growing relationship with him.

It is hard to love an abstract principle. It is hard to love a formula for success. At least, it is hard to love principles and formulas in the self-giving, costly, absolutely loyal way that the “Hear, O Israel” passage has in mind. When Jesus said that loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength was the most important commandment, he had in mind our loving his and our Abba in heaven. It is a personal relationship. Nothing less will do.

How and where do we discover and experience the real personal nature of God? In obedience to his calling. In daring to serve him. In venturing into the mission field. I am not necessarily talking about going to Africa or China or India or Latin America or to inner city America. God will call a few of us to such locations. But the mission field may be as close to us as our telephone or computer or the house across the street. There is no end of deep need right here in Carroll County. The key is that we seek and respond to God’s calling to serve him in making his love real to somebody who needs to know him. And that is when God will make himself real to us. At least that is how it happened for me.

I won’t repeat the details today. But once God called me to plant a church in western Little Rock. I worked very hard, wore out a lot of shoe leather. The church planting effort did not succeed. But in the mission field, God met me, revealed himself to me, taught me, confronted me, healed me, and empowered me. I entered with an abstract God and came out with a personal and powerful God. I had to go to what I thought was the mission field to find out that I was the mission field. That has made all the difference for me. Since then, even when I am mad at God, I love God from the formative center of my being. Loving the living God is what it is all about. Jesus said so.

Is the living, loving God becoming ever more real in your life? If not, get out and meet God in the mission field, and discover that you too are the mission field. I repeat: Loving the living God is what it is all about. Jesus said so.

A Time in the Life of Elijah for a Time in Our Lives

A TIME IN THE LIFE OF ELIJAH FOR A TIME IN OUR LIVES
Sermon by Judy Turner
I Kings 19:1-18

A man of God named Elijah lived 850 years before Christ. He lived and spoke for God in the land of Israel, a nation formed by God’s own hand, people who were called to live in such a way that all the nations and peoples of the world could know the true God and live in His ways. Yet, the people of Israel were not only worshipping Yahweh, the true God, but all sorts of other gods through which they wanted to insure their prosperity. It was a time in the life of the people of God, where it not only seemed economically advantageous to worship false gods, but it was politically correct. The King of Israel, Ahab, had married a foreign queen, Jezebel, and she set up altars to the baals and asherah all over the land of Israel. She kept hundreds of prophets of these false gods and goddesses at the palace, and she persecuted and killed those narrow-minded prophets of Yahweh who insisted there was only one true God who wants and deserves our full devotion and worship, exclusively. Elijah thinks he is about the only true prophet left, and he issues a challenge to Ahab, Jezebel, the false prophets, and all in Israel who are worshipping false gods. It’s the spiritual Superbowl on Mt. Carmel, between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal, and you can read about it in I Kings 18. The false prophets prepare a sacrifice and call on their god to consume it. Nothing happens. Elijah prepares a sacrifice and calls on Yahweh. Fire falls from heaven and consumes the sacrifice. Although terribly outnumbered, Elijah demonstrates the truth that even one faithful person and the true God are an unbeatable force. The people of Israel, who have been wavering between two opinions, kind of worshipping Yahweh, but also worshipping the gods of their culture, have a sudden realization of truth and are impressed. “The Lord He is God! The Lord he is God!” they cry. Elijah, seizing the moment, tells the people to round up all those false prophets and kill them, which they did. (This is the Old Testament- Jesus has not yet come and initiated the New Covenant, the new way of living for the true God, which includes loving enemies.)

The 19th Chapter of I Kings starts with Jezebel getting the word from Ahab about everything Elijah did. She was not pleased! She sent a message to Elijah, which essentially said, “If you’re not dead by this time tomorrow, my name’s not Jezebel.” When Elijah gets the message, he is afraid and runs for his life into the desert. Now, wait a minute! This isn’t how I expect this courageous prophet to respond- to cave in when he gets a message from the queen. Where is the courage and boldness he showed only day before yesterday? Where is his strong faith and trust in God? Yet, when I think about it, in light of my own experience, maybe I do understand. Maybe he thought the battle was won and he would get a rest. But here is a new threat. He doesn’t think he has what it takes for one more battle- and here is the battle at his doorstep. This is the last straw, and he breaks. He is at the end of his rope, sick of the constant struggle, and ready to just give up. He runs away to the desert, sits down to rest under a tree, and prays to die. “I’ve had enough, Lord,” he says. Then he falls asleep.

Elijah is at the end of his rope. But guess who is there at the end of his rope? God! I Kings 19 is the story of how God responds to his tired, burned-out, fed-up, servant and friend. This is first of all a story about God- God’s nature and power and provision. Although we may want to give up on life or give up on God, God never gives up on us. God still has a purpose for Elijah’s life. It’s not all over from God’s perspective. He’s just getting started with Elijah. But Elijah is going to have to come to a deeper understanding of who God is and how God works. Elijah is going to need to learn some different ways of working with God. Elijah needs his spirit strengthened and renewed, and God knows just how to go about restoring and re-shaping his child. First, he lets Elijah rest. God cares for us when we are down. He understands our exhaustion, our pain, and our discouragement. But he cares too much to let us just lie there in self-pity and die. He provides what is needed to get on our feet again and start going in the right direction.

I Kings 19:5b-9
All at once an angel touched Elijah and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

God calls his stressed-out servant to go on a spiritual journey. This is not only a story about who God is in His power and love and gentleness. It’s also a story about our choices. There are some choices we have to make if we’re going to get to a new and better place spiritually and to fulfill our God-given purpose. Let’s look at Elijah’s choices. First, he has to “get up” and “fill up”. God provided the wake-up call with an angel touching Elijah. God even provided breakfast. But Elijah had to choose to get up and partake of the food. Have you noticed how two people can go through similar difficult circumstances but with an entirely different approach? Two women have the same kind of cancer and undergo the same treatment. One prays continually and asks others to pray. She expressed gratitude that there is hope with the treatment, gratitude for the medical professionals, gratitude for the support of the church family. The other expresses bitterness toward God for letting this happen, complains about the doctors, and says nobody cares about her. Possibly one is choosing to “get up and fill up” on the resources God is providing for the difficult journey of illness, and the other is not. God has not promised that our journey through life will be easy. What he has promised is His presence with us and His provision of everything we truly need to make the journey and arrive at the destination He has for us.

God wants Elijah to make a literal journey so God can work to renew and restore his spirit. Where does God invite Elijah to go? To Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God.
Now that mountain represented defining moments in the story of the people of God. That was where God made a covenant with the people He delivered from bondage in Egypt, where Moses went up to receive the 10 Commandments. It’s not surprising that God would call him to go there, but in order to keep headed toward his destination, Elijah must choose to "look up”. He chose to get up, fill up, now as he sets out, he must look up to keep heading in the right direction. The psalmist, beset with difficulties, said, “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence my help comes. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Looking up means we choose to focus on the presence and the promises of God, and not on the difficulties, and we continually ask for the grace to keep that focus. I once ordered a book on line titled, God’s Promises for Your Every Need. I got an e-mail from Amazon explaining that the order would not be shipped right away. In the subject line on the e-mail was “God’s Promises Delayed”. I had to laugh out loud when I saw that heading. “Isn’t that the way it often seems,” I thought. “God works in God’s time, and not ours.” Often we have to wait for God’s best time. One of the mysteries of God I have discovered in my life is the truth that “God is never late. God always arrives on time.” But it is only after the season of the difficulty is past, looking back, that I can see the rightness of God’s timing. Our job is to keep walking with God, keep moving in His direction, keep trusting. Elijah had to look up until he reached the mountain of God.

Once he had reached his destination, once he was there on the mountain, what happened?
Vs. 9b-13
There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
The Lord said, “Go and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Elijah had to choose to “Listen up”. He had to pay attention, because God didn’t speak in the spectacular, the cataclysmic, but rather in “the still small voice”.
God is often like that in how He communicates. He doesn’t overwhelm us with razzle-dazzle. He won’t compete against all the racket and disturbance in our lives. He speaks in the still, small voice, and when we get quiet enough inside, we pick up on God’s communication. A very talkative young woman made a spiritual retreat at Christview. When she was invited to the spiritual discipline of silence, that felt hard for her. But at the end of two days of mostly silence she said, “I’ve never felt so close to God. I really felt like He was speaking right to me.”” But,” she added, “I never been still and quiet for that long before.” She went home and told her husband, “You wouldn’t believe how long I went without saying a word, and I think that gave God a chance to speak.” Her husband just smiled, and wisely, and didn’t say a word.

When Elijah listened up, what did God say? I summarize what God says in this way: “Elijah, you thought you were the only person left who is faithful to me in the whole land of Israel? Guess what? I have 7,000 faithful people. I want you to go back now and link up. I want you to annoint 2 kings and an assistant prophet who will succeed you. There is a new season to your ministry. No longer will you be doing single-handed combat with evil. Link up, link up with others, and especially train one who will continue my work after I take you home. Together you will do accomplish my purpose in your place and time.” If I were to put what God said to Elijah in two words, those words are Link Up.

Perhaps as you have been listening to this message so far, you have been able to make practical application to your individual life. Maybe you are beset with problems and struggles- in your family, with your finances, in your workplace, with your health. Maybe you are at the end of your rope, and I pray that God has already met you there and started speaking to you about how He will provide what is needed to walk faithfully and victoriously through your current difficulties.
One of the primary resources God provides is other Christians to walk with you, pray for you, support you, offer practical help. Receive the help. Ask for prayer. Link up. Don’t try to fight your battles in your own strength, but in the resources God provides, which includes the community of faith.

But Link Up speaks a word of challenge to us as a body together. We do not exist only or even primarily to take care of each other. We exist as a church to do the work of Jesus. We are His body, continuing His work in the world. We must link up around the mission of Jesus. What does that choice to link up involve?
1. Praying the same prayer. A critical step in linking up is all of us praying the same prayer: “God, unite us around carrying out your mission for us here in this time and place.” We tend to seek what we want rather than what God wants. We tend to be controlled more by our fears and by our personal desires and preferences than by faith. As long as we are each operating out of our fears of what will or won’t change in the church, we cannot unite. As long as we are set on our personal preferences being carried out, we cannot unite, because those preferences go in different directions. It must grieve the Lord to hear from different ones of us, “What can change in the church to make ME happier?” How it would delight the Lord to hear us pray for the direction and power to do the work of Jesus together!
2. Refusing to let our differences divide us. We are a miracle! We are from different places and backgrounds, different ways of life. But we are all here together, worshipping the same God. The reality we cannot see is what is most important- we are all in Christ. Each one of us who has committed his or her life to follow Christ is now In Christ. The spiritual reality of being “In Christ” is just as true as we are all in Berryville Arkansas. But while we can physically go somewhere else and no longer be in Berryville, we are forever together in Christ. So, it doesn’t ultimately matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat. If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we will serve the Lord together. It doesn’t ultimately matter if you live in Westridge or the trailer court. If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we will serve the Lord together. It doesn’t ultimately matter if you prefer tradition or spontaneity in worship. If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we serve the Lord together. It ultimately doesn’t matter if you have a Phd or not even a G.E.D. If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we will serve the Lord together. It doesn’t ultimately matter whether you are in your twilight years or you are a teenager. If your heart beats in love for Jesus, then take my hand and we will serve the Lord together. We will link up, and together we will make a difference, a God-difference in our time and place. Amen!

Garden Update: New Ministry Formed!

Whole oats have been planted as a Fall & Winter ground cover.

Last Sunday, on September 11th, 2010, FCC's Board of directors voted to form a new church ministry which has grown out of our Community Garden. And we thought we were just planting vegetables and flowers!

The new ministry is called the Community Development Ministry (CDM) and was formed for the purpose of assuring that FCC is contributing to our Mission of "Building a Community of Hope". The church garden was viewed as the logical starting point for the new ministry because it contributes to the beautification of our church and community, is a small, practical sign of our commitment to stewardship, provides support for Loaves & Fishes, and has placed FCC in a leadership role in promoting sustainable agriculture and sustainable communities. These are all "community development" outcomes and ones we hope to replicate next year.

Beyond an expansion of the garden in 2011, we're not sure what the new CDM will do. There are two steps that have to be taken before we know more. First, we'll have to develop a Ministry Budget (all church ministries develop individual budgets that get combined to form our Annual Budget) that informs us what the CDM will cost and, second; we need to talk to all our members to find out what they feel are the right community development activities for FCC to take on. Once we take those two steps we'll have a road map for the journey ahead.

Many gardeners and farmers put down a cover crop, as we have with the oats above, to replenish the soil after the summer's harvest. Cover crops also keep weeds down, keep soil from blowing away, and retain moisture. In the Spring, we pull the oat straw aside and replant the rows with vegetables and flowers.

Laying down a cover crop is a good metaphor for what we need to do with the CDM. As gardeners, and as a congregation, we are preparing for a rich and productive future by doing "the ground work" now. To find out more about the CDM, and how you can contribute, please talk to our Pastors, John and Judy Turner.

Bringing the Streams Together

John 17:20-26; Colossians 3:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24

I decided to do a fourteenth and concluding sermon in the Six Streams of Living Water series. Let’s assess what we have learned and how we can apply it in the life of our church.

We have learned that in the early nineteenth century founding days of our Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement and in our period of most rapid growth in the early and mid-19^th Century, all Six Streams were operating within our movement. This was true in the other mainline Protestant churches such as Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian. Most mainline churches were built (1) on the authority of inspired Scripture and the compelling Great Commission characteristic of the Evangelical Stream, (2) on the focus on personal transformation into Christlikeness characteristic of the Holiness Stream, and (3) on the guiding and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit characteristic of the Charismatic Stream. The other three streams were present also. Then, settled middle class spiritual complacency and the influence of skeptical higher education on the training of clergy caused mainline churches to become less friendly to the streams on which they had been built, causing the less comfortable and less educated members of mainline churches to withdraw and start their own denominations. These new denominations tended to be primarily One Stream denominations, either Evangelical or Holiness or Charismatic. Without the checks and balances of the other streams, they fell into excesses and abuses, but they still had a dynamism that caused them to thrive better than the old mainline churches.

Meanwhile the old mainline churches focused at the congregational levels on respectability and at the leadership levels on the Social Justice Stream which they eventually overly politicized and inadequately grounded in personal morality, driving even more believers from their folds. The result of all this is that the old mainline churches in this country are in precipitous decline. Is there hope for recovery? Perhaps, but it will take bold action.

While Judy and I were in Indianapolis, we became acquainted with a United Methodist congregation in Ginghamsburg, Ohio, a bedroom community outside Dayton. About 15 years before we became aware of it, the congregation was in rapid decline and down to 90 members. We were told that the Methodist hierarchy wanted to close the church and so sent them the pastor that they thought least equipped to renew the congregation and most likely to alienate their members. The bishop appointed Michael Slaughter. At first, it looked like the hierarchy had it figured right. Slaughter arrived and announced his program for attempting to renew the church. The membership dropped to down to 45. But then it started to grow. In a few years it reached 300. In a few more years it reached 2,000. According to its website, the congregation is now 4,500 strong in weekend worship attendance, the largest United Methodist Church in Ohio.

Don’t worry, that won’t happen here. We are not sitting in the path of urban sprawl. In our setting, topping 300 combined in two or three worship services by 2020 is a plenty big goal. But the principles on which Slaughter renewed a mainline church are still valid for us.

More than on any other Stream, Slaughter built on the Evangelical Stream with its focus on the authority of the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the bringing of people to faith in Christ. Slaughter announced that the first principle of growth would be to move from the vague theism that was being taught in the church before his arrival to clear proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Further, he asserted that telling people about Jesus was the business and purpose of the church and that this purpose would govern everything the church did, even how it worshiped. He wanted to be clear from the beginning with every person to whom the church presented the gospel that following Jesus costs us everything that we might want to claim as our own rights. In other words, a believer in Jesus Christ holds no area of his or her life back from Jesus’ command, from dedication to Jesus’ mission.

Also in line with the Evangelical Stream, Slaughter announced that scriptural truth would be the primary source for everything they preached and taught, for everything they believed and did.

Going beyond the Evangelical Stream to the Holiness Stream, Slaughter insisted that their scriptural foundation was not just for information, but for transformation. To support this transformation he asked new members to covenant to follow certain practices that are typical of disciples of Jesus Christ, things very similar to our 9 ways, including belonging to a small group that incorporated accountability to the covenant and to spiritual honesty.

In line with the Charismatic Stream, Slaughter saw a major function of the church as helping members identify their spiritual gifts and to respond to the callings, leading, and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

He insisted that strong spiritual leaders were part of the Holy Spirit’s work, that they were not managers, but Spirit-led visionaries who must hear and articulate the vision and mission of the church and then embody and model important aspects of that mission and vision. In other words, the leader must tie together the Contemplative, Charismatic, and Incarnational Streams… listening to God in prayer, discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit, and living it out in daily life, and that the pattern set by the adventurous leaders was then to characterize the whole membership.

Slaughter did not neglect the Social Justice Stream, but moved it beyond ideals, positions, and stands and moved it into tangible commitments. Slaughter insisted that the mission of the church included serving the least and the last. For starters, he asked each church family to consider connecting to one underprivileged inner city Dayton child and buying the same kinds of gifts, clothing, and school supplies for that child that they bought for their own children. That’s where the rubber (of expensive athletic shoes) met the road. He then used these connections to inner city life as the foundation for building vision for all sorts of missions to address the underlying problems. He encouraged members to find their individual callings to social service and to pursue them. In short, Slaughter led his church to a well-rounded approach that brought together every one of the Six Streams, and it was very fruitful. I don’t know if he even knew about the Six Streams concept. He just did them, and it worked.

Does that mean that we should imitate the Ginghamsburg church? Not in the details. God led Slaughter and the members of his church to do what was right for Ginghamsburg and Dayton, Ohio. God will lead us to do what is right for Berryville and Carroll County, Arkansas. But I believe that the healthiest of churches anywhere will have all six streams flowing together, with appropriate checks and balances.

I began by talking about the fact that what led to success for the early Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement was lost, fragmented in mainline churches. I am suggesting the Six Streams as the corrective for that decline. The great thing is that it is not only a moving forward, but also a return to what made our movement (and the other mainline churches) strong in the first place.

How do we bring the Six Streams back together? We do it with a combination of openness and caution. We drop our prejudices against the best parts of each stream. We guard against the worst parts of each stream. For instance, for the Evangelical Stream, we develop an enthusiasm for the richness of inspired Scripture and for obeying the Great Commission to go and make disciples, but we guard against angry crusades against those we identify as sinners. For the Holiness Stream, we take very seriously the purpose of God to restore our lifestyles to fit with the image of God, but we guard against legalistic self-righteousness. For the Charismatic Stream, we welcome the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit in all its Scriptural actions, but we guard against undiscerning fascination with all things supernatural and spectacular and speculative. And so on.

The Apostle Paul demonstrates this open and cautious pattern with regard to the Charismatic Stream in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-24. Paul establishes two guidelines for openness: do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies (that is, Spirit-given messages). He establishes a basic rule for how we evaluate prophecies: test everything; hold fast what is good; abstain from every form of evil. He puts the measuring rod before us, our wholeness and maturity in Christ: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely (or make you totally holy), and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He makes clear that this is the work of God: He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

That kind of sane balance is what we are aiming for with all Six Streams, and we are aiming for the result of wholeness in our church life and wholeness in our personal lives. May it be so. Amen.