Deuteronomy 4:29-31; NASB
29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul. 30 When you are in distress and all these things happen to you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice. 31 For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not abandon you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them. I remember early on in my college days, there was one class that took place on Tuesdays and Thursday, right around lunch time. Several weeks into the semester, my friends decided to invite me out to lunch. “I have class,” I thought. “Certainly I can’t miss it. I signed up to be there.” It was a Tuesday, and I made the decision that it is far better to go to lunch with my friends than it is to go to class. You know, because as a young college student, I know everything. But, me being me, I felt guilty for deliberately ditching a class. It was disrespectful to the professor. It didn’t honor them and the work they were trying to do. So as Thursday rolled around, I had a huge pit in my stomach. “How could I just walk back into class after I had turned my back on it a couple days before?” And Thursday's class came and went, without me being in attendance two times in a row now. Oh the guilt I felt! (I know, maybe it’s just me, but I have to admit I have some very ‘pharisee’ tendencies in my life) In Deuteronomy 4, Moses is giving Israel its charge as they are about to head into the Promised Land. “I have taught you statutes and judgments as the Lord God commanded me,” Moses declares in verse 5. And then in verse 9, “Only be careful for yourself and watch over your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from it all the days of your life.” But verse 25 takes a different turn, as Moses warns what will happen when they forget God, when they turn to false gods: you will provoke the anger of the Lord and you will not live long in the land He has promised you. Before we cast stones against Israel, because they totally blew it and turned from God just as Moses said, we must look at ourselves and see our own propensity to turn from God and His glory, selfishly seeking out our own pleasures. And when that happens, everything seems to fall apart. The great news (well, let's call it the Good News, the Gospel message), God does not turn His back on us, nor does He forget us. He doesn’t want us to remain in that place of darkness. “He is compassionate,” Moses declares, “He will not abandon you. Man, God is an amazing God! But, there is a catch, a requirement, a necessary component we need to have. You will seek the Lord and you will find Him IF you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul. IF you search for Him with all your heart and soul. That’s a pretty big “if”! God isn’t looking for people who go through the motions. He isn’t seeking followers who are there most of the time, but if something better comes along they might not be there. All. Your. Heart. And. Soul. Our commitment to God is much like our commitment to our spouses when we get married. What is typically said? “To have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until parted by death.” It’s a commitment to be there all the time, no matter what is happening. It’s a commitment to support, to love, to cherish. It’s the same with God. God wants to be near us, to be with us, to have a relationship with us. I honestly think it breaks God’s heart when we choose other things as more important than Him. He longs for our return to be with Him. It’s the same as Jesus taught in Luke 15:7 - “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Maybe you are in a place that is hard, dark, foreign. Have you wandered away from the Lord? Have you drifted to seeking your own pleasures instead of seeking the glory of the Lord? Know this - the invitation to come back is always there with God. The door is open for you to return. But, it is going to require a lot of you. Well, not a lot….all of you. Search for the Lord with all your heart and soul and you will find Him. Because He is right there walking with you. Remember, God is a compassionate God. In the end, I made it back into the class I ditched, feeling so horrible for my actions. The professor wasn’t angry. In fact, I believe they said they were glad to have me back in class. I may have received a reminder that I only have so many unexcused absences before I would have to drop the class and take it all over again another semester, but it was a gentle reminder that this is what I signed up for. No matter where you are, come to God. Come to God for the first time. Come to God if you have wandered away. Let His compassion and grace wash over you. But, if you want to find Him, don’t just go through the motions. Search for Him with all your heart and soul. -Pastor Brian
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Psalm 61:1-4; NASB
1 Hear my cry, God; give Your attention to my prayer. 2 From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 3 For You have been a refuge for me, a tower of strength against the enemy. 4 Let me dwell in Your tent forever; let me take refuge in the shelter of Your wings. Have you ever felt abandoned, lost, or overwhelmed? I know I have. I remember as a kid we would take family vacations and go on hikes. I would run up ahead and hide behind trees then jump out and scare my family (although I’m pretty sure they knew exactly where I was). Then one day, I ran ahead and hid behind the trees and waited to jump out and surprise my family. So I waited. And waited. And waited a little more. No family. “Hmmmmm,” I thought, “they should be here by now; maybe I’ll go back and check on them or maybe I went further than I thought.” So I head back down the trail. No family. No people anywhere. Maybe they all got eaten by bears or something (you know, I was like 6 so the mind can be a terrible thing). All of a sudden I was alone in the woods. I was afraid. So I cried out. David is writing this Psalm. And we aren’t sure when it was written or what the occasion was. But many believe it could have been when his own son Absalom took the kingdom from David and drove him out of Jerusalem. So David has moved from a place of security to a place that seems like he is at the end of the earth, far from home. When it says his heart is faint, that Hebrew word for faint actually means “overwhelmed.” Have you ever felt like that before? If so, you’re not alone. So David does the only thing he knows how to do: cry out to God. “Lord, hear my cry….pay attention…help me out!” One of the great things about the God of the Bible is that no matter where life takes us or where we find ourselves….He is already there. And He listens. And He helps. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now read that last paragraph again. Sit in those words, swim in that truth. You are never so far that God is not there. Because what David is looking for, what he is asking for, is not to retake his throne in Jerusalem. “Lord, let me be found in You. You are my refuge, my strength, my defense. God in you I find shelter from all of life’s storms.” My encouragement to you, the encouragement from Psalm 61…no matter what happens or where life finds you, remember who God is. He is a refuge, a strength, a shelter. He is always there. He always listens and hears. May our first response be to cry out to God and to wait on Him. Because His ways are the best. His love for you is the best. And believe it or not, His answers when you cry out are the best as well. You can trust in God in all things. And so you know, eventually my family all popped out from behind trees and surprised me. They were there all along. -Pastor Brian Romans 8:18; NASB 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. I have played musical instruments for most of my life. Yes, I was a band “geek” in Junior High School. After that, I switched over to drums. I also learned some piano here and there. Finally I switched to playing guitar. Guitar is fun and great and cool. But learning guitar for the first time is difficult and painful. For one, you are probably going to learn on a guitar that is not that expensive. In my case, this was true. An acoustic guitar with steel strings. The problem is, the strings were quite far off of the neck of the guitar. Which meant you had to push harder to get the strings down. Now, so you know, if you have never played guitar, or haven’t played in awhile, as you push your fingers down onto these steel strings….it hurts. It’s painful. It takes some time for your fingertips to adapt and build calluses. Until then you go to practice guitar but can only play for so long because of the pain in your fingers, all the while thinking, “Is this really worth it?” Life has a lot of joys and celebrations. Great friendships, accomplishing tasks or big goals, overcoming obstacles that used to stop you. But life can also be full of struggles, pains, hardships, hurts, sufferings. All of us at some point have been through the highs and lows of life. And there have probably been times when your last leg is long gone, you're not sure how much more you can take, and you begin to think to yourself, “Is this really worth it?” Yes it is. Romans 8, Paul starts out by reminding us of this great truth: there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Then a few verses later he declares, “The Holy Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are children of God.” Se free. No condemnation. Children of God. That’s a pretty good list. But that doesn’t mean our lives will be without trouble or hardship or oppression or struggles. Just like every person, we will face trials. And in those trials we might be tempted to give up, to wonder if it is really worth it. And Paul reminds us that these present sufferings aren’t worth comparing to the glory of God that awaits us. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul reminds them of much the same thing: For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. (2 Corinthians 4:17; ESV). All to say this: don’t give up, don’t give in. The struggles you are going through right now are real. And I’m sorry for them. I wish I could take them away. But at the same time, the struggles you are going through today are preparing you for the incredible riches of God’s grace and glory. Keep fighting. Keep pushing. Keep your eyes on the real prize. And keep trusting God as He leads you through it. -Pastor Brian Judges 7:2; NASB And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to hand Midian over to them, otherwise Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has saved me.’ “Less is more.” Have you ever heard or used this phrase? It is intended to bring a more simplistic approach to things. The idea is that having just the essential things is better than having way too much superfluous things. It allows you to focus on what matters. Oftentimes it is used in advertising, or design. Sometimes we want to fill every aspect of the page with text or some design element. Don’t waste any room. I always heard the term used in the context of music. Being a musician, and a drummer, it is learning that not every part of the song needs to be a drum solo or a guitar solo. Keeping the song simple, allowing space, creates an incredible dynamic in music. But if you crowd it with too much, it is difficult to listen to or discern what is happening. Meaning, often as a drummer I was reminded, less is more. Gideon is an interesting story in the Bible (you can read his whole story in Judges 6:11-8:35). Gideon was called by God to lead/judge Israel. In this specific passage, God is leading Gideon to defeat the Midianites, for they were oppressing Israel. And as Gideon/Israel is preparing for battle God says, “Stop. You have too many with you. We need to reduce the numbers.” Now, I imagine, as one leading an army to fight another group of people, “less is more” is not necessarily the strategy you want to have. In this instance I would prefer the thinking, “more is better.” Right? But God has a habit of working in strange ways I don’t always understand. So Gideon tells his army, “If anyone is afraid to fight, it’s ok. Go back home now.” And then, 22,000 soldiers left, leaving Gideon with 10,000 soldiers. I can only imagine the gut check, the mental anguish, the possible fear Gideon felt as he watched 2/3 of his army leave. But then, God says, “You still have too many people. Let’s reduce the numbers.” And the number of soldiers in Israel’s army went from 10,000 down to 300. Start your march to fight with 32,000 soldiers. Arrive at the battleground with 300. Call me crazy, but I would be terrified to head into a fight with so small a number. But as I read this verse it made me wonder, “Are there areas in our lives we are not seeing victory because we are depending on our own power and not on God?” Hear me out. I’m not trying to develop a theology that says we will never see victory or success as long as we try to do it on our own. People have overcome addictions and obstacles in their own lives who don’t believe in God. Nor am I saying we should just sit back in our La-Z-Boy recliners in life sipping an iced tea while God does all the work. But I wonder, spiritually speaking, if we aren’t stuck in a rut, stunted in our growth, or drowning in the shallow end because we are more focused on what we can do to overcome than we are depending on God to do His mighty work. It is interesting that God told His prophet Zechariah, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6; ESV). Let’s ask ourselves a couple questions. Where might God be saying “you’re depending too much on your own strength” in your life and spiritual growth right now? What are some ways we can depend more on Him and less on our own abilities? Remember, often when we are following God, it is best to go with the idea that less is more: less of us and more of Him. -Pastor Brian Matthew 23:11-12; NASB
11 But the greatest of you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. The other day I was invited to preach at a friend's church. It was an honor to be invited, and I was thankful to be there and share from God’s Word to another church body. As arranged, I arrived early in the morning to walk through the service and acquaint myself with all the people serving and all the moving parts that day. Where do I fit in? Who is introducing me? What should I do when I finish speaking? After going through all that, there was some time before the service. As I was waiting for the service to start, a gentleman approached me. “Excuse me,” he said, “I was just asked if I could get some volunteers to help me set up the bounce house for the children’s ministry. Would you mind helping me out?” I thought to myself, “Is this really happening right now? Is there no other person to help? Can he not see that I am wearing the microphone to be the speaker for the day?” So I said, “Sure, I would love to help.” He tells me to hang on one minute as he grabs another volunteer (ironically, it turns out the other volunteer was visiting this church for the first time that day). It’s a funny story and a memory to me. Sure we could laugh about it and joke about what this person was thinking asking these two people to help that morning. But at the same time it was a great lesson God was teaching me that day: “Brian, you are never so good that you cannot help others.” Jesus has a great take on what it means to be “great.” It doesn’t mean having power and authority. It doesn’t mean to have an abundance of money. It doesn’t mean that you are in a position where you command others what to do and they do it. It’s not about degrees. It’s not about connections. It’s not about heritage. None of these things are bad or wrong in and of themselves. There are a lot of great people that are in situations like those above. No, for Jesus, what makes a person great is humility. Not looking for recognition. Not looking for fame. Greatness is found in being mindful and watching out for others, lending a helping hand whenever and wherever you can. Did you see the movie “Bruce Almighty?” In the movie, Bruce Nolan (played by Jim Carrey) is asked to fill in for God. And to be honest, he is not a great God. Why (other than the obvious fact that there can only be one true God)? Because Bruce is only concerned with himself, using and abusing the power of God for his own fame, benefit, and recognition. The only person he was interested in serving was himself. And that was the lesson he needed to learn in the movie. That there are far greater things in the world than just our own fame and power. There’s plenty of people we can call out in today’s society who think they are great but fall far short of Jesus’ definition. That’s not the point. The point is, Jesus is telling His disciples (the 12, you, me….us) to change the way we do things. Jesus is calling us to be servants to all. So get out there and serve others. Serve in your neighborhoods, your family, your workplace. Maybe it’s gardening, or helping someone clean/organize. Maybe it’s helping an organization. Opportunities abound. Even when you are asked to be a guest speaker, you’re never too great to serve and serve with others. Go be great! -Pastor Brian |
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