STORMS

In case you wondered, I am alive, I have been real busy and some other things have effected my getting back out here and posting. Can I throw in a plug for a radio program? I have been listening to these guys for about two years now. They have a morning show that is based out of Alabama and I listen to them on the net. You can also hear them on 1250 am here in the Lexington, KY area Saturday Mornings. They are Rick Burgess and Bill "Bubba" Bussey, who hosts the show know as The Award Winning Rick and Bubba Show. You can find them on the net @ http://www.rickandbubba.com Check them out sometime.

Okay now here is the post. It is from a man I admire, who's preaching has had a dramatic impact on my life. he is Dr. James MacDonald, read how he looks at Storms.

And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. Matthew 8:26


We can avoid storms in our lives about as often as we can divert weather patterns over our city. Go stand outside and try. The reality is you will always face times of uncertainty. In the landscape of your life, you will enjoy a few blue-sky days, but mostly there will always be a dark cloud gathering somewhere on the horizon of your life, reminding you of the daily need to trust God with tomorrow. You can’t set your hope on the illusion that somehow you’re going to sort everything out one day. There will always be enough to keep you on your knees. And just about the time you think, I don’t really need to pray that much this week-wham. Face it; on this side of eternity, there will never be a day when you won’t need to trust the God who loves you.


My future and yours will be ravaged by the waves until we embrace the fact that God allows these storms for our good. He won’t let us drown. Can you imagine how it would have wrecked the Gospels if it went down like this: There was this storm and Jesus was asleep and four of the disciples drowned? Of course not! He would not let them--nor will He let you--drown.



But back in the moment, the disciples were wild with fear. Even the professional fishermen knew things were out of control. In the original language the disciples said just this: “Lord, save!”Notice Jesus’ response to them: “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:26). Bible scholars debate whether or not that was a rebuke. Matthew was clearly fond of reporting how many times Jesus said it: First, here in Matthew 8:26, when they feared the storm; then in Matthew 14:31, when Peter took his eyes off the Lord and began to sink; again in Matthew 16:8, when they forgot about the miracle of multiplying bread; and again in Matthew 17:20, when they failed to heal the demon possessed boy. “O you of little faith!”-Jesus said it to them a lot.



In my mind’s eye, I see Him smiling when He says it here in the storm. I think it’s tender, like He’s saying, “You don’t get it yet, do you?” He’s not mad at them, but sad that they didn’t think He could take care of them.



Makes you wonder how often He says “O you of little faith!” to us.

2007 Christmas Party & A Million $$ Life

Don't forget the 2007 NHSM Christmas Party. It is set for December 15th. For more information and directions contact the church offices. Remember it is a white elephant party. Bring a gift to exchange with someone. We will be meeting at the church on the 15th, van will pull out for the party at 5:30 SHARP. Don't be late!!!

I haven't bought a baseball bat for a while, but I know you can buy one that's cheap and may not last long or one that costs a little more. I seem to remember the old Louisville Slugger bats. But a million-dollar baseball bat? That's a little out of my price range. And lest you think I've lost it, not long ago a massive 46-ounce Louisville Slugger bat sold at auction for $1.26 million dollars! What in the world could possibly make a simple baseball bat worth that much to anyone? Who used it. It was the bat used by Babe Ruth in the first baseball game in the new Yankee Stadium in 1923. In the third inning, the Babe blasted a home run right into the right field bleachers, and somebody just laid down over a million for the bat he used.

It was just a piece of wood until someone important used it to do something important. That's what gave that bat such great value. And that's what gives ordinary humans like you and me a whole new value - being used by the most important person in the universe to do something He considers important. An ordinary life is never quite ordinary again once that life has been used by Almighty God.

And His choice of the person He will use is not based on the things most people look for. God doesn't care about charisma, or credentials, or connections, or cash. He's looking for character. He's a holy God, and He can only use holy instruments; people who keep themselves clean for His service.

Paul paints a picture of two kinds of believers - one useful to the Lord and one of little use to Him - in 2 Timothy 2, beginning with verse 15, He says, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved." (P.S. here: Missionary martyr Jim Elliot said the only degree he really wanted was his A. U. G. degree - Approved Unto God.) The verse goes on to say, "a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth ... In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble." Even our house has some things we use for throwing away trash and others that we use to serve special people for special occasions.

So what do I have to do to have the honor; the incredible value of being someone that the High King of Heaven can use? "If a man cleanses himself," the Bible says, "he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work." Man, those are beautiful words, "useful to the Master." Just like you or me going to the kitchen to find a glass to drink from, God is looking for someone who's clean to use. And He doesn't find very many. What a powerful reason for you to keep your heart and your mind pure, to repent of the junk you're hanging onto, to meet with Jesus daily for that day's tune-up, to aspire to be, as Robert Murray McCheyne said, "as holy as a saved sinner can be." You'll be God's man, God's woman, through whom God's work will be done in people's lives. That temptation, that compromise can't possibly be worth losing out on a destiny like that!

The beautiful thing is that anybody can qualify to be used by God. It's your passionate purity, your total surrender to be used totally for His purposes that qualifies you. You've abandoned your dreams for your life for His dreams for your life. They're so much bigger and so much better. And the greatest legacy of your life will be to join Him in the rescue mission that changes people's eternity from hell to heaven. He's inviting you to join Him in that rescue mission for which He died.

Make yourself available to the Lord of the universe and keep yourself clean for Him. When He picks up a life to use it, it takes on a meaning and a significance that nothing on earth can even get close to. And in God's hands, your life can be a holy home run!

Missing the View

I wanted to remnd you that Disciple Now 07 is just around the corner. Keenan Braden will be our speaker and M'rod will be doing the music. Disciple Now will begin on Friday October 19th @ 5:30 with a meal and then M'rod will lead us in worship. After which Keenan will speak to us and then you will go to your host homes and have a short Bible study and maybe sometime that night you all will go to sleep.

There will be schedules for you all in the youth area Sunday.

I hope you all have been praying and about Disciple Now and the leaders.

Here is our thought for the day.

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Few people captured the American imagination like America's first astronauts. That's why, for many of us, names like John Glenn are on a list of 20th Century heroes. John Glenn was, of course, one of the first men to ride a rocket into space. Then, years later, as a "senior citizen" he amazed the world by doing it again. So when John Glenn gives advice to today's space shuttle astronauts, he's got credentials! I love what he is reported to have told the Columbia astronauts before what turned out to be their last flight. He said, "Hey, don't forget to look out the window!"

Once they were in space, the Columbia astronauts - and other astronauts - expressed their appreciation for John Glenn's advice. They confessed to being so busy doing what they were doing that it was all too easy to miss the spectacular view all around them. A tendency, by the way, that isn't just limited to astronauts. Those of us who are highly task-oriented or goal-oriented (that's me), can easily get so consumed that we "forget to look out the window." We miss the beautiful things happening right in front of us and all around us.

In Psalm 103, David seems to be addressing this tendency to miss or forget a lot of life's blessings. Beginning with verse 1, he says, "Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives our sins and heals our diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things."

When you take time to enjoy the beauty "out the window" you'll see the new beginnings the Lord has given you after you've blown it: the health that He's preserved or restored, the pits that He's rescued you from, the little and big things that He's doing right now to show you His love, and the good things you wanted that He has provided. When you fail to stop and "smell the flowers" as some have said, you start to get all stressed, brittle and overwhelmed and negative. But taking a timeout to catch your breath, regain your perspective, and appreciate all the good things around you will renew your joy, it will renew your energy, your faith, and your attitude.

Maybe in your hurry to get it done or to get to your destination you've inadvertently been running over people, including people you should stop and enjoy; stop and listen to. Maybe you're missing all the blessings in your situation because all you focus on is your burdens. You need to take some timeouts to let your soul catch up with your body. Enjoy the scenery. Stop the rat race long enough to just take a leisurely walk, take time to listen to a child. They often help us see the world as we ought to see it. Stop to give a hug, look for things you can compliment in the people around you, and consciously, intentionally thank God for specific blessings of the past 24 hours, or the past 24 minutes.

The Bible reminds us that God's "mercies are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23), which means there's new God-stuff to appreciate each new day for those who are looking for evidence of God in their day. If you're tired and if you're tense and you're feeling overwhelmed, it could be you've been so absorbed in your mission that you've forgotten to look out the window.

There's always something beautiful to see because of the awesome God who's always doing something new and something good.

"Winning the Battle With the Animal Inside."

Several years ago on an Indian reservation, a friend there told us about an elderly neighbor of hers who had taken an unusual pet into her house. It was a half wolf and half dog. Half wild and half domesticated and, as it turned out, big trouble. One morning that wolf dog picked up the lady's granddaughter and began to carry her away. The grandmother saw it, and she screamed at the top of her lungs. The animal stopped and froze in this moment of evident struggle between his wild side and his tame side. The wolf dog looked straight at this screaming lady, totally unafraid; his wild side wasn't scared at all. His wild side wanted that child for food. But then in one dramatic moment, the animal dropped the child and let her go. The tame side finally won, but there were still a lot of scars.


The battle between the wild side and the tame side is a battle we humans know all too well, because it seems they both live inside us and they're both strong. One Biblical writer, Paul, the apostle, wrote about this struggle in these words: "What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Romans 7:15).


If you're tired of the animal inside you winning, if you're tired of the scars it's left on you and the people you care about, then you're ready for a look at the Word of God in Galatians 5:16. You'll hear the struggle, but you'll hear the solution, too. The Bible says: "Live by the Spirit (that's God the Holy Spirit, who lives in everyone who belongs to Jesus), and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." Does that sound familiar at all?

Here are the two menus of the kind of person you're going to be, depending on which side wins. "The acts of the sinful nature (that's the animal inside) are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. Those who live like that will not inherit the kingdom of God."

That's deadly stuff from our wild side. But it goes on to say, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."

Here's the hard truth about the animal inside. You can't tame him; it's too strong. You can strive all you want, make all the commitments to change that you want, the monster will still win very often. But when you get Jesus, the Holy Spirit moves into your life with all the power there is.

The winning secret is in Ephesians 5:18, "Be filled with the Spirit." That means controlled by, taken over by the Holy Spirit, which means you stop trying to change by your own efforts. You trade striving for surrendering all of you completely to the Holy Spirit of God.


If you lay a glove on a chair and ask it to move the chair, the glove will just lay there. But if you put your hand in that glove, that glove will pick up the chair and do what a glove can't do by the power of the hand inside it. You're just God's glove, powerless to subdue your sinful side. But if you surrender all control of that glove and let God put His hand in there, His power will move what you've never been able to move and change what you've never been able to change.

The Bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross to rescue us from the power and the penalty of our sin. If you've never reached out to Him in faith and said, "Jesus, you're my only hope. I'm Yours," I urge you to do that today.

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Someone (Rob Taylor) gave me pictures from the cookout a few weeks ago. As I was looking through the pictures, one just stuck out. Not because of who was in it, but because of the way it was taken. Here's the picture,

Being a Witness where you are

If you are in either Anderson or Woodford County school system then you are back inside the walls of public education. You are in the trenches of the largest mission field and I wanted to talk to you about being a missionary to your friends. Now ladies, please forgive me for this illustration, but it fits perfectly. Okay.

He was one of the outstanding place kickers in the National Football League, helping his team win some memorable games with his field goal accuracy. But he had a spiritual hole in his heart. As he tells his story - which he did before tens of thousands of people at a Billy Graham Mission - it was a sudden, debilitating disease that got his attention. He began to be aware how desperately he needed the God who could do what he could never do. He points to the man who was his ball-holder as the one who really showed him Jesus. Of course, when that football is snapped to the holder for that field goal attempt, it's the sure hands of the ball holder that the kicker depends on completely. But this former star, now a highly visible ambassador for Christ in his community, tells insightfully how much his Christian teammate really meant in his life. He explains it this way: "He wasn't just holding the football in his hands, he was holding my eternal future in his hands!"

If you're on Jesus' team, that's the position you're playing for people around you whether you realize it or not. You are, in a sense, holding their eternity in your hands, because you know Jesus and they don't. And if you don't tell them, they probably never will. Which means they have no hope of this life ever making sense, and no hope of heaven when they die.

Many of us just don't realize the amazing position God has given us; a position that gives you the possibility of your life mattering forever and ever. That position is spelled out in II Corinthians 5:18-20, "God ... reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (That's bringing together someone Jesus died for with the Man who died for them.): that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are, therefore, Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."

So that's why you are where you are, doing what you do, knowing who you know - you're there to take those folks in one hand and Jesus in the other hand and bring them together! How are you doing? It's as if we're saying, "Jesus couldn't be here in person, but He put me here to tell you about Him." Your message isn't about your religion compared to their religion. It's about life's most important relationship! Remember, it's a message of reconciliation! A relationship we were created to have, but a relationship we don't have because we've run our own life. A relationship, though, that we can have because of what Jesus did, and it's a relationship you must choose. It's that simple, and it's life-or-death information - eternal life-or-death.

It isn't so much that Jesus is asking you to go out on some witnessing raid of people you don't know. He wants you to do what you already do every day for eternity, by trying to take some of the people you're with all the time to heaven with you.

You may think there's someone more qualified but you're the one who's there, and you're there by God's divine assignment. Don't miss the mission He put you there for! Jesus has placed you in the middle of some people whose eternity depends on them knowing Him, and you are holding their eternity in your hands!

Up Coming Events

August 11,2007
Cookout at the Bowman house ( Parents are encouraged to attend)
meet at the church @ 5:30pm
return to the church @ 9:30pm
It will be a time of games, food, fun and maybe music.
Sign up sheets are in the youth center.

August 18, 2007
SUPER SATURDAY @ Immanuel Baptist Church
9:00 to 3:00 (meet at the church at 8:00 am)
Lunch will be provided

Cost is $20.00
There will be a main speaker and worship leader along with 2 breakout sessions.
The sessions cover: Basic Bible Study,
Help Your Youth Pastor
How to take the Gospel to your family and friends
You get to pick two of the three sessions. Sign up sheet is in the youth area.

A Word of Thanks:
I wanted to take this time to thank the youth who came out during VBS and helped. It was wonderful to see you pitching in to help and watching you interact with not only the adults, but the children. Some of you may never know the impact you had on those children.

Finally,

D-Now is scheduled for October 19-21
What your mail for more information.

The Cost of not Changing

Camp is coming, are you ready? We leave out on Sunday June 3rd for Jonathan Creek. Don't be late.
Now if you know anything about me, you know I love to eat and breakfast has become one of my favorite times of the day. It is when I get to sit down with my family and we can talk, laugh and just be together. Well, my favorite breakfast meal is pancakes or waffles and you have to have maple syrup, not just any maple syrup, it has to be Vermont maple syrup. Once you've tasted Vermont maple syrup, all those store brands just taste like goo! So my ears perked up when NBC Nightly News started talking about the troubles that Vermont maple farmers were having this year. They focused on one farmer who lives on a farm where they've been mapling for eight generations! This farmer (his name is Burr) has known that the maple trees are ready to be tapped for their valuable sap during the first week of March. It's always been that way. But recent weather changes have suddenly thrown that predictable harvest schedule into total confusion. Last year, he and his son nearly lost a third of their normal maple sap because it was either too soon or too late to capture it. For all those eight generations, Burr's family has used one time-honored method of tapping their maple trees; a spout on the tree and a bucket underneath. There is a new technology that enables a farmer to know when the sap is ready and to capture it in that brief window. But tubes and vacuums seemed pretty foreign to a man who's known one way that worked all his life and for generations. But after all they lost last year, his son finally convinced Burr to spend $10,000 for that new equipment. His son's comment was, "It takes some coercion to get him to go along with new ideas, for sure." But the veteran farmer did it. The NBC News reporter identified why. He would do anything to keep the farm for his son. In the reporter's words, "Even if it means doing what he hates the most - changing his old ways."

When the method you know, and the method you're comfortable with is costing you the harvest, you change or you lose the harvest. How can that lesson be lost on those of us who have joined Jesus in what He came to earth to do - seeking and saving the lost? Jesus called the work of bringing people to Him harvest. And honestly, there's a harvest many Christians and many ministries are losing because we hate to change. While North American Christians have built this massive Christian subculture, we've been losing our culture. And the lost people around us have changed dramatically. They don't know God's rules; they don't know God's Book; they don't know the religious words we use; they don't ever plan to go to any of our religious meetings. But in many cases, we're deciding what we'll do to reach them based on what we're comfortable doing. But since when does a rescuer decide what he's going to do based on what's comfortable for him? He does whatever he has to do to save that dying person!

Listen to God's greatest harvester, the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:22, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." Just before this, he's told us that when he's with the Jews, he comes in a Jewish package; when he's with the Gentiles, he's as Gentile as God will allow him to be; when he's with those who need an uncomplicated presentation of Christ, he becomes what they need. All the time making sure that he is never "ashamed of the Gospel of Christ" (Romans 1:16). And Paul followed a Savior who constantly changed the package and the presentation to break through to changing audiences. But they never changed the product! They never compromised the message! Like that Vermont farmer, we're harvesting the same product, but we'll change the way we get at it as much as the harvest requires.

So are you willing to change so we can bring in the harvest of lost lives? Will you learn to tell them about Jesus in their words, not our Christianese? Are you willing to use the kind of program, the kind of music, the kind of package that speaks the language of the person you're trying to reach? That's Missions 101! Are you willing to reach them in locations where they're comfortable? Are you willing to introduce the Gospel by starting with the needs they care about? We're talking change here; what we hate to do the most. But the cost of not changing is much higher than the cost of changing - souls lost forever because we wouldn't change.