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Remember Me…

There are many different ways to remember Jesus (“Obeying Jesus,” 08/29/2010). For example, it seems from 1 Corinthians 11 that the infant church sometimes had a fellowship meal for the entire assembly of believers and that they took time during that meal to remember Jesus with the bread and the cup as he invited them to. Granted, from the comments by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, they were messing it up pretty badly: ignoring the poor and hungry, giving preference to the rich and the important.

The report in Acts chapter 2, verse 42 and the following verses, seems to be a more simple picture; a meal shared frequently from house to house between sisters and brothers in Christ. 

I have broken bread while out camping with friends, in a beautiful chapel at Camp Berea, on the beach at Berea, in a college dorm room with other campus Christians. Once I seem to remember breaking bread together as a family while we were on vacation and all we had available was a corn muffin. 

Some are afraid that if we have Communion too often it will somehow cheapen the experience and make it less meaningful and significant. That sounds like “I should only tell my wife that I love her once each year so that it doesn’t get trite and less meaningful…”

Actually I think the opposite is true; waiting too long just dulls the spiritual senses and allows material and worldly stuff to permeate and saturate my life. Like I said Sunday, its not like we  “forget Jesus,” we just get distracted and forget to remember.

What do you think? How often is often enough for you? What’s too often? Tell us about a meaningful time that you had remembering the Lord.

Resting in Him,
Steve

Make Disciples…

When we talked about “Make Disciples” (August 22, 2010) we just skipped over the imperative “Go…”, the command to Christ-followers to “Go and make disciples” which seems to imply something different than “stay right here.”

In the 2,000 years since that command was first given, thousands have obeyed it and gone to make disciples. From Philip who evangelized the Ethiopian in Gaza and John-Mark who went to Egypt, to the apostle Paul’s trips to Turkey and Doubting Thomas’ trip to India… The gospel reached Portugal and Morocco by 150AD, Switzerland and Belgium by 200AD, and the Greater Khorasan region of northern Iran and Afghanistan by 300AD.

By 400AD Christianity had come to Scotland and Ireland, by 500AD to the Franks under Clovis I of Gaul, by 600AD to England, by 650 to China, and by 750AD to Iceland.

By 1000AD the gospel had reached Poland and Russia, Greenland and Sweden and Norway. In 1494 the first missionaries arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic and by 1498 the first conversations happened in Kenya. By 1644 John Eliot had reached the Algonquin Indians of North America.  And William Carey reached out to India in 1792.

 The “Haystack Prayer Meeting” at Sloan’s Meadow by five Williams College students in August of 1806 sparked the Student Volunteer Movement that initiated North American missions worldwide. Anthony Norris Groves, an English dentist, went to Bagdad in 1829. CT Studd established the Heart of Africa Mission in 1910…

And these are just a very few highlights of the history of Christian Missions (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christian_missions). Thousands of missionaries and bible translators, doctors and teachers, merchants and explorers–many of the ultimately becoming martyrs–have spread the name and fame of Jesus Christ around the globe.

Today, in the third wave of evangelical missions, the emphasis is on reaching “unreached people groups,”  the 40.7% of the world’s population in ethnic people groups all over the world with the least followers of Jesus Christ (see http://www.joshuaproject.net); and reaching those within “The 10/40 Window,” the area that extends from 10 degrees to 40 degrees North of the equator, stretching from North Africa across to China, the area of the world that contains the largest population of non-Christians in the world (see http://1040window.org/).

So there is still a role left today for some to “Go.” And there is a role for the rest of us to “Mobilize” others to Go by recruiting and supporting them with our prayer and our finances. You can Go, or you can Mobilize. Either way, you and I have a role to play in finishing the work of the command to “Go and make disciples…”

Resting in Him,
Steve

Give…

“Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” – Matthew 5:42

“…when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” – Matthew 6:2,4

“Freely you have received, freely give.” – Matthew 10:8

“Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.'” – Matthew 14:16

“Jesus answered, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'” – Matthew 19:21

“I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.” – Mark 9:41

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” – Luke 6:38

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” – Luke 6:38

Resting in Him,
Steve

Time Alone With God…

Ben Harris and Jeff Cambridge shared some good thoughts on prayer with us (August 1, 2010) from the command of Jesus about prayer in Matthew chapter 6. For myself, too often when I pray I am quickly and easily distracted by other thoughts that come barging into my mind — stuff I have to do, a recent conversation, the noise of the environment I’m in, you name it. It’s hard for me to focus.

Chuck Swindoll writes that the two key elements for deepening your relationship with God are “solitude and silence.” Both are pretty hard to come by in our busy lives.

Let me suggest that you make an appointment with God this week for some solitude and silence in the beauty of the outdoors. One way to do that is to take a “Prayer Walk.” Take a half-hour or an hour this week – maybe late at night, maybe skip breakfast, maybe during free time, you pick it – and go for a walk … and pray.

Why do a Prayer Walk?

George Müller recorded more than fifty thousand specific answers to prayer, over thirty thousand of which he said were answered the same day he prayed! Müeller wrote:

“I find it very beneficial to my health to walk thus for meditation before breakfast, and . . . generally take out a New Testament . . . and I find that I can profitably spend my time in the open air.

I used to consider the time spent in walking a loss, but now I find it very profitable, not only to my body, but also to my soul. . . . For . . . I speak to my Father . . . about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.”

What do I do on a Prayer Walk?

Just pray while you walk! Believe it or not, the walk will help keep you from being distracted. Many find that it’s actually easier to focus yoru thoughts when you walk. Your time will be enriched as you notice God’s creation and share your thoughts with the Lord as you walk.

Prayer Walk Suggestions…

  • Confess and ask forgiveness for your sin
  • Thank God for His blessings!
  • Worship God for who He is – you can even sing!
  • Pray for yourself, family, church, leaders, nation
  • Pray about your upcoming decisions and plans
  • Ask God to open your eyes to opportunities and your ears to His promptings
  • “Pray the scriptures” by reading them back to   God as your prayer. Here are some suggestions: Psalm 23; Philippians 2:1-11; 1 Timothy 2:1-10; Psalm 139; Ephesians 1:15-22; Psalm 40…
  • Let silence happen – take time to be quiet & think

Prayer Walk Guidelines…

  • Do your walk alone – one-on-one with God
  • Maintain silence with people – this is not a social event – but feel free to talk out loud to God
  • Plan at least a half hour or more for your walk
  • Find a quiet place: the backyard or around the block, Capron Park, the HS track, the Blackstone River bike path…
  • Take notes of what God prompts you to think as you spend time alone with Him

I trust that your time alone with God will be precious–special enough that you will want to do it again soon.

Resting in Him,
Steve

Amazing Grace…

Here’s a good article on the recent news story…

Shirley Sherrod: Racial healing and God’s amazing grace
By: Gustav Niebuhr

The story of how Shirley Sherrod briefly lost a job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and almost immediately received an offer of a new one –from departmental Secretary Tom Vilsack himself–has had a remarkable staying power in the news media. A week has gone by since an administration official, furiously dialing Sherrod’s cell phone, demanded she pull her car over and resign. Very few subjects, short of wars and catastrophic oil spills, receive the amount of ink her dismissal has.

But amidst all the ruminations about and fulminations against blogger Andrew Breitbart, Fox News, Vilsack, the NAACP, President Obama, and–well, you name ’em all–a central character in the drama has gone almost unremarked. That would be Ms. Sherrod’s God, to whom she assigned the decisive role in the now globally famous speech she gave to Georgia’s NAACP last March.

By now, most Americans must know how the video excerpt of her words, posted on the Web, made Sherrod look as if she were discriminating against a white farmer by not extending him the services he, a struggling agriculturalist, deserved. And most now know the excerpt was not the full speech, but served Sherrod as a prelude to explain how she changed and came to be who she is today.

As she said to members of the Georgia NAACP back on that March day, she spoke as the daughter of a murdered black farmer, victim of a racial crime whose author was never convicted. That allowed her to talk about how, through her experiences with the financially hard-pressed white farmer in 1986, she came to believe a divine agency was at work in her life, teaching her.

“God helped me to see that it’s not just about black people–it’s about poor people. And I’ve come a long way. I knew that I couldn’t live with hate, you know.”

That’s the key statement in her speech. In traditional Christian terminology, it’s called a testimony.

In her speech, Sherrod singled out young people, asking them to hear her story of moral transformation. The daughter of a murdered man, she credited God with goodness and showing her a way helpful to others.

In reporting on Shirley Sherrod’s case, commentators have focused on the high-pressure dysfunctions of the 24-hour news cycle, the embarrassing, knee-jerk, rush to judgment of high administration officials, and the way race as a subject continues to bedevil many Americans into saying and doing stupid things.

But not to be ignored is one woman’s recounting of how she experienced an amazing grace. That’s not a singular narrative. Americans have been telling those stories about themselves for centuries. The details vary, but the essential storyline remains the same: I was lost, now I’m found. Too bad a lot of the news media are tone deaf when it comes to recognizing the story and the tradition to which it belongs.