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Author Archives: Pastor Chas

24 hours

23 Nov

It’s amazing what can happen over the course of a 24 hour period.  Look back over your day and think about things that took a drastic turn, for good or bad.  We are coming up on one of the most mind-blowing holidays of the year.  Thursday morning many of us will wake up with a renewed spirit of thankfulness.  We will spend the day with family and reflect on everything we have been given.  Some teams will celebrate victory and some will fall to defeat; and though family members will nag one another over the victory or loss, they will still be something in the air that allows them to shake it off and keep being thankful.  UNTIL . . .

Friday at exactly 12 am, all this will change.  People will turn from thankfulness and enter a store where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The people who were previously so thankful for everything will act as though they have nothing and fight for the last iPod or iPad that is on the shelf.  All rules will be out the window and people will revert to barbaric action in order to find the special gift for that special someone (that they’re not willing to pay full price for). 

It is an amazing change that takes place over 24 hours.  To all of you that choose to brave this environment, my prayers are with you.  I will be at home in my bed.  Have a great Thanksgiving and remember the real reason you have to be thankful!

 
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Posted by on November 23, 2010 in Just a Thought

 

Thankfulness

22 Nov

There are many things that I am thankful for this year.  If I were to ask you, some of you could give me a large list.  While on the other hand there are many of you that would simply state you have nothing to be thankful for.  Take a moment and write down the three things you are most thankful for this year.  I know this sound elementary, but sometimes we really need a reminder.  Now that you have written them down or at least acknowledged three, cross out one of them.  I know it is a hard choice, but do it anyway.  You see the thing we are thankful for are not always going to be with us.  I am thankful for my children, but I know they are going to turn into teenagers one day.  I will love them the same, but they will no longer be little.  Now that you have one of them marked off, look at the final two.  Yep, you know what I am going to ask you to do: mark another one off.  I know; it may seem like I am ruining your Thanksgiving spirit because I just asked you to mark out two of the three things I asked you to write down.  I promise you there is a point.

Look at this last item.  What is it?  What I want to share with you is that if it is not your relationship to God established through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you are missing the one thing you should be most thankful for.  We rewind back to the Lord’s Supper in Luke 22:19-20.  Jesus told his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me.”  Isn’t it sad how quickly we forget.  We forget that Jesus Christ gave his life so that we could have eternal life.  Remember what Psalm 23:1 says? “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”  It is to this end that I ask you, what more is there to want?  Through Jesus Christ we have a Heavenly Father that provides everything we need.  Letting anything trump our thankfulness for this gift seems rather foolish.

This Thanksgiving I pray that you begin to see the true sacrifice of Christ and you let that take preeminence in your life, it comes first.  I pray that amid the hustle and bustle, the material fulfillment and the indulgence of food, you begin to be truly thankful for the grace we receive through faith.  If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9-10)  Live a great life of thankfulness.

Join us next Sunday @ 10:45 as we begin our new sermon series Unwrapping Christmas with The Integrity of Joseph.

 
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Posted by on November 22, 2010 in Uncategorized

 

Potty Training 101

16 Nov

  Today was Charlie’s first day to try and last in his Thomas the Train underwear.  It turns out that he does not realize they work a little different than diapers.   I came home today only to find out that he had gone through four pairs of pants and we were about to embark on another change. 
  Amy took him to the bathroom and started to put him on the toilet only to find out that he had given Thomas a little (OK, it was quite big) present.  Amy quickly asked him, “does it not bother you that you have poop in your pants.”  To which he quickly replied, “nope.”  The filth didn’t bother him at all, he just knew he was going to get to watch Thomas if he sat on the potty.
  It’s funny the things we will let sit in our lives.  They are the things we are not proud of, the things that haunt us, the things that we wouldn’t dare let those we respect know about.  It turns out that we all have things that we need to not be comfortable with.  We need to make sure we are not comfortable sitting in this filth.  We’ll see how long it takes Charlie to figure this potty thing out, but it seems like even as adults it is an object lesson we need to look back on every now and again.

 
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Posted by on November 16, 2010 in Family Life

 

Testing of Faith (cont.)

15 Nov

Yes, God does use our circumstances to change our view of Him to one that is more accurate, but there must be another tool used: the Bible.  If we just allow our circumstance to dictate our view, but neglect to rely on the Word of God to be the solid source, we may easily fall into another false view.  God speaks through our circumstances, but we should never let that trump the primacy of His Word.

 
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Posted by on November 15, 2010 in Just a Thought

 

Testing of Faith

12 Nov

   I was reading Oswald Chambers today and he wrote that the true test of faith was not among the circumstances of life, but when one’s view of God is challenged and they are forced to alter their belief to one that is correct.  However, it seems that many times the circumstances in life are what God uses to move you to a more correct view of who He is and who you are.  I pray that God continually moves me so that my view of Him is more accurate today than it was the day before, no matter what the method.

 
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Posted by on November 12, 2010 in Just a Thought

 
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