In Isaiah 43 we find a word from the Lord through his prophet to his people in exile. God reminds them, that against all odds He is doing a new thing!

there are so many times it appears that God is absent, or out of touch with our realities – we wonder: is he faithful? is he loving? is he forgetful? is he really omnipotent?

God reminds his people in exile –  people who have lost their land, their livelihoods, their families, their God – that he is still at work, and He is doing a new thing.

But, do we really believe that? Are we listening for that? Are we ready to do what is necessary to be a part of that? In the midst and confusion of our national political stage and our struggling churches, I hear the reminder of our Lord that He will build His church and that nothing shall prevail against it!

What a delight to join Him in this new thing He is doing!

Lat time we talked about being “set apart” as the meaning of the word “holy.” As Brian Coulter says, “to be holy is to be set apart, but it is being set apart with a purpose. Simply being ‘set apart’ is not the same as being holy.”

We all set apart time in our days for a lot of tasks. We set apart time for taking care of regular chores, for reading email, for scanning blogs, etc. But, the call to be holy is the call to set ourselves apart for God’s use in the ordinary.

I am convinced that it is far easier to be holy in the special, but to be holy in the ordinary requires intentionality. “It is only when I deliberately set something apart with a holy intention for our holy God that it becomes holy.”

Make your prayer today to be set apart for His use in the ordinary. Make your prayer that you might do everything for the glory of God this day!

I am enjoying the Lent Devotional “Be Holy” that we are using in our congregation this year. Being holy is not what we suppose it to be. It is not being perfect, self-righteous, holier than thou, or any of a myriad other things. The word “holy” means set apart.

We are holy in that we have been set apart, by the grace of God, for His use. Now, that is a completely different idea than we normally have. We are set apart for his use in the mundane tasks of our days. We are set apart to His use when we are at work, home, play, or leisure.

Brian Coulter writes, “we are not set above, over, on top of, or higher than others in this calling.” Together we are set apart for God’s use.

Let our prayer be – God use me in the place you have set me this day.

I recently read this in an article by Mary Hulst. She wrote:

“Following isn’t a skill that most of us are encouraged to develop. If you want to learn how to lead, there are books and conferences galore. Workshops, classes, seminars, and videos abound on the topic of leadership. But what if your most important job is to follow? Not all of us are called to lead. But each of us—every last one of us—is called to follow.

And you know what? We don’t want to. That’s why there aren’t any conferences on following. Because no one wants to follow. That’s why it takes 13 weeks of 24/7 discipline to train a Marine. Following is not appealing. Following is doing what someone else wants you do to. If we are straight up honest, we don’t want to follow.

This, however, is Jesus’ first invitation: “Follow me.” It was the invitation of a rabbi to potential disciples. And not unlike Marine boot camp, a rabbi expected his disciples to follow him in the way he ate, slept, walked, prayed, and thought. A disciple was to follow his rabbi so closely that he would be covered in the dust of the rabbi. The disciples were supposed to imitate the life of the rabbi. This is why Jesus says in John 13, “Now that I, your Lord and Rabbi, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”  Now that I . . . you also. That’s the essence of following.

While we don’t always want to follow Jesus, we know that we should. We should follow him. We should follow him in the way we deal with our anger, our money, and our sex lives. We should pray as Jesus taught us to pray. We should care for children as he cared for children.

Jesus is our Lord. So even if we don’t always want to follow and we don’t often follow very well, we do know that we should.”

Following the Master… That is our call. In following we learn to serve and lay our lives down for each other. In serving perhaps we truly learn to lead. What is better than a servant leader?

How can you enrich the lives of your co-workers this week?

Who’s got time for God in this busy world we live in. We are bombarded by opportunities, noise, opinions, technology. It all gets rather overwhelming if we are not careful.

To make matters worse, we know we should carve out time with God but we feel guilty that we do not do that often enough. That very guilt compounds and builds between us and God.

Some years ago I read a book by Gordon MacDonald in which he advocated for the creation of Sabbathing moments in the middle of our busy live to allow time for our souls to catch up with our bodies.

What is a Sabbathing moment? It is an intentional use of 5 minutes (can be any length), in which you shut down and spend time talking to God. That time may be prayer, it may be reading His Word, it may be quiet meditation.

Who’s got time? You and I do. We have 86,400 seconds to spend each day. Time we will never get back. How will we spend that time this day? Let’s make some Sabbathing moments in our busy lives to quiet ourselves with God and to be reminded that He is still God.

Sin is not a popular word in our modern churches. We would much rather talk about love and grace. I count myself in that company. But several discussions in this last week have reminded me again that if we have no sense or awareness of sin than we cheapen grace. If we have no concept of sin, then why do I need the cross? I know that we can go to extremes here but today we are guilty of what Isaiah states in 5:20 – “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Just today a friend sent me this story entitled “PCUSA Report Shows Evangelists Shifting Away From Calls to Repentance?”

I am not a fan of the old time fire and brimstone methodology, but I do not think we are anywhere close to that extreme. May God awaken us to the reality of the sin that affects us in all our faculties and to the grace that meets that sin with the wonder of forgiveness.

I read this on a blog today and thought it had some great stuff in it. Enjoy the read.

Churches need new people. Most new people come to us as visitors who are strangers. The Bible wants us to welcome strangers and meet their needs (Matthew 25:35), but some people don’t talk to strangers. I hear many reasons for their hesitancy, such as fear that the “visitor” has been attending for a year already or inability to deal with awkward silences.

I agree that some visitors are private, reserved types who don’t want to answer lots of probing questions. And, most people are not comfortable with a church on the first visit. In fact, my husband and I repeatedly tried, and then disregarded, a common hospitality idea for first-time visitors. A recent Christward Collective article* stated the suggestion like this, “You will find that almost anyone visiting will jump at the invitation to come to your home for lunch.” Not in New England. Not when it is the pastor’s house. Inviting new people to our house assured that we didn’t see 80% of them again. Ever.

So, how do we welcome strangers, avoid intimidating visitors, and encourage them to come back to our church? Here are some general ideas.

• Seek out new people and introduce yourself.
• Start slow. You don’t need to obtain 30 years of backstory in one conversation or invite them over on the first visit.
• Listen well. You will be able to tell if something makes them uncomfortable. You will also learn things that you can mention in future conversations.
• Introduce them to someone else in the church. Think of a member who has something in common with the visitor.
• Ask a question that doesn’t have a yes or no answer.

Questions to Ask a Church Visitor

1) What is your name? Preface this question with “Hello. I’m xxx. I am glad to see you here.” Remember the visitor’s name. Write it down if you have to. Review the name before next Sunday so that you can call them by name next time. Even though I have trouble remembering names, I believe this is the most important question I can ask.

2) How did you discover our church? On a basic level, this will tell you what types of outreach are successful. And, you will find out what the visitor already knows, e.g., from looking at the church’s website. In addition, some visitors are comfortable with sharing more without being asked. You might learn that they are dissatisfied with their current church or that they are new to the area and don’t know anyone. This will help you understand them better.

3) What do you do for your job? Most people can easily talk about their job, if they have one. However, you need to be sensitive to those who might be students, retired, unemployed, disabled or raising children. You don’t want to suggest that only people who work outside the home have worth. So, you can lead off with this question instead or use it as a follow-up for those who don’t have a career. How do you spend your days?

4) What about the style or culture of our church is different than what you are used to?The answer to this question will allow you to explain things and help the visitor get acclaimed to a new environment. Being a visitor is a tough job, especially for one who doesn’t go to church much. Some churches have kneelers, and some have hipsters. Some think Calvin is not Calvinistic enough, and others have never heard of Calvin. In addition, visitors face more practical matters of where to sit so that they don’t take someone’s regular spot, how to find the rest room and when to stand up in the service.

Even if the visitor dashes for the door at the first opportunity, and you never get a chance to ask any of these questions, the warm smile you offer from across the room may be the start of a great conversation. Next Sunday.

We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.

– Brennan Manning

The love of God should constantly amaze us! The more we know of the love of God the more we will be truly one and productive for the Kingdom. The joy of this journey is daily finding out more about the greatness of God’s love for us in Christ!

I must admit I enjoy a good discussion as much as anyone. I love the honest and frank exchange of ideas. However, I do not enjoy what I see on FaceBook and elsewhere where such discussions quickly sink to personal attacks and dishonest misrepresentations of the truth. Not long ago I was in a discussion regarding “Black lives matter.” And, for the record, yes they do – but I went on to say “as do all lives.” After all we are made in the image of God and as Christians should have a high regard for life and all that bears God’s image. The response was to accuse me of racial insensitivity and it went south from there.

As we enter a political season (and I wish we would enact campaign reform to limit the length of time and the amount of money that can be spent on such) let’s try and remember to let “our speech be always with grace.” I believe anyone crazy enough to run for higher office has the best interests of our country in mind. We may have very different ideas as to how best get there (and that is a healthy conversation), but if we remember that simple proposition it enables us to listen and hear those with differing ideas.

Let’s commit ourselves to civility and grace filled conversations to build each other up rather than tear each other down.

Worship is a wonderful and funny thing. I say “funny” because it is so easy for us to miss the point of worship. Hughes Oliphant Old maintains that “we worship God because God created us to worship him. Worship is at the center of our existence, at the heart of our reason for being.”

This is what Augustine was saying when he said – “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

If we are made for worship and worship is at the center of our existence then it stands to reason that worship must be God focused and consumed with the glory of God. After all, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever (WSSC Q1).

But, our modern, narcissistic culture wants to worship to be happy and fulfilled and I think we miss the point. Sometimes worship does make us happy, but sometimes true worship disturbs us and unsettles us.

I believe corporate worship is about us bringing the fruits of our individual worship throughout the week and joining it all together to the praise of God Almighty. If I am not worshipping throughout the week it affects my corporate worship and if I am not worshipping corporately I am not able to worship through the week as I should.

So, let’s bring hearts of great joy as we bow before the God who made us and redeemed us in worship this Sunday!