From the Pastor: I Just Don’t Have the Time!
“I’m too busy, it’s overwhelming me.” “I just don’t have the time. No kidding.” “I know I promised to get back to you, but…” “There aren’t enough hours in the day to get things done.” As a pastor, I regularly hear that the busyness and demands of life today are just too overwhelming to live a happy, healthy life. Parents of young children are too busy helping with homework, parents of youth are preoccupied with their issues as well as ensuring their children are
From the Pastor: The Destructive Power of Negative Internal Dialogue
Hatred of self—of the way we look, the way others see us, the way we see ourselves—guarantees misery. Sometimes our own negative internal dialogue can be worse than anything anyone can say to, or about, us. In a Glamour (Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today) magazine survey, it was reported that young women had about 13 negative body-shaming thoughts a day! Does this survey shock you? It’s not just women; you might be surprised
From the Pastor: How Do We Discern God’s Guidance in Adversity?
For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. -Psalm 48:14 In talking to friends here and back in the USA, through this time of lockdown, stressful situations, and restrictions, it appears many are seeking God’s guidance and help. So how do we discern God's guidance? What we learn from others is that God’s leading “was done in such a way that I couldn’t possibly have missed the point. The whole experience
From the Pastor: Avoiding the Blame Game
Biblical wisdom is seen in the God-centered life. It’s not just good advice. It’s others-centered. We know this to be true, yet life seems to offer us many opportunities for resentment, disillusionment, or anger designed to turn us quickly self-centered as we compare ourselves to others: We didn’t get what we thought we deserved—that promotion, job, relationship, or vacation to the Bahamas! We don’t like the way we look. We feel cheated, duped, discarded. We broke up with our loved
From the Pastor: Pentecost – Faith, Evangelism, and the Holy Spirit
Paradoxically faith, like love, increases the more it’s given away. Rather than waiting for it to reach a peak high enough to communicate to others (as most believers do), it grows and expands as we do so from the very beginning. Also, once the nature of true faith becomes clear, the character of true evangelism comes to light as well. What the church goes to such great lengths to reinterpret or avoid altogether, and what so many Christians dread so
From the Pastor: Never Give Up!
Luke 11:5-13: A Friend at Night And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you
From the Pastor: Good Mistakes
Are you wondering if you can ever reach a point of joy and contentment when you look back at a life of stupid mistakes, botched relationships, wrong decisions, and seemingly one failure after another? The short answer is: you can, but not by yourself. You need a powerful source and guide: the Bible. Both the Old and New Testaments are packed with the histories of those who made mistakes, serious ones, who blundered through life, and who would have become utter failures,
From the Pastor: How To Be Happy
On my way to an early morning church meeting some years ago, realizing I was 20 minutes early, I pulled off the traffic-jammed El Camino Real, found a place to park on a side street, and turned off the engine. I then sat back to think of the busyness of the day ahead of me. Suddenly, a man about 35 years old burst out of the front door of his small house on the other side of the street, with his
From the Pastor: Who Said Waiting for God Is Easy?
“Wait for the Lord.” Wait for the Lord! The phrase occurs so often in the Psalms because King David feels that it is worth repeating. 1 and 2 Samuel provide us historical context and understanding for this exhortation occurring in many of David’s Psalms. Life is full of bad surprises: betrayals, conspiracies, battles, diseases, reversals of fortune, slander, hatred, and the like. David experienced them all—repeatedly. He was forever finding himself in endless conflicts and perils that he spent much of his
From the Pastor: Parents, If We Want to Raise Children in the Faith…
Preachers devote a lot of time and preparation to “wives submit to your husband,” “children obey and honor your parents,” and so forth. However, very little is said about two remarkable verses: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” -Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” -Colossians 3:21 (As a side note, even though Paul uses the term “fathers,” most commentators would agree that the
