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Published February 19, 2009

Fulfilling Our Purpose

For those of you who missed last week’s message (and for those of you who have forgotten), last week we introduced a series of messages on the church. And to start it off, we looked at the two most basic fundamental questions you can ask about the church.

#1. What is the church?

The church, we were reminded, is people. Church is not a building, it is not a charitable organization, it is people who belong to the kingdom of God – followers of Jesus Christ.

#2. What is the purpose of the church?

And we discovered that our purpose, as individuals and together as Christ’s church, is simply to love God and be loved by Him.

Now the question I want to answer today is “How do we do that?” How do we love God and be loved by Him? So as I started to prepare for today’s message I began to come up with a list of different things we should do if we want to really love God.

  • Read the Bible.
  • Study the Bible.
  • Memorize the Bible.
  • Pray.
  • Love my neighbor.
  • Tell others about Jesus.

Before I was finished, I realize that the list I had looked very much like a Christians New Year’s Resolutions. Have you ever done that? Maybe not at just New Years, but after listening to a convicting speaker or reading a great Christian book, or while attending a Christian conference? You make a firm resolution – I’m going to read my Bible more. Or I’m going to spend more time in prayer. Or I’m going to be more bold in sharing Jesus with my friends.

I’ve sure done that a lot, I imagine you may have as well. But what happens most of the time? You get up at 6:00 am to read our Bibles on Monday. Then again at 6:00 am on Tuesday. You’re a little tired on Wednesday, so you bump it back to 6:30 am. On Thursday you manage to squeak it in at 6:45 am. Friday you hit snooze too many times and are running late, so you decide you’ll read your Bible before you go to bed that night. You forget all about it over the weekend, and by Monday, you’ve given up. Then it’s back to your regular routine until the next time you feel convicted.

After we’ve been through that cycle about 10 times we begin to think that we’re a pretty terrible Christian. Why can’t I read my Bible more – or why don’t I get more out of it when I do? Why can’t I memorize verses – I know I should, but I can never stick to it. Why can’t I be more bold in sharing Christ with others? Even when opportunity comes up, I chicken out. How can I really love God, if I can’t do all these things I know I should be doing?

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Published February 19, 2009

The Purpose of the Church

This is the first of five messages on the topic of the church.

A little over two years ago God began to take me on a fantastic journey. I had been working full-time with Camp Little Red for about four years when Heather & I began to feel led to resign from our position of follow-up supervisor. We didn’t really know why – we certainly enjoyed working at the camp, and we didn’t have any other job options at the time. But we felt increasingly led by God to leave the camp and begin a new chapter in life – whatever God would have us do. So in October of 2006 we resigned from the camp and I took on a job as a teacher’s aid at the small Christian school that I had attended as a kid.

Up until this time, camp was the over-riding theme & focus of my life. I had directed camps, developed new camping programs, and spent my energies thinking of new creative ways of doing camp. I loved planning camps and dreamed of one day starting my own camp. In fact, at one time I had proposed to the camp board that I start up a brand new camp here on Buffalo Lake. But about this time, God began to shift my focus.

I started to think about the church. The church that we were attending was going through some difficult times. Attendance had been continually dwindling. New Christians were few and far between. Church seemed lifeless and dull. And to be honest, most Sunday mornings I really didn’t want to go to church.

So I thought, is this really church as God intended it? Where was the “abundant life” that Jesus had promised His followers? The church that I read about in the Bible was alive and exciting! Had the church gone off track? Or maybe was me who’s got the problem? Were things messed up in my approach to church? Maybe my relationship with God isn’t what is should be? Whatever the issue is, how can I fix it? I began to have all these questions about church and my focus started shifting from wanting to build fantastic camps to wanting to build a fantastic church.

So to make a long (but exciting story) short, God has taken me on a fantastic journey over the past 2, 2½ years that has taught me all kinds of things about who God is, who God wants me to be, and what part He wants me to play in His church. I certainly don’t have it all figured out, but I am very excited to share with you some of the things that I have been learning and to continue to learn with you.

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Published February 15, 2008

Eatin’ That “Christian Food”

This devotional is a rehash of an earlier post, Livin’ on Strained Carrots. That devotional was written for grades 7 thru 12 and this is a re-write for grades 1 thru 6.

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Today I want to teach you guys something very important. The thing I want to teach you is pretty easy to do, but there are lots of grown-ups that still don’t know how to do it. In fact, the thing that I’m going to teach you is so important, that if you learn how to do it today, and you start doing it – you will never be the same! Do you want to know what I’m going to teach you? I’m going to teach you how to feed yourself.
Before you tell me that you already know how, I want to play a little game.

Game:

Three contestants blindfolded, guess what object they hold. If they are right, they win the object.(Pop, Smarties, and baby food)

Imagine that it’s Christmas time. Christmas day, actually. All of your relatives have arrived and it’s time for the feast. There’s a big turkey (or ham or whatever your family usually eats complete with all the trimmings. Name a few of the things you would have at your Christmas meal…
So there’s all this food just waiting to be eaten, someone asks the blessing on the food and everyone digs in – except you. For you, your mom or your dad opens a jar of baby food and starts feeding you that stuff.
How would you like that? No way! That would be gross. And besides, you’re not a baby anymore! You don’t need your parents to feed you – you can feed yourself!
But you know… you couldn’t always feed yourself, could you? When you were a baby, you had to be fed by your parents. You had no teeth and all you could eat was baby food. But aren’t you glad you grew up and learned how to eat regular food all by yourself?
Today, I want to show you how you can grow up as a Christian and feed yourself spiritually. If you don’t know what that means, that basically means that I want to show you how to be really good friends with God.

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