The Deepest Impression

The Deepest Impression

"Let your light shine before men, that they may see your
good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Mt.5:16

While doing some studying on the Book of Nehemiah, I came across a quote that has really caused me to think. It said this:

"A holy life will make the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns, they only shine."

For all the direction and guidance that lighthouses give to others, they sit silently, some for many centuries, doing their most effective work in times of greatest darkness. And the quote is right, they do it without making a single sound. It made me start to think about light and how it works. It's faster than sound and travels a lot farther. We've all been around campfires and heard the loud crackling of the wood.

But we've also seen fires from a distance, home fires and factories, where the light lit up the sky but we were so far away that we couldn't hear a sound. It is said that there are constant explosions on the face of the sun, but in all honesty, I've never heard a single one. I have, however, seen the light of the sun and enjoyed the warmth it provides.

The dictionary gives us some insightful definitions of an impression, such as "the first and immediate effect of an experience or perception upon the mind" and "an image in the mind caused by something external". In the natural,we can all relate to impressions made in the ground when it's wet and or in the carpet by furniture left in one spot for too long. And how many of us had impressions made by the dentist when we are having a crown put on, biting into that rubbery paste until it hardens enough so that the dentist can form a new tooth from the mold.

Our lives, much more that our words, also leave impressions, impressions that are deep and lasting, upon the minds of those whom we interact with. When the Bible talks about our light shining before others it is referring to the way we live being observable by our friends, family members, co-workers and others. And just like walking on wet soggy ground leaves an impression in the ground, our lives, our actions and reactions, the way we treat others, leave impressions that will shape the lives of others and that may have eternal implications.

Do me a favor. The next time you see an impression in the ground, let it remind you that you are leaving an impression wherever you go in the minds of others. And let's all make sure that those impressions are ones that honor the Lord and reflect the values that He has called us to live by.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Patterns

Patterns

In the years before she worked full-time, my wife Nancy did quite a bit of sewing, making everything from beautiful dresses for the girls to curtains for the house. And she did most of it using patterns she would find at the store. I still remember her laying out the patterns on the dining room table, cutting the material, and being impressed, time and time again, with the final product.

Using patterns isn't just for sewing though; it's found in the Bible, for example when Moses was given instructions about building the tabernacle:

"See that you make all things according to the pattern
shown to you on the mountain." Hebrews 8:5

What a blessing that Moses didn't have to try and figure out what God wanted him to do, with all the worrying and wonder that goes with not being sure if what we are doing is right. He just had to follow the pattern that God showed him. And in our everyday life, we have to do the same thing to be successful - follow the pattern that the Lord set for us. One part of the pattern (like the sleeves my wife used to cut out) says "When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate." (I Peter 2:23). Another piece of the pattern, found in Philippians 2:7, say "......he took on himself the nature of a servant." If we took the time, we could put together a complete pattern of the
Christian life, of the life God blesses.

No doubt it would have been a lot harder for Nancy to sew those dresses for the girls if she didn't have a pattern to follow. And, in the same way, the Christian life would be much more difficult without the pattern that Jesus left us to follow. Our job is ".....to walk as He walked". The pattern is revealed in the Word, waiting for us to discover it and follow it.

But then there is one further step - becoming "a pattern believer", a person whose life others can imitate. Children already do it, following the pattern that their parents set for them. Newborn Christians do it, following the lifestyle of other believers in their local church. In fact, your life is probably a pattern that someone else is following.

Our lesson for today is simple, follow the pattern Christ left us and then be a pattern believer whose life others can safely follow.


God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Just Over the Hill

Just Over the Hill

"Since the beginning of the world, no ear has heard, no eye has seen what God has prepared for those who wait for Him." Isaiah 64:4

In one of the closing scenes from the movie A Far Off Place, the two teenagers have been trying to flee across the Kalahari Desert and are facing total exhaustion. Without water and blistered from the sun, they finally collapse while climbing a sand dune. The camera, showing they lying face down in the sand, zooms out to reveal that just over the crest of the hill is the town they had been trying to reach. Their goal was within reach if they could have pressed on a little farther and, no doubt, if they had known it was that close, they could have summoned up the strength to climb the last stretch of that sand dune.

The movie reminds me a story in I Samuel 13 where Saul was facing a very difficult time and was waiting for Samuel to show up and give him an answer from the Lord. When Samuel didn't show up on time, and with the situation getting more desperate by the minute, Saul took matters into his own hands and offered a burnt offering, a job reserved for the priests. And as so often happens when we give up before God shows up:

"And it came to pass, that as soon as Saul had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came...." I Samuel 13:10

So often we give up just before our breakthrough comes, probably because that is the time of greatest testing and stretching, that is the time when our strength and our faith are at their weakest. And then, to make matters worse, Samuel told Saul that if he had only waited, the Lord was going to establish his rule over Israel forever but now it would be given to a man after God's own heart (David).

Time and time again, I've seen people give up on God just as He is getting ready to bless them and do something incredible in their lives. We need to have reinforced the knowledge that the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, and that the Lord will never let you and I down. We cannot always understand His timing but we know it is perfect. Our faith will be rewarded!

And so it may well be that your breakthrough, your answer to prayer, the change you've been waiting for is just over the hill.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

The Walking Stick

The Walking Stick

"And Aaron's staff...had not only sprouted but had budded,
blossomed and produced almonds." Numbers 17:8

If you've ever made a walking stick for going on a hike, you know the process. First, find a good branch from a tree, not too thin and not too thick. Then strip all the bark off it and, lastly, leave it in the sun to dry out. And no doubt, that's what Aaron did, along with many others, during their journey through the wilderness, walking through the arid Sinai Peninsula.

Aaron took a branch off an almond tree and it became his trusted staff, strong enough to support and steady him as he walked. That is until one day when God had need of it. God said "I'm going to rid myself of this constant grumbling about who should be in charge" and He used the walking sticks of the leaders to do it. Each of the leaders of the twelve tribes gave Moses their walking stick, he carved their names on them, and then placed them in the Tabernacle as God had commanded him.

As we consider these walking sticks, these branches off trees, we have to remember that they were once full of life, with leaves and buds that flowered and fruit that appeared on the branches. And they had been cut off for a purpose that seemed far less important than bearing fruit for others to enjoy. These branches off trees had been stripped bare and laid in the sun to thoroughly dry out before being used. Sometimes we go through similar experiences where we are left feeling dry and barren, without hope for our future, not realizing that God still has a plan for our lives.

In the story in Numbers 17, the Lord said that the staff of the man He had chosen would sprout leaves again, a pretty incredible, even impossible thing to happen. Twelve hours after being placed in the Tabernacle, Moses gathered up the walking sticks. Eleven of them were unchanged but Aaron's had budded, blossomed and produced almonds. It is a powerful example of what the Lord can do in our lives as we spend time in His presence. You may feel dry in your walk and relationship with the Lord but there is hope if you will spend time in His presence.

The miracle of the almond walking stick is a miracle waiting to happen in your life, taking you from feeling dry and cut off, to seeing your life blossom like never before. And the key, and really the key for every situation we face, is getting into His presence. For David to write in Psalm 16:9 "in your presence is fullness of joy", David must have had his own walking stick experience, a time when he allowed God's presence to transform him and fill him with life, with joy, and with a renewed purpose. The Lord wants to do the same for you, restoring hope and filling you with life as you experience the power of His presence.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

If the Bible is the most popular book of all time, then Amazing Grace is without a doubt the most popular song of all time. Written in 1773 by John Newton, it has become America's spiritual national anthem for events of any magnitude. Amazing Grace has been heard at the Olympics, at presidential inaugurations and in crisis situations of every kind from the 9/11 tragedy to the more recent Utah coal mine disasters.

John Newton could write about grace because he had experienced it in his life. His mother, was was training her son in the scriptures, died just before his seventh birthday and John was shipped off to boarding school a short time later. Abandoned and abused, he ran away from the boarding school and returned to England living a life far from the values his mother had tried to instill in her son. As a young man, by his own admission, he was "a slave to doing wickedness". Newton made his way to Africa and took up with a Portuguese slave trader journeying across the Atlantic with human cargo. Then grace came raining down on John Newton life:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see

The storm on March 21, 1748 was unlike anything Newton had sailed through as it rocked the ship and began to flood it's holds. The storm was so severe that John began to contemplate death at sea without a Christian burial. When he was sent below by the captain to retrieve something, the man who took his place was immediatley washed overboard and grace-the unmerited favor or kindness shown to one who is totally undeserving-began to work in John Newton's life.

For the rest of his life, Newton believed that that wave had been meant for him and that he was saved for a higher purpose. As it can for each of us, a moment of grace is able to change a lifetime and an eternity. Newton found his way back to the God that his mother had so trusted in and served the Lord faithfully for the rest of his life as both a pastor and noted writer of hymns.

John Newton could say as Paul "I am what I am by the grace of God". Grace-that favor given freely to those who are without hope and without God in the world. Grace-the gift that is greater than all our failures and shortcomings.

Until his death is 1807, Newton observed March 21 as a special day of remembrance, a day he marked with "humility, prayer and praise". In the busyness of life, let's never forget all that God's grace has rescued us from and acknowledge, as we look at others struggling through life, "there go I but for the grace of God". And realize that His grace is still available today to strengthen and enable us for all we face.


God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

The Average Person

The Average Person

Studying the average person can reveal some unusual things such as:

1. The average person (in America) will eat 35,000 cookies in their lifetime.
2. The average person falls asleep in about 7 minutes.
3. The average person is about a 1/4 of an inch taller at night.
4. The average person loses between 40 and 100 strands of hair a day. (That is something I definitely cannot afford to keep doing!)
5. The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in their lifetime. (If that isn't a good argument for buying expensive shoes, I don't know what is)
6. An average woman says 7,000 words a day. ( A man - just over 2,000 words)
7. The average person laughs 15 times a day. (Definitely not enough for good mental health.)
   

But this devotion isn't about statistics and interesting facts about the average person. It is something much, much more serious: THE AVERAGE PERSON IS MISSING!!!!

The latest survey found that no-one feels they are "the average person". In fact, in almost every recent survey, the average person believes he or she is better than the average person. Sly And The Family Stone wrote the song Everyday People and end each verse with "I am everyday people". They may be the only average people left in our nation of over 300 million people.

But seriously, Paul wrote this in Romans 12:3

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought."

When we think of ourselves more highly than we should, we end up in denial about our problems, our weaknesses, and about who we really are. We end up seeing ourselves in a distorted fashion in which we exaggerate our strengths and minimize our shortcomings. And the problem that causes is that we lose an essential ingredient in changing - the ability to see ourselves as we really are. Jeremiah 17:9 says "the heart is deceitful above all things.....who can understand it?" When you stop to think of it, very few unfaithful people think they are unfaithful. Very few gossipers think they gossip. Very few mean-spirited people think they are mean-spirited, you get the idea.

Time after time, we rationalize our behavior, the choices and decisions we make and the way we treat others, rather than acknowledging to the Lord and to ourselves what we are really like. And we end up, just as Paul warned, thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought.

And therein is one reason that the Word of God has to have a significant place in our lives. As we read it, we see ourselves reflected in the words and in the stories and we can begin to make the changes needed to become men and women who can be used to reveal Christ to a lost and dying world.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Listen

Listen

"If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord .......if you pay attention to his commands..." Exodus 15:26

There are certain promises in the Bible that attach a not so easy to do condition that we have to fulfill - listen. The promise in Exodus 15:26 is that we would experience the Lord as Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals us. The condition is that we have to listen carefully to His voice and obey what He commands.

But we know that listening isn't all that easy. One of the fun activities I used to enjoy doing as a principal was playing Simon Says with the students. You remember the game: if the command was preceded by "Simon says" then you had to do it. If there was no "Simon says" before the command and you did it, you were out of the game. There were some students who wouldn't last one minute. Others could do well for a while but they eventually lost concentration and missed a command. And then there were the Simon Says champions. Whether you spoke slow or fast, used your best fakes, tried every form of trickery, they listened and followed the commands.

These students always knew when to move and when to stand still. (Some of you right now are remembering how good, or bad, you were at Simon Says.) What was the difference between the winners and losers - their ability to listen to the instructions being given, to the words being spoken. In the same way, we each need to develop our listening skills. Abraham heard the voice of the angel telling him not to kill Isaac, pretty important, especially if you were Isaac. Elijah heard the still small voice encouraging him and directing his future. And Paul heard the voice of Jesus declaring God's purpose for his life.

Isaiah 30:21 says "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying 'This is the way; walk in it' ". Our ability to hear what God is saying, our skill in listening will have a major impact on our lives. Whether keeping us from making mistakes, or giving direction at crucial times, the voice of the Lord, if we can hear it, will guide our steps. Our job is to learn to block out other voices and distractions so that we can clearly hear the one voice that matters most.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church