Enough Already!

Enough Already!

“All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; 

He’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; 

He’ll always be there to help you come through it.

                                                    I Corinthians 10:13 MSG

This week’s list of stories is getting so long that I need to get this devotion typed and sent out before I read one more example of people who went beyond their difficult circumstances to accomplish much with their lives. Consider this week’s list:

• Today it was a boxer who broke both hands in World War I, was told he would never box again, but refused to give up and went on to win the heavyweight championship of the world.
  

• Wednesday lesson was from the life of Glen Cunningham, a young man who almost lost his life when he was so severely burned that he was told he would never walk again. Despite that, he went on to set record after record in the one-mile run, achieved world class status as a runner, and was elected to the Track and Field Hall of Fame.
  
• In getting ready for a Washington, D.C. trip meeting, I noted our annual stop at the FDR Memorial and was reminded that the former president, who led our nation through The Great Depression and World War II, battled the paralysis that resulted from polio for much of his life and his entire presidency. It is more than a play on words to say that he refused to let his disability cripple his dreams and aspirations.
  
• The book I’m reading contained another similar story. “I beg of you to keep the matter of my deafness a profound secret to be confided to nobody, no matter whom …..” was written by none other than the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven who, when speaking of his increasing deafness, wrote to a friend on the subject, “I am resolved to rise above every obstacle.”

Enough already! The message that our problems are not our real problems rings loud and clear. The message that our adversities, our unique circumstances, the problems and challenges we face in life are not excuses that give us the right to give up and languish in self pity has been received and acknowledged. The examples above are the smallest of samplings of life testimonies that we are more than capable, and equipped by God, to rise above every challenge we face and accomplish God’s wonderful purposes for our lives.

God Bless,

Pastor Joe

Gateway Church

Over the Wall

Over the Wall

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
                                               Joshua 24:15

Saying something like “if you do it, I’ll do it” can either get us in a lot of trouble or cause us to launch out and try something that takes a lot of stretching. When the 14 year old girl asked us, many years ago,  if we wanted her to show us how to get down to the pool at Texas Falls in Vermont, we said sure, but without realizing the commitment we were making. She calmly walked to the edge of the rocks, stepped off, and dropped the 40 or so feet into the water. My stomach did a perfect somersault as I realized that no self-respecting 25 year old could not follow through and take the same plunge that young girl had so graciously demonstrated. With heart pounding, I will never forget that jump, a jump that my words committed me to taking into the most refreshing, exhilarating pool of fresh water I’ve ever experienced.

President Kennedy used to tell a story about his grandfather with a very similar point. His grandfather grew up in Ireland and talked about climbing some of the 10 – 12 foot high, jagged cobblestone fences that his group of friends passed on their way home from school. Some were difficult and dangerous to go over for these boys who wanted to climb but didn’t want to get hurt doing it. One day Fitzgerald, President Kennedy’s grandfather, took off his cap and threw it over one of the most difficult walls to climb knowing full well that he now had to climb the wall or face certain discipline from his parents for going home without his cap.

Asking that young girl to show us how to get down to the water at the base of Texas Falls committed me to a jump that I seriously doubt I would have taken if my words hadn’t required it. But now 35 years later, I can laughingly look back on the best jump of my life. Fitzgerald might not have climbed that difficult wall but throwing his cap over the wall ended the discussion; he was going over no matter how difficult it was. And we know he survived to tell a grandson who took on some incredible challenges in his short lifetime also.

Telling others we’re going to do something, or announcing something that once we say it, we can’t easily back out of it, even if we wanted to, can be like our throwing our cap over the wall. It forces us to stretch and to move beyond what is comfortable and certain in our lives. Is there something you have felt challenged to do for a long time but fear has kept you standing at the top of the cliff, or looking up from the base of the wall? Maybe today is a good day to throw your hat over that wall by publicly declaring a goal you have or a desire that God has placed in your heart. It just might be the step that puts you over the top!

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Partnerships

Partnerships

“For we have become partner with Christ if in fact
we hold our initial confidence firm until the end.”
                                                 Hebrews 3:14

Partnerships are formed for a wide variety of reasons: one person may bring the finances to a business while the other has an idea or invention that sounds promising. In another situation, one person might have manufacturing expertise while another has the marketing skills needed to convince people to buy their product. Partners compliment each other and form an enterprise that neither one could succeed at without the other. And to think that we have been called “partners with Christ” is quite an amazing thing.

The story is told of a mouse who was riding on an elephant’s back as they took a journey together. After traveling for some time, they came to an old, wooden bridge and began to cross it ever so carefully. Despite its creaking and wobbling under the weight of the travelers, the bridge held up and they made it to the other side. It was at that point that the mouse declared, ever so boldly, “We really shook that bridge, didn’t we?” And of course we know the answer, which is yes; they really did shake that bridge together! The mouse’s eight ounces and the elephant’s two thousand pounds, taken together, were almost too much for that rickety old bridge to handle.

The story is a cute reminder of some of the dynamics of our relationship with the Lord. Without a single doubt, it’s clear that the person who enters into a true, sincere, and wholehearted partnership with our God can and will shake the world. They will, as was said of the early church, turn the world around them, families, friends, neighbors, and even their local church, upside down. Sometimes accepting that we are like the mouse in the story is hard to swallow, but that reality can free us to partner with God in the works He is calling us to do.

What is amazing is not so much the choice that people make to give all to God and follow in His work, but that God, the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing God, would choose to partner with us. In spreading the good news of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ, God has all the wisdom, strength, and power that He contributes to the partnership. On our part, we make our bodies available as living sacrifices to do God’s good and perfect will. And together, you and God, me and God, we can shake the world.

God Bless,

Pastor Joe

Gateway Church

By Products

By Products

“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may
be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
                                                 John 15:11

By products are products made during the manufacture, processing, or refinement of something else; they are an often unexpected and secondary benefit of some action. Maybe some examples will help us to see where this is going. For example, look at some of the by products of crude oil:

                      Ammonia                      Hair Coloring                 Bandages
                      Caulking                       Artificial Turf                 Ballpoint Pens
                      Antifreeze                    Contact Lenses                Footballs
 

After the gasoline and oil has been produced, each of these rather significant items is produced as a by product of the refinement of crude oil.

With corn, some of the by products include spark plugs for our cars, latex paint for our houses, wallpaper for decorating, and licorice for long car rides and summer vacations. And after we harvest the wool and enjoy the lamb chops, the by products produced from sheep include makeup, cosmetics, and tanning lotion, not to mention items for plastic surgery, piano keys and adhesive tape. These are all products that are the result of a primary process. We don’t pump crude oil from the depths of the earth because of our need for caulking or contact lenses; it would never be worth it. But as by products, we are greatly blessed to enjoy their benefits.

Reading a statement last night that ended with “….and the by product of doing that is joy” caused a light bulb to go on in my head. Are we asking to God to give us things that are really the by product of something else? We long for understanding and ask God to help us understand. But David wrote the following in Psalm 73:16-17

“When is tried to understand all this, it was troubling to me

  until I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood….”

It’s interesting that he didn’t find understanding until he went into the sanctuary and into God’s presence, and as a by product of his action, as a by product of spending time in the presence of the Lord, he received understanding. The same is seen when Jesus talks about wanting our joy to be full. He didn’t encourage His disciples to ask for joy; He encouraged them to have an abiding relationship with Him and to walk in obedience to His commands. He was saying that if you do those things, major on your relationship with the Lord and walk in obedience to His Word, you will be filled with joy. But it wouldn’t be joy as an answer to prayer; it would be joy unspeakable as the by product of an abiding relationship with Jesus, the true vine. And that is a by product available to each of us today!

God Bless
Pastor Joe

Gateway Church

Pick n Choose

Pick n Choose

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what
 is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.
                                                                          II Timothy 3:16

A typical trip to Vince & Joe’s Fruit Market gives you the opportunity to pick and choose what you want as you walk through the store. The fruits are the first thing you pass and you get to sort through the nectarines and peaches, the melons and berries, picking out the  ones that look the ripest and that appeal to you the most. Next are the veggies and you get to select the head of lettuce you want, the tomatoes and broccoli that look best, with each person having their unique set of qualifications for what and how to choose.

Across the street is Kroger for the basics and, like everything else, we get to pick and choose. The breads are checked for dates so that you get the freshest, as are the milk and the meats. The number of cereal choices seems endless, from Sugar Smacks and Frosted Flakes to Wheaties and Cheerios, depending on the degree of health consciousness on any particular day. (And, of course, you need the slightly green bananas to add to the cereal, another important decision to make.)

But the problem we so often face is that picking and choosing is quite appropriate in the grocery store and at the mall, but doesn’t apply when it comes to the Word of God. The increasingly modern trend is to carry a consumer mentality into our relationship with the Lord, deciding for ourselves how we will serve the Lord, which aspects of Christianity we will follow and adhere to, and what works best for our family and lifestyle. We have made God’s commands into personal decisions as if the choice was ours when the call of God remains, as always, a call to a life of complete, unwavering obedience to the Word of God.

Faithfulness in tithes and offerings and church attendance, sharing the good news about Jesus with others and having a consistent daily devotional life, not to mention how we treat people, our attitudes and the words we speak, have all fallen from areas of obedience to the Word of God into the quagmire of “what works best for me”. And the results in the lives of believers have been sadly and silently devastating. My encouragement to you is to leave any “pick n choose” mentality that has entered into your walk with the Lord at the cash register. The truly blessed life is one of complete obedience to the whole Word of God.

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Out of Death

Out of Death

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

                                               John 12:24

Seeing the praying mantis that I had observed in the church planter all summer long lying on the pavement Tuesday, lifeless with its stomach many times the size it had been, was a sad ending to what had been a good day. With a “just in case” thought, I picked it up and place it on a branch, watched for a few seconds hoping to see movement, and then moved on to other things. Wednesday saw the lifeless praying mantis right where I had placed it but last night was quite another story; it was nowhere to be found. As I watered the plant and looked to see if I could find it, a young, lively, newborn praying mantis came climbing up the branch, ready to take on whoever was disturbing its home. And as I shook my head in wonder, I could only think: out of death comes life!

We know the principle from our faith: Christ died that we might live. Because He gave His life on the cross, we can experience abundant life now and eternal life forever. The scripture above brings out the point so perfectly; the seed that dies and the life that dies produce much fruit. Out of death comes life. As I have meditated on the young, only a day old praying mantis, I thought of the many ways that life springs forth from death, a realization that can truly be life changing.

Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians “I die daily”. We too experience dying on a daily basis, sometimes to attitudes that have to be crucified, at other times to personal desires and habits that don’t line up with God’s will for our lives, and still others to simple things we want to do that we die to for the sake of meeting the needs of others. If only it were a one time “death”, it might be easier but, as Paul said, it is a daily experience of dying to self with the incredible result that out of death comes life. We die and yet find ourselves refreshed; we die but feel satisfied at the good fruit that results in another’s life; we die to something yet we end up freer than we have ever felt.

We can see it in nature, the seeds sown in our garden died and decomposed before producing a harvest of peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants. And we see it in the simple example of an insect like the praying mantis. My sadness Tuesday at the lifeless praying mantis lying helpless on the cement was quickly replaced by total awe at the new life that had sprung forth. Life, in all its facets, is an amazing thing to behold. Jesus thought that our experiencing new life was worth dying for. And let me encourage you that all God is calling you to die to will be worth it, in your own life and in the lives of others. A simple truth – out of death comes life!

God Bless
Pastor Joe

Gateway Church

Undivided Attention

Undivided Attention

“You have asked a difficult thing …….yet if you see
me when I am taken from you, it shall be yours.”
                                                 II Kings 2:10

Our ability to stay focused on what lies before us, to maintain our concentration on the tasks and goals we’re attempting to accomplish has never been more challenged. Under the guise of multi-tasking, we text and drive, talk on the cell phone and drive, read the paper and drive, not to mention the ladies who put on their make-up and drive. We watch television during dinner, use our smart-phones in the checkout line, and take walks and talk on the phone at the same time, making people who can’t see the earpiece wonder about the level of our sanity. Our ability to give someone and something our undivided attention for a sustained period of time is disappearing faster than the arctic snowcap.

After years of serving Elijah, Elisha’s receiving the prophetic mantle was dependent on one thing and one thing alone: his ability to keep his eyes on Elijah. Faithfulness in answering the call aside, a right attitude in serving another over time aside, Elisha’s ability to keep his eyes focused on Elijah and to not let anything distract him was the key to his receiving a double portion of the anointing that was on Elijah’s life. The Jordan River had just miraculously parted, others were telling him that his master was going to be taken from him that day, and, to top it all off, a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared. But none of that changed the fact that if Elisha could maintain focus, no matter what, the double portion of the anointing would be his.

With the continued assault on our attention span, the importance of our having times when we give God our undivided attention has never been clearer and more critical. Reaching the goals we have set, and living lives that accomplish our priorities will require a purposeful living that runs counter to the multi-tasking, attention sharing direction of our society. We will have to plan out how we use our time carefully and discipline ourselves to give our undivided attention to what God is calling us to do. If that means turning off the cell phone during devotions and leaving the smart phone in the car during church, the reward set before us of receiving our own personal “double portion” will make it more than worth it.

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church