Saturday, January 24, 2009

We Live In Two Worlds

We live in two worlds, one is physical and the other is spiritual. The physical world is easily discerned, but pulls us in many directions at once. The spiritual world is easily ignored, but leads us to the inner fulfillment of God’s love. Time spent giving attention to spiritual matters will ease the time we must spend on matters of the physical elements.

 

            Our physical bodies can both deceive us with vanity, and when we least expect it, stop us cold with a dose of reality of our limitations. Yet there are dimensions of our spirits which we can never fathom and there are strengths within us that are a total mystery. We are often surprised by answers that seem to come from nowhere to meet our need. We are creatures with a deep restlessness, and we search the world until we find our rest in the love of God.

 

            There is a healthy tension between the two worlds of physical and spiritual life. Between the extremes there is a balance of love and commitment that leads to total health. As we deal daily with our physical life let us remember the teaching of Jesus to “Seek first the kingdom of God.”  When we do that all the rest will fall into place.

 

            If you have been neglecting your spiritual life and are feeling the strain then now is a great time to refocus on your relationship with God.  As a Pastor I am always happy to help you find the way.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Burned Out???

A Church Member once complained about being burned out on church work to her friend who was also the church secretary. The secretary replied, “Honey, you can’t be burned out. You’ve never been on fire.”

 

            In revelation 3:15 Jesus said, “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

 

            To be “LUKEWARM” in our faith is evidently a very dangerous thing. If  we are cold to Jesus there is a chance that someone on fire for the Lord may tell us about the Gospel and we would be saved. If we are ON FIRE for the Lord, then we are proclaiming the Gospel to others. If we are lukewarm with a ho hum faith we may lost forever. It would be so sad to know about the Christian faith and have it all around us and still be lost to it.

 

            The Christian faith is one of passion for Jesus the Christ. It is to live totally for Jesus like one who is newly in love lives for the other. If your faith is ho hum, we can re-light your fire of passion for the Lord. I am looking for fellow travelers who want to be on fire for Jesus. Come visit with me and let’s talk about it.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

National Prayer Service

The National Prayer Service is a tradition started by President George Washington. 

As I watched Today's service I was very proud of Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who was the first woman to deliver the sermon at the National Prayer Service.  She is the leader of my denomination and gave a wonderful message of faith and hope. 

I was also impressed with the prayers of people from all faiths during this service. Now I wish I had taped it.
:-)

Archaeology


I have really missed my Archaeology blog Digging In The Dirt and several people have asked me if I am going to recreate it here. The answer to that is yes once I get comfortable with blogger. 

Getting use to posting immages on here is important because I have a LOT of pictures from my diggs. I guess I will have to start over since all my old post on JS are gone. So soon I will be creating "Digging In The Dirt" here and we can all enjoy a review of history.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New President

I have been glued to the TV today watching all the pomp of the peaceful transfer of power that makes America the model for the world. I am very proud of our country and I pray that we will soon have peace and better days ahead.
God Bless America!

Monday, January 19, 2009

God In the White House

I am reading a book called "God In the White House" by Randall Balmer. This is a history of how faith shaped the presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.

From Kennedy who had to make us believe that his Catholic faith would not inform his political opinions to W who wanted us to believe that his right wing claim to faith influenced every thing is an interesting trail.

I laughed about Norman Vincent Peal's remark about Nixon's faith. He said, "I don't know that he ever let it bother him." Well that says a lot about one of the most corrupt presidents we ever had.

This book is well worth reading as we enter the Obama term of office and think about who faith affects our leaders. 

Let us all pray for our new president and congress to lead us with wisdom and righteousness