Amazing love

I'm forgiven
Because You were forsaken
I'm accepted
You were condemned
I'm alive and well
Your Spirit is within me
Because You died
And rose again

Amazing love
How can it be
That You my King
Would die for me
Amazing love
I know it's true
It's my joy to honor You
In all I do I honor You

March 11, 2012 Bulletin

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Verse of the Day

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“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” 1 Peter 3:15 NIV

You Can Still Be Merry!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

You Can Still Be Merry!
by Jon Walker

“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” (Luke 2:20 NIV)

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40 Days in the Word: Learn the Word, Love the Word, LIVE the Word.
The nationwide launch of Pastor Rick’s 40 Days in the Word is coming Jan. 29. It’s not too late for your small group to get involved! Watch a three-minute video testimony of lives already being changed. Download a free sample PDF of 40 Days in the Word.

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We celebrate the birth of Jesus, and then we return to the office, to school, to the things we normally do.

Do you remember that Christmas was just a few weeks ago? (Or are you still thinking about when you’ll take down your decorations?)

The shepherds of Bethlehem returned to their fields. God had sent them to find the baby Jesus in a manger. They marveled at God and knew they’d been blessed to see the Messiah’s arrival.

And then they returned to their flocks. They returned with an energized faith, glorifying and praising God. But, still, they returned to their routine.

God takes us to the mountaintop where he shows us great miracles and wonders, but he doesn’t leave us there. It is in the fields and among the flocks that our faith grows, nurtured in the soil of the day-to-day, the mundane. This is where we die to Christ, allowing his life to blossom within us (Galatians 2:20).

You may have returned to your routine, but God wants you to know this:

• The things we truly believe emerge day-to-day. It’s the conflicts over who makes the coffee, who cleans up the mess, who gets to go home early, or who gets the biggest piece of pie that test whether it is Christ who lives in us or if we’re still saying, “No, it is I who live.”

• God wants you to succeed, and he is going to stay with you to help you get it right. As Pastor Rick often says, God is on your side. This means God’s intent is not to catch you doing something wrong; his intent is to reveal where you still need to yield to the Jesus-life growing in you.

• You can still be merry! Don’t we always point out how friendly, cordial, loving, and giving people are during the Christmas season, and then lament the fact that they aren’t like that during the rest of the year? It may be January, but you can still be friendly, cordial, loving, and giving right now. It is a choice!

Merry Christmas and a Happy Return to Routine.

Jon is managing editor of Rick Warren’s Daily Hope Devotionals and the author of Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship.” This devotional © Copyright 2012 Jon Walker. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Lost Ones

September 10, 2010 — by David H. Roper

Our Daily Bread Radio is hosted by Les Lamborn

Read: Luke 15:4-6

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost! —Luke 15:6

Bible in a year:
Proverbs 8-9; 2 Corinthians 3

In my college years I worked as a guide, taking boys on treks into Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. On one occasion one of my hikers—a small, slow chap—lagged behind and took the wrong fork on a trail. When we arrived at our campsite he was nowhere to be found. I frantically went out to search for him.

Just before dark, I came across him sitting by a small lake—utterly lost and alone. In my joy, I gave him a bear hug, hoisted him on my shoulders, and carried him down the trail to his companions.

In a story by Scottish writer George MacDonald, he describes a young woman finding a child alone and lost in the woods. She gathered him up in her arms and carried him home to her father, at which point she gained an insight that was never to leave her: “Now she understood the heart of the Son of Man, [who came] to find and carry back the stray children to their Father and His.”

I want you too to know the heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, who came to find and carry back His straying children to their Father, “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). No matter how far you may have strayed and how lost you may be, He came to seek and to save you.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost,
Left heaven’s glory, minding not the cost;
Looking high and low and far and wide,
The Son of Man for all was crucified. —Hess

To find salvation, you must admit that you’re lost.

Love, love, love

John 13:35 (New International Version)

³⁵By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Operation Christmas Child 2009

http://www.threesixteen.net

http://www.threesixteen.net

The numbers of hope.

Jesus And The Jerks, by Jon Walker

“But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV)

Jerk: A person regarded as disagreeable, contemptible, especially as the result of foolish or mean behavior.

One of the biggest jerks I ever knew was a 23-year-old college graduate whose anger and arrogance spilled into many of his relationships. His hypocrisy was astounding – one moment he claimed to be a Christian and the next he acted like a son of hell. If it had been my choice, I would have avoided him all together – but since that jerk was me, I was stuck being around him!

Most of us try to avoid jerks. We pat ourselves on the back for not telling them off. We applaud ourselves for putting up with them. We remind ourselves everybody has a cross to bear, and so we grudgingly accept certain jerks as our divinely ordained burden.

But is that what we’re called to do?

Jesus embraced jerks; he graced them with love – while stilling telling them the truth in love. Now he had no qualms about pointing out a whitewashed tomb when he saw one, but the corporate evil of the Pharisees was a far more serious matter than mere human jerkiness.

The point is this: Jesus didn’t shelter himself from the pain and heartache caused by jerks. In fact, he voluntarily stretched out his arms on the cross and allowed several jerks to slam nails into his hands and feet.

Behind all their stomp and snort, jerks are still spiritual beings, created in God's image and destined for heaven or hell. We’re compelled to be ministers of reconciliation, willing to embrace the pain of a fallen world for the sake of our God. (2 Corinthians 5:16-21)

The heart of the gospel is that God loves the unlovely. Could it be that the jerks God places in our lives are there to teach us to be more like Christ, to teach us the God-like quality of loving the unlovely?

Most of us take for granted the incredible change God initiated in our own lives: We were once jerks to God, yet even while we were still jerks, Christ died for us!

Jerks are never easy to embrace. If it were easy to love everyone, then Christ need not have died; we could love them on our own. But in order to embrace the jerks in our life, we need the Life of Christ within us so that, as new creations, we can overwhelm jerks with God’s grace, showing them the only power that will stop them from stumbling in the darkness, teaching them to cling to the only thing able to move them from being jerks to being Jesus-followers.

So what?

· Jesus loves jerks too – Even the most difficult people are spiritual beings in need of Christ.

· Jesus transforms you – Jesus can use the “jerks” in your life to transform you into a more Christ-like believer. Is it possible that the “jerk” who annoys you is God’s instrument to show you areas where you should grow, areas where you have difficulty loving unconditionally, the way that Christ loves you?

· God’s plan for you – If God allows a difficult person in your life, consider that he may want you to (1) pray for them and (2) show them by your own example how much God loves them, regardless of their behavior.

· Your mission – Who in your life seems disagreeable, contemptible, foolish, or mean? How would God have you approach them from now on? What can you do today to show them the love of Christ?

© 2007 Jon Walker. All rights reserved.

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