To Him I owe that I am not still in hunger, thirst & nakedness. Into those I brought myself; it was He who delivered me.” -John Newton

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Discipleship at The Kitchen Sink–The Art of Regular Hospitality

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Time to wash up

I have said for a long time that “discipleship happens at the kitchen sink.”  I believe this to be true for our children and for those God has arranged to cross our path on a regular basis.  It is in the rhythm of ordinary everyday life that God brings about extraordinary changes in the lives of those we walk life with.  While we wash dishes and do yard work God provides the opportunity for us to share the fabric of our faith with others.

I learned many years ago as a young youth pastor that it was hard to sit across from a young person and get them to open up to you, but if you were active in some pursuit with them they would open up to you.  This pursuit could have been throwing a football, shooting hoops, washing dishes, setting up for an event, raking leaves for a senior or anything other of a million things we could do together.

I remember when I realized that was true with friends as well as my youth group.  It was while cleaning the kitchen with a friend that I was able to enter easily into a spiritual conversation.  In the flow of an everyday activity I was able to intertwine a discussion on this persons view about God and his involvement, or seemingly lack of  involvement,  in their present situation.  This simple conversation was a springboard for a season of heart to heart discussions that would make us both grow in our understanding of God and his place in our lives.

I know that this information may not be revolutionary to some who read this, but for others, this kind of ordinary life conversation is something yet to be experienced.  For those on either end of the spectrum I think that there is one thing that we need to master to make sure that we don’t miss out on a single opportunity to deepen the spiritual richness of our relationships, and that is the art of hospitality.

I believe that hospitality, while a natural gift for some, needs to become something that we all work towards.  I believe this is a lost art that needs to be restored to and through the Body of Christ.  I feel that Joanne and I have or at least have been able to develop the gift of hospitality.  We love to have people in our home and yet there has been a dry season of entertaining and sharing life with others in our home.  What has caused this season?  Simply being to busy.

I recently read an article by Jeff Vanderstelt an old friend from my youth ministry days.  In the article Jeff addresses the lost art of Gospel Hospitality.  He gives this very unique and interesting definition of Gospel Hospitality:

In light of the Gospel, we might define hospitality as the creation of a space that allows people to BE themselves, to BECOME renewed, and to DO the works God has saved them for. When we properly exercise hospitality, we welcome people to be themselves in the warmth of the light of Christ, to become renewed by being changed by the work of Christ, and to do works we have been created for in Christ.

This definition and the article as a whole has given me much to think about.  I will write more later, but I encourage you to click  here to read the complete article by Jeff on the Gospel Centered Discipleship website.

 

 

5 Common Myths About the Great Commission

Blog Post from The Verge Network at www.vergenetwork.org
May 15, 2014

Mirror

I found this article to be a simple reminder of why we need to remain about the work of the “Great Commission”.    I found Myths 2 and 3 to be particularly timely reminders for me.  Read Post

“Sermon from May 11, 2014: Jesus, The Son of God”
by Dennis Gulley

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Leduc Fellowship Messages
May 11, 2014

In this message I take a  look at two very important questions in each of our lives.  Who is Jesus and how do I respond to him?

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How Big is Your Tank

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When I was in my grade 12 year I was given an amazing opportunity.  I had played water polo for three years at my high school, yes there are high school water polo teams in the states, and yes it is a real and difficult sport. 

 In the spring, after our water polo season was over, our coach Andy called and asked if I was interested in playing a non-league game with his team from Portland State University.  I was excited that Andy had enough confidence in my ability to ask me to play with his university team. 

 I gladly accepted and showed up at the rec-centre where the game was to be played on the allotted day and time.  Right away I realized something was different.  Our high School pool was 25 yards long by about 12 and half yards wide.  The maximum depth was 10 feet and the shallow end was 3.5 feet.  This meant that during the 40 minutes of exhausting play sprinting back and forth we could hold on to the sides or stand on the bottom of the shallow end when a play was stopped for a foul.  This gave the tired players and their tired legs a break.

 The University tank was a regulation water polo tank.  It was 30 yards long by 20 yards wide and was delineated by ropes as it was set up in the deep section of the Olympic size swimming pool.  That meant there were no sides to hold on to and that due to the platform diving tower, the whole tank was 20 feet deep. 

 This all seemed good until mid way through the second half; my legs began to cramp due to the fact that I was unable to rest them during the dead ball moments of the game.  Now I was, if I may say so, an excellent swimmer and always thought I could swim through a leg cramp.  Let me assure you that no matter how good a swimmer you may be it is nearly impossible to swim with both legs cramping.

 I was unable to swim quickly to the side or stand in the shallow section to help rest my legs.  I began to sink like a lead balloon.  I struggled to the top flailing and screaming in pain.  I just got high enough to gasp for air and started to sink again.  I made my way back up one more time, gasped for air one more time and then on the third time went down believing that I was about to meet my maker. 

 Just as I had resigned myself to the fact that my life might be done, I felt someone grab me by the wrist and quickly pull me to the surface.  It was Andy.  He looked at me with this goofy grin through his walrus-like mustache and said “how you doin buddy?”  He quickly swam me over to the rope and to the side of the pool in true lifeguard style and told me to take a rest.  That day I decided my water polo career was over.

 Now are you ready for it?  Here comes the cheesy Christian segue.  Our spiritual journey is sometimes like this.  As a church it is our desire to see people grow in their love for God and their love for one another and their neighbour.  The love for God is our vertical relationship, or a relationship that is defined by depth.   The connections with one another and our neighbours are our horizontal relationships defined by the expansion out from our comfort zone into the lives of others. 

 I have noticed that in my life, and in the lives of many I walk the spiritual journey with, it is easier to desire a very narrow and shallow pool.  We feel overwhelmed by trying to go deep in our relationship with God and/or we feel very uncomfortable widening our relational field to include more people.  So we tend to stay in the safe shallow end of a personal relationship with God, keeping it to what is known and comfortable.  Likewise, we can tend to stay close to the wall of the pool rather than expanding our world to include the people that God has placed in the natural path of our everyday lives. 

 As your pastor it is always a struggle to know how to lead our community to grow in both areas, to grow deeper with God while at the same time growing relationally with those around us.  The challenge I have for all of us as we go into this New Year is to examine the size of our tank.  Is it too shallow or too narrow or both?  As Elders, staff and ministry leaders we will strive to give strong leadership in providing guidance to our community to grow deeper in a relationship with God and wider in a love for those God has called us to. 

 Be Blessed,

Pastor Dennis

waterpoloball

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What Does God’s Covenant With Abraham Mean for Me?

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I said in the last post that I would follow up with a post on what the idea of covenant means to you an me today.  Well, while we may not be a culture that sees covenants in the same way as Abraham did, we enter into them all of the time.  Contracts are covenants.  If you have a cell phone, then you have entered into a covenant with your carrier.  If you own a home then you have most likely entered into a covenant with a your mortgage holder.  We covenant, or enter into a relationship in a formal nature all of the time.

In the cases mentioned above the covenants are not always seen as equal.  They usually exist because we want something that the other person has or can get us.  We sign our lives away to enter into these relationships so we can get something that we want.

We, if we call ourselves followers of Christ, are in another form of covenant, the New Covenant.  This covenant is made available to us through the blood of Christ shed on our behalf on the cross.  This covenant is one that restores us to our intended relationship and communion with God our Father.

In this case we are offered a chance to covenant with the one person that holds the key to the one thing that we really need, not just something that we want or desire.  This covenant brings the eternal life that we lost through our rebellion of sin.

There is another difference with this covenant is that it is not made by one stronger to hold us the weaker in a state of ownership, but rather it is as the covenants of Abraham’s day when a covenant made in between a stronger party and a weaker party made the two equal.  Yes, when God made the covenant with Abraham, He made Abraham equal to a child of His, with the right to all of the resources of the Father.

With this agreement came the right to speak differently to each other.  Abraham could now argue with God and beg Him for things, Abraham had a right to ask for the full resources of God the Father, as a dearly beloved son.

We too, as part of the New Covenant, have the right to the full resources of God.  The goal of this should not be for our own gratification or wealth, but to have the heart of Christ in the garden when He prayed to the Father:

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Luke 22:42

Seeking the will of the Father should be the driving force of how we ask for and utilize the resources of the Father.

When is the last time you begged the Father for resources to make His will on this earth a reality? Maybe it is time to start.

 

 

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Bring Me a Heifer..

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You may be reading this
post for no other reason than the title.
They are interesting words for sure.
They may not mean much to you and me, but to Abram they meant the world.  In Genesis Chapter 15 we read the following
interaction between God and Abram:

“After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram  in a vision:

“Do not be afraid,  Abram.
    I
am your shield
    your
very great reward.”

But
Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my
estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You
have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir,
but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the
sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So
shall your offspring be.”

 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of
it.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

In this passage of the story God is revisiting
Abram and He once again is promising to bless Abram.  Abram who is still childless, though years
before God promised to bless him with children, begins to bargain with
God.  But God makes it clear that He is
the one in charge and powerful enough to bring about His promises.  In verse one He says “I am your shield.”  This word for shield actually means
“sovereign”.  God is saying I am in
charge, I, and I alone, am God. 

Then why was Abram so excited that God asked
him to get a heifer, a ram, a goat, a dove and a pigeon?  Because Abram knew that God was preparing for
a covenant ritual.  Abram was from a
covenant culture and he knew the process.

A covenant was not just a promise or a
friendship.  It was not a business deal
or an agreement, no it was an act of grace.
You see a covenant was usually entered not by people on equal terms, but
people who were very unevenly matched, a greater and a lesser, a strong person
and a weak person, a rich person and a poor person.  The covenant made the two parties, not only
equal, but in a sense one.

Listen to what Pastor and author Mike Breen
says about this:

“Now, it’s a Covenant making society, a Covenant making culture. So when people
heard this for the first time they understood what was going on. They
understood that there were two leaders. There was a greater leader and a lesser
leader, but both represented the identities of those whom they represented. And
the greater leader confers by grace, upon the lesser leader, the capacity to
come into relationship. You see, here is the greater conferring upon the lesser
a relationship. Here is the stronger conferring upon the lesser the right to
relationship. So Covenant has always been crafted in grace. It’s always required the initiative of the great one. It’s always required the initiative of the strong. And God, the strong one,
confers grace upon the weak Abram, the right to relationship.

But there’s more than that. It’s not the relationship that
a slave would have with his master. It’s not even a
servant who is free to do their own kind of stuff. It’s not an employee. It’s the relationship of
oneness. And the best way we can express that is in family language. They

become one. God confers
upon Abram this astonishing gift which is that he is now one with God and can
meet God eye to eye and though God remains the greater and the stronger and can
speak to God as if he were one. Isn’t that
amazing? It’s absolutely astonishing.”

This Covenant that God initiates with Abram is
a gracious and sovereign act.  This is a
major part of God’s Upper Story.  In my
next post I will deal with what this means to us in our Lower Story. 

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God is God and I am Not

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The words in the title of this post are words from a song by Steven Curtis Chapman, as well they make up one of the most simple and yet most profound theological truths known to man.

It was in a moment of deep despair that these words struck deep to my heart.  It was about 3 and a half weeks after my mother had passed away unexpectedly.  Joanne, the girls and I were in Oregon and I was spending every waking moment preparing my mother’s house for sale.  This was a big project that could have been featured on an episode of “Flip This House”.  After three solid weeks of extreme home makeover I hit the wall.  Hands bloody from trying to scrape 3 layers of linoleum off of the kitchen floor and becoming more and more aware of the fact that I was in way over my head I got in my mother’s car and drove away.  I drove the old country highway that I used to drive as a young man when struggling.  As I drove I cried out to God for help and then just as those words came off my lips the words of this song came on the radio.

A we begin our journey through “The Story” over the next year at LFC it is good to be reminded at the outset that all things in this universe are under God’s masterful plan. Creation of all things comes from Him and in and through Him they are held together.  In Him alone can we find hope, purpose, healing and redemption.  That is why we have been given the Bible, to tell us of a creative God who now seek to redeem all things at the greatest cost, His own life.

Over the next 10 months I will seek to blog a few times a week to add further thought to our study of “The Story:  The Bible as One Continuous Story of God and His People.” I hope you will check back and keep up with the thoughts.

Here are the lyrics for the song “God is God and I Am Not.  I hope you enjoy them:

And the pain falls like a curtain
On the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most
I just don’t know

And the questions without answers
Come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move
Afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust

God is God and I am not
I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God

And the sky begins to thunder
And I’m filled with awe and wonder
‘Til the only burning question that remains
Is who am I

Can I form a single mountain
Take the stars in hand and count them
Can I even take a breath without God giving it to me
He is first and last before all that has been
Beyond all that will pass

Oh, how great are the riches of His wisdom and knowledge
How unsearchable for to Him and through
Him and from Him are all things

So let us worship before the throne
Of the One who is worthy of worship alone.