Fishing with Jesus

Our Church is progressing through a sermon series on Christian community. In conjunction with that our small groups and home fellowship groups are doing a study on Christian community called “The Life-giving Power of Community” written by John Ortberg, Laurie Pederson and Judson Poling. It is a challenging series and study.

Recently we were given an interesting premise. Jesus is not only our Lord, Savior, and teacher, but Jesus also longs to be our friend. We are given this to reinforce the reality that true Christian community requires true relationship. It is very interesting to think about Jesus as all that He is, but to also realize in a true relationship He is also our friend is simply amazing beyond words.

We can see this in scripture. In Matthew 11, Jesus is described as a “friend of sinners”. More clearly in John 15 we see; “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

I just love that thought and as the old song goes, “what a friend we have in Jesus”. As part of our study we were given a spiritual exercise to take time to do something you love and to invite Jesus to be part of it. We were encouraged not to make this too formal as in prayer, but to just bask in the presence of Christ and to just speak to him as a friend there with you in this activity.

As you might have guessed I invited Jesus to go fishing with me. I gathered all the equipment, walked down to the edge of the water, marveled at creation, and began a most excellent fishing expedition. Things started out great, just some casual conversation and it was amazing to recognize the presence of Christ there fishing with me. However, soon I became focused on the fishing, the lures, the timing of the tides, the movement and forgot my friend was with me.

I suddenly realized I had invited Jesus to go fishing with me and in the busyness of my activity I had forgotten Him. Oh, isn’t that like life? Do we all get so busy, so focused on the things of life that we forget our Lord, our Savior, Our Friend? I know I do. Try the spiritual exercise some time. Invite Jesus to do something with you. Don’t hold back; something amazing might happen.

Father, forgive me my lack of attention to that which is so important, so vital, so loving and (here’s the good news) so filled with grace and mercy. May we all focus more on a true loving relationship with Christ our King!

Grace and Peace!

Knowing God

You know much has been said about National Day of Prayer. For me it was an encouraging and hopeful day. It was a day where people across this nation stopped and lifted prayers to our glorious God. It has caused me to reflect upon this day and upon prayer. This year my home fellowship group is studying prayer, and it has been so helpful in my prayer life. With all these things converging, I asked myself; why pray?

You know there are a number of good answers, we are commanded to, we pray to praise God, request things, thank, confess, worship and all those are important, but something really exciting to me is that prayer provides a way of knowing God.

A.W. Tozier minister and author of Pursuit of God had this to say about prayer:
"So when we sing, draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord, we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence."

And Oswald Chambers minister and author of My Utmost for His Highness said this:
"Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting something for ourselves; the biblical idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself."

Isn’t that an amazing thought; that through prayer we can truly know God. I think we can find it in scripture. In Jeremiah 24 we find this verse;

7 I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

Can you see it? Can you see the call to know God and that prayer is our means to knowing our great and glorious God. Now just what does that mean and what can we learn from this one verse? I think we can peel back three things here.

First, through prayer we get to know God by having a relationship with Him. You can see it in this verse, our gracious God gives us a heart to know Him, to know that He is our God and we are His people and what a beautiful relationship it is. I just love the verse in Revelations 3 that gives us another picture;

20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Even though Revelations 3 is a warning of sorts, it shows us that to know God is relational and requires a means of not only talking to, but a means of connecting and that brings us to our second point.

That through prayer we get to know God by communicating with him. We can see it in Jeremiah where God tells us we will be a people that return to Him. However, we must return as a people who recognize their brokenness and as a people who can return to their God only by the sacrifice of Christ. And the way we return, the way we communicate is through prayer. We can find this communication throughout scripture and we can even see that God hears our communication; our prayer. Let’s quickly look at Isaiah 38;

'This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears

Brother Lawrence described it this way; "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God."

Isn’t that so comforting? We, through prayer can have a continual conversation with God. And as we do, as we have a relationship with Him and as we communicate with Him an amazing thing happens which brings us to our last point.

That through prayer we get to know God by loving Him. We see it in Jeremiah 24 as we are not only a people that return to our God, a people that establish a relationship, that communicate, but that we return to our God with all our hearts. It is so clear that as we get to know God we are to love Him. I just love Deuteronomy 6:4-5;

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

So what has become clear to me is that through our prayers we come to truly know God. Through prayer the communication starts, the relationship begins and the love between God and His people grows. The great theologian, J. I. Packer had this to say about knowing God:

"Knowing God involves a personal relationship whereby you give yourself to God on the basis of his promise to give Himself to you. Knowing God means asking for His mercy and resting on His undertaking to forgive sinners for Jesus’ sake. Further it means becoming a disciple of Jesus, the living Savior who is there today, calling the needy to Himself as he did in Galilee. Knowing God, in other words, involves faith- assent, consent, commitment – and faith expresses itself in prayer.

Finally, we have been brought to the point where we both can and must get our life’s priorities straight. But it is tragic that so many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is and always will be the true priority for every human being – that is learning to know God in Christ".

Isn’t that our real challenge, the challenge for each of us is how are we getting to know God? How are we spending out time? If you have three minutes watch this video.

Isn’t that so true? Life seems so busy, but again what are our priorities? Phillip Yancey wrote a great book and study on Prayer and in it he says that he is so busy, but in all his busyness he still finds time for the important things – things like e-mail, favorite shows, and the list goes on. You know if we will admit it we do make time for the things we really want to do. Yancey goes on to point out that "if prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer."

Let that be our encouragement; May we all learn more about prayer, may we all pray more, and may we all know God!

Grace and Peace!

Ready? Set? GO!

Just got back from a mini-vacation and it was a great time of rest, relaxation and reflection. We scrambled to get things packed and I had carefully planned to catch up on some reading. I selected several books to bring along; Bible, The Reason for God, The Cross of Christ, The Deliberate Church among others. Those that know me know that as a relatively new Christian, I have this drive to learn as much as possible about this new faith, this new relationship through Christ that I have been graced with. As such, I was really looking forward to this time away.

We begin our journey to a very remote island on the west coast of Florida only accessible by ferry. A little more than half way there I realize that I had failed to pack my book bag (and my laptop). My very considerate wife offered to turn back and the thought really crossed my mind as I was beginning to panic a little. What was I going to do for four days with nothing to read? We are traveling on back roads, but decided to continue on. I was hoping to find a shopping Mecca to buy something to read.

As we get closer to our destination, no shopping was in sight when on the horizon I spot a bright shiny CVS. I just knew that they would have something to read. We storm the store and head directly for the book and magazine rack. No surprise, but there was plenty of typical beach reading, but nothing that struck my theological needs. I start digging through the volumes of fishing magazines and find tucked away a book on clearance. It was called; Living in God’s Love and was Billy Graham’s last three sermons during his New York crusade of 2005. It is a wonderful little book and I left with at least some relief.

I read the book in about 2 hours. It contains some really good thoughts – if you look deep. I kept getting the message that as human as we are, we all strive for things and these things become our obsession; yet when we obtain these things we are still left feeling empty. Tim Keller says that we must continually battle not to let worldly things become our ultimate things. These worldly things can quickly become our ultimate desire, the thing we worship most and that is so dangerous. This is much like my life; at least until very recently and I still struggle with this. I was always after the next big thing; job, raise, car, house…the list goes on.

Reading the book so quickly left me plenty of time for reflection, prayer, thought…just getting in touch with the one thing that should be our ultimate; my very relationship with God through Christ. Sometimes I get so focused on learning and reading that I forget about the relational aspect that is so vital.

Reverend Graham’s last sermon of the crusade was on Sunday June 26, 2005 and was focused on Matthew 24:36-39

36"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[a] but only the Father. 37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

In his sermon, he asks; "are you ready?" We will not know the day or the hour, but what does it matter. What matters is; are we ready? What is your ultimate? Here is hoping and praying that by God's grace; we get ready!

Grace and Peace