by Les | Apr 4, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
Matthew 21:4-5
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”
The prophecy in Matthew 21:5 is cited from Zechariah 9:9 and Isaiah 62:11.
Jesus IS King!
The people of Israel were looking for a military leader, one who would lead them against Roman oppression. They badly misunderstood God’s plan for their people. God instead sent the world his son who would be victorious over death.
As Holy Week begins, think of the greatness of why we celebrate the week. Christ made the ultimate sacrifice that we can be set free from death.
In this Holy Week ahead, may God direct our thoughts and attention towards what matters most, Jesus Christ our King.
by Les | Mar 28, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
Uncertainty is a familiar human condition. We all have periods of lacking direction and being without a compass to guide us.
One thing that I have learned in my Christian walk is that if God sends you to do something then you had better commit to the task with all of your ability. If God is for it, if it is his will and you devote yourself to the task then he will open doors before you. On the other hand, if you enter into His will with half hearted effort or uncertainty then be prepared for a great deal of frustration. God does not appear to reward our lukewarm effort towards any of his goals.
Pastor Dick’s series on Elijah, and how he boldly acted upon God’s instruction, reflects a proper response to the most high God. Jonah is a good example of running away from what is expected of us. Yes, Jonah did eventually submit to God’s will, but it took some unique encouragement from God before Jonah was ready to yield.
Be courageous and follow God’s will as he reveals it to you.
by Les | Mar 21, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
1 John 5:4, ‘…for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.’
This morning while thinking about Pastor Dick’s message, “On to Victory”, I decided to Google ‘victory in Christian life’. The Internet search led me to an article on the medium.com website. The article is a part of a series on ‘The Victorious Christian Life’. Below are a few of the items that caught my attention as I read through the article.
“… the victorious life is a gift received from God by faith. Our salvation was a gift. We did not deserve it or earn it in the least. Victory is also a gift. We cannot obtain it in our strength.”
“Faith does nothing; faith lets God do it all.”
“Victory is in trusting, not trying.” (Pastor Dick’s message series on Elijah have illustrated this point.)
“Do not rely on past victories for future victory. Always rely on Christ alone. Rest in the Lord consistently. Victory can be only ours as we obey all the commands of the Spirit to us personally.”
To read the entire article, visit….https://medium.com/christian-family-line/the-victorious-christian-life-f4c5447db0cd
by Les | Mar 14, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
Genesis 1:11. ‘Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation; seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.’
Tony Campolo is a well known American Baptist speaker, author, pastor and professor of Sociology. A number of years ago Dr. Campolo was speaking about how people view God creating all things. Tony then shared his thoughts about how God created.
Many people have this image of an all-powerful God, waving his arm out and presto, plants and trees magically appear across the land as far as the eye can see. As Dr. Campolo spoke, I began to understand why he didn’t see it happening this way. Tony shared an image of God as he delighted in everything that he created. He saw God as an artist who enjoyed the act of creating new things.
Imagine, for a moment, God creating the first daisy and then stepping back and taking delight in his creation. Then imagine that, being so pleased with the first one, God shouts out, “DO IT AGAIN.” Continue to imagine God shouting, “DO IT AGAIN,” until his desire to create daisies was fully satisfied.
Sure, God is, and was, capable of creating acres upon acres of daisies with a spoken word or a wave of an arm. Or, God could just as easily choose to take delight in creating every daisy, unique in its own way because he had spoken it into existence. After all, what is time to God who is everlasting?
Had God spoke all daisies into existence with a single utterance, each plant would be just another daisy, not unique at all. In Tony’s suggested scheme of creation, God took delight in each and every daisy created. Every single plant was something that He created because it gave him joy.
In Jeremiah 1:5, God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” God may not have chosen any of us to be prophets but he certainly knew each of us before we were formed in our mother’s womb.
To the most high God, you are somebody.
by Les | Mar 7, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
In February of 2000, while a member of First Baptist Church, Valley Center, KS, I learned of David who lived in El Dorado. David had been a member of the first ABC mission team to travel to Nicaragua following Hurricane Mitch. Hurricane Mitch had parked itself off the coast of Nicaragua and didn’t move for five days. The devastation it caused in Nicaragua, Honduras and as far west as El Salvador was immense. American Baptist Men – USA, had partnered with ABC-International Missions, to send teams of volunteers to Nicaragua to assist with the reconstruction of communities served by our ABC mission partners in Nicaragua. This all led to my asking David to come to FBC, Valley Center and be the guest speaker for our men’s breakfast.
Our Saturday morning men’s breakfast was 16 months after that disastrous hurricane and the rebuilding of communities served by our ABC mission partners was far from complete. American Baptist had sent a volunteer mission team to Nicaragua to assist with the reconstruction every month since Hurricane Mitch.
As David was preparing to end his narrative, he told us that the mission team that was to go to Nicaragua in April 2000 had backed out. He challenged our church to form a team to fill the vacancy and he made this challenge while looking directly into my eyes.
It took me only seconds to dismiss David’s challenge. Twice in the previous year I had said that I would never be a member of an international mission team. My father-in-law had passed away the previous week and we were still dealing with his passing. Our high school aged son, who had an early interest in foreign missions, was to travel to the former Soviet state of Latvia with an ABC-International Ministries X-Tream Team during the same period of time of the challenge to go to Nicaragua. I didn’t even have a passport and the departure date was only nine weeks away. I had my reasons for not wanting to go but the biggest was that I simply didn’t want to go.
That Saturday evening I was home alone. Helen was with her mother, helping out after the loss of her father. Our daughter was away at college and our son was spending the night with a friend. I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
Somewhere around 2:00 AM I found myself wide awake and had a feeling that I should be in prayer rather than sleeping. So I laid there in quiet prayer and Nicaragua came to mind. The debate began with something like, “Lord, I can’t go to Nicaragua. You know my reasons and they are all valid reasons.” The word Nicaragua kept returning, just the one word, and I continued to argue my position for over an hour.
Feeling a little frustrated, I followed Gideon’s example and laid out a fleece. (Judges 6:33-40) “Lord! If you want me to go to Nicaragua then somebody will have to come up to me and say, “if you want to go to Nicaragua we will help you get there.’” Feeling safe, I considered the issue resolved.
I arrived at our church a couple of minutes late that morning and went directly to the sanctuary. It was our practice for the deacons and pastor to gather on Sunday to join hands and to pray for our church before Sunday School began. They had already started but as I approached two of them separated their hands to allow me to enter their circle. Having stepped in, the person on my right finished his prayer and squeezed my hand to let me know it was my turn. When I completed my prayer the men began breaking the circle. But Bob, who was standing to my left, continued to hold my hand. I turned towards Bob and he spoke. “Les, if you want to go to Nicaragua we will help you get there.”
It was obvious then that the fleece on my threshing floor was damp. I hung my head for a moment and then raised it and looked at each of the four men who were with me before I replied. “Gentlemen, I don’t have time to explain as I have a Sunday School class I am to be teaching now, but it looks like I am going to Nicaragua.”
It was a moment of surrender. I had heard God and had only a moment before resolved to respond to his wish and was silently giving him praise for making his wish so absolutely clear.
Now my question was, how am I going to tell my wife I was going to Nicaragua?
by Les | Feb 14, 2022 | Click Date to Respond
In 2000, having been challenged to assemble a mission team to travel to Nicaragua in a short nine weeks, I immediately declined the challenge. I had the usual excuses, too short a period of time and not within my comfort zone to begin with. In the interest of brevity, I will only say that God had other plans and within 24 hours of being challenged I found myself assembling a mission team.
On our departure date the team consisted of nine members, only two of which already possessed passports. The remaining seven of us had to have our photos taken and apply for our passports within the short nine week window before our departure on Friday, April 28th. On a Friday, a week preceding our departure, five of our team had received their passports in the mail while two team members were still anxiously waiting.
The following Monday I learned that one of them had received her passport that morning. I also heard that the other person, Mike, had not yet received his passport.
I phoned Mike’s home that afternoon and, as I waited for Mike to come to the house phone, I was thinking about what I should say to reassure him. Regretfully I couldn’t think of any reassuring words because I too was concerned. So I took the few seconds I had, as I waited for Mike, and silently prayed something like, “Lord, Mike needs words of reassurance and I don’t have the words. Please speak through me the words that Mike badly needs to hear”.
Mike picked the phone up, and after our greetings were spoken, I told him that I had heard that his passport hadn’t arrived yet. Mike said that it was true and that he was concerned about letting the church people down after they had contributed funds to get him onto the trip. It was then that I opened my mouth and these words literally fell out of it. “Mike! Don’t worry about it. Your passport will be here Wednesday.”
I choked!
In my mind I screamed, “WHAT DID I JUST SAY?” The realization of what I had spoken frightened me. For a moment I couldn’t catch my breath, a pause in our conversation occurred as neither of us seemed able to speak. Finally, a small voice in the back of my head whispered, “Its okay, go with it.”
Having no other idea of what to say I continued with, “Mike, did you hear what I said?” Mike said that he had and we spoke a while longer as I asked him to have faith that his passport would arrive before we left.
On Wednesday morning, April 26, 2000, shortly after 10:30 AM I received an email from Mike’s mother saying that the passport had arrived in the morning’s mail. We boarded our flight to Nicaragua two days later.
I did tell Mike the rest of the story behind what I had spoken a few days into our trip.
Some takeaways from this experience:
God absolutely hears our prayers.
God does answer our prayers.
Your unwillingness to do something may not be what God wants and he has a way of telling you so if you are willing to listen.
It was God’s idea that this mission team be assembled and he was, and is, faithful in moving things in the directions of his visions.
Don’t ask God to speak through you unless you mean it, he may use words that you are unprepared for.
If caught in a situation in which you don’t know how to respond, and you hear a whisper speaking to you, pay attention and “go with it”.
