Live Dangerously

By Pastor Rey Diaz

When I was a kid, you couldn’t find a wilder little boy.  I was always jumping, kicking, stomping, racing, running and causing trouble.  I wanted to jump over everything, balance on anything, and hang from anything. My mom would always tell me to “be careful.”  Now that the script has been flipped.  My boy is a riot, rascal and causing a ruckus.  And I’m the one saying, “be careful.” 

Yet I also know children learn from mistakes, so I want him to grow, develop, and get strong.  I don’t want to slow down his development but I want to make sure he’s safe.  I don’t think its one or the other.  It needs to be both.  This isn’t a tension to be resolved, it’s a tension I need to manage. 

It is the same way when it comes to our relationship with God.  He is our heavenly Father.  And He wants to bless us.  Every good and perfect gift comes from Him.  Yet, he is also our king.  And He has asked us to pray “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.”  It’s not one or the other it’s both.  God blesses us as we follow him.  He provides safety and protection and provision.  He provides us comfort.  He also asks us to “go”, to “give”, and to “serve.”  We have both a Father and King.

One of our tendencies, especially for people who have been following Jesus for a long time, is to start moving towards comfort and away from God’s kingdom.  Eventually we reach a place where our actions say “My comforts are more important than God’s kingdom.”  That is what happened to Queen Esther.  God put her in a position to live dangerously yet she chose her comforts.  Eventually, she changed her mind and decided to put God’s kingdom before her comforts.  Because of her decisions the lives of hundreds of thousands of people were saved. 

I think you will experience the same type of blessing when you make that decisions – God’s kingdom is more important than my comforts. 

Where are you?  Have you gone one way or the other?  Have you ignored God’s call for his kingdom because of holding on too tightly to the comforts God has given you?

Esther 4:13-14

¹³ Mordecai sent this reply to Esther: “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. ¹⁴ If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”

Our Deepest Need

By Pastor Rey Diaz

I’m sure your daily prayers go something like mine – “Dear God, thank you for everything.  Please help me.  Please protect my family.  Please help us financially.  Please continue to bless us… in Jesus’ name amen.”  We might even throw in a prayer request for a sick person or a person in need. 

You see we all have these urgent needs that come up everyday.  Every single one of you could send me a current list of pressing needs to pray for.  There is nothing wrong with that.  However, there is something vital missing: forgiveness.

Our deepest need is for forgiveness and that might make you uncomfortable.  There is a story found in Mark 2 where a group of four friends take a paralytic see Jesus.  The felt need is obvious to everyone.  The guy is laying on a mat.  Unable to walk.  Unable to move himself.  Everyday he prays for healing.  His urgent, most important, and most pressing need is clear – healing.  So what happens when he meets Jesus? Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.” 

You can just hear the guy and crowd saying, “Well, thank you but I was hoping for something else.”  But Jesus is revealing an uncomfortable truth to all of us – our deepest need is forgiveness.  Forgiveness gives me eternal security in God.  Forgiveness gives me access to my heavenly Father.  These other needs are temporary.  But forgiveness is eternal.

We all need forgiveness.  Jesus died on the cross to offer us forgiveness.  After the first message ever preached in the church, Peter tells us, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

So where are you at?  Have you repented inwardly?  Have you been baptized yet?  Have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit?

What Makes You So Strong?

By Pastor Tim White

Women, what makes you so strong?  So much of our character is infused into our lives by our mothers, our sisters and our daughters.  As I thought about moments of character that change everything - I was overwhelmed by the strength that God put in Moses’ mother, Samuel’s mother and Mary the mother of Jesus.  How they looked at life through praise, the strength of God's perspective and through giving hearts.  I thought about all the women of God that He has placed in my heart and I could not help but ask God and the ladies of our church - what makes them so strong?  How do they hold it together when loved ones pass away, when finances are tough, when they are treated unfairly?  What is that special strength that God has placed into women’s lives?  And we concluded it was their eyes- their beautiful eyes that look at life through the eyes of God.  That is the way they see flowers, children, and even problems that arise.  We can learn from that character building trait.  

Presently, our church is facing a transition challenge.  We are getting great interest on our RecCreation Center that would leave us with amazing possibilities.  But we have to continue to make the payments while these possibilities go through the year long process of materializing into strong options.

 Just as when you sell your house, your payments don't stop until you have sold the house.  So it is with this transition that our church family is going through.  When we listed the RecCreation Center, as we were directed by our bank, many of our supporters stopped their building gifts or Wall of Champions gifts and we face a big challenge now.  Unless we can quickly pick back up the challenge there will be major cut backs to ministries and staff.  

But we see this as a time of possibilities- a time when we see life through the eyes of God.  Yes, we are going through a transition but the opportunities are unlimited and we are still a family. Won't you consider reenlisting for the transition drive to put us in a strong place during this time of change?  We are transforming into a movement- a movement so great that only God can see how great the vision is ahead.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

50 Shades of Black and White

By Pastor Tim White

50 Shades of Grey is listed on the New York Times Best Seller list and has been for the last 52 weeks.  However, it is not the book we are recommending but we are responding to a world that teaches that there is neither a right nor wrong.  It is called moral relativism.  If you follow the arguments those who believe in moral relativism are tired of religious judgmentalism.  But are those the only two choices?  Do we let our children float free in a world that is producing more and more young people that get involved in murder, drug addiction, promiscuity, lying and addictive behavior that masks their God given potential?  Do we allow the grey world to paint us grey, putting our marriages at risk because there is really nothing wrong if everyone is doing it? 

I have been reading the book by Gene Klann entitled, Building Character : Strengthening the Heart of Good Leadership, his third book on the subject of building moral character.  Dr. Klann is an Army leader with seventeen medals for valor and fourteen for meritorious service; he has a PhD. a Masters and Diplomas from U.S. Army War College and NATO Defense College.  The book, based on a study by the Center for Creative Leadership, is a classic text book used in the new emerging doctoral field in leadership.  It is not a Christian book but it does recognize that moral character is essential in the task of preparing leaders. 

What I like about his approach is that it sounds a lot like our Lead Pastor, Dr. Rey Diaz, when he says, “Character is a verb.”  It means a change in behavior.  He points to a study by Harvard and US News and World Report that out of 1,374 people pooled, 73% responded that most leaders in the United States are out of touch with the average person, 58% felt their leaders cannot be trusted, and only 39% felt they have high ethical standards. According to Dr. Klann, this leadership deficit is due to lack of character development.

This month we enter a series that sounds almost out of place in our moral relativistic culture:  50 Shades of Black and White:  moments that forge great character in Bible heroes.  No, we are not becoming a religious judgmental organization.  We are simply followers of Jesus Christ finding a gracious way to help forge moral fiber in our lives and those for whom we love.   Every good mother sets about this task with their children, and next week we will look at three mothers in the Bible and how their world view is different from the popular position in our society.  We will be teaching a way to look at life the way God sees it and to be changed by our perceptions.

Last week during time Jackie and I spent time with our grandchildren, I took my granddaughter for a long walk on a beautiful day. She smiled as we talked to the squirrels and whistled to the birds.  I gave her a flower and she explored it with her feet.  I sang to her and she tried to sing along as I sang, “Isabela, Isabela, once I found a girl and called her Isabela, I love her so and one day the whole world will know her glory.  Isabela, Isabela.”  She fell asleep in my arms in the warmth of the day.  

Later, my grandson, Elijah, and I had so much fun playing tag together.  He is fast.  When I caught him he reached over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  I told Jackie, “Boy, he did not get that kind of sweetness from me!”  But I would do anything for every one of my children and grandchildren to develop strong, steel -like moral fiber in order to face the challenges of this world.  I want that to come from God, not from whatever is popular today. 

Don't miss this series on 50 Shades of Black and White.  This really will help us to forge strong families, a stronger church community and world changing lives.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim