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The Mission Church of the Nazarene in Hammond, Indiana sermons either preached by Rev. Robbie Cansler or by Rev. Jennifer Jensen.
Episodes
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Philemon
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
It’s the story of a church leader who was doing all the right things.
It’s the story of his worker who had not.
And it is the story of the pastor asking the church leader to do the right thing again, even though it was harder than ever. Even though the right thing meant giving up his rights. Even though the right thing looked a whole lot like a one-sided deal.
But one thing had changed: the worker had come to Christ. The worker had become, in the pastor’s care, a brother in love. The worker had shifted from the one who stole and cheated and lied to the one who was forgiven by the One who had saved us all.
This letter of Paul’s could have been written in any time and in any place. It has all the elements of a good movie, even: the bad guy with the change of heart and the good guy who has the opportunity to make it right and the one who brings everyone together because of the One who brings everyone together.
The only problem with the story is that we don’t know the ending. In fact, except for a vague statement of ‘wrong’ we don’t even know the beginning. The beauty of this story, which is included by way of a letter from one leader to another, is that we don’t have to know all the details: we can all find ourselves in this story in one place or another at one time or another.
This letter that Paul writes to Philemon is one that has stayed in the canon despite it’s short length, despite it’s incomplete story, and despite it’s very personal nature, because it resonates (or it should resonate) with all Christ followers everywhere: it is the story of forgiveness and redemption that all of us know – we are either the one who must give it or the one who must ask for it or the one encouraging another to live it: but all in all this is the story of Christ’s love writ in real circumstances.
In Philemon and Onesimus’s story, Onesimus is the sinner. He has, at the least, run away and potentially, he has stolen from his master. Philemon is the wronged master. In the Roman empire, people often sold themselves into slavery to pay debts. The slavery was generally temporary; slaves had the opportunity to earn their freedom. Slaves who broke their agreement were despised by most, because they were doubly in error: they had broken their word and they had defaulted on a debt. Because of this, Philemon has rights in the Roman empire, that include the option of condemning Onesimus to death.
But Jesus.
Paul tells Philemon that even though he could exercise his rights, Onesimus has not only had a change of heart, he’s become Philemon’s brother in the Kingdom, serving Paul as though he were Philemon himself. And that should mean something.
The Kingdom that we are a part of, God’s Kingdom through Christ, makes us behave differently. We waive rights that we would have insisted on before, we challenge the status quo that insists that each of us is better than the rest of us. We defy logic. We love the ones who have hurt us. We give to those who might take advantage of us. We surrender our rights to the love and favor of the God who runs the Kingdom we live in: we are always only looking for God to say well done at the end of our living instead of living for the accolades of our world. We don’t care what others think – we care only that God has said love your neighbors, pray for your enemies, and live as though the designation of last place is as precious (if not more so) than the designation of winner.
We don’t know what Philemon did when his runaway slave came back to him. But we do know that if Philemon was a true follower of Jesus then the right thing, although it was the harder thing, was what he did.
This week someone told me that Christians too often are the ones who throw stones, who spend their time condemning others and hurting them instead of standing up for those who are finding their way or being dismissed and detained and victimized. My answer to that is that true Christ followers find their place catching the stones that others throw and dropping them in order to love both sides: those who can’t see past their own righteous indignation to throw them and those who can’t run away when they are lobbed. It isn’t comfortable to stand in between. It isn’t easy. It isn’t even fun, but the Jesus who dressed in human flesh even though he is God, says that this is the way of the cross. We don’t get to throw stones, even at those we disagree with. We don’t get to adamantly insist on our rights being acknowledged of fulfilled, even when we are right and the other one is wrong, because Jesus calls us to something more. To a hope in a life where giving of ourselves and giving all we are offers the return of abundant grace that makes our surrender a precious receipt of the beauty of God’s favor. God’s blessing is God’s presence and we forfeit that blessing when we insist on making ourselves the first and foremost in any situation. Loving others is hard work, it requires effort to be kind.
Paul gives this introductory statement about who Philemon is:
I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people.
Based on this, it seems reasonable to assume that although Onesimus deserved something else, Philemon, in love, welcomed his former slave as a brother in love.
We all might be Philemon. We all have been Onesimus. We all have been in the position of asking for grace where we deserved something else. That is the very definition of the gospel: God gives us grace and mercy when we deserved anything else. God offers us relationship where we once were rebellious. God says please come to me even when we run away. In fact, God started the redemption story by offering ways to get back in relationship and building a plan whereby God himself would come to us, would pursue us, so that we might see the truth of God’s love in the beauty of a babe in a manger, the harshness of a savior on a cross, and the glory of an empty tomb that promises a resurrection that defies the damages we do to each other.
God asks us to love God more than we love ourselves because God loves us and gave himself up for us and because in the place where we live into God’s Kingdom, we can receive the blessing of God in our lives.
How could we possibly imagine saying no to that? I don’t think Philemon did; I hope that each of us refuse to as well.
If you aren’t a Christ follower today or if you aren’t sure if your life of Christ following looks like this, I ask you to remember God’s love for you as we move into our time of response and reflection. It is at the table of Christ, what we call communion, that we find our way home. It is through communion that grace is given and that redemption makes its way from our heads to our hearts. It is my prayer that everyone who hears my voice today will know that Jesus lives and that Jesus loves and that you are welcome, no matter who you are or what you have done.
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As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture. Follow along on your sheets and whenever I point at you say whatever is bolded on your page:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like Jesus.
God loves us enough to want us to live like Jesus – an abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loves us enough to still let us choose our own destiny.
God loves us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and final judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Friday Nov 15, 2019
Friday Nov 15, 2019
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Hebrews 10:21-25 from the Message:
So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
Giving Hope: creatively do good together. That is the way we have distilled these 4 verses to a t-shirt slogan. But it really means something deeper and it defines us not only as members and attendees of this church, but as Christians who are necessarily called to do three things: Living a life that holds on to hope (full of belief, confident that we’re presentable…keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going), creatively doing good (let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out), and being together (not avoiding worshiping together), as the author of the book of Hebrews says.
Hebrews is a fun book. It ties together in a way that no other New Testament book does the entire picture of Old Testament sacrifice as a foreshadow of the work of God in Christ on behalf of the world. The book has no identifiable author, but there are many theories: Paul, Apollos, Clement, Barnabas, Timothy, Priscilla, or Junia. In the end it is somewhat irrelevant who wrote the book, but who ever it was had some great insights and gave us some great passages of scripture.
The faith chapter, for example, is found in Hebrews 11, where we read a minor synopsis of the Old Testament Hall of Famers – those who held on to the hope they had, who gave it away, and who did God’s work in the face of adversity, not even having seen what God’s final plan might look like.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the author writes, and this phrasing helps us see faith for what it is: something we know about and trust to happen, but haven’t yet experienced.
But faith isn’t the only thing in Hebrews: it is also a chapter full of hope. In it we learn that our redemption has been purchased, so that we can move into the very presence of God. We no longer live with the guilt of past sin, we no longer have to stand trembling and ashamed, instead we lean in and receive the beautiful grace that was bought for us with the shed blood of our redeemer, Jesus.
Our hope, then is multi-faceted: it is the hope of Christ’s work in us now and the hope of an eternity in God’s presence. It is the hope of the resurrection from the dead, the hope of bodies transformed and spirits renewed. It is the hope of abundant lives now, full of the grace and mercy we have been given, being given to others. It is the hope that we cling to, by faith, and that in this place we have resolved to give away. It is the hope that defines us as Christians, as those who know who God is and what God has promised and the hope that allows us to believe that the faithfulness of God is foundational to who we are now and who we will be as God continues the transforming work in each of us through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Even Job, as we read in our scriptures from the lectionary today, had a grasp on this hope, although he had no view of Christ in his life. Listen again to Job’s words from Job 19:25-27:
I know that my redeemer[b] lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.[c]
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet[d] in[e] my flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
This is a man who has lost absolutely everything. We tend to revere him for patience, as though his losses somehow gave him the ability to withstand longer. But I submit that what we should remember Job for is his willingness to question and his willingness to believe despite the circumstances: for the hope that he stubbornly held onto even when everything was terrible. He clung to hope when all else was lost, when even his wife would have him curse God and die. Job’s hope is pre-Jesus, but Jesus helps us know that Job’s hope was not in vain, that Job’s hope was right, and that our hope then is right and not in vain.
Our hope is also something that others can see and know that God is faithful. We have the opportunity to give our hope away by living into the hope that we have. We can serve those around us, which is what the author of Hebrews reminds us to do: Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, as Eugene Peterson tells us in the Message version of the book. We give hope away by encouraging others, by helping others to see who Jesus is, to see the hope we have fulfilled in the life we live for others.
The last part of that scripture reminds us that our hope is bigger and more real to us when we celebrate it and work it through together. In the NIV, this verse says “and do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” because the author knows that the Church as a collective is needed for the fulfillment of our hope, too. We cannot hold onto the hope we have unless we do it together, unless we work through it collectively. We need one another. We need to see God at work in each other, we need to hear how God is doing things, we need to know where there are hurt people because we know hurt people need healing and sometimes we are the means for that healing and help. Our gatherings are about worship, too, worshiping God collectively is important. And all of the different aspects of worship draw us closer not only to each other, but to the God we love and serve.
So God’s love for us is visible to us in the hope we have and in the beauty of our collective worship and mission. We are together to love and to serve and to give our hope to those both in this space with us and in the world around us. Our vision is not just a t-shirt slogan, then; instead it is the wonder of a Christian life lived for those around us so that they to might know the hope of a God who loves. Giving Hope – Creatively Do Good Together.
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As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture. Follow along on your sheets and whenever I point at you say whatever is bolded on your page:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like Jesus.
God loves us enough to want us to live like Jesus – an abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loves us enough to still let us choose our own destiny.
God loves us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and final judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Saturday Nov 23, 2019
Saturday Nov 23, 2019
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
James 1:19-27
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
Three Indiana judges have been suspended without pay for their involvement in a shooting during a drunken brawl outside a White Castle restaurant in May.
The state Supreme Court said in an order published Tuesday that the county circuit judges — Andrew Adams and Bradley B. Jacobs of Clark County and Sabrina R. Bell or Crawford County — behaved in a way that was "not merely embarrassing on a personal level; they discredited the entire Indiana judiciary."
Adams previously was sentenced to a year in jail with all but two days suspended after he pleaded guilty to battery in the incident, during which he and Jacobs suffered gunshot wounds.
An investigation by the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications depicted the judges as wandering the streets of Indianapolis, where they were attending a judicial conference, in a drunken haze in the middle of the night on May 1.
The judges and a fourth man, Clark County Magistrate William Dawkins, met up at a bar where they drank for several hours before deciding to go to a strip club, which was closed, investigators said. So they then went to the White Castle.
The judges remained outside while Dawkins went inside at about 3:15 a.m., according to judicial documents. That was when two men drove by in a car and shouted something out the window, to which Bell "extended her middle finger" in response, investigators said.
The men pulled into the parking lot and got out, which led to "a heated verbal altercation ... with all participants yelling, using profanity, and making dismissive, mocking, or insolent gestures toward the other group," according to the documents.
The confrontation ended when one of the men from the car, identified as Brandon Kaiser, pulled a gun and shot Adams once and Jacobs twice, investigators said. Both men underwent emergency surgery and were hospitalized for several days.
Judges arrested for disobeying the laws they help enforce. Laws they know. Laws they quote. Laws they are sworn to uphold in the enactment of justice. It is shocking to us, still, in this day and age, when people who are expected to behave one way, with decorum and propriety, with dignity and honor, act as though they are eighth graders left unsupervised at the mall. This is the same reaction we once had when learned of disgraced priests who hurt children or celebrity pastors who cheated on their wives, or even famous actors who portrayed good guys and then we found out were not so nice behind the scenes to those around them. Over time, we have become less shocked by some of these things because they happen so often, we nearly expect them. But it does still seem odd to hear of judges, who know the law so well, who are expected to tell others what it means and how to do it, have seemingly forgotten all about it and become the very criminals they usually punish.
This is what James writes to the church in this letter = when you only hear the words of God and do not behave as though you believe or know them, you are like someone who looks in the mirror and immediately forgets their own face. Imagine that for a moment: you look in the mirror and forget what you look like as soon as you turn away. James is telling us that the law of God, the law that we are to follow as Christians ought to be as familiar to us as our own faces and just as difficult to dismiss in our thinking and lives.
James is the brother of Jesus. His father is Joseph, his mother is Mary. James grew up a devout Jew, just like Jesus. He was raised by the same people and lived and played and engaged with Jesus the same way any of us do with our siblings. I imagine them playing hide and seek in the family compound, or chopping the wood their father would use to build tables and doors for others in the community, or telling jokes at the dinner table. They would have celebrated Passover together, and the family would have frequently told the story of Jesus being forgotten at the temple when he was twelve and how worried everyone was on that trip to Jerusalem.
So it’s easy to understand how James was pretty reluctant at first to believe his big brother was the Messiah. It’s easy to understand why he and his other brothers told Jesus to go to Judea and gather disciples – they wanted him to show his hand so that this whole thing could get nipped in the bud before it got out of control. But the resurrection. James saw Jesus after the resurrection.
We read about it as an offhand comment Paul makes in I Corinthians: Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Paul is giving his testimony and he is referring to James the brother of Jesus as one who was given a special audience with Jesus after the resurrection. James became a big deal in the church. James became a prominent leader who wrote this letter to the Jews who had become Christians but were not in Jerusalem any longer, reminding them that the law they had known was fulfilled in Jesus, and the royal law – the law that Jesus had commanded them to follow was the law that leads to freedom: the very law we have preached in so many messages, the law that changes who we are to our core when we live it, the law that frees us from lists of dos and don’ts, the law that says simply love your neighbor.
James says if we hear it and we don’t live it, we are in danger of being just as shocking as those judges in Indiana: people who know better, but don’t do better. James says that when we follow it, when we do live it, then we have gotten rid of moral filth and evil in our lives.
James tells us to be slow to get angry, quick to listen. He later also says to care for widows and orphans. These are instructions for what loving your neighbor looks like: taking care to listen and perhaps understand something that is beyond your normal sphere of understanding, so you can care for those who are on the margins, those that the rest of the world casts aside and tries to devour. James gives us these instructions to help us see that loving our neighbor encompasses more than just doing nice things once and a while for someone down the street (although that’s a good thing) it means changing how we interact with the world around us so that the very way we display our emotional temperature is radically different from those around us.
We live in a culture of outrage and indignation that pronounces judgements and throws around memes and posts expressing angst and hurt before ever waiting to hear the other persons point of view. Some have said we have turned ourselves into emergency addicts: seeing each new outrage as a new crisis to submerge ourselves in, facts be damned as we rage against the vile oppressor, whoever they may be. This behavior is not contained to one group or another, either, it has become an outflow of any group who says you are in and you are out and when you are out, you often do things that are a violation of everything those of us who are in believe in.
This happens with non-Christians, you might say, but certainly not with Christians…well, sorry to disappoint you, but it is happening in our churches too. When we say this person is not welcome or that group is not welcome or that kind of person is not welcome in our churches and then stand in places where those people are welcome and announce their vileness to us: we are just as engaged in outrage culture as those who point their fingers at churches and decry the things we stand for without understanding them. We become angry over things that others within the church do or say, we become angry about the ways in which someone disagrees with us and we don’t take a moment to think about a response that is loving and kind, we lash out. James says that is evil. It breeds hate and harm.
Jesus prayed for unity for believers. Jesus said that we would be known by our love for one another. Jesus told us to love our neighbors. And if we cannot live by the words Jesus died for then are we even following him?
This week, if you watch the impeachment hearings, read stories of betrayal or sorrow, or hang around people with opinions that are different than yours, spend a few moments listening to what someone else has to say, taking some time to understand the perspective that seems so foreign to your own, recognizing that all outrage does is burn like a flash and feed hate and animosity. 2000 years ago, James warned believers that this was a bad idea, almost as if he had a vision of what our culture in this century might look like. Really, he knew what people are like and he knew that no matter the day or season, people find ways to be less than loving to one another. And he reminds us that loving our neighbors is far more satisfying, far more freeing than reacting with righteous indignation over every slight and differing opinion.
God loved us so that we could love others. We love others by breaking away from being angry at every turn and instead finding ways to listen before we speak, to understand before we condemn, to live out the royal law that brings freedom, remembering what we are supposed to look like even after we turn away from the mirror. We are called to love. Because God loves us.
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As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture. Follow along on your sheets and whenever I point at you say whatever is bolded on your page:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like Jesus.
God loves us enough to want us to live like Jesus – an abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loves us enough to still let us choose our own destiny.
God loves us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and final judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Saturday Nov 30, 2019
Saturday Nov 30, 2019
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
I Peter 5:5b – 7
all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
When I was a non-believer, my favorite Bible verse, the one I put in all the sympathy cards, the one I always quoted to people when they were upset was I Peter 5:7. By itself, I always quoted it as “Cast your cares on him for he cares for you” It’s a nice sentiment. It is a lovely thought. But the whole of it encompasses more than just giving up our burdens to a caring God – it has to do with our posture in the laying them aside and it has to do with the fact that God has asked us to not just surrender our anxieties, but our very selves. In fact, God says to not only be humble before God, but to be humble to one another – to lay aside our need to be right, our need to be first, our need to prove our point, and instead trust that God will be faithful in demonstrating just exactly who is right and vindicating our position.
We have to surrender ourselves or we risk losing who we are called to be to our sinful nature. God has called us to be different, to live differently, but sometimes we just don’t get it. Sometimes we have to learn the same lessons over and over. And I will tell you that every message I preach is intended not only for you, but for me and sometimes I wish you listened better, but then I remember that I need to listen better, too. So here we are again: God has called us to be humble. And God doesn’t call us to that without also having lived it: Jesus had every reason to be exalted his whole life, but as we prepare to go through advent, we will remember that even though Jesus was born a king, he allowed himself to live as one of us, to be tempted like one of us, to be a human being with wants and needs and desires – he emptied himself and showed us what humility looks like (you only have to read Paul’s hymn in Philippians 2 to know that this humility was beautifully expressed in who Jesus is) Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
This is what God is calling us to. This is what Peter is talking about in his letter to suffering Christians: give up your very selves and trust God because God cares what is happening. God will lift you up because it is God’s reputation on the line.
And here’s the thing: you can’t truly surrender your cares to God unless you actually trust God to handle them, which means letting them go 100%, which means that you cannot be proud about the resolution. You cannot think you can solve the problem – that’s pride, too. You can’t think “oh I’ll just tell God about it to hedge my bets” as though God is one of many options in the resolution to the concerns you have.
When you pray and ask God to handle your situation, your illness, your decision, your future, your work – you no longer have to worry about it. You no longer have to keep tossing around ideas to fix it. You no longer have to turn it over in your mind wondering what is going to happen next.
Instead, when it comes back to mind, you say “I have given that to God. I cannot do better than that”
This doesn’t mean you forgo doctor appointments or medicines or family counseling or going on the job interview – what it does mean is that you surrender the OUTCOME to the God who cares about what you are going through and wants you to turn it over to him.
I do also want to say that sometimes anxiety is a mental disorder. Sometimes only medication can resolve it. That is not what I am talking about, because that is not something you have control over (think of it like diabetes = you can’t control your blood sugar without medication with that, so with an anxiety disorder, the same is true of your anxious thoughts) If that is true for you, that is completely different.
Because casting your anxiety on God is about the anxiety you control, the worries you bring on yourself, the things you refuse to let go of, not the things you can’t let go of because your brain won’t let you.
Humility means being willing to let God own your issues. It means resolving to continually give them back to him, not trying to wrest them away. It means knowing that when that worry or fear starts to pop up again, I am going to remind myself that it does not belong to me anymore. I do the things I need to do, and I let God own what happens next.
I go to the doctor and hear the diagnosis.
I participate in counseling sessions.
I go to the job interview.
But all the while, I remember that God has been given the outcome controls. So if the diagnosis is bad, I do the treatment and trust that God will be with me.
If the divorce still happens, if the children still go into foster care, if I don’t get the job, if everything falls apart – I still trust God with the outcome. I do not worry that God will fail. Life is hard. Life has obstacles to overcome and challenges to face, but if I cast my cares on God, I am trusting that God will provide.
Jesus said that in this world we would have trouble, but that he would be with us and that he would send a Comforter.
Paul reminds us that God is working all things for good and he tells us to pray continuously.
And here, Peter says, give it to God because God cares.
There are people who suggest that we should limit our prayers to the big things: cancer, disasters, car accidents, job loss.
But I believe God caring doesn’t stop at the giant things – God cares about the little things too: the sick pet, the lost keys, the crazy day. As long as you are not praying out of selfish ambition or pride (yeah, let’s not pray for Rockstar parking at the Target on Christmas Eve, ok?) but truly out of a place of ‘here God, I can’t, you can’ God will listen and God will answer.
Sometimes the need feels too big. That’s ok, too, because when you are humble enough to know that God can handle it, the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf, sometimes groaning right along with you. You see, when Jesus said he was going to be with us, he didn’t just mean that he was everywhere in the world and therefore available to us.
He meant that like a best friend, like someone who loves us, he would be there – next to us, suffering with us, knowing our need and caring about it.
God has given us a beautiful promise – God is mighty, God is powerful, God is able, and God cares about you. God promises to take your burden if you cast it on him.
I love that word “cast” – it isn’t just a laying it down, but if you have ever seen fishermen at work, which remember, Peter was a fisherman by trade, when they cast a line or a net, they throw it out as far as they can. They don’t try to keep it close and successful fishermen keep the line out in the water, they don’t reel it back in every 5 minutes. They wait.
Peter isn’t using this word casually. He suggests that we throw our burdens as far as we can away from ourselves: all the way to God’s throne, where they can actually be addressed and managed by the God of all mercy and grace. The God who cares about our needs and about us.
So what things do you need to surrender to God today? How can you, right now, cast your cares on God? How can you say “here God, I can’t, you can” about the things in your life that you cannot control?
I ask everyone to take a sticky note and write your one thing down. I have this jar up here on the table and I am going to ask everyone to come and put their one thing in it. We are going to leave this jar here, on the altar. And every time you start to want to take your burden back, picture it here – all of it, sitting in this place where God sees it and no one else knows it. And as each of us think of the burdens in this jar during the week, pray that God will move on behalf of the person who laid it down. It doesn’t have to be a long involved prayer – just “God, you know what is there and who put it in. Show them your care by working on their behalf. In Jesus name, amen”
In this way, we are not only surrendering to God, but sharing the load with our fellow Christians, which is also an admonition that we have been given about the burdens we carry.
I suggest to you, that when you can surrender this one thing to God today, if you can remember that God cares enough to stand with you in the midst of your trial, if you can allow the rest of us to pray for your need not even knowing what it is, if you can trust that God can where you can’t, you will be freer than you have been for a long time – trusting the God of miracles to care about your mess.
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As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture. Follow along on your sheets and whenever I point at you say whatever is bolded on your page:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like Jesus.
God loves us enough to want us to live like Jesus – an abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loves us enough to still let us choose our own destiny.
God loves us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and final judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Advent is the new year in the church. New years are often a time for resolutions and for thinking of ways we want to improve. We don’t always think of Advent as a season of reflection and renewal, but what if we shifted our thinking? What if we found a way to reduce distractions, to simplify things, and to focus on remembering the coming of Christ and anticipating his return? How might we be transformed by that, and how might the world be transformed by our faithful witness of watching and waiting with hope?
Monday Jan 27, 2020
Monday Jan 27, 2020
The final message by Pastor Jen @ Giving Hope
II Corinthians 4:5-12; I Kings 19:1-18
2 Corinthians 4:5-12 New International Version (NIV)
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
1 Kings 19:1-18 New International Version (NIV)
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”
Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
You may be seated.
There is a book you may have heard of. It is called Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. It is intended to teach children, and I suppose their parents as well, that bad days are temporary and they affect all of us – even when it feels like we are all alone in our bad circumstances. Alexander wakes up with gum in his hair and everything after that is just wrong for him all day, right down to not getting to wear his favorite pajamas that night as he goes to bed. All day he says he’d like to move to Australia, certain that in that magical place no one has Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad days. Finally he realizes that tomorrow will probably be better and that even in Australia, there are bad days.
Sometimes I think we read our Bibles and listen to the stories in them as if we were expecting that it is like the Australia of Alexander’s imagination: there are no bad days, there are no terrible moments, there are only instances of God making everything work to good. Certainly, we sometimes convey that to children in Sunday School as we tell stories of heroic David and paint our nursery walls with cute pictures of Noah’s ark full of cartoon animals.
Perhaps there is nothing too wrong with giving that kind of bubble gum coverage to the Bible stories we learn in our youth, but I think it is important to note that most of the time, the stories in scripture are way more like the Alexander in reality – they wake up with a crappy day and it just kind of follows them around, until in Scripture, God either intervenes or shows them what it could look like.
This story of Elijah is one of my favorites – in fact, I have preached on it before, speaking of focus and talking about how when we lose focus we lose sight of what matters. Today, I bring you this message because I think we can all relate to what Elijah was feeling. Because Elijah has just had what could only be called the opposite of a terrible horrible no good very bad day – he made a bet with the King of Israel and he won: King Ahab’s Baal priests have all been destroyed. Elijah won, because God showed up and showed off and the wonder of that moment should have carried him for weeks…except within just a day or so, Elijah is on the run, hiding out, and ready to give up.
He had every reason to trust God. He had survived drought and famine and a murderous queen Jezebel. He had been taken care of, fed, healed and confronted God’s enemies – and still, he ran and hid and kind of pouted…listen to what he says: . “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”
He. Can’t. Even.
What makes this narrative so powerful is not how Elijah is afraid and feeling alone and dejected, although those things are all true.
It is how God reacts in that moment: God feeds him, God gives him rest, and then God calls him to a new place and a new effort, reassuring him that God isn’t done, God hasn’t lost, and he is never alone.
Elijah acts a little like a toddler throwing a tantrum, and God does what any good parent does: he gives him a snack, a nap, and a distraction!
Seriously, though, it is in God’s response that we can find comfort. God didn’t call Elijah a failure even though the people didn’t listen to the message.
God didn’t scold Elijah for being worn out after fighting so hard.
God didn’t erase Elijah’s work as though it were nothing.
God, instead, pulled him up and got him going as soon as it made sense to do so.
That’s what God does.
We have spent many hours and days and months in this town working to bring the light of the Gospel to the people who live in darkness. Not only is that our reading from Isaiah today, but it is also part of the reading in II Corinthians for this message: The people living in darkness have seen a great light.
We have been that light sometimes. We have stood in this place and done what God has called us to do.
Paul says that he experienced so many disappointments and discouragements in how he was treated, in what he encountered and how even, the churches he planted and ministered to reacted to the Gospel or lived it out later. But what he says is even though he has encountered all of these things: he does not give up the Gospel. He does not give up living out what God has called him to. We know that the dying off of the old is necessary to bring out the new, he says, and he means that as we die in Christ, our new life brings us forward with joy and hope so that we live in light even as the world turns dark around us.
After the first message I ever preached, the pastor’s wife came up to me and handed me a slip of paper with this scripture from I Corinthians on it, and she said “when ministry gets hard, and it will, remember this promise”
She was right. But the promise holds true. What was true for Elijah, what was true for Paul and what remains true for each and everyone of us is this: We have this treasure in jars of clay. The Holy Spirit continues to empower and embrace and enfold us and move us forward in the proclamation of the gospel.
If you have found Jesus and you have loved him and you have been filled with the Holy Spirit, the closing of this church or any other matters little to the job that you have been given: to proclaim the good news of Christ Jesus to everyone around you, by living loved, by loving your neighbors, by loving God.
I am going to enter a season of ministry in the context of my family for awhile. I will likely visit several churches, looking for a final new church home. Knowing myself, it will be a challenge to not get busy right away in serving, because that is what I know I am called to – but I am going to wait, because I know God is providing me this time for that purpose. Even so, my life will reflect my Savior. My faith will be visible in how I live and how I love and I will continue to grow in the grace and faith of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But when God is ready for me to resume ministry in this sphere, the sphere of pastoring a church, the sphere of shepherding God’s people well – I will always and can always only answer yes. I pray that you too will take a season of rest – take a nap, if you will. Get fed for awhile. And then be listening for the next place God will call you to serve – because God will always have a place for you, if you are ready and willing. I know you can, I trust you will. We have loved and served together well – I will miss you all, but I promise even though this may have been a terrible horrible no good very bad season in our church life, some seasons are like that – even in Australia.
Sunday May 29, 2022
Sunday May 29, 2022
This is the recording of a church service at the Hammond Mission Church of the Nazarene on May 29, 2022
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
Sunday Oct 16, 2022
What is it about scripture that makes us elevate its status above a book? Is it because of this text in 2 Timothy wherein Paul writes his spiritual son and announces that all scripture is God-breathed? What if the Bible is actually one tool among many that draw us close to God?
Sunday Jul 28, 2024
Sunday Jul 28, 2024
Sunday Jul 28, 2024
This is a message about loving our neighbors. It is also a prophetic word to the Church of the Nazarene and Pastor Jen's testimony.