Synchronicity?

^{2Peter 1:17} For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” ¹⁸ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. ¹⁹ And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, ²⁰ knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. ²¹ For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

As remarkable as the transfiguration is, as amazing as seeing Jesus and being touched by Jesus and hearing the Father’s voice from heaven (all in the same moment)… we have something more sure, the scriptures.  My hope in telling you this story is that the experience will take you to His word and that you will be left with a deeper love for Him.

I've told my wife that this experience has made me afraid of God… not tyrant ruler fear, but God is awesome fear. He has given me a glimpse of what He is up to and it makes me fear Him in the most reverential sense, because He is just so awesome. My mind is blown. And if you listen to this message, yours will be too…

I have a friend named Billy. Billy is in prison.  I met him via a letter while working at a church in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.  Billy’s letter was one of two letters written to my Senior Pastor, Jean Larroux, in response to an article he had written in the newspaper but because he was in his last days in Bay Saint Louis, in the middle of transition to move his family and pastor a church in Alabama, he gave the letters to me. They sat in my briefcase for months until I finally wrote back.  Billy and Richard couldn’t have been more different.  It became clear that Richard was just interested in whatever favors the church would be willing to do for him. Billy, on the other hand, was more interested in sharing with me about the favor he had received from God.

After about 6 months and as many letters, Billy told me that he hadn't had a visitor in almost ten years since first going to prison.  It broke my heart.  I told Tiffany I had to go see him, which terrified me.  The prison was about 2 hours away and when I got there and met Billy, it was an emotional avalanche.  We sat in the visitation area crying and praying for almost 3 hours.  It was awesome.  We discovered we had both been converted to Christ about the same time.

There is far more to this story… far more to God's sovereign hand on Billy's life and where it's going. Check it out!   -Chris Leuck

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Generous Sowing, Generous Reaping?

Trust and Obey

      Trust and Obey

           Trust and obey, for there's no other way

            to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

One of the Apostle Paul’s major projects was collecting a large donation to help poverty stricken believers in Jerusalem.  The major passage on this is 2 Corinthians 8-9.  Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe says, “These two chapters present giving as a Christian grace, a blessing, not as a legal obligation that burdens people.  If giving is difficult for a Christian, then there is something wrong with his heart!”  

Giving is difficult for me because I don’t know God well enough.  And what I do know I tend to forget.  Because I don’t know God very well I don’t trust him very much.  The more I know him the more I trust him.  The more I trust him the more I obey.  I don’t obey God so he’ll love me.  I obey him because He loves me.  I don’t trust God so he will accept me.  I trust him because he’s accepted me.   Knowing and trusting God makes it less difficult for me to give.

Have you learned to trust God?  What stories do you have of God’s faithfulness?  Here’s one of mine.

We lived in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada from 1990-1995.  Kathleen’s from Miami, FL and I’m from Marietta, GA so our first winter there on the shore of Lake Huron was rough.  Winters are MILD in the South.  No so in Canada.  It wasn’t the Yukon or Siberia but it sure felt like it!

I love being outside and have an adventurous spirit so I learned how to deal with the cold.  One afternoon  that first winter my son and I went to Sarnia Bay.  It was completely frozen over so naturally we wanted to explore the ice.  I knew nothing about ice so I didn’t trust it.  The ice was about four feet below a concrete retaining wall.  We climbed down and eased onto the ice expecting to fall through at any moment.  We had a death grip on the top of the wall as we cautiously inched our way along.  It felt like we were outside the 40^th floor of a skyscraper.   We cringed and froze at every creak and crack.  Finally we’d had enough excitement for one day and made our way back.

We returned the next day to let the rest of the family see the frozen bay and brag about our exploit.

I couldn’t believe it!  Cars everywhere.  On the ice!  They were getting ready for a motorcycle race.  On the ice!  When I asked a guy about it he laughed and said, “Yeah that ice is a foot thick!”

I laughed at my undue caution, timidity and fear the previous day and strolled out onto the ice like I was walking down my driveway to get the mail.  No fear.  I knew it would support me.

In 2 Corinthians 9:8-11 Paul wrote, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work… you will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way…”  God’s grace, like the Sarnia Bay ice, is omnipotently able to support me.  The difficulty I have in trusting Him comes from my inadequate knowledge of his faithfulness.  When I remember God’s faithfulness I can trust and obey with a little less fear and trepidation.

-John Ottley

Click here to listen to the entire message messing with your money, giving of your time and yourself.

Is Everyone Going To Heaven?

Election: How do sinners escape their sin?

Ephesians 1:3-6

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴ even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 

Is God glad you chose him? 

You may have heard the description of a corridor of time and God looking down it seeing sinners choose him, and therefore God choosing them on the basis of being chosen by sinners. I grew up my whole life believing that and hearing that, and I can tell you just from my own study, that it seems to me by what we read in Ephesians 1, that's hardly the picture the Bible paints.  

My wife and I were flying back from Chicago on a pedal-jumper airplane, you know, just everyone being crammed into a tube in the sky.  Just before take off, I leaned over and asked Tammy, "Is there a baby on the plane?!?" She said, "What do you mea....OHHH...", and from there the smell just intensified.  I have a very weak sensitivity for such things, and my gag reflex was so intense people around me thought my heart was stopping.  Meanwhile, I'm shooting my glance around between coughs and chokes trying to find the culprit letting them know that I am gaging in utter revulsion.  Folks, that's more like God's view down the corridor!  If you believe what the Bible says about God and his holiness, that he dwells in unapproachable light, that his eyes are too holy to look upon sin, that if you start with God's nature and see what he sees when he looks at sin, if you see what Christ sees when he looks into the cup of God's wrath and has to drink it down in it's fullness, it's REVULSION.  

Because of God's holy nature, not only is he utterly, perfectly, and infinitely, revolted by sin but because of his righteousness and justice he has no choice in the matter except to exact punishment.  

Can God do anything? No.  Can God make a rock so big even he can't pick it up?  No.  Can he let sin go unpunished?  No.  He is limited only by his own excellencies and they will not let him NOT be revolted by sin.

I would think it would cease to be an amazing grace if God were at our mercy to execute his own plan.  Grace will not be hijacked.

-Jim Umlauf

To listen and wrestle for yourself this challenging passage in scripture, click here

God's Midnight

Matthew 25:1“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ² Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³ For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, ⁴ but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵ As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. ⁶ But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. ⁸ And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ ¹⁰ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. ¹¹ Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ ¹² But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ¹³ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

By in large we know that weddings as the one described in this parable were held at night.  Typically, the sequence of events would go like this: the groom accompanied by his friends would leave his home and head towards his betrothed fiancé.  He would arrive at his bride's house and she would come out attended by her childhood friends, bridesmaids, or attendants.  In this parable, they're called "virgins".  They would all leave together with pomp and circumstance, and present the couple to their new home.  The groom comes to get his bride and takes her to her future home!   This is the storyline of the entire new testament.  It's interesting that the bride in this story isn't mentioned, but that the emphasis is on the groom and his coming.

Everything you need to understand about this parable is riding on how you see the virgins and their oil.  I'm led to believe and many commentaries agree that verse 13 points to the virgins being a simile for the "visible church"; visible being the church of the present, invisible being the church of past, present and future.  The parable tells us that this visible church is comprised of virgins that are wise, and virgins that are foolish.  

The foolish had oil...some, but not enough.  They had a faith, but it was not a saving faith because their oil ran out.  Early on, they looked like the other virgins, but over time, and specifically with the coming of the groom, they're left out.  They have some marks of the wise, they're not openly God-less, but what is glaringly obvious, is that the foolish virgins do not make it in.  That means that some of you (in the visible church) will not, make it in.
-Dr. Jimmy Young

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