Choosing to Serve the Lord

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AUTUMN-HARVEST-TIME

“Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” [Joshua 24:15]

There was going to be a change in leadership. Joshua who had faithfully and successfully led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land would soon be gone. Also going away with him was the people’s link back to Moses who had led them out of Egypt and also given them the law. So this was an important change indeed. Joshua gathered the people together for a farewell address. After he reminded them of all that God had done for them, Joshua asked them to choose who they would serve. Two of the options Joshua mentioned are still valid today as we struggle to choose who, or what, we will serve.

 

worship-services

The first choice was to serve the gods your ancestors served. How many times do we elevate traditions in the highest position and worship them more than we worship God? Some of the most discouraging words a pastor ever hears are: “Preacher, we’ve never done that here,” or “Preacher, we’ve always done it this way.” One of the best definitions for insanity is keeping on doing what you have always done and expecting a different outcome.

Now traditions are not all bad. In fact, some are really good: they become sinful when we serve them rather than serving the Lord. I once served a church in which the piano lamp was broken. My pianist had to “fix” it each time before it could be used. However to even talk about replacing it was considered blaspheme because someone had given it as a memorial gift for an ancestor. Often we choose to serve the “gods” of tradition and worship the past.
The second choice was to serve the “gods” of the people around them. In Joshua’s time that may well have seemed to be the best choice. Serving the gods of the Amorites would allow the Israelites to blend in and become a part of that society. Now while the reasons may be different today the temptation to blend in and be just like everyone around us is still very strong.

Surveys tell us that peer pressure may be the most defining thing in our youth’s lives. Also most of us, regardless of age, want to be accepted and to fit in with those around us. This may be on the job, in school, or just in the community at large. Far too often we compromise our Christian beliefs and find ourselves serving the “gods” of those around us.

However, Joshua also presents a third choice, serving the LORD. In one of the best affirmations of faith in all scripture Joshua said: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Oh how I hope and pray that we all can make that same affirmation of our faith!

Richard

State of the Church

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Each year for Charge Conference the pastor is asked to do a report of the state of the church that he or she is serving. Below is my report for this year.

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This has been another hard year for our church. Both membership and average attendance, for both Worship and Sunday School, is down. One promising thing is that the percentage of decrease is less than it has been in the past few years. Also troubling is the fact that our giving is down. At the end of July we were over $7,000 behind our budgeted donations and over $10,000 behind last year’s giving. We need to do better!

Easter eggs in grass.

© Donar Reiskoffer / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0

However, there are some encouraging signs. Ruth Sizemore, our Children’s Committee Chair, did a great job with our Easter Egg Hunt and our Vacation Bible School “G-Force=God’s Love In Action”—was really successful with an average of over 20 kids each night. God is good!

Our Mission Outreach continues to do great work; with our Health and Welfare Assistance program each Tuesday making a real difference to those in need.

Our United Methodist Women remains one of the strongest units in the Wytheville District. Several members of our local unit serve in leadership positions on the district level.

Our Music Department does a great job—this adds so much to our Worship. However, our brightest light may be our Kid’s Junction ministry. Started with the help of a Holston Conference “Change-for-Children” grant, this has not merely survived but grown greatly. This school year we were able to provide fifty plus backpacks for students as well as other needed school supplies. This is in addition to our on-going distribution of coats, clothes, diapers and personal hygiene items not covered by SNAP benefits. Way to go church!

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This is a time of change for First Galax United Methodist Church as we transition from the type of church we used to be and become the church God wants us to be now. Change is always scary but if we seek God’s will to commit to doing what God wants, we will have a bright future.

Richard

INDEPENDENCE DAY

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The Fourth of July is a very special day. It is the birthday of our nation and the time when we celebrate our freedom. It may be my favorite holiday of all. This is partly true because it comes during the summer which is becoming more and more, the older I get, my favorite time of the year.

While the Fourth has always had meaning, it seems to have become more important after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. After the terrorists attacks, you seem to hear the phrase “God bless America” much more than you did before. Each time I hear or see those words I ask myself what do they mean? Especially, what do I mean when I say them?

Sometimes we forget that the Fourth is not a religious holiday. I am afraid that we often worship our nation almost as much, or more than, we worship God. Now please do not get me wrong. I love the U.S.A. as much as anyone. My heart beats faster when I see the flag or hear the national anthem; but we cannot allow anything, even our nation, to be the thing we put above our worship of God. We need to hear again the words of Jesus regarding how we treat civil leadership of any nation: “Render to Caesar the things that are Ceasar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” [Mark 12:17 K.J.V.] This teaches that God must be the ultimate thing in our lives above all else, even our love of country.

Furthermore, we need to remember that God is God of all nations and God loves all the world’s people. Now God does not approve of the evil some people do and terrorism done in the name of religion must break God’s heart. However, when I hear “God Bless America” I cannot help but think of the words of Lloyd Stone’s hymn entitled “This Is My Song.” Let me share those words with you now:

‘This is my song, O God, of all the nations, a song of peace for land afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is, here is my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine: but other hearts in other lands are beating, with hope and dreams as true and high as mine. My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.’

Now please do not get me wrong. It is not wrong to love your country and to pray for God to bless the U.S.A. as long as we do not mean by blessing our country that God would harm some other country. Maybe one of the hardest teachings Jesus gave us is to love our enemies. If we are to love our country as we should, we have to love God more.

So I hope this Independence Day you celebrated your freedom and enjoyed this great nation of ours, only keeping God first in your heart.

Richard

KNOWN

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“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” [Jeremiah 1:5a N.R.S.V.]

The theme for this, the 30th anniversary, resurrection was that each and every one of us is known by god.

Thirty years ago three pastors in the Holston annual conference had an idea for a youth event each year in Gatlinburg, tn. They were inspired to name the event resurrection and presented their idea to the conference council on youth ministry. Reluctantly CCYM agree to back their idea and the first resurrection was held. It was attended by between three hundred fifty to four hundred youth and adult counsellors.

From that humble beginning resurrection has grown into one of the largest youth events in the southeastern united states and the second largest United Methodist youth event in the world! And oh how god has used it!

Literally thousands of young lives have been touched and changed attending resurrection. Thousands of souls have been saved and scores of young people have answered the call to fulltime Christian service as preachers, youth pastors, Missionaries and by other avenues of service for Christ and his church.

This year’s speaker was Reggie Dobbs who is an excellent preacher. His messages were built around the fact that god knows you and has a plan for your life. No matter whom you are how small, young, weak or insignificant you think you are, god has given your life a purpose and will strengthen you to live out that purpose. Now you have to choose to accept him as your savior, obey him, and seek to know god’s will for that purpose to happen.

Sometimes this is not easy. Sometimes we wait, hope and pray and it seems as if god never answers. Sometimes it even seems as if god does not even hear. Faith, however, tells not to give up. I constantly have to remind myself that god’s time is different than my timetable. What we think is forever may just be god waiting for the right time.

I do not know why some people are miraculously physically healed while others are not; i do not know while some Christians seemly are blessed in all they do while others struggle in all things, but i do know that god is always there and that god cares for us all!

One thing Reggie said will stick with me forever. It is this: “don’t let your situation dictate you savior, let your savior dictate your situation.”

So in all things, trust JESUS!

Richard

THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL

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“And when they had come into the house they saw the young child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him. And when they had opened their treasures they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense and myrrh.” [Matthew 2:11 N.K.J.V.]

Christmas is the time of gift giving. This practice is traced directly back to the gifts the Three Wise Men gave to Baby Jesus. Sometimes the practice of giving gifts causes more problems than it offers benefits. Many families overspend on Christmas and wreck their financial well-being in an attempt to keep up with their friends. I can remember as a teenager hating to go back to school after Christmas when all my friends would brag about all they had gotten for Christmas, and I never got as much. Up until that time I really did not realize that by material standards how poor my family really was. I was embarrassed to have to admit that I only received one small gift, and there were years I did not get that much, while my friends had gotten so much more. Sometimes I was tempted to lie about what I had gotten, but I knew lying was wrong.

Looking back on my life, I now can see that while my family was lacking in material things, they were able to give me the greatest gift of all. Realizing now that, even as a teenager facing all the peer pressure that teenagers face, I was still able to know that lying was wrong was a great gift indeed. Telling a lie might have made me be better accepted, but not giving in to that temptation speaks volumes of how rich spiritually my family really was. The greatest gift of all that my family gave to me was faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

I cannot remember a time when prayer was not a part of our life. Blessings were said before each meal. Children were taught to pray as the last thing you did at night and the first thing you did the next morning. There was never a question of if we were going to church—if the church doors were open, we went. Some of my earliest memories are of my playing around my mother’s feet as she worked on a quilt and told me the stories from the Bible. I honestly cannot remember a time when I did not know about Jesus. The strength and the comfort of the Christian faith sustained and kept me, even during those times I rebelled against that faith. What a great gift my parents were able to give me.

So this Christmas give your children, your grandchildren, or the neighborhood children, the gift of faith. Take the time to tell them the stories of Jesus. Live a life that brings honor and glory to God before them. Be their example of who a Christian really is. Long after the material gifts that you may give them are broken, lost, or worn out, or become “boring”, the Christian faith will still be with them and it can change their lives. God gave the world His Only Begotten Son at that first Christmas and that is the greatest gift that ever was. The greatest gift that you can give is to share Jesus with others.

Richard

HOPE

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“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! Psalm 27:14 NRSV.

The theme for Resurrection 2014 was hope. The key verse of scripture was Psalm 27:14 quoted above. As you may notice the word hope is not found in the key verse, but certainly the theme of hope is all through it. Our speaker was Andy Nixon senior pastor of the Loft United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas; incidentally he was, in my opinion, the best speaker we have had for Resurrection. Here are some of my thoughts on what Andy had to say.

Hope is the thing that keeps us going. Our faith in the goodness of God allows us to live hope filled lives even during those times we are struggling to get by. Sometimes keeping hope alive is not an easy thing for us to do.

Twice in this verse the Psalmist tells us to “wait on the LORD.” As a society we do not wait well. We tend to want what we want when we want it and get really impatient when we have to wait. We even upgrade our devices when a newer, faster model comes out. The idea of spending time with God and quietly waiting for God’s guidance is totally foreign to our way of thinking. Busyness has become our idol. In fact often we are so used to multitasking that we feel guilty when we are only doing one thing at a time. To do nothing and simply wait for God seems like a complete waste of time.

Yet when we do that we often are truly blessed. For you see, God’s time is sometimes different than our time. I know that many times I fail when I run ahead of God. So let us wait on the Lord and seek God’s will in all parts of our lives.

Another key element in our verse is the encouragement to be strong and to take heart. One of the great mysteries of faith is that often we are strongest when we are at our weakest point. One reason this is true is that when we think we are strong we assume that we can do it ourselves and God gets pushed aside. On the other hand when we are weak we realize how much we need God’s help. God is always there to see us through whatever we may be facing. It has often been said we stand our tallest when we are down on our knees in prayer.

So always let your heart be filled with hope for when we wait on the Lord, when we know that God’s strength can see us through we never lose heart, we never give up and we can change the world.

Richard

WALKING WITH JESUS

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Luke records an interesting story in the twenty-fourth chapter of his gospel about two disciples who were on their way to the village of Emmaus. This was just after Jesus had been crucified and they were still confused and sad over the events that had happened. I imagine they had based their acceptance of Jesus on the fact that he was the Promised Messiah. Yet now, for them, he was gone! They were defeated!

Then Jesus was walking with them. The interesting thing about this text is that they failed to recognize him. Jesus walked with, he talked with them, and they still did not know who Jesus was.

Many times we are exactly the same way. Jesus promised never to leave us alone. He walks with us, and if we would only listen, Jesus talks with us as well. Yet we fail to recognize Jesus when we encounter him.

However this story ends on a high note. Jesus shares a meal with these disciples. In the breaking of the bread they were able to recognize who Jesus was. Then they remembered how their hearts had been warmed when he shared the scriptures with as they walked along together.

If you are failing to see Jesus, if you think you are traveling the road of life alone, may I suggest this Easter Season you do what these disciples did. Join us for worship where we share the scriptures together. Join us for our Fellowship Meals where we break bread together. Join us at Holy Communion where the Bread of Life is shared together. These disciples felt their hearts burn within them as realized they had been with Jesus. Worship can still do that for you. Join us and see for yourself!

Richard

THANKSGIVING

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“Count your many blessings; name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

The other night I was having trouble sleeping. Some people say that sleeplessness is a part of the aging process, but I am too young for that to be the problem, so there must have been another reason. Pretty soon I was having a real pity party. In my mind I was going through a long litany of problems and things that were wrong in my life. Then all of a sudden the words of a song I thought I had long forgotten came into my mind. Try as I would I could not get these words out of my consciousness.

Those words were: “Count your many blessing, name them one by one, count your many blessing see what God has done.” I began to do that and pretty soon I realized just how much God has blessed me. The next thing I knew it was morning. When I awoke I wanted to finish my list. I soon realized it could not be finished! God’s blessings are really without number!

Maybe what I came to understand is the true meaning of what Thanksgiving really is: being thankful for the good things God gives us and not allowing the problems that we incur become the things that control us and give us our identity. When we dwell entirely on the negative we lose sight of the positive.

By the way here are some of the things that topped my list. 1. Jesus Christ-God loved me enough to send His Only Begotten Son to be my Savior. 2. The beauty of creation-God looked at all God had made and indeed it was very good. [Geneses 1:31] That goodness has not been totally overcome. 3. First United Methodist-Galax- I am blessed to serve a church that loves the Lord and cares of each other. 4. The portion of health that I enjoy-my health problems are not getting any worse. 5. Family-I thank God for those who love me, sometimes in spite of me.

I am also very thankful for friends, for our new Daybreak Worship Service, and the fact that three different people have told me within the past month that we are a friendly, warm, caring congregation.

May we all begin to count our blessings and realize just what God has done for us. May we do this not just on the fourth Thursday of November but each and every day we live.

Richard

WHAT IF CHRISTMAS HAD NOT HAPPENED

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“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19 NRSV

What difference would it makes in your life if there were no Christmas? I few years ago I attend a Youth Service in which this question was the theme. As the young speakers spoke on this topic I found myself really caught up in that question. What difference does Christmas make?

One answer is to get involved with the commercial aspects of the holiday and say that the merchants would be hurt economically. It seems as if Christmas is exploited commercially more and more as stores put out Christmas merchandise and put up Christmas decorations earlier and earlier. I think I saw some before Labor Day this year. Christmas shopping has become the main money making time of the year. This is shown by the whole “Black Friday” craze. Originally the day after Thanksgiving was called Black Friday because sales on that day are counted on to move the profit margin out of the Red, signifying loss, into the Black, signifying a profit. However now stores open on Thanksgiving evening or even stay open all day! So if Christmas had not happened there would be no Christmas shopping and the merchants would suffer.

Another answer comes on a deeper spiritual level and that is to say that if Christmas had not happened Jesus would not have been born. For on that first Christmas a Savior was given. Emmanuel came to redeem captive humanity. The Incarnation proves that God loves us enough to become one of us in order to save us. For without Christmas there could be no Easter. IF Jesus had not been born then he could not die on the cross and been raised again so that we could have a right relationship with. A relationship not marred and separated by sin.

Sadly not everyone knows this, or if they know about the meaning of Christmas they live as if they just do not care. For a majority of people spiritually it is as if Christmas had not happened! It seems that this was the case right from the start; the vast majority of people in Bethlehem that night did not have a clue as to what was happening. I rather imagine that many of the guests at the inn complained about the noise in the stable. After all there were shepherds coming and going and then there was that pesky star light shining so brightly that they just could not sleep. And the greatest gift the world has ever known went unappreciated.

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas story is what Luke said about Mary in the verse quoted above. She pondered these things in her heart. For me this says that even though Mary did not fully understand what all this meant, she knew that the birth of Jesus was something special and Mary knew that Christmas had changed people’s lives forever.

So this year take the time to ponder the true meaning of Jesus’ birth in your heart and do not get caught up in the buying and getting, the shopping and the giving and the spending, that you cannot enjoy the season. For if Christmas had not happened we would still be lost in our sins. May we all let the words of a great Christmas hymn give us guidance as we “go tell it on the mountain, over the hill and everywhere: go tell it not the mountain that Jesus Christ is born.” If we do that maybe everyone will say: “I would not like my life if Christmas had not happened,” and then the world will be a better place.

Richard

“WHAT IS HOLINESS?”

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“For I am the LORD who brought you up from the Land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall be holy, for I am holy.” [Leviticus 11:45 N.R.S.V.]

Holiness is a topic we do not hear much about anymore, although there seems to be renewed interest in holiness in the United Methodist Church. This is good, for after all, the Wesleyan Revival was a holiness movement from the very start. Yet have you ever stopped to answer this question “Just what is holiness?

Many of us when we think of holiness think of those groups who separated from Methodism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to form their own “Holiness” denominations-group such as what is now the Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army and the Church of God. These groups are often identified by plain dress, a certain type of hairstyle and not wearing any jewelry or make-up. These outward signs of holiness are often what we equate with the meaning of the word. Yet holiness is much more than just these outward signs. It is really a change in lifestyle that makes us more like God and also like what God wants us to be.

There are two important parts of holiness. These are personal holiness and social holiness. Both parts are equally important. Personal holiness deals with such things as not stealing, killing or committing adultery or any of the other so called “big sins” we hear so much about these days. However personal holiness goes far beyond just keeping these commandments. For Jesus reminded us that while we may not have killed, we have gotten angry; while we may not steal, we have wanted what others have; and while we may not have committed adultery, we have lusted and wanted to! [Matthew 5:25] True personal holiness is living your life in such a way that it models the love of Jesus to all. We seek this not simply because God will “get us” is we do not, but because God’s love has already “gotten us.”

Social holiness is living your life in such a way that it makes a difference in our world. Disciples of Jesus are mandated to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick and hurting, visit the prisoners and treat the outcasts the weak and those who live on the margin of society with respect and dignity. When we study the gospel we find that Jesus taught more about these things than anything else. In fact, there are more verses in the Bible that deal with how we use our money than any other topic!

So, what is holiness? For me holiness is living a life that shows Jesus Christ to the world, both in what we do personally and how we treat others socially as well. To be holy as God is holy can easily be dismissed as an unattainable pipedream, or it can be a real challenge for us to strive to attain. In the weeks, months and years ahead, when we hear of holiness, let us not think just of those other groups; let us think about striving to be holy as God is holy!

Richard