Monday Reflections...President's Day 2020...sipping green tea at Dunkin


President's Day 2020 and a very quiet morning at Dunkin.  A holiday so the usual crowd is brewing coffee at home this morning.  After a full weekend, I am thankful for some time to collect my thoughts.  The state of Maine also has a week off of school in February so this might be a really different week around town.  

 There is no perfect church because there are no perfect people.  The people of God make up the church and we mess up at times.  Sometimes we do what we are not suppose to do; we don't respond the way we are suppose to respond; and we don't portray the One who saved us.  What do we do then?

 The sermon this week looked at the vision of the church.  What should we and they see when we and they look at the occupants of a church and especially those who profess faith in Jesus Christ?  The Bible helps us out with lists that we find the book of Ephesians and Galatians.  Those lists are scary because we probably have been on the "south" side of each of them at some point or another.  What is the upside to this?

 The upside is that we know when to confess.  If we have been prideful instead of humble, then we confess.  If we have been harsh instead of gentle, then we confess.  If we have been speaking the truth without love instead of speaking the truth dispensing it with love, then we confess.  I think you get the idea.

 We have been given by God how we are to be on the front side and then we are also given by God how we are to respond on the back side when we fall on our faces.  The key is that they see us not only portraying Christ like qualities but also that they see us confess when we come short.  

 I end with a touching story by Rebecca Manley Pippert.  Click the link to read it from the source.  So many watch while few respond.

 Adam



A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Galatians #15 - Galatians 6:11-18 - "On The Road Again..."

Image
  Another week closer and it involves some more travel for the Wolfgangs.  I feel like the Willy Nelson song, " On the road again... "  I don't know if I agree with the next line though. " ...I can't wait to get on the road again. " One of the members of the church in Wisconsin calculated that I will travel well over 10,000 miles to make this transition.  Traveling mercies prayers please. Last Sunday we will look at Paul's final words to the churches in Galatia.  He brought them the gospel (good news) message of Jesus and what resulted were churches forming throughout the region.  The letter is to defend that message that our salvation comes from and is in Christ alone.  Christ's sacrifice on the cross was sufficient for the forgiveness of our sins.  The summary statement of the letter is found in  Galatians 6:15 (LSB) .  " For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. "  Translated another way earlier in  Ga
Read more

God gave us a good weather window to travel...yeah God!!!

Image
  Berthoud Pass Here we are at the top of Berthoud Pass.  It was a whirlwind week to conduct a " hand off " service in Wisconsin on 3/17 and then preach a Palm Sunday sermon in Colorado on 3/24.  We give God all the glory for this happening.  So there are two video links at the bottom of this blog.  One is for the Wisconsin service and the other is for the Colorado service.  I racked up over 12,000 in the last 7 weeks.   I love to take these pictures sitting from the front row of chairs and listening to the one God has provided for the church I had been serving for 20 months.  I now have 3 and I am so thankful for the opportunity God gave us to serve Him in this type of ministry over the last 5 years.  It has been great to add to our daily prayer list Zach in Maine, Chris in Ohio and now Stephen in Wisconsin. This was our set up for the 2000+ mile trip.  No " hiccups " except for the strong eastern winds in Kansas.  Of course everything was quite a bit dirtier when
Read more

Resurrection Sunday in a new space...Matthew 27.62-28.20

Image
  Resurrection Sunday has come and gone but it was a sweet day to be with the gathered saints of the Stillwater Community Chapel .  We are venturing through the Gospel of Matthew and this Sunday will take us back to Matthew 1.1 but last Sunday we were in Matthew 27.62-28.20.  It was a lot to cover so the white board was truly a help to keep me on track.  This year in my Resurrection Sunday message, I focused on the contrast of the cover-up story of the disciples stealing the body of Jesus fueled by a bride and the commission of speaking of a risen Lord fueled by boldness . After the service upstairs, we ventured downstairs to the lower level and had a great meal together.  The conversations around the tables allowed us to continue to talk about the passage of Scripture we covered upstairs.  Maybe this is a very informal picture of what happens at the  Waushara Community Church called the " Going Deeper " classes of the Come For More hour following the Sunday morning worshi
Read more