Advent: He Stretches Us

Last week, we talked about how God calls us. Sometimes, we don't like what God calls us to do. In times like that, God stretches us. Stay with us for this one. It's long, but it is so good to hear what God says about us not wanting to do what He wants us to.

Let's first read in Jonah 2:
(we highly encourage you to read all of Jonah to get an idea of the whole story)

¹ From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. ² He said:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
³ You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
⁴ I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
⁵ The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
⁶ To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

⁷ “When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.

⁸ “Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.
⁹ But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

¹⁰ And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

One thing we see is that God gave Jonah a call he didn’t want.  He had his own plans on where he wanted to preach and to whom he wanted to preach; and for that matter he had his own ideas of whom he wanted in the kingdom of God, and also who he believed didn’t belong there. And preaching in Nineveh was certainly not a part of that plan. He was stuck in this narrow kind of thinking that says "I want my kind of people in the kingdom of God"; that says "I want only my kind of folks in my church". And he had some pretty firm ideas of whom he did not want in his church. The church and the kingdom were for Jews…only. Oh, we might let a few others in, but certainly not those from Nineveh.  He had his list of those who didn’t deserve to be there, and Nineveh was on that list.

The bottom line in this story is that Jonah simply could not love whom God loved.  That was his problem at heart. It was a heart problem! God loved those Ninevites, outsiders though they were; and Jonah didn’t. God had compassion; Jonah didn’t. To God, they were his creatures who needed to know of his grace; to Jonah they were outsiders who ought to be kept outside.  Jonah was busy erecting fences to keep people out; God was busy changing hearts to bring people in. And then this story ends…well, it doesn’t really end…it just stops…right there. It becomes the unfinished story. There seems to be no closure, no resolution. And I wonder if there is a message in that…that many times when God does try to stretch us, disturb us, it doesn’t go so well…it just sort of hangs there unresolved?

Sometimes we get stuck in our own ruts; we become too narrow in our thinking; too centered on ourselves; we take control of things away from God; and we think we can chart out our own course. And we become so comfortable in that way of thinking that we are not willing to examine it. We’re just locked into it. That’s our way, and we’re going to keep it our way! But it isn’t God’s way and so he has to push us out of our comfort zone; he has to disturb us. That’s when he becomes God the Disturber.

It is very important that God asks you to stretch because that will make your stretch a stretch of faith. We do not want to make up our own stretching exercises because we are liable to pull something. We only want to stretch as God asks us to stretch. What is the biblical definition of faith? Faith is simply trust, and it is trust in the Word of God. When God asks us to do something, we stretch our faith to respond.

What happens to a muscle when it is regularly stretched? It becomes flexible, versatile, efficient, strong, and growing? Think about those five adjectives—flexible, versatile, efficient, strong, and growing. Would you like those applied to your spiritual life? I would; especially, when I consider the antonyms—weak, brittle, and inflexible. One other antonym can be applied. What happens to a muscle when it is not regularly stretched? Does it stay the same? No, it atrophies, which means to shrink from disuse.

When I say that God is going to stretch you, I do not mean that you are human taffy. I mean that He is going to ask you to do something, and you will have to decide whether to stretch in faith. God has given you your very own personal trainer who is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will be giving you your set of stretches on a daily basis. God’s calls stretch us, so we have to be ready for God to stretch us so that his work can go on.

Are you willing to have your love be as big as God’s love? Is your circle as big as God’s circle? Or are you drawing lines that you’ll love just some — these folks, but not those folks?  If so, be careful. When Jonah did that he found God to be a Disturber. He found God determined to stretch him.

Much of our information came from here and here.
 
Advent Series:
He Reveals Himself
He Calls Us for Life
He Stretches Us
He Accomplishes Great Things

Advent: He Calls Us for Life

 
Last week, we talked about how God reveals Himself to us. When God reveals Himself, He begins calling us.
 
This week, we'll start by reading from 1 Samuel

The Lord Calls Samuel

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.

² One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. ³ The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. ⁴ Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” ⁵ And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

⁶ Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”

⁷ Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

⁸ A third time the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. ⁹ So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰ The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

 
God calls you to a service far beyond anything you could ever imagine. You were put on Earth to make a contribution. You weren’t created just to consume resources—to eat, breathe, and take up space. God designed you to make a difference with your life. You were created to add to life on Earth, not just take from it. God wants you to give something back.

What God told Jeremiah is also true for you: “Before I made you in your mother’s womb, I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work” (Jeremiah 1:5a NCV).When most people think of this “special work,” they think of pastors or professinals, but God says every member of his family is to minister. In the Bible, the words “servant” and “minister” are synonyms, as are service and ministry. If you are a Christian, you are a minister, and when you’re serving, you’re ministering. Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t just immediately take us to Heaven the moment we accept his grace? Why does he leave us in a fallen world? He leaves us here to fulfill his purposes. Once you are saved, God intends to use you for his goals. God has a ministry for you in his Church and a mission for you in the world.

 

What we need to do, is be like Samuel. Samuel was willing to come when the Lord was calling, even when he thought it was Eli calling. God wants us to be willing to answer His call and to be willing to do what God wants so that we can do His special work.


 
Much of our information came from here.
 
Advent Series:
He Reveals Himself
He Calls Us for Life
He Stretches Us
He Accomplishes Great Things

Advent: He Reveals Himself

Advent is a time of preparing ourselves for Christmas and the birth of Christ. There are many ways this can be done, and many themes that can be looked at as we prepare ourselves, and this year we will be look at seeing what God does. God can do a lot of great things, but we need to take time to stop and pay attention.

First, we see how God reveals Himself. Let's read from Exodus 3:

Moses and the Burning Bush

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

⁴ When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

⁵ “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

⁷ The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸ So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹ And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

¹¹ But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

¹² And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

¹³ Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

¹⁴ God said to Moses, “I am who I am” This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,

    the name you shall call me

    from generation to generation.”

Ok, so imagine that you are God. You created all things – including human beings. You made humans in your own image and you want them to relate to you in a special way.

Wouldn't you tell those humans about yourself? Wouldn't you tell them what you expect of them? Wouldn't you tell them how to come into the relationship you want to share with them? Sometimes our parents do that, or we find that we do that to our children. We want them to know about us. Then others will understand why we are how we are, or to make a connection with you.

People who believe that God is unknowable assume that God hides himself from his creation. But God does reveal himself, through his creation, in history, in the pages of the Bible, and through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Creation reveals God in many ways. King David and Job are some of those who marvel at God’s creations. They, among many others, talk about how great and beautiful all of God's creation is.

History reveals God in communication. Adam & Eve, Noah and Moses directly communicate with God. We can still communicate with God if we take the time to stop and listen.

The Bible record reveals God. The Bible tells us who He is, what He is doing, what He has done. The Bible is full of God revealing His plan, his thoughts and Himself.

God had revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the human form of God. He came to Earth to show us how to live and what He expects from us. 

Of course, we are unable to know all there is of God, but we are able to understand what he has revealed to us. God is:

• self-existing
• not restricted by time
• unbounded by place
• unlimited in power
• unlimited in knowledge
• transcendent (having his existence beyond the physical universe)
• immanent (involved with the universe)

What did God intend when he made all things and gave us life? Paul explained to the Athenians: "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. `For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring' “(Acts 17:26-28).

Much of our information came from here.

ROC the Day 2014

UPDATE 12/3/14: Thank you so much for ROCing the Day with us yesterday! We had our biggest year yet! We raised $66 for TurningPoint, and $107 for Parma Christian Fellowship Church. We are so grateful and thankful for what you have given us to help make our ministries successful. THANK YOU!

 

 

 

We hope that you are able to join us and donate to TurningPoint Youth Ministries and Parma Christian Fellowship Church as part of the 4th Annual ROC the Day!

We have spent the last 20+ years helping those in our community, and with your help, we can continue to help members of our community. You are free to donate any amount, so please consider donating even just $1, and encourage your friends and family members to donate $1, especially if they have been impacted by our support. Please share either the ROC the Day photo or another favorite picture of a memory you have of our ministries, and share WHY we are so important to you, and why others should donate to us.

We appreciate your prayers and support!

Dessert Fundraiser

You can now order pies or cheesecakes for the holiday season! You can place an order online at the PCFMinistries website. Payment is required before your dessert is made. You can pay using cash, check (made payable to Parma Christian Fellowship Church) or PayPal.

Thanksgiving orders are due by November 23rd.

Christmas orders are due by December 17th.

What Does God Want From You?

Last week's lesson inspired us for this week's lesson and fun craft activity.

We all have busy and full lives (hopefully of mostly good things), but it's easy to get caught up in your own life, your own drama, and your own habits. It's not in our culture to stop and think about others, but sometimes we need to do just that. When we are in a relationship with God and as we choose to become more like God, we begin to see (or try to see) what God sees. When we interact with other people, we're interacting with Jesus.

We find that it feels good to do charitable and/or "Christian" activities (like donating clothes, reading the bible, going to church, etc.), but God calls us to do more than that. He wants us to live our life for others and to be compassionate to others.

Think: Which is better? A wicked person donating a large sum of money to a church, or a poor person who gives everything they have to help another person? The answer is a poor person helping another person. They are sacrificing their resources, everything that they have to help someone else in need.

We read Micah 6:1-8 (NIV):

Listen to what the Lord says:

“Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;
    let the hills hear what you have to say.

“Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation;
    listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the Lord has a case against his people;
    he is lodging a charge against Israel.

“My people, what have I done to you?
    How have I burdened you? Answer me.
I brought you up out of Egypt
    and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
    also Aaron and Miriam.
My people, remember
    what Balak king of Moab plotted
    and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
    that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.”

With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

 

Micah is sharing God's message with the people of Judah, who have been rebellious and wicked, and would soon face God's wrath. Micah shares with them what God really wants from them. To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

 

Do justice (act justly)- God hates dishonesty, lying and cheating. He wants us all to have integrity and to be honest.

 

Love kindness (mercy)- We are to love others, and be compassionate in our everyday lives.

 

Walk humbly- Live in devotion to Christ, not displaying arrogance or self-reliance. We are to be dependent on God, and not forget the price that God paid for us.

 

In more plain terms:

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
    what God is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
    be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
    take God seriously.

~Micah 6:8 (MSG)

 Holiness is more than living life for yourself. It is characterized by a life lived for others.

After we got through the lesson, we had some fun making a poster for us to remember these words.

What Do You Think About?

What do you watch/do/read/think about/etc on a daily basis? Is it the same or different as pop culture?

Do you meditate? (Meditation is contemplating, reflecting, focusing your thoughts on something, pondering, planning.) It doesn't necessarily mean you are thinking about something spiritual or nothing. It could be meditating on sports, TV, partying, friends, etc.

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.  ~Joshua 1:8 (NIV)

Joshua was the leader of the nation, and led the people to Israel. God's command to Joshua was to keep his laws on your lips. Meditate on it. (Always think about them). That way you can be careful to do it.

When you play a sport or take an art or music class, or do anything else of interest, you generally learn the rules and basics before you begin. This helps keep everyone safe and helps them enjoy what they are doing. The same goes for the Bible and life. You need to learn the instructions and rules you should be following before you enjoy life.

¹ Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
² but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
~Psalm 1 (NIV)

⁹ How can a young person stay on the path of purity?
    By living according to your word.
¹⁰ I seek you with all my heart;
    do not let me stray from your commands.
¹¹ I have hidden your word in my heart
    that I might not sin against you.
~Psalm 119 (NIV) 

Sin means to fall short, or miss the mark. If we are constantly thinking about God and what He wants, it helps us stay on the right path and make good decisions so we do not miss the mark.

Whatever you spend time with is what you follow and what you are. Choose how you spend your time wisely.

⁶ With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
⁸ He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.
~Micah 6 (NIV)

Next week we will talk a little more about Micah 6:8 and have a little craft to go along with it!