Archive for the ‘Pastor’s Blog’ Category

As the New Year has begun a lot of us have already made resolutions trying to implement changes that we want to make in our lives.    They could be financial, family related, weight loss, or even a new job but hopefully one (or more) is spiritual.  And if you haven’t made a spiritual resolution yet let me suggest one.

Consider the resolution to not go to church unless you make true worship of Jesus the first priority of your life.   Now this is where you might do one of a couple of things.  Some of you will be appalled that I even suggested such a thing so you will be angry with me and not read any further.  Some of you that think that you already do this will check out and not continue reading.  And then some of you will consider that I am off my rocker and simply dismiss me but I urge all of you to hang in there and really consider the rest of this article.  See this article is more for you; the one who claims to know Christ and to be a worshipper of Him than someone who doesn’t make that claim. 

Now don’t get me wrong those who don’t know Jesus in a personal relationship definitely need to get that worked out in their lives.  If you don’t know Him your life will never know true peace, true freedom, and true joy.  In the Gospel of John the fourteenth chapter Jesus says “…I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  What does that mean, you ask?  Well that simply means this; if you want to go to Heaven and spend eternity with God you must know Jesus and believe that He died on the cross for you.  That when He shed His blood it made all of your sins and wrongdoings go away in God’s eyes.  And it is that simple!  Sometimes religions make it much harder than that but it isn’t.   It is Jesus and Jesus alone.

And this brings us right back to those of us who claim to already be worshippers of Jesus.  With the beginning of a New Year I challenge you to start out with a new prayer of worship.  And this prayer would be that God would come in and radically change your heart to see Him in a new and fresh light this year.  Now you say well this sounds like every other “New Years” article that a pastor might write but I assure you that it isn’t. 

God wants to make an impact on your life in the area of worship.  And by worship I don’t mean singing songs before the pastor speaks I mean the way that we live and glorify God.  As one spends their life in church they can know the right things to say and all of the right things do in man’s eyes and can sit in a pew every Sunday and think that those things make them closer to God.  See you can do the right things and you can give your time, your money, and think that that is what makes God happy.  But that isn’t what brings you closer to God and that is not what makes God happy.  And it is definitely not what the Bible teaches on the subject. In fact God specifically says that He would rather us close the doors of our churches than offer half-hearted worship and obedience.   In Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament in the tenth verse of the first chapter God says this:

^“10Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the LORD of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.” ESV

God doesn’t want robots that say and do all the right things.  He wants people to truly love Him with all of their hearts and desires.  He wants people to be passionate about His Son and what He did on the Cross.  He wants people that will search after Him and allow Him to work in their lives.  When He speaks they will listen and they will follow.  We have made so much of Church about the rules and regulations that we have taken a lot of the true worship of God out of Church. 

Jesus spoke to this very thing in the book of Matthew when he was speaking to the religious group of that day the Pharisees.  He instructed them that you do all of the right things on the outside but inside you are still defiled.  This is what He said

             Matthew 23:25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

            It is not what the outside appears to be that makes God happy but the true inside state of your heart and your relationship with Jesus that does.  See the only way to really know what Jesus is about and what God desires for us is to dig through the Bible and learn about His character and about His ways.  It is very easy for us as people to begin to think that we have some influence into our salvation or our righteousness by what we do.  That is why keeping all of those religious rules feels so good.  But what God really wants is our dependency upon Him and to release our control and just worship Him with our life.

So the spiritual resolution for 2010 should be that we would not go to church unless we are going to worship and glorify God with the truth of Jesus in our hearts.   That we will put down all of the religion and all of the extra stuff that we have added to Jesus and just simply worship and praise Him.  And we should do that as the Bible instructs us to in Psalm 98:4

⁴Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler Harrison
Berean Church

Try explaining that to an 8 year old.  We as humans always try to put things into a category that we can grasp and understand.  Men have strived for decades to prove that there is life on other planets or that the “Theory” of evolution is true.  Matter of fact there have been many scientist who spent their whole career working on a theory only to retire or die before they are able to prove it.  What is this need of ours to try to understand and rationalize everything?  Why is it so hard for us to accept the unexplainable? 

¹⁸ “But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built! ¹⁹ Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you, ²⁰ that your eyes may be open day and night toward this house, the place where you have promised to set your name, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. ²¹And listen to the pleas of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”

2 Chronicles 6:18-21 ESV

In 2 Chronicles 6 we see that Solomon has completed the temple and he then dedicates it to God.   In this prayer of dedication we see that even though he doesn’t understand how God could possible reside in the temple he believes that He will…based simply on the fact that God said He would.   He then cries out to God to day and night hear the pleas of His servants and the whole nation and asks God to forgive all the sin.   Oh and by the way he also was praying this in front of the entire nation on his knees with his hands thrown upward to heaven (What an example of complete surrender).

In regard to our own lives; are we standing kneeling on the promises of God rather we can comprehend them or not?  Are we expecting God to move in supernatural ways that are His ways or are we settling for things that we as humans can understand?  Do we have to settle the argument “what came first the chicken or the egg” before we are able to praise God for creating Chicken pot pies?  Ok, that one may have been a stretch (but when it is cold and snowy chicken pot pies are a supernatural warming agent) but you get my point regardless.  Solomon knew that God could not even be contained by Heaven…so why do we think he can only work in ways we would think of?  I challenge you to get on your knees and throw your hands up to the God that can not be contained by Heaven.  He is waiting to hear your praise and your pleas!

So often in our society we have gotten used to the idea of instant everything.  Many of us (that are old enough, or have parents that are old enough) still remember the old time poppers for popcorn that you had to put oil and the popcorn in and wait for what seemed like forever for it to begin popping and before it was ready.  But now we simply put a minute and thirty seconds on the microwave and instant popcorn is hot and ready to be devoured.  And unfortunately, some of our prayer lives resemble the same mentality, meaning we throw up instant popcorn prayers which are mostly a laundry list for what we want God to do and in what timing we need it done.  But when is the last time that we just sat and listened to what the Almighty had to say?  Of course this would require that we turn off the radio, our cell phones, the laptop, and the television so that we can have a time with God that is uninterrupted and focused specifically on Him. 

But more important than just the fact that we are busy I think leads to this popcorn mentality of prayer.  I think that we have lost the true understanding of what forgiveness is.  Read this definition that Oswald Chambers gives us of forgiveness: 

Forgiveness doesn’t merely mean that I am saved from hell and have been made ready for heaven (no one would accept forgiveness on that level). Forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a newly created relationship which identifies me with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One. He does this by putting into me a new nature, the nature of Jesus Christ.

We also forget why God hates sin, we assume that it is because it separates us from Him, or because it makes us unholy but those are only aspects of that hate.  And I know that you know that everything in history and everything in the Bible is about Jesus (especially if you are part of the Berean Church because I tell you that constantly) so why would sin be any different.  If you remember it is that very nature and act (The sin nature & sins that we commit) that sent His one and only Son to the Cross to die.  He had to bear the punishment for all of that sin so that we could be restored into a right relationship with the Father.

So, based upon that understanding and if you take a second and really think about the miracle that forgiveness is don’t you think the Majestic God that we serve deserves more than a minute and thirty seconds?

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

My beautiful wife has many habits that I have found out about during our 11 years of marriage.  One, for instance is that she is fanatical about organization and labels everything if it stays in one place to long.   Two, she cleans while she talks on the phone.  Now this one is especially interesting because she doesn’t realize that she is doing it so things just get put up and then you have to go hunt to find them.  But the one that I really love is the fact that she puts scripture all over the house on index cards, rocking chairs, the refrigerator, the window sills, and even the stool in the kids bathroom.  Well this is the one that struck me tonight as I was helping to put the kids to bed.  She wrote Exodus 14:13 which states:

“…Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today…”

Now this is the stool that they stand on while brushing their teeth, washing their hands, or brushing their hair so they see and read that everyday (multiple times a day.)  And think about the wisdom in that verse, how many times do we as believers think God is moving to slow or that He has overlooked us and so we step out on our own and screw things up because we got ahead of God.  How many times can we look back on situations and say “WOW, God had it planned perfectly from the get go” like we are surprised by the fact that He had perfect timing.  We need to remember that He is a sovereign God and that He is just waiting for us to stand still and have FAITH in Him.  His Word tells us that it will not come back void and so if it says that He will rescue us each day then we should simply stand still and wait for Him to move.  So thank you Krystal for surrounding the kids and I with scripture in our home, and for having a heart that searches God’s Word for wisdom and strength.

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler