Take a second and think back to high school or college during science class when the teacher or professor began to explain the litmus test.� If you remember the litmus test is used by scientists to indicate whether a chemical is an acid or a base.� So it is the means in which we can determine based upon criteria the makeup or the designation of a substance.�

In society we have used this expression of the ?litmus test? to explain many things that test circumstances or situations in our lives.�� And in the same way we have a litmus test for our walk with Christ.� We have the Bible and the examples that are laid out for us to understand through its teachings.�

And so we should look at the examples and then compare them to our own lives and grow and adjust according to the reflection.� For example, let us look at the first people to actually be called Christians.� They were gentiles (anyone who is not of Jewish decent) who were told about Christ and what He did and believed that He was the Messiah.��

Now unfortunately over time, the word ?Christian? has lost a great deal of its significance and is often used of someone who is religious or has high moral values but who may or may not be a true follower of Jesus Christ.� Many people who do not believe and trust in Jesus Christ consider themselves Christians simply because they go to church or they live in a ?Christian? nation.� But going to church, serving those less fortunate than you, or being a good person does not make you a Christian. Going to church does not make you a Christian anymore than going to a garage makes you an automobile. Being a member of a church, attending services regularly, and giving to the work of the church does not make you a Christian.

The Bible teaches that the good works we do cannot make us acceptable to God. Titus 3:5 says, ?He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.? So, a Christian is someone who has been born again by God (John 3:3; John 3:7; 1 Peter 1:23) and has put faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is ??by grace you have been saved, through faith?and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.?

A true Christian is a person who has put faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, including His death on the cross as payment for sins and His resurrection on the third day. John 1:12 tells us, ?Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.? The mark of a true Christian is love for others and obedience to God?s Word (1 John 2:4, 10). A true Christian is indeed a child of God, a part of God?s true family, and one who has been given new life in Jesus Christ.

And it is in this new life that we as humans begin to mess it up.� We begin to make Christianity about us and not about Christ.� We make it about our religious acts and about the people who are behind the pulpit instead of about the God that humbly gave himself as a sacrifice for us.� And to make it worse we don?t do as the people from Antioch did and example our faith, we walk around with bad attitudes and we judge other people?s sin without being concerned about our own.�� We assume that God got a good deal when He got us in His church instead of understanding that we are the ones that messed up the church.�

So, let us go back to the idea of the litmus test.� As we take the scriptures and we apply them to our lives we must examine whether or not our actions, behaviors, and our speech reflects the fact that we do have a new life in Christ.� Would the people around you use your life as a litmus test for being a true follower of Christ?� When they see you at the grocery store shopping do they see Christ?� When they see you at the basketball game cheering do they see Christ?� When they see you at church is it different than when they see you out on Broadway?� I encourage you to seek Christ and His litmus test for your life.

 ⁷ Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
   at the presence of the God of Jacob,
⁸who turns the rock into a pool of water,
   the flint into a spring of water.            Psalm 114:7-8 ESV

There are several reasons that one might tremble.  First and foremost on that list of reasons would probably be fear.  That is probably the most typical response as to the question ”Why would you tremble?”.  And there is nothing wrong with the response as it is a very accurate statement.  And if we examine scriptures there are several places where it is discussed that someone or something trembled at the sight of or presence of God.  And that is without a doubt an appropriate response to those times.  To physically see God or to experience His power in a dramatic forum is an event that is life altering.   But I want to suggest that we should have a different response as believers that might warrant the number one response to be changed. 

As we have made the transition into Nebraska and into the town of Imperial we have been able to do some things that normally we would not of had the exposure to do.  One that is pertinent to this discussion would be the amount of time that we have spent in a combine picking corn.  Now to some of the readers this might seem somewhat boring or even drudging.  But to my four year old this is basically one of the pinnacles of his young life.  When I tell him that we are going out to ride the combine with Mr. Max or Mr. Kurt he literally begins to shake with excitement.  He cannot stand still and he definetly cannot stand in a stoic fashion as if he were a statue.  So here is my question and my point. 

As we read the verse above and review that we as believers serve a God who can turn flint (which is hard form of quartz rock…just in case you were wondering) into a spring of water shouldn’t we be trembling with excitement to go and spend time with Him?  Shouldn’t we be like my four year old who can’t even stand still when he finds out that we are going to the field?  Shouldn’t we be filled with such excitement at the fact that we are going to worship and hear from God that we cannot even stand still?  There are so many churches across America that will be filled each Sunday with individuals that act like they are at a funeral.  So, I pose this question to you for you to ponder and consider for your own life.  Do you tremble with the expectant excitement that you are going to be in the presence of the Almighty God each Sunday morning before church?  Secondly, do you feel the exact same way Monday thru Saturday?  Now I am not suggesting that you have to be running around like you hair is on fire every moment of everyday, but I am asking do you tremble in your spirit, in your heart, in your soul, as you reflect, consider, act upon the fact that God can take a hardened rock and turn it into water.  Because if He can do that then surely He can rescue us from the trials of life, He can fix any issue, and resolve any conflict.   He can restore any marriage, repair any heart, provide for any need, and love any unlovable. 

He is the Great  Mighty Living God that is concerned with your every breath. 
Now that is something to tremble about! 

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

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

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!

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

“…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

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held

So Fran, Mike, and Michelle  this is what if feels like to be held, God promises that He will be with us through all things. 

Nahum 1:7 (English Standard Version)
⁷The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.

We as Eden Community Church will be with you through every step of this journey.  We have great hope and joy in the knowledge that brother Ed loved Jesus and is now with Him worshiping and finding out what true healing and true peace is about.  We love you!

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

It is so important as a CHRISTian to find someone of the same gender that you can trust, communicate with, and confide in to share your failures and your successes.   The need to openly discuss our sin is one of the first steps in defeating that hold that the devil may have on our life or ministry.  We can not successfully truly be close to God while still holding on to sin that is not surrendered over to God.  We must repent and protect ourself from failure by finding that Ark.  Remember that not only did God use a ark for Noah and his family but also for moses.  When moses was a baby God had his mother place him in an ark (basket) so that pharaohs daughter would find him and protect him from being murdered.  God has provided us an ark from a life that is constantly impeded by sin…that ark is the act of accountability.  I urge you as a pastor and as a brother in Christ to find someone that you can love and trust to confide in.  Someone that will see you through Christ’s eyes and not judge you for your failures but through scripture help you to overcome those obstacles in your life.  There is no reason to tread water by yourself when God has provided somewhere safe to go.  So 2×2; stand strong and stand firm on the promises of God.

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

Psalm 115:3, “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”

  Isaiah 46:10, “Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure;”

Dan.4:35, “And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, What hast Thou done?”

I think sometimes we as Christians need a reminder of who is in control of everything that goes on around us.  Although God may not always tell us why; as a Pastor friend of mine pointed out we truly already know the why.  FOR HIS GLORY!  We just have to have the maturity of heart to understand that His Glory is a perfect answer. 

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

…”The point of prayer is not to get answers from God, but to have perfect and complete oneness with Him.”

When is the last time that you looked at your prayers as a time to be in complete oneness instead of a time to share or receive information from God.  Our modern day christians have moved into such a mode of consumption (meaning they expect God to just give give give to fufill their wants.)  We see this in our churches as to worship services, preaching styles, classes offered, and prayer lives.  If we dont get something out of the service then we complain, when in fact we are there to get closer to God to honor Him, not us.  So, I ask you to refresh your outlook on exactly what is your motivation towards God.  Is it a motivation that is simply worshipful and honoring to God because He is God or because you need something from Him.   Something to ponder…

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

Jerusalem, in the life of our Lord, represents the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will. Jesus said, “I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me” ( John 5:30 ). Seeking to do “the will of the Father” was the one dominating concern throughout our Lord’s life. And whatever He encountered along the way, whether joy or sorrow, success or failure, He was never deterred from that purpose. “. . . He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem . . .” ( Luke 9:51  ).

The greatest thing for us to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God’s purpose, not our own. In the natural life our ambitions are our own, but in the Christian life we have no goals of our own. We talk so much today about our decisions for Christ, our determination to be Christians, and our decisions for this and that, but in the New Testament the only aspect that is brought out is the compelling purpose of God. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you . . .” ( John 15:16  ).

We are not taken into a conscious agreement with God’s purpose— we are taken into God’s purpose with no awareness of it at all. We have no idea what God’s goal may be; as we continue, His purpose becomes even more and more vague. God’s aim appears to have missed the mark, because we are too nearsighted to see the target at which He is aiming. At the beginning of the Christian life, we have our own ideas as to what God’s purpose is. We say, “God means for me to go over there,” and, “God has called me to do this special work.” We do what we think is right, and yet the compelling purpose of God remains upon us. The work we do is of no account when compared with the compelling purpose of God. It is simply the scaffolding surrounding His work and His plan. “He took the twelve aside . . .” ( Luke 18:31  ). God takes us aside all the time. We have not yet understood all there is to know of the compelling purpose of God.

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

And this is how that suffering happens— if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is so obviously uncompromising with regard to every human relationship because He knows that every relationship that is not based on faithfulness to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet He was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God, and in what God’s grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone.

We as a society put way to much faith in ourselves and other people.  We need to take the time to get to know God and allow Him to live our life through us.  This is the only way that in our spirit and in our hearts we will truly be satisfied and content with ourselves, our life, and our circumstances. 

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler

God Bless ~ Pastor Tyler