Posts Tagged ‘Christ’

So as I have undertaken this journey of reading the entire Bible in 180 days (which is been very challenging and rewarding all at the same time) I have really gotten a refreshed look from the Holy Spirit into God and His desires for us as His children.  And as I do most days I read a lot of other’s blogs and make sure that I am attempting to stay current with all the things that are happening across the Church in America today.  In one of those readings I came across a profound statement that made me sit back and think for awhile about our state as a Church and some of the things that I have seen or heard happen.  I wanted to do two things then today:

1. Share the quote and the article with you (it take abouts 5 minutes to read it is very short)
2. Share a video with you that accentuates the point of this blog and of the article as well.

So here is the quote that I read that I felt was very profound and possibly a perspective changer (as a pastor I love perspective changers).

God laid aside his wants—and so can we

God’s action in the world never revolves around the immediate satisfaction of wants and needs. His action is focused on reconciliation. The amazing news is the God of the Bible incurred all the cost of reconciliation himself. He paid our debt in full to restore us to his family. And when we see the God of the heavens lay aside his wants and needs to serve us, we can make the much smaller sacrifice of laying aside our own.

Now take a second and look at this article

OK, now that you have read that…take about 2 minutes and watch this video from the Family Fued.  Now I am not condoning the topic I am simply making a point as to the order that the answers fall in the survey.  It really makes my heart grieve that we have grown so lackadaisical as believers that we have lost a lot of the impact and priority in society.

Give me your thoughts…
~ God Bless
Pastor Tyler

So as we come into this new year I am so excited that 2011 is here and 2010 is gone.  For those of you who are close to us you know why, and for those of you who aren’t lets just say that it has been a year of change, growth, anguish, and joy.

And this year I am going to start off with a HUGE undertaking so I need your prayers.  Here at 2metalheads we are going to read the whole Bible in 180 days.  Now you say that doesn’t sound like much but it  is going to be a challenge that can really test your  fortitude.  Let me give you an example why;  there are 1189 chapters in the Bible, that means I will have to read 6.6 chapters a day to keep up.  And again that doesn’t sound like many but with anyone who is devoted to their quiet time and is a true student of the Bible you know that God can speak volumes in a verse much less 6.6 chapters. 

But, I am so excited because I know that through this process renewal will come.  Renewal of what? you ask; well of strength, of joy, of spirit.  This is what happens when we study and dwell in His Word,  the Holy Spirit will speak to our hearts and encourage us in ways we expected and ways that we did not.

But so often for us to really take on the challenge of studying His word would mean that we have to hold a mirror up to our life and go through all the areas that we want to either ignore, keep, or that are too painful to look in.  We are forced to look at ourselves and evaluate the sin that is in our hearts, our lives, and our thoughts.  This is always a humbling experience no matter how long you have been a Christian.

Stop and take a second to look at Adam and Eve, in the account of creation in Genesis we are told that once they both had eaten from the forbidden tree their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.  After covering their nakedness the very next thing they did is hide when they heard the presence of God in the garden. 

[8 ] And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
(Genesis 3:8 ESV)

And isn’t that what we like to do?  We like to have our little back pocket sin and try to hide that from not only our spouse but also from our friends, our Church family and most especially God.  And if we don’t spend time with Him then we don’t have to feel guilty about being “naked”.

But with anything else in life continual “maintenance” is always better then letting something go.  It is like the flowerbed in your front yard.  If you dont weed that bed for a few years and it becomes grown over with weeds, it is easier to just leave it alone.  But, before long the weeds are taking all of the nutrients and the plants, flowers, shrubs aren’t doing as well as they could be.  The flowers are just a little less dazzling or the shrubs are not as full as they could be. 

But if you pursue the bed and you constantly weed it, it becomes easier and easier to maintain and the plants, flowers, shrubs gain all of the nutrients that they need to thrive.  The shrubs are full, the flowers are blooming and it all looks magnificent.  Well it is the same with our Heart, if we are constantly examining it and allowing the Holy Spirit to weed it through Scripture then we are going to see the fullness of God and the blessing and the growth that He would desire for us.  We will have the blessing of becoming more and more Christlike.  So take the time to allow the maintenance to happen, get up 20 minutes earlier or go to bed 20 minutes later, whatever it takes to get into the Word and allow the Word to get into you!

God Bless~
Pastor Tyler

“We must be careful to value all the biblical books. Christians are always tempted to construct a ‘canon within a canon’—-a set of books within the Bible that are more important than others. The danger is that we will end up with an imbalanced Christianity—-a view of faith based on a narrow selection of books and passages. The antidote to this problem is to force ourselves to deal with the whole gamut of biblical revelation. We should expose our minds to the whole of God’s truth, not just those books we happen to be interested in or those issues we happen to get excited about.” -Unknown

My prayer for you and for me is that we would frantically beg the Holy Spirit to show us where our Christianity is imbalanced.  Where we have chosen to grab hold of certain doctrines and be loose or even rejecting of other doctrines.  I pray that over this next year we would search for those things in our lives that would make us more surrendered to, broken, and usable by God to bring glory to Himself through our lives.

~ God Bless
Pastor Tyler

I just did not have the words this morning so I am going to do something that I normally don’t do.  I am going to simply put my devotion reading this morning up so that you can read it and let it speak to you.  For me it was just to much of where I am for me to speak on it.  I pray that God will speak to you out of it.

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