Faithful God

He observed as the people gave, then He beheld her.

He knew the depth of love for her Lord.

He delighted in the measure of faith she possessed.

He watched her give all she had into the temple treasury.

She trusted the Lord her God to provide for her future.

For the present, she chose to give all she had.

Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-3

So little flour-So little oil-So little hope.
She planned one last, small meal for she and her son.
The man asked for water and a piece of bread.
She followed his instructions and generously
gave him the bread she had prepared.  Amazingly, just as he
said, the jar did not run out of flour nor the
jug out of oil.   There was food for the prophet Elijah,
and for her family; not just a meal,  but every day.
1 Kings 17:10-16

After 7 brief years of marriage, she lived as a widow.

She never left in the temple, worshiped day and night.

She fasted, she prayed.  Now at the age of 84, her eyes beheld

the young Messiah at the temple.  She gave thanks to God, and

proclaimed it to all who listened.

Luke 2:36-38

Three women, each through faith gave sacrificially; each realized the faithfulness of God.

Faithful God and Holy Father,
Grow our faith.  Loosen the grip we have our pocketbooks-our only security is You.  Father, open our hearts and homes to freely share any possession to bless another soul.  Abba, open our eyes to see our days are best spent investing them in Your eternal purposes.  Thank You, Faithful One, for every example in Your Holy Word, and for the faithful lives living among us today.  May we look to Jesus, His life, His faith and His sacrifice to grow our faith-to give sacrificially.
Through Him, amen.

Mischelle Oliver
Stephenville Tx

Scars

I see the scars sin has left on me, on my heart and on my mind.  The past two weeks has been a battle with the wounds of bad decisions, worse really, wounds from a separation from God.  

I have two good friends who are in a battle for their hearts, for their marriage, and for their children.  They have both sinned, both tried to hide it, and both see the battle as being against the other instead of being against the power of darkness.  Their choices are wreaking havoc and they are in a spiritual death spiral.  Trying to stay close to them, trying to help with words and with prayers is bringing back the pain of my own failings and I can clearly see the scars my sins have left behind.  

The scars are reminders.  A reminder of a marriage severed.  A reminder of the pain my children suffer from a family ripped apart.  A reminder of separation from my children, the people I love the most on this earth.  A reminder of a life lived playing Christian but not being a Christ-follower.  

The scars are reminders.  A reminder of a son who left home, pockets full of cash, to live a life of wine, women and song.  A reminder of a father who allowed the son to take off knowing what the future would hold.  A reminder of a son living with pigs.  A reminder of a loving father, a forgiving father, a father who ran to meet his wayward child and then threw a party for him.  

The scars are reminders.  A reminder of reconciliation with God.  A reminder of learning to understand God’s love.  A reminder of learning what forgiveness feels like.  A reminder of how confession leads to healing.  A reminder of how the Holy Spirit will work within me.  A reminder that living a life following Christ is a life of freedom and peace and joy and love and ample helpings of forgiveness given and received.  

As I came through painful days and grew closer to God, I asked that he let me know I was on the right path by using me.  I now have a ministry I really don’t want but one that reminds me God is using me to show others what can happen when hearts are not aligned with God.  I hate the position but am joyous in my Savior’s faith in me and willingness to work through me.  The scars are constant reminders of where I was and where I am and where I want to keep going - walking with God.  The scars are ugly but they allow me to tell a story of beauty.  I pray it will be a story that helps my friends but I know it is only through their desire and the power of God that reconciliation will occur.  

I seek your prayers for their hearts as well as mine as we all walk a road that leaves us exposed to Satan’s schemes but also a road that will allow us to see a Father running towards us, ready to embrace us, ready to throw a party in our honor because His love is so great for my friends, for me and for you.

Grace and peace.  

Jeff Jones

Decatur, Texas

Stand, Bend, Raise

Matthew 15:1-9
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2  “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7  You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8  “‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
9 in vain do they worship me,
    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” 

Jesus was for tradition.  We occasionally hear the apostle Paul comment about tradition.  Tradition is never a byword in scripture.  Tradition has always been a major component in giving shape to personal and corporate faith.  

But, Jesus did take issue with traditionalism.  In the spirit of Old Testament prophets like Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah, Jesus shined the light on a traditionalism that was constructed out of the building blocks of skewed ideas and comfort zones of the flesh from which a sign hung that read:  the will of the Lord. 

Have you ever asked yourself how traditionalism goes-to-seed in a person?  We don’t study ourselves into it.  We observe it first and then bring texts alongside our perspective and practice.  In short, we practice our way into interpretation.  When a particular practice is based on healthy interpretation then faith is allowed to flourish offering a genuine and beautiful presentation of the gospel. The counterpart is unhealthy but wrapped in language and a passion that passes itself off as “the way of the Lord.”    

I noticed an example of this at a singing recently.  The chorus of a particular song says, “And I stand, I stand in awe of you.”  When we got to the “stand” part…you guessed it…we stood.  I have been in many congregational, group and retreat settings in which people traditionally stand when we get to that part of the song.  Do we stand “in awe” at that point or do we stand because the song says “I stand”?  That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?  But, something happened later that sets this in bold relief.  We sang a song that had the words, “I bend my knees in praise…” and “I raise my hands to you”.  The second song called for bodily expression – just like standing in the song a few minutes earlier – but...we sat still.  There was no “bending of knees” and no “raising of hands.”  Our comfort zone (familiarity zone, conditioning, practice) has allowed for – even encouraged – standing as THE appropriate expression.  Bending and raising are just as plain linguistically, but our social norms have conditioned us to put a premium on standing.   Why do we defer to one action and exclude the others?  Plainly, we are more comfortable with the one action than we are with the other two.  I suppose at stake here is what we are actually doing in song.  Are we singing out of nostalgia and a herd mentality or have we truly chosen to give physical expression to what is in our hearts?  Bending and raising can be dismissed as strange and perhaps “showy.”  Of greater concern here is how traditionalism has affected how we think about what we are “actually” doing when we are singing.  And…that’s just one example. 

Jesus’ words stand before us as much more than a blistering declaration against the aberrations within Judaism of his day.  They speak to us about how we reflect on and express faith today.  They summon us outside of ourselves.  They ask us to step outside of our congregational atmospheres and to breath a different kind of air.  They beckon us to take a long hard look at how we think about faith and what really matters.  Have the minors become majors and the majors minors in our way of thinking?  Do we passionately defend things that in our estimation are “of God” while missing the things that are truly “of God?”  Do we lean conveniently into socially engineered phrases like “comfort zone” and “that offends me” so we can maintain the wall between ourselves and critical thought?  I’ve done it on occasion.  Why?  My reasons are the same as anybody’s:  Fear of change, arrogance, ignorance masquerading as knowledge, trusting an environment instead of thinking…for myself…for a change.  Other things could be listed.  What’s on your list?

The aforementioned is a major baseline on which any group of Christians thinks, lives and serves.  Christians have always struggled with sorting this out.  The spiritual optimist in me says that if we can allow ourselves a more acute awareness of this baseline we increase our ability to think about faith and live with each other in a maturity that lives in the spirit of the message Jesus delivered in Matthew 15.  What is most important here is that we do our best to “think critically” about what we are doing, defending, and championing.  We might ask ourselves:  1.)  Who is the Lord? and, 2.) How does this honor Him?  To do otherwise, Jesus says, is to follow roads of thought and practice that lead to forms of worship that come short of what God intends for us as persons and as communities of faith.  

Father, give us eyes to see who we are and what we do the way you want us to see it.  May we be more interested in the heart of our faith than its trimmings.  Help us to glean from your word the shape of life that honors you in all that we do and say.  Amen.

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas

A Sacrifice of Faith

Was not our ancestor Abraham

considered righteous for what he did

when he offered his son Isaac on the

altar?

You see that his faith and his actions

were working together and that his faith

was made complete by what he did.

And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed

God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he

was called God’s friend.  - James 2:21-23

When Abraham led his son Isaac into the wilderness, he did not hesitate to obey God’s command to offer him as a sacrifice. He believed that God would not break his promise.  Obviously, he did not understand how God was going to make it all work out. Even so, he didn’t fall on his knees and pray to God for a sign that Isaac would not die, or that Isaac would even be raised from the dead. He simply acted in faith that God would not break his promise.  He powerfully demonstrated his faith.

Another of my favorite stories of faith is found in First Kings 17:8-24, the story of how God sent Elijah to the Widow at Zarephath for food. Verse 12 makes clear her desperate situation.  “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”  In spite of her poverty, God commanded the widow to give food to Elijah. By the time Elijah arrived and asked for bread, God had not shown the widow that He would supply anything to feed anyone. By the time Elijah came to the widow’s house, she and her son were almost dead of starvation; and yet Elijah instructs the widow to make him bread and to serve him first. The widow obeyed God, depriving herself and her son of their last morsel of food to feed Elijah. What an incredible demonstration of faith, similar to that of Abraham. The Widow at Zarephath was ready, as far as she knew, to sacrifice her son as well as herself, to do what God commanded. In return, God sustained them all through the time of famine.  

The important point of these stories is that they show that God often waits to fully bless us until our faith is first demonstrated.  I have observed this time and time again, and I have come to think of facing the challenges we all sometimes face in our walk with God as “Sacrifices of Faith.” When faced with those decisions in your spiritual life that take you out of your comfort zone and perhaps even lead you to face deep insecurity, consider the opportunity for showing God how deeply you believe in His promises. The important thing for each of us is to profoundly trust our Father in all things, whether small or great, everyday things or eternal things, and to take the actions that demonstrate faith. For whom is the demonstration staged? Surely not for others to see, for that is its own questionable reward. The demonstration is for God. It is our trust that God longs to receive. It is our faith that God rewards. It is our faith and unwavering trust that becomes the true sacrifice to our Father.

Jerry Hoover

Lubbock, Texas

Jesus Has Compassion

Recorded in the Holy Book in Luke 8:42ff Jesus again reflects the compassion of his loving Father.  A large crowd is gathered to listen to Jesus when a man breaks through the crowd and falls at Jesus’ feet. This man pleads with Jesus to leave the crowd and come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about 12, is dying. If you are a parent, you understand his boldness to break through the crowd and come straight to Jesus pleading with all he has, for his daughter’s life. At that moment, Jesus begins a mission of compassion for this young girl and her family by following the man, when something else suddenly happens.

As Jesus is making his way through the crowd of people pressing in from all sides, He feels power leave Him and He asks, “Who touched me?” No one spoke up until a woman came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people she told her story of an illness that had caused her 12 years of pain and humiliation. She had been labeled unclean and was not allowed to touch others. She had risked being caught, just to touch the hem of his garment and she was instantly healed. Jesus told her, “Your faith has healed you, go in peace.”

Jesus is telling us four things:

• He is never too busy to stop what he is doing for us.
• We are never too unclean for Him to acknowledge us.
• He has an unlimited power supply.
• He has unlimited compassion.

This story is for you if you have ever felt like:

• I am not important to Jesus.
• I don’t deserve God’s attention.
• I believe the message, I have the courage to step forward, but I don’t want the attention.
• I keep going everywhere else to heal my hurts and I am fearful of going to the one who can heal me once and for all.

Jesus is able and He wants you to come to HIM!

As the story goes, the young girl died before he reached the home. He walks up to the house passing all the people “wailing” outside and invites her mother, father and 3 disciples inside and raises her from the dead. Beyond all odds! Unlimited power!

Dear Father, Hallowed be your name. Thank you for giving us this story showing your unlimited power and compassion. We are so happy to know that you care about the things that weigh us down. Today I bring to you............. You are our strength and our deliverer. Praise your name.

Terry Smith
Stephenville, TX