Eyes on Him!

So Sunday has come and gone and I was reminded of a great truth this past Sunday.  I had a rough week last week and I had allowed myself to wallow in my circumstances.  To rely on myself to try and get through it.  But no matter how hard I tried to stay positive, no matter how many times I tried to tell myself I needed to love and have grace, I kept slipping into the woe is me trap.  I would re-play conversations and words that were spoken.  I would allow the feelings of hurt to keep me down.  I could not get out of the pit.  Sunday morning was no different.  I was down, I was depressed.  I needed God but I could not get my eyes off of myself.  Until I began to sing praises to Him.  Until I began to praise His name and worship Him in song.  Then I began to have a change in my heart.  I took my eyes of myself and put them on Him.  That made all the difference.  Why did I not do that at first, why did I not do that right away?  But O the sweetness of having God come close and speak to me in those moments of surrender and praise!
Psalm 121 says,  "I look to the mountains, does my help come from them?  My help comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth!"
When I had my eyes on the mountain, I had no peace.  But when I got my eyes on God, I was able to praise Him; my heart changed, by his grace!  All of the troubles I had washed away, He filled me with a song, a song of praise; hallelujah!!

Its Sunday and I am in church.  It is good to be here this morning, even though in my spirit I am having a hard time.  This is the place to be when life seems like it is spinning out of control. This is the place to be when you feel like you are in a pit and have no one to help you out. Why, becasue of hope!  There is a hope in this place that you do not find anywhere else on the planet.  It is a hope that comes not from the songs we sing or the sermons we hear and preach but from a God who loves us and wants a relationship with us.  This is the one thing that is keeping me going this morning, this is the one thing that is enableing me to get behind a pulpit and preach.  It is the message that I have hope in Christ Jesus and no matter what I am going through, no matter how dark it seems, He is with me all the way!

Have a wonderful Sunday and remember you have a hope!  His name is Jesus.

Ask, Seek, Knock, or Don't Worry be Happy

In Matthew chapter 7:7-12,  Jesus teaches us about effective prayer.  He says: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the do will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!  So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." 

Praying effectively is one thing that I desperately want to do.  I don't want to be like the people Jesus describes in Chapter six who mindlessly repeat their words thinking that bombarding God, with repeated requests will somehow change His mind.  I just want to be able to take my requests to God, and know that he has heard them and that is good enough for me.   I am having a hard time, this week, doing this.  

I know that Pastors usually should be able to pray and know how to pray, and I do.  I love my prayer life with God and my relationship with Him.  It is just that I have this one issue that seems to be weighing heavily on my heart.  This one issue that has started to keep me up at night as I go over all of the things that will go wrong if this issue is not resolved.  I feel pressed and I am having a hard time doing what he tells us in chapter 6 vs 25, "I tell you do not worry".  

A few weeks ago I preached that these times of pressing can either be a cause for us to fall away from God, and choose to reject Him and His message; or it can be a time of drawing us closer to God.  So today I am choosing to practice what I preach.  I want this issue in my life to draw me closer to God, I want to pray effectively for this issue but more importantly I want to seek Him and find Him.   I want to know Him better through this time, I want to find His peace, I want to seek His face and His will for this issue in my life.   I want to not worry and be happy in Him.  

My prayer for you is that you would echo these thoughts.  I know God loves us and that he works all things together, for our good, if we love Him.  So let us love Him with all of our hearts, in the midst of the storm.  Let the wind blow and the waves roll, Jesus is piloting my ship, and with Him at the wheel, I will not sink, no matter how many holes my boat may have!  

Thank you Jesus for loving us and hearing our prayers.  You know what we need even before we ask.  Have you way in our hearts, in our lives, in our issues and in all! 

How to take a pounding!

Tonight is a night that my family will remember for the rest of our lives.  The call came a few weeks ago from my board secretary who asked me if I had ever been pounded?  I responded by telling him, "yes I have been pounded before and I did not enjoy it, why what did I do to deserve a pounding so soon?  He laughed and said that the church family decided they wanted to give us a pounding, which is a whole bunch of people coming over to our house for an Island kitchen party where everyone brings groceries and goodies to eat.  Tonight was the night they choose and all I can say is wow!  It was amazing to see our house packed with members of our church who all were laughing and talking and eating goodies.  It was even more amazing when they started to pile all the groceries in the corner.  It filled our table and left me speechless.  We felt so loved and appreciated and grateful that our church family cared enough about us to bless us by doing this.  We are so blessed, not because we have a table full of food and enough in gift certificates to purchase food for a few weeks, but because we have people who care and desire a relationship with us.  Thank you so much to everyone who came and brought food but more importantly thank you for the friendships that are starting to be formed.  Thank you for loving my family!

All I can say to those of my friends who read this and who do not have a church family looking out for them, is I wish that you could experience what we did tonight.  There is a fellowship and bond shared with people who go to church and love Jesus Christ, that is not found elsewhere and when it is done right, it honors God and helps to build his kingdom.  Find a church that you can call your home and you will find that when those times come when you need a hand or an encouraging word, they will always be there for you!

Have a wonderful weekend and make time for God, who loves you, and go and worship Him on Sunday!

Faith can be ours!

Oswald Chambers has said, :  "Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal posession only through conflict.  What is your faith up against just now?  The test will either prove your faith is right or it will kill it. "

Have your found that statement to be true in your life?  Has the testing of pain, sorrow, loss, fear, relationships, financial difficulties, spiritual dryness, doubt, parenting, work, unemployment, and all of the other things life can throw at you; have those things drawn you closer to God and firmer in your faith?  Or have you allowed those things to kill your faith?   Faith is something that is built, and built over time.  We need to trust in Jesus Christ, and be continually calling out to him in those times of testing.

We many never know when the test will come, but if our faith is owned by our hearts and is at the core of who we are in Christ, then no matter the test, the trial; our faith will become even more solid as we see Jesus our Saviour work in every situation.

Think of Mary and Martha and the loss of their brother Lazarus.  The testing of loss in thier lives and the miracle that Jesus worked as he said in John 11:40, " Didn't I tell you that you would see the Glory of God if you believed."   Father help us to believe in you and put our faith and trust in you, no matter the situation.

Lessons from a Marathon

Today I had one of those moment that only parents can have.  It came quietly and gently in the midst of the kaos of almost two hundred and fifty kids running the last mile of a marathon.  There are 26.2 miles in a marathon and over the last four weeks, my kids have been in a run club that ran one or two miles everyday after school.  As I watched my kids line up and get ready, I could see the determination in their eyes as they both mentally prepared for the run ahead.  They were both nervous and yet excited.  The whole group of kids were.  The air horn sounded and off they went, one kid lost his shoe and another tripped, it was like watching the running of the bulls in Spain, yet instead of terror there was unbridled happiness and excitement, and that was just from the parents.

We waited cameras in hand and watched them run out of sight, then we waited nervously hoping that they would finish and that this would be a good experience.  Then all of a sudden we could see a kid in the distance, a lone runner ahead of the pack on the far side of the field. As this kid got closer we could see others coming and running. The excitement in the crowd grew as the girl got closer and closer until finally her name was called over the loud speaker and tremendous applause broke out. This applause did not stop until all two hundred and fifty kids were across the line, the last one a three year old who was being helped along by his mom.  He saw her and did not want to finish.  It was cute.

My moment happened, though, when I saw my son Spencer running with all of his heart; racing another kid to the finish. He wasn't going to let him win and as he crossed the finish line my emotions mixed and swirled until I was laughing and cheering and crying at the same time. I realized that my son had just accomplished something that I had not, he had run a marathon; my daughter too.  My daughter Emily did not really enjoy running at the beginning of this process, but she stuck with it and with her mom's encouragement and running beside her; Emily learned how to run and pace herself and she finished very strong and sprinted to the end.

Having your kids accomplish things that you have not is an awesome thing. I am so proud of them and how they stuck with this and how they have found something that they like to do. This experience will serve them well in the future. They both want to run some more and enter a 5K run in the future and now they are trying to get me, the guy in the family who hates running, to try. Watching my kids cross the finish line may just have been the motivation and inspiration I need; all my excuses and reasons for not liking to run disappeared when I saw my son and daughter race to the finish.  Life is too short to be in the cheering section forever, we need to get in the race.

That reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Hebrews 12:1, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us." We are called to be in the race of life, not in the crowd, or like the back of one school's shirts said,
Run if you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must, but never quit.  That is good advice.  So it looks like I get to buy some new running shoes.

Mothers Day

It is Mother's Day this morning and I am glad that it is.  I have been so blessed because of the Mothers in my life and I thank God for all of them.  The first ones that come to my mind are my great-grandmothers.  I can remember my Great-grandma Monk and my great-grandma Rossiter, as a little kid they seemed to regal and yet so warm and caring at the same time.  I will always remember seeing my greatgrandma Rossiter kneeling in prayer with my great-grandfather on their green chairs, that left a permanent impression on me that has made a difference in my life.   Great-grandma Monk had the coolest house in Toronto, one of those tall and thin duplexes in the old section of Little Italy.  It was awesome to go to her house and play with all the knick knacks around her place.  I actually haves the little ship in a bottle that I used to be enthralled with as a kid.  I spent hours trying to figure out how they got that boat into the bottle, with its soaring masts and sails.

My grandmothers were also amazing women.  My grandma Harrison was an inspiration.  She was always cooking or baking and she made the best Molasses Cookies, they are my favorite cookies to this day!  She also always had a hug and a kiss for us kids, no matter how annoying we got.  Some of the best times in my life were at my grandma Harrison's house for sleepovers.  When I woke up in the morning I would always catch grandma and  grandpa eating toast with cheese-wiz on it and doing their devotions.  They would pray for all of their kids and grandkids and I will never forget the feeling I got when I heard them pray for me, that has never left me either.

My grandma Rossiter always seemed solid, like nothing in the world would ever phase her.  It was always fun to go to her house in Oxford.  She lived in this big 100 year old house that we could get lost in.  Half of her house was used by the church for Sunday-school rooms and we were not supposed to go in there, but we did anyway, and when she would catch us she would just kind of laugh and call us out and get us doing something else.   I remember being at grandma Rossiters house and being amazed at the people who would come calling.  grandma was a true counsellor who would listen to peoples problems and issues and who would give Godly advice and then pray with them before they left.  That had a huge impact on me as a kid.

Then there is my Mom.  This will mark 15 mothers day's that I have been away from my Mom, living in Alberta while she is in Moncton New Brunswick.  The bible says that a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, but a man never really leaves his Mom.  I call my mom at least once a week because I need her input in my life and I need her wisdom.  I would be nothing today if it were not for my mother and the foundation that she laid in my life.  A foundation of faith and love that goes to the core of my character and who I am.  I can think back in my life, to the times when I really hurt my mom by doing stupid and hurtful things; and yet she loves me still no matter what.  That is why I think the bible describes mothers as being blessed.  It is because a mother is a mirror image of Gods grace and love.  They are a mirror image of His unconditional love and grace and no matter what we do or where we go the love of our mothers goes with us.   That love has kept me going more than once in my life.

Then there is the mother of my children.  I always thought I understood my mother, but I was only scratching the surface.  Observing my wife Christy, interact and love and nurture my children has opened my eyes to not only my mother and who she truly was, but to who my wife truly is.  My wife, like my mother and all my grandmothers and great-grandmothers and my wife's grandmothers; is an amazing and awesome person.  She can read our kids minds and tell when things are going to go wrong and then take a pre-emptive strike to mitigate damages.  She can wade into the fiercest fight between our kids and as cool as a cucumber, diffuse the situation and have our kids hugging and smiling two seconds later.  She holds a teaching job and yet balances work and family life like no other woman I know, finding time to do laundry too.  She is a statesmen, ambassador, crisis counsellor, hostage negotiator, artistic director, interior decorator, sanitary engineer, gourmet chef, C.E.O, administrative assistant, nurse, and in short the most amazing woman that I know.  I am truly blessed because of my wife Christy and I thank God for the time that I have been given to be with her.  Watching her with my kids is time well spent!

So to all the moms out there and to all the women who are moms to be, thank you for being great moms!  Happy Mothers Day!