Gratitude Versus Ingratitude

Thanksgiving Outreach at CCBC

This Sunday, our ministry, the Worship & Arts Ministry, was able to team up with City Church and provide 33 Thanksgiving Meals to our city and families that are in need.  We collected money from our church members and provided a turkey and all the fixings for a Thanksgiving meal.  What an amazing opportunity we had to share the love of Christ.

I was privileged to deliver 3 meals yesterday.  My entire family went with me to make these deliveries.  I was touched to hear my kids voice a prayer over these families as we gave them a free dinner.  One sweet lady accepted the turkey and said with tears in her eyes, "I did not think we were going to have a Turkey this year!"  God continues to provide!  What a blessing to serve Him.

I continue to be challenged by God in my spiritual life.  So many times I neglect to live my life with a heart of gratitude.  I become self seeking with thoughts centered around me instead of thoughts placed of God and how I can serve others.  I was listening to a devotional this morning about generosity.  Chip Ingram was sharing how our society can become so consumed with life and looking inward instead of outward to help and serve others that we become depressed because of our need to be so consumed with materialism.  The cure?  Serve others!  Think of others!  Once we take our focus off of ourselves and place them on God and serving others, the depression and self gratification of our needs all passes away!

Read the following from Nancy Leigh DeMoss


Gratitude Versus Ingratitude

• Consider with me some of the contrasts between a grateful heart and an ungrateful heart.
• Grateful people are humble; ungrateful people are proud.
• A thankful person is conscious of God and others; an un-thankful person is self- conscious and self-centered.
• A grateful heart is a full heart; an ungrateful heart is an empty one. People with thankful hearts are easily contented; un-thankful people are subject to bitterness and discontent.
• A grateful heart will be revealed and expressed by thankful words; an ungrateful heart will manifest itself in murmuring and complaining.
• Thankful people are refreshing, life-giving springs; un-thankful people pull others down with them into the stagnant pools of their selfish, demanding ways.

So,  this Thanksgiving, take an inventory and live your day with a thankful heart!

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanks Be To Our God

Thanks Be To Our God.

As I was preparing for the Thanksgiving season and planning a couple of worship services, God brought a song to me that really made me stop and reflect on the heart of God and helped me focus my attention on true thanksgiving.  Read these words from this song by Travis Cottrell...

For the road that leads from darkness into light,
For the hope that rescues us from endless night,
For the grace covers sin, at the the door where life begins,
For salvation reaching in to guide us through,
Thanks be to our God.

For the healing that no mortal can explain,
For deliverance that breaks the sinner's chains,
For the strength to carry on, and forgiveness great and strong,
And the promise of Your mercies ever new,
Thanks be to our God.

Hallelujah! Everlasting songs will rise
For all You've done.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Thanks be to our God!

For the emptiness that cries out to be filled,
For the promise that Your word is deeper still,
For the longing and the need, to have more of You in me,
Because nothing satisfies the way You do,
Thanks be to our God!

For the mysteries beyond the veil of death,
For the peace that opens with our closing breath,
When our struggles pass away, and we finally see Your face,
And a greater glory rises into You.
Thanks be to our God!

For all God presents to us in our life - the good, bad, great, ugly, joy, heartache...Thanks Be To Our God.  Why can we say this?  How can we praise God in all circumstances?  Because we understand God Loves Us!  He has a perfect plan for us that is filled with gratefulness and love.  On this Thanksgiving, might our hearts turn to God with a heart of true gratefulness and we can respond and say, "Thanks Be To Our God".

1 Corinthians 15:56-58  "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

Making a Difference

How can we make a difference for Jesus today?

 I am flooded with emotion through reading the scriptures this morning.  I am challenged by the words of Jesus from Matthew 5, where he begins sharing the famous Beatitudes then works his way down to pulling up a chair in front of me and challenging me to make a difference in my world today by being salt and light.  Here is how Jim Denison shared this passage..."Until he returns, our nation needs us to be the "salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13), leaving the safety of the saltshaker to stand for Christ with bold courage; and the "light of the world" (Matthew 5:14-16), going wherever the night is darkest."

I love the imagery here of "going wherever the night is darkest", and this is where I am struggling in my nice little neat Christian world.  What am I going to do to be salt and light today?  What area of my world is dark and needs the light of Jesus shown on it?  How can God direct me and allow me the opportunity to share his light with someone today.

I truly believe in order for me to make a difference for Jesus today, I must think of others before myself and be willing to follow Jesus to the dark areas of this world to share His light, but Lord, I need your guidance to know how to do this.

Join me in making a difference today - share Jesus with someone today.

Jesus Ultimately Revealed

I have been leading our Worship & Arts Ministry through a challenging and inspiring Bible curriculum called "The Gospel Project".  Each time I read and prepare for my lessons, I am reminded more and more about the love and sacrifice Jesus showed for me on the Cross.  I grow daily with humility the sense of who I am as a follower, and more than often, I become disappointed in myself.  Why?  Because of the sin in my life.

Read the following comments from this week.  It speaks to the love and sacrifice Jesus made for me and the sin I commit daily...

Jesus ultimately revealed the character of God in His DEATH and RESURRECTION.  He revealed the Father's JUSTICE against human sinfulness and rebellion, He revealed the Father's POWER and authority over Satan, and He revealed the Father's GRACE and MERCY toward undeserving sinners of every ethnicity.  After comprehending these statements, I ask the question today, "what should be our posture towards God?"  Not one of pride or arrogance for anything we can offer or do for God, but all about what God has done for me.  Humility, serving, loving, caring for others.  

My posture today towards God?  Seeking Him and striving to know Him more.  I can become easily distracted with different events from my day, so I posture myself to God today with humility and teach-ability.  I want the Lord to shape and mold me.  Lord, lead me and teach me to follow your example daily.  Through your sacrifice, I want to tell you, with a grateful heart, thanks.  I follow you today Lord.  Lead me.

The Old has Gone and the New Has Come!

The Old has Gone and the New Has Come!

Here are some thoughts I had as I challenged our group to Lima Peru on taking the Buckner Mission Trip back home to America.

Focus our attention on continuing what we have learned here in Peru and taking it back home.  We can never replicate our experience here this week.  What has happened here is unique and special; carved out as a moment in time that God has used for His good pleasure.  My challenge for us is how do we use this experience as an onramp for things to come in our lives back home?  How can we take the act of using our gifts, persevering, serving others and relying on God’s power and apply it to our lives back home?

First thought – We must change our worldview to see things as God sees things.

·      2 Corinthians 5:15-17 - ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. ¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

·      We have been focusing on what has God done through us to benefit & minister to the people here in Peru and how it will change their lives, but in reality, our lives have been changed.  Through serving others, it has allowed God to change us and taught us that we need to go back home and make some needed changes with how we do life.  How we view our neighbors, our finances, our churches and more.

Second thought – We must get out of our comfort zone and allow God to stretch us and take us to places that make us rely on Him and not ourselves.

·      Matthew 28:19-20 - ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” 

Third thought – We must look for opportunities to serve the mission field in our own back yard. 

·      Acts 1:8 - ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Final thought - We carry this further – we all open our hearts up to going on mission again and bring someone with us! – How powerful and impactful the trip has been and encourage others to get our on the frontier with us.  Thank you to Cynthia and Buckner for making this a reality and success to want to do this again and again!

Humility in Christ

Die to Self - Humility in Christ

Philippians 2:2-11

2 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!  9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I agree with these statements as believers in Christ:

• We have encouragement because we are united with Jesus Christ as our Lord.   
• We are comforted by the love of Christ for us.
• We have great fellowship with the Lord through His spirit.
• We have shown tenderness and compassion for others.

Because we are learning these things and acting according to these principles, we are offered a challenge by Paul to RESPOND - TODAY – He is challenging us to "MAKE MY JOY COMPLETE"

How do we make the joy of the Lord complete?  How can we do this?   So, how can we bring people to God today and make the Lord’s Joy Complete?

Honest Answer – WE CANNOT DO THIS!  We cannot go out and do the things we just read on our own power and strength.  If we do, then we are acting out of our own will and not the will of the Lord.

While serving on a mission trip in Peru, I challenged my team with this question.  "What makes what we are doing this week different from other humanitarian organizations that can come in here and offer the same service? If we bring them only our giftedness and talents, then we are bringing the world to the world, right?  I want to bring these people more than the world – I want to bring them Jesus!"

So, how do we bring people Jesus today?

·      By being like-minded

·      Having the same love

·      Being one in spirit and purpose

·      Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit

·      In humility consider others better than yourselves

·      Look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others

Challenge: How can we pass on these things to those we follow Christ today?  How can you make today all about making the joy of the Lord complete?  We must put into action this verse from Paul!

Prayer: Lord, I desire to make your joy complete in my life.  Replace my strength with your strength today and use me to be like-minded, sharing your love with others.  Teach me to be one with your spirit and to do nothing out of selfishness for my own gain today, but truly humble myself and consider others better than me.  Help me to see the interest of others more important than my interest today.