Pastor Earl's Blog
Super Sunday? Feb. 05 2012
American culture calls this Super Sunday or Super Bowl Sunday. It is a day of worship. It’s a day to worship sports. It’s a day to worship power. It’s a day to worship fame. It’s a day to worship materialism. It’s a day to worship to worship food. It’s a day to worship the idols of American culture. (OUCH!)
This is not a rant against football or Super Bowl Sunday.
I simply want us to stop and think.
Do I invest as much time and energy in worshipping God as I do preparing for the Super Bowl?
Am I as excited about new people coming to know Jesus as I am my favorite team making it to the big game?
Would I give as much time and energy to sharing my faith as I do to talking about Super Bowl Commercials?
Is my attendance at Sunday Morning Worship as important to me as watching the big game?
You see I have a whole different definition for Super Sunday than American Culture
My dream for a Super Sunday looks like this…..
….10 people accept Jesus in Sunday School Classes
…..12 different people invite friends to church
…..10 people begin to pursue the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
…8 people open their homes for Sunday Lunch and invite people from church over for real fellowship.
…..The Holy Spirit fills our sanctuary so tangibly with his presence that people don’t even want to go home when services end.
….. The Love of God is shared and celebrated as the people of God gather for worship.
….. 4 people are set free from their addiction and pain.
….Maybe I am setting my sights too low, 3000 were saved on Pentecost Sunday – That sounds like a SUPER SUNDAY to me.
Do we want the Holy Spirit? Jan. 29 2012
“We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone…..[We] have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost.”
-A.W. Tozer- (Quoted in Forgotten God, pg. 27)
One hundred years ago there were people in America who were devoted to preaching and teaching Scriptural holiness. They were people who were devoted to the apostles teaching, devoted to the fellowship, devoted to the breaking of bread and devoted to prayer. They spent there hard earned money and vacations to gather in the country, pitch a tent and gather under that tent to hear people preach about the need for the Holy Spirit in the life of every follower of Jesus. These people were a part of what historians call the “American Holiness Movement.” Many of these people united in 1908 to from what we now call the Church of the Nazarene.
Yes, they were and still are a peculiar bunch. They were a bunch of people who believed that it wasn’t enough to live with our sins forgiven, but that God had something more to give to us: THE HOLY SPIRIT. And they spent a great deal of time talking about and emphasizing the need for the Holy Spirit in the life of every follower of Jesus.
Today, a little over 100 years later I have to ask, DO WE WANT THE HOLY SPIRIT? Do we want to be Holy? Do we want to be set apart and used by God for god’s purposes? - Or – Has A.W. Tozer spoken the truth about our lives in the quote above?
Is our spirituality low?
Are we seeking the favor of the world around us?
Are we substituting worldly delights for the very presence of the Lord?
Are we relying more on ourselves and our own strength;
than we are on the power of the Holy Spirit?
God continues to have a desire to give us the Holy Spirit. We will receive?
Repent: Just in Time- Jan. 22 2012
While visiting a Benedictine monastery named Christ in the Desert, Eugene Peterson experienced a vivid reminder about life’s transitory nature. The path to the cafeteria went by a cemetery and Peterson noticed an open grave. When he inquired about the death, they said nobody had died: “That grave is for the next one.”
Every day they repeatedly walked past that prepared grave as they gathered for meals. These monk purposely left the grave open and ready to remind themselves regularly that one of us will be next. The Talmud teaches that every person should repent one day before his death.
Someone from Peterson’s group asked the obvious question, “How will we know that this is the last day before our death?” He was told, “You won’t know. So treat every day as if it were the day before your last.”
(Source: ChristianityToday.com, Walking Through a Graveyard, John Ortberg, 10/25/10)
JESUS Film Harvest Partners #2 in Top 10 List of Most Impactful Christian Charities - Jan. 15 2012
Global Ministries Center
By Nazarene Communications Network News Staff www.ncnnews.com
Return On Investment Ministry, Inc. recently released their Top 10 List of Most Impactful Christian Charities, naming the Church of the Nazarene's JESUS Film Harvest Partners number two. ROI Ministry based their decision off of JFHP's estimate that for every three U.S. dollars donated, one person is saved.
Since its founding in 1979, the JESUS Film Project has carried out the mission of spreading Jesus' teachings through film. The classic JESUS film has been viewed six billion times in more than 220 different countries and has resulted in more than 10 million commitments to Jesus.
The JESUS film is a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International. In August 1997 Campus Crusade for Christ entered into a partnership with Louie Bustle, the director of Nazarene Global Missions. Campus Crusade would provide the equipment, and the film. The Church of the Nazarene would provide the leadership and workers around the world to show the film, disciple new believers, and start new churches.
This was the first partnership of its kind using the JESUS film. The Church of the Nazarene became a trail blazer in committing to use the JESUS film as a main strategy for evangelism. In the years since it has proven to be the most effective evangelistic tool the Church of the Nazarene has ever used.
Executive Director, Brian Helstrom expressed his gratitude to all those involved in JFHP.
"What a humbling honor for JESUS Film Harvest Partners to be highlighted in a Top 10 list that rates on eternal return on investment (eROI)," he said. "We certainly are grateful to be seen as such a ministry. I praise God for the Harvest Partners donors and churches for their support, for the JESUS film teams who are doing the front-line work to reach the lost, for the partnerships with other Kingdom ministries, and for the evangelistic, disciple-making, and church planting context in which we work. JFHP only happens because we all work together, and what a blessing it is!"
According to ROI's list, the partnership between the Church of the Nazarene and Campus Crusade for Christ International is "a most effective partnership between the local church and a para-Church organization."
This is one of the many ministries First Church supports through Missions giving.
Not So Identical Twins
Author Unknown -Dec. 25 2011
There were once two brothers who were identical twins. Now, even though they looked exactly alike, they were exact opposites when it came to their personalities. One brother was an eternal optimist—he always saw good in everything and everybody. The other brother, however, was an eternal pessimist—he never saw good in anything anywhere.
One Christmas, their parents decided to try an experiment on them to see if there was any way that the two brothers could find some balance in their personalities. To the pessimist son, the parents gave a bright, shiny bicycle. To their optimist son, they gave a bag filled with nothing but straw. They put the presents under the tree with the boys’ names on them and waited to see what would happen.
On Christmas morning, the two boys ran downstairs to discover what they had received from their parents. Upon finding the bicycle, the pessimist proclaimed, “A bicycle? Why did you give me a bicycle? It’s too cold to ride outside, and besides, I will probably fall and hurt myself. I can’t believe you got me a lousy bicycle!”
The optimist opened his present, found the bag of straw and thought for a minute. Suddenly he ran to the backyard and began looking around frantically. His parents and brothers were completely puzzled, and they finally asked him, “What in the world are you doing?” To which he replied, “Well, after getting that bag of straw, I just know there’s a pony around here someplace! I just haven’t found him yet!”
Attitude can make a huge difference in your circumstances. When things happen to you at home, at school, with your friends—you have two choices. You can take the high road or the low road. The high road is to remain positive and look for the good in your situation. The low road is to be negative and to see only the bad. One road leads to happiness, the other to despair. Really, the choice is yours. Circumstances don’t have to control your life. You can instead control how those circumstances affect you. You have the power.
As Christians, we have every reason to take the high road and to be optimistic about life. Because of Christ, we have hope—real hope. We know that no matter what happens, God is in control and we have the victory that Christ won for us on the cross. The apostle Paul was in prison when he wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). That’s the kind of attitude we need to have.
(Source: Hot Illustrations for Youth-talks)