Faith and doubt

Miracle on 34^th Street is one of the beloved Christmas classics of all time. It is a story about faith. While some people make faith as something to be easy and without struggle, most of the time in my experience faith is actually dirty, complex and mysterious. This is the type of faith that I observe in Miracle on 34^th Street.

Mother (Doris) and daughter (Susan) have experienced a past full of pain. We find our that Doris has a lot of resentment against her ex-husband and does not have a lot of trust and faith outside of what can be explained with common sense. This has been passed down to Susan as a way of learning from her experience.

Kris Kringle is a new hire at Macy’s as the store Santa Clause. He believes he is the one and only Santa Clause, and people think he is crazy. Fred takes Susan to see Santa and while in line Susan discusses the idea of Santa as silly and impossible. However, the girl in line after them does not speak English as she was just adopted from Denmark. And Santa starts to speak Dutch with the girl. This amazes Susan and gives her a little faith.

As Kris Kringle’s claim of being Santa becomes bigger he is put on trial. Fred who is also a lawyer, defends him. Kris finally has all charges dropped because the post office delivers thousands of Santa letters to him at the courthouse. And if a government organization believes it, it must be true.

Christmas finally comes and Susan experiences doubt because Santa could not deliver what she wanted, a house. This was the only way she would really believe that he is real. In life we experience doubt and dismay with what happens around us. And it is okay to doubt. But do not focus on the doubt, rather focus on even the little bit of faith that you do have.

Matthew 17:20 says “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”As Susan works through her doubt, Kris gives Fred directions somewhere. On the way Susan sees a house and jumps out of the car, saying “I do believe, Santa did get it for me.”

While faith does have obstacles there are times where we have breakthroughs like Susan did with the viewing of Santa speaking Dutch. We however do not always have the big miracle like Susan experiences here. So take faith one step at a time, and focus on what little faith you might have rather than the doubt. Pray for God to grow your faith and miracles really can happen.

Hope in A Christmas Story

This is a brief summary of yesterdays sermon at Heartland. Check out www.heartlandlpc.com for more about the church.

It is now December, which means the Christmas season has arrived. My favorite things about Christmas are egg nog, Christmas parties and Christmas movies. During the month of December in this article and at Heartland Community Church we will be looking at a different Christmas movie each week. One of my favorite Christmas movies and probably yours as well is A Christmas Story.

When I watch it I cannot help but see the story of hope. Ralphie, the main character in the story is a young blonde kid filled with hope. He has the hope that his parents are going to buy him a Red Ryder BB Gun. He brings his hopeful request to his mother. She responds, “You will shoot your eye out.” He even writes a school paper on his deepest desire for the toy. He receives a C+ on the paper and the teacher tells him, “You will shoot your eye out.”

As Ralphie lies in bed one night he is trying to figure out how he will make this dream come true. It comes to him to take the request to Santa. So Ralphie is now becoming anxious about telling Santa about the hope he has. He arrives at the mall and realizes he has a long way to wait in the line for Santa. This however does not destroy his hope. He waits… and waits… and the time arrives where Ralphie sits on Santa’s lap and he is speechless. He does not know what to say. Santa tries to get it out of him. Still nothing. Santa asks, “Would you like a football? Ralphie shakes his head yes in agreement. The elf puts Ralphie on the slide and as he starts to go down, Ralphie stops himself and starts to crawl up the slide. He yells “NO, I want a Red Ryder BB Gun.” Santa responds, “You will shoot your eye out kid.”

Ralphie’s mom, teacher and Santa are what I consider Killers of Hope. We all have them in our lives. We cannot let Killers of Hope get the best of us.

In Isaiah, the Israelites were going through a rough time, however held onto hope. They had hope that a Savior was coming into the world, that he would rescue and restore them to where they should be. God, the Father was looking to give them this longing but it was not yet the right time. But it would not be long…

Ralphie was defeated he had opened up all his gifts and his Father asked him if he had received everything he wanted. Ralphie responds, “kind of” but the disappointment was obvious. His Father tells him to go look behind the desk. Ralphie goes over, pulls out the box, unwraps it and it is the Red Ryder BB Gun. He is ecstatic and asks if he can go outside to use it.

The one person he never asks for the toy, his Father, is the one person who gives him the gift. His Father wants to give him the things to fulfill his hopes and dreams… Granted Ralphie does break his glasses and fulfills the “you will shoot your eye out.” Why is it that we can always go to God the Father with all our hopes and requests but it is usually the last place we go?

On the road with God

I am asked this question every now and then. Why does God in the Old Testament seem so differerent then in the New Testament? This was again asked this morning. This was my answer to him. Hope it helps. 

This is probably the hardest question for any person to understand but yet is one of the most asked questions. At times I even ask myself this from time to time. Both Ellen and Ben are right. 1. God chose to reveal pieces of himself at his choosing. In Genesis with the fall, he chose to give Adam and Eve grace by sacrificing an animal to give them clothes. This was in spite of his earlier comment to them saying that "they would surely die if they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." 

I believe it was also grace and justice that came out when God kicked them out of the Garden so they could not eat of the tree of life. This was an act of protection. Since this time man/woman tried everything in their power to connect with God. Through sacrifice and worship unfortunately people decided to worship in a way that they desired. It started with Cain and Abel. Cain was jealous because his offering was not accepted. So he killed his brother and then lied about it. 

From here on humanity went down hill. Cutting themselves, murder of children, worship with prostitutes, orgies. It was obviously not a God ordained worship and sending prophets did not help. Even through his own revelation people were not following his revelation. So he decided to wipe out the earth in spite of his love for the people. He made a promise to never destroy the earth again. Even after the flood it wasnt long before people started living there own way. Selling a brother into slavery led a nation into eventual slavery. 

But God keeps fighting for his people. He sends a murderer (Moses) back to Egypt to fight for them, with eventually getting them freed. God then gives them the law. This is the first time where this comes into a written form. The 10 commandments all have to do with relationship. Love God, Love Others. When this is obeyed it is a different world that we are able to live in. However it was not long before the Jewish people disobeyed the number one command with the building a golden calf. God still continues to give grace to his people. 

He gives them a new leader in Joshua as they now enter the promised land that he promised long ago to Abraham. However there were people already living there. In getting their land back there were a lot of battles fought. This is where it gets tricky. People think this is where the wrath of God comes out and takes anyone and everyone out. But even in all these battles God offers each nation a way out. The Gibeonites in Joshua 9 trick the Jewish people into signing a treaty with them. They will now follow the God of the Jewish people. I think if every nation did this God would have allowed them to live as well. Now the Israelites are Israelites again. They make mistake after mistake. They want to worship things they can see, rather than worshiping the God who created them. Asking for a human king, instead of allowing God to govern (1 Samuel 8.) Following their own desire instead of God's desire (King David w/ Bathsheba). 

Even through all these mistakes there is grace and forgiveness, but also justice. A lot of the punishment seems to be earthly in the OT. (David losing his child from the affair) God uses prophets to keep the downward slide of his people. 

Then Jesus is born into the world. He was and always was, but now he is flesh and revealing a new Gospel. At least a new gospel to the people. It had always been there for them but they were never willing to accept the God of grace in the OT. But now grace is their incarnate in the flesh. He came to reveal it because no one else was able to get it. Because to be honest it was tough to get. People would have to listen and look for God's revelation before. 

But now He was there with them. They could witness his grace through His miracles. They could witness His love through his care for the children. They could witness his wisdom with turning questions of the spiritual leaders into these profound thoughts and questions back to them. (Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone, For a time is coming when we will worship in spirit and in truth, what is more important on Sabbath than to give mercy and truth?) 

They could not witness his willingness to be a servant in which he was willing to wash feet. They could not witness his sacrifice in which he laid down his life. They could not witness his power as he defeated death. People have to be witnesses. They want proof. 500 people witnessed Jesus after he rose again. These witnesses died and were Martyred for spreading the Gospel of Christ. They would surely not die for Christ if they were making this stuff up. Today God continues to reveal himself to his people through the Holy Spirit. We are still learning about justice, grace, love and forgiveness. We are trying to live out the example that he first showed us in the OT with the 10 Commandments of Loving God and Neighbor. God has never changed but he has always given us new revelations to show himself to his people.

Independence on the Road to Freedom

My freshman year of college I was in a freshman dorm. It was the closest thing to what my Private Christian Liberal Arts College had to a fraternity. Bowman House for many was where many “boys became men.” The chant that I remember hearing so often was “where we go one, we go all; Bowman House.”

            I grew close to a lot of the guys in our dorm. Some of my best friends today came out of my freshman year in Bowman. It was a place for many to learn what community was. Bowman House had regular meetings to build community as well as many other activities throughout the year. However as a freshman I really did not care to attend these meetings, so I skipped out. It was nearing the end of our freshman year and some of my friends who had not skipped out were selected to leadership positions in Bowman during our sophomore year.

            When one of the leadership positions opened up, I went and talked to Rob, the RD, about the possibility of the position. He told me while he saw me as a leader, because I had not joined in the community like I could have, he would not accept me for the position.

            It was during this time that I realized my independence was keeping me from actually taking part in the things that I wanted to do. Everybody has freedom, but with this freedom comes the ability for choice. When one does not choose responsibility then there are at times consequences. In my case I could not be a leader in Bowman because I had chosen to skip out on the house meetings.

            Freedom is a powerful thing. We allow the freedoms that we have to change us. We allow the freedoms to help us grow. But at the same time it could change us for the worse, it could lead us away from what we really truly desire for our lives. For this I am thankful of choice. But on this road to freedom, I wondered if needed something more.

Community on the Road in OK

This past week I was privileged enough to go to Moore, OK with a group from Heartland. We left at 6pm on Wednesday and traveled to Ottawa, KS. We checked in the hotel at 12:30am and left by 6:30am. It was a short stay, but we had a goal. We arrived at the church by 12noon and were helping with relief by 1pm. We were tired and the sun was hot. On the first day we worked about 4 hours and they let us off early to enjoy the 4^th. As a team we decided to go to downtown OKC.

There was a lot going on with live music and fireworks. Rather than listen to the music we decided to walk what was told to us as a few blocks to the Oklahoma bombing memorial. I thought I remembered a lot more about that sad day in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh decided to wreak terror. We arrived and there is still a makeshift memorial with people attaching things that were of value. There were some race numbers which a Ray, a teacher from Moore, told us they were from a memorial marathon ran the last 13 years that provides funding for the memorial museum.

Ray was for one of seven people that stood out to me during the trip. We were able to find out that Ray was one of the lucky ones who lived in Moore. His house was spared; the school he worked at was missed by the tornado. He and his 16, sixth grade students were huddled together in the bathroom. After he knew his students were safe and had someone to attend to them, he ran to Briarwood Elementary, the school that lost a gym, and the school where his son attends. He was to the point of panic when he saw the school for the first time, but it was not long before he scooped his son up in his arms and was thankful for the protection through the storm.

He then went home to find out it was ok, but lost power for five days. In the previous 7 years he really never took the time to know his neighbors but because of the power outage they started hanging out in their driveways, sharing stories and having cookouts. His neighborhood is now a community.

Ray had just returned from DC where he was at a teacher’s conference for 5 days. He said he could not wrap his mind around how different things looked and how much the volunteers had done in a few days. This was important to our team, which was involved in the cleanup process. We spent the majority of our time in Plaza Towers Elementary back yard. One of the hardest hit areas cleaning up a few houses that homes had been taken right off the slab. It was hard work and even though you could see a lot being accomplished we felt like there was still so much to do.

The second person is Jared. He works for Poured Out, the organization we worked with during the few days we were there. Jared was our project coordinator and also ran the skid loader to bring the rubble of someone’s home to the side of the street for the city to pick up. Jared is 20 years old, and we were able to talk to him about life. For someone so young he has a lot of perspective. He has a goal of eventually being able to work for Poured Out full time. He was working a good job, where he was paid well, but he was unable to have the flexibility of taking off 3 weeks here and there to work with Poured Out, so he quits his job on faith and finds a part time position at a church in town where he now has the flexibility he need to be able to go where he feels God is leading him too.

The other five people were the team from Heartland. These were people that were so flexible that took time away from work, they never complained (at least to my face), and were always willing to do the uncomfortable, even work in 95-degree weather to get the job accomplished. Angie, Jeff, Kayla, Dani, and Eric, I would take you anywhere, I would trust you with anything, and I might just follow your directions, just not all at once. I felt I knew them all well before the trip, but there is something special that happens on these trips that would take months or even years in a church setting. The forming of community is a special thing, and that is what this trip was all about for me.

On the trip home, we asked group questions, everyone had to answer, unless they were asleep. Some were funny, some were just to help us know the individual more. But as time progressed the conversation turned to more serious things. Things we would not normally share outside of family or those closest to us. And that is when I realized our community had become a family. Something everyone desires but very few receive.

Independence

My parents tell me that I was an independent child. I always wanted to try things on my own. I would fix breakfast or lunch on my own from a pretty young age. Remember steakumm sandwiches. Not sure if they still make them or not. I was awesome at fixing those.

Why ask for help when I am able to do it, or at least attempt it. I was content shooting basketball on my own in the driveway. I was content riding my bike places instead of depending on my parents for transportation. I would ride miles to go to a friend’s house. It gave me a sense of freedom.

When I went to college I went 1300 miles away from home. I did know some people at the school. But there was something about the unknown that intrigued me. Getting away from family and friends did not seem to bother me. I thought of it as an adventure. Even as a 17-year-old when I decided on Indiana I knew it would work out. Being on my own did not seem to scare me.

In college things started to change, I started to form a community around me. But the pull of being independent was still there. It is hard to be in a community and still be independent. My freshman year in spite of the great friendships I made I was still very independent. It allowed me to still do the things that I wanted to do, whether they were helpful or harmful to myself or even my friends.

God was molding me and it hurt. People confronted me about my actions. People saw dangerous behavior in my life. At times I did not like what I saw in the mirror. I started to realize I had anger, that I was very prideful. My community was a good one and they put up with a lot from me. I am surprised they still like me by the end of the year, well; most of them still liked me.

I was finding my independence did not really work very well if I wanted to be a part of a community. There was something that had to change about me. But I knew it would not be on my own that I could change. It would have to be through Christ and as a part of my community.

This will be my first post in series on independence, freedom and community. Oh and by the way, Have a Happy Independence Day this week..

The last year on the road

A year ago things seemed bleak, if you told me then where I would be today, I would have laughed at you. It was almost a year ago that we met with a prospective birth mother at Bethany Christian Services. "Baby boy" was born on March 28th and for a couple months things were up in the air. He was in interim foster care for almost 2 months. It was also almost a year ago that we started talking to IA-MN District about going to Heartland.

On May 20, after a few phone conversations and face to face interviews I candidated at Heartland. May 24th we went and picked up Tedy and brought him to his forever home. I am still amazed with the process but it seemed things were starting to go right.

We have now been at Heartland 8 months and things are starting to take off. New faces are coming weekly and people are slowly being made new. It seems that a lot of the people that are coming are dechurched. At one time they came to church but for one reason or another they walked away. Others are coming because they are being brought by their kids who attend our midweek family ministries. Our attendance in February is up 58% from last years average. God is blessing Heartland.

 When people ask what I/we are doing to see this happen, I say I do not know, but God is really blessing us right now. We are being the church, we are going outside of the walls, we are having fun, morale is high and we are Loving God and neighbor. And God is blessing that.

We are starting to plan Tedy's first birthday. He is growing even faster than Heartland. He is doing things I really did not expect for an almost 11 month old. And God is blessing us as parents. Just last week the a teen/church surprised us by organizing a monthly date night for Jenny and I. They gave a number of gift cards to restaurants. It is evident they care about us.

I have been in full time ministry as an assistant/ youth pastor off and on over the last 9 years. As much as I have enjoyed ministry in the past I love being a lead pastor. I live casting vision. I am finally figuring out what type of pastor I was meant to be. My personality is finally coming out in my ministry. I am allowed to be myself. God continue to reveal yourself to us. Show Heartland how we can love you and your community more. You are our God and we are your people. This is your church. Continue to bless it and continue to make people new.

God on the road

I am writing this blog not even sure of what I am going to say. Which is rare because I am always full of words. God is good. I have been told in the last couple months that a former youth does not believe that this is true. He struggles with the idea of evil and God allowing it to happen. I talk to him about free will. I ran into this quote by CS Lewis, "Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." He struggles with how he sees the church treating the LGBTQ community. So he has walked away from his beliefs that God is good. I talk to him about being the change in the church. If the church will ever bridge the gap they need people like him to help show them the love and grace of God. But how we cannot dismiss the truth of scripture. We cannot always consider a church and God to be on the same page. We cannot always let someone in the church let us view God in an unhealthy manner, because God is always good, even though his followers are not. God is good.

I have a number of friends who are separated and in the process of divorce. This saddens me because at some point in their lives they have let sin enter their lives and their heart has been hardened. Some of them have walked away from God and the church during this time, because of the lack of grace they felt from the church. Unfortunately they let someone else take their eyes off of God on the road. Because God is still good.

I am disheartened lately because of the burden God has given me for his people. But I know this burden is not a curse but a blessing. He has given me a Pastor's heart and helping me see things a little more clearer and a little through his own eyes. He sees a world that is hurting and longing for more grace, love, and even truth in their lives. They are longing for someone to care for them like the church has always supposed to have been doing. Obedience is a core issue of the heart. God is longing for hearts of obedience to follow him. People talk about the idea of happiness. But in a lot of the cases that I have discussed they have forsaken the obedience of God for their happiness. God is not always concerned with our happiness but our holiness. If you want fulfillment, obey Christ. If you want JOY, obey Christ. You will never have true freedom in your life until you obey. GOD IS GOOD