Our Impact youth group had a contest to see which school could raise the most money for Speed The Light (STL). STL helps missionaries purchase the equipment that will help them speed the light of the gospel around the world. Our Cedar Springs students, Kent City students, and missionaries are all winners!
“Ladies and gentleman, come see the amazing high wire act! Watch closely as he crosses the chasm on a tightrope without a net!” Well, at least that’s what it feels like for me.
On September 8 and September 15 we will be doing our annual Q Series at Calvary Assembly of God. These are Sundays where I don’t prepare a sermon, but I prepare myself to answer questions that are thrown at me on any topic. And I feel a little like the man walking on a tightrope without a net.
Here we go!
If you’d like to submit a question, you can do so in the comments below. You can always send questions to me via Twitter or email. If you won’t be able to attend the services, we’ll make an audio link available with my answer to your question.
If you can attend in person (each of these Sundays at 10:30am), we will have a text number available so you can anonymously text your question to the computer techs.
It’s always fun and educational, so I hope you will be able to join us.
I have often said that one of the most arrogant, short-sighted prayers we can ever pray is this: “Lord, please bless what I’m about to do.”
Why is this arrogance? Because I’m presuming to know what’s best. I am saying, “God, this is what I have decided is the best thing to do, and I want You to bless it.” In reality, God has already decided what He is going to do, and He will bless me if I do that.
Listen to what God says—
“This is what the Lord says, He who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is His name: ‘Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’” (Jeremiah 33:2-3)
I love that promise: Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know!
This is as true for me personally as it is corporately for the church I get to pastor. So this Sunday I am taking time to talk to the congregation of Calvary Assembly of God about what I believe God is calling us to do. If you are in the area, I’d love to have you join us.
Whether you can attend on Sunday or not, this is a great reminder for all of us. Let’s not tell God our puny plans and ask Him to bless them, but let’s ask Him to show us great and unsearchable things that He is blessing so that we can get to work doing those things. You will be blessed by doing what God is doing.
I’ve been leading my congregation through a spiritual workout from the 119th Psalm. This psalm is unique for a couple of reasons: (1) It’s the longest chapter in the Bible; (2) It’s divided into twenty-two 8-verse segments, with each segment beginning with its own Hebrew letter; and (3) All but four of the 176 verses directly mention God’s Word (using words like command, precept, statues, commands, etc.).
Something else that makes this psalm interesting to study is the Hebrew alphabet itself. In our western world, a letter is just a letter: an L is just an L. But in the Hebrew language, the letters have a name, a meaning, and even a numeric value. So the Hebrew equivalent to our English L is the letter/word lamedh.
Lamedh is the tallest of all the Hebrew letters, so that means it stands out. The section called lamedh in Psalm 119 is one of big proportions. Words like eternal, boundless, established, enduring, and forever are prominent in these eight verses. The psalmist is inviting us to climb up into God’s Word and get a bigger view, a higher vantage point of who God is.
When we are in difficult places, we tend to focus more on our problems, and less on God’s awesomeness. So lamedh is a call to shift our gaze.
But this letter/word also has a definition, and lamedh is a double-edged definition. This word can mean to learn. Indeed, as we gaze upon God’s majesty, we learn so much more about Him! But lamedh also means to teach.
I have found that as I go through difficult times and choose to change my focus from my situation to my Savior, that I learn more about His faithfulness. But at the same time, others are learning from that decision to switch my gaze to God.
So I’ve got one word of advice for you if you feel like your problem is too big and you’re thinking about throwing in the towel: DON’T!!
By focusing on God’s bigness instead of your circumstance, you will learn to grow in faith. And at the same times you will be teaching others to place their faith in God too.
Those who wait on God will soar to new heights!
If you have missed any of the messages in our P119 series, you can access them all by clicking here.
“Hey, Pete,” I asked, “How’s the new workout routine going?”
“Well,” said Pete a little sheepishly, “It’s not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to be able to run that 5k charity run next spring, but I can hardly make it around the block. How in the world am I ever going to run 5 kilometers?! So I just threw in the towel.”
If Pete has never run before, it’s a bit unrealistic for him to complete a 5k on his first day lacing up his running shoes, don’t you think? But far too often we throw in the towel before we even get started!
How about someone’s pursuit of God? God is so vast, so majestic, so awesome. And then we hear words from Jesus telling us, “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Just like Pete we think, “How am I ever going to do that?!” and we throw in the towel before we even start.
But God already started something when He created you. What God creates, He completes; and what He completes, He completes perfectly.
The prophet Zechariah said, “Do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).
The psalmist wrote, “Your hands formed me and made me; give me understanding to learn Your commands” (Psalm 119:73). There is just one Hebrew word for “Your hands” and it also happens to be the name of that section in Psalm 119: Yodh.
Yodh has a corresponding Greek word: Iota. This word shows up in Matthew 5:18 when Jesus says, “Not one iota of God’s Word will ever be wasted.”
God created you perfectly and on purpose. What He created, He wants to see completed perfectly too. He will do this through His Word working in you. The question is: Will you get started? The Hebrew letter yodh is the smallest of the Hebrew letters, but don’t despise its small beginning. Don’t despise the work God started in you either. So what if you can’t run a spiritual 5k yet … you can grow into that maturity by letting God’s Word work on you right now, right where you are.
Will you let God get started today?
If you have missed any of the messages in our P119 series, you can access them all by clicking here.
No, an oxymoron is not the big oaf sitting next to you! An oxymoron is a literary term where two seemingly contradictory things are put together to make a new item. For instance, jumbo shrimp isn’t something that is big smallness, but a tasty seafood dish. A girl who is awfully pretty isn’t a beautiful jerk, but someone remarkably cute.
I love the oxymoron that appears in the section of Psalm 119 called Teth—good pain. In just eight verses the word good appears six times, right alongside the word afflicted, which appears twice.
How in the world can pain be good?!?
To be sure there is bad pain, but where does good pain come in? Bad pain is the pain that sends you to the doctor, perhaps the pain that means you need to have surgery. There is still pain after the surgery, but that’s a good pain because it reminds you that what was wrong has been fixed. But if what was wrong has now been fixed, wouldn’t we say that the initial pain was really good pain all along?
That’s what the writer of the 119th Psalm thought. He said, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn Your decrees” (v. 71). Do you see the good pain there? How about in verse 67: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey Your Word.”
A 16th-century monk named John of the Cross described good pain this way—
“Thou hast wounded me, oh, hand Divine, in order to heal me, and Thou hast slain in me that which would have slain me but for the life of God wherein now I see that I live.” (emphasis added)
We’re really good at dulling physical pain with aspirin, Motrin and Tylenol. We try to chase away emotional pain with anti-depressants. And, to our own harm, we try to excuse or mask our spiritual pain too. But that spiritual pain is GOOD pain … if we will listen to it.
The psalmist knew good pain that came from the Holy Spirit’s illumination of God’s Word was something to pay attention to and obey quickly. The writer of Hebrews knew it too—
For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power, making it active, operative, energizing, and effective; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and the immortal spirit, and of joints and marrow of the deepest parts of our nature, exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12, Amplified Bible)
Don’t ignore that spiritual pain. It’s good pain for those who will listen.
If you have missed any of the messages in our P119 series, you can access them all by clicking here.
Here is a video review Waterbrook Multnomah Press asked me to do on Plastic Donuts. This review is especially for other pastors, but I think you’ll see how much I liked this book. If you would like to read my full book review, you may do so by clicking here, you may also read some of my favorite quotes from the book by clicking here.
Calvary Assembly of God, get ready … you’re going to hear more about Plastic Donuts soon. And I’ve got a special gift for you too! Stay tuned.
I love this verse from Isaiah: Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a Voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21). This foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian is powerful.
The Voice can be an audible voice, but not always. Sometimes the Holy Spirit says, “This is the way” through different modes. Things like:
But here’s an important thing to remember: The Voice of the Holy Spirit is not perceived by those people intent on doing things their own way. The Voice may be speaking, but those people are simply not tuned-in. The individuals that hear the Voice saying, “This is the way” are those who are determined to obey what the Voice says to them.
In Romans 12, Paul says that as our act of spiritual worship we lay our lives on the altar: we give up trying to control our own lives. He goes on to say that when we do this, we will quickly discover what God’s good, perfect and pleasing will is. In other words, we will be receptive to His Voice leading us into His perfect plan for us. So the Holy Spirit can direct us only after we’ve given up trying to direct our own affairs. Or said another way—
“Oh, this baptism of the Holy Spirit is an inward presence of the personality of God that lifts, prays, takes hold, and lives in us with a tranquility of peace and power that rests and says, ‘It is all right.’ …Oh, this God of grace! Oh, this willingness for God to let us see His face! Oh, this longing of my soul that cannot be satisfied without more of God!” —Smith Wigglesworth
Here are some of the quotes I used in my message this morning…
“The Holy Spirit is not a luxury, not something added now and again to produce a deluxe type of Christian once in a generation. No, He is for every child of God a vital necessity, and that He fill and indwell His people is more than a languid hope. It is rather an inescapable imperative.” —A.W. Tozer
“There is nothing so still and gentle as the checks of the Holy Spirit if they are yielded to, emancipation is the result; but let them be trifled with, and there will come a hardening of the life away from God. Don’t quench the Spirit. … Guard as your greatest gift the anointing of the Holy Spirit.” —Oswald Chambers
“Jesus doesn’t say we will baptized with the Holy Spirit and power (see Acts 1:8), but that we will be baptized with the Holy Spirit AS power. There’s a huge difference! It means we will have everything we need to always overcome, to never be at a loss!” —CTO
Here are a couple of great quotes from Andrew Murray that I shared with our Dads (and future Dads!) at Calvary Assembly of God this morning.
“God seeks a people on earth to do His will. The family is the great institution for this object; a believing and God-devoted father is one of the mightiest means of grace.”
“O God, teach me to realize fully what this parental faithfulness involves that You ask of me. I would make this the one object of my family life, to train my child to serve You. By my life, by my words, by my prayers, by gentleness and love, by authority and instruction, I would lead them in the way of the Lord. Be my helper, Lord. Above all, help me to remember that You have appointed this parental training for the fulfillment of Your purposes and that You have made provision for the grace to enable me to perform it. Let my faith envision Your undertaking for me in all that I must do to raise my children to love you. I ask all this in the name of Your Son. Amen.”
Craig T. Owens 