God has a good memory

Jeanne Jugan has written, “Go and find -Jesus when your patience and strength give out and you feel alone and helpless. He is waiting for you. Say to him, ‘-Jesus, you know exactly what is going on. You are all I have, and you know all. Come to my help.’ And then go and don’t worry about how you are going to manage. That you have told God about it is enough. He has a good memory.”

Prayer of Humble Access

This prayer is often used early in the church worship gatherings to help prepare people's hearts for worship in the Anglican and some Catholic traditions:

he 1552 revision (in the modernised spelling of the 1662 Prayer Book) reads as follows:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

Prayer for Father's Day...

Reflecting on this prayer from common prayer.net today:

Lord, wherever there is mercy, justice, freedom, and kindness, we know your good news is echoing in human history. Give us ears to recognize the sound of glad feet coming and grant us grace to join you wherever you are moving. Amen.

Commanded to delight?

I was reflecting on this prayer this morning:

"Shine your light on our darkness, Lord : and teach us the duty of delight."

Psalm 37:4English Standard Version (ESV)

4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

When we gather as a church...

I read this prayer today and thought about how powerful it is when we make the time to meet together as a church - especially on Sunday mornings.  With the tragedy in Orlando last week we were able to pray just hours after the horrible events happened asking for God to empower His people in Orlando to love on the victims and their families.  God moves when we meet!

Ignatius of Antioch said, “Take heed, then, to come together often to give thanks to God, and show his praise. For when you come frequently together in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and his fiery darts of sin fall back, worthless. For your unity and harmonious faith prove his destruction, and the torment of his assistants.

Taking note...

I have been thinking about this statement made by the religious establishment in the first century toward followers of Christ as recorded in Acts 4:

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

Later these guys would celebrate the fact that were given the 'privilege' of suffering for the sake of Jesus' name (Acts 5):
41 The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

Makes me ponder my own life in Christ.  Can people tell I've been with Jesus?  Do I consider suffering something to rejoice over?  

Bless us with discomfort...

God, give us discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that instead we may live deep within our hearts. Grant us anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of -people, so that we may wish for justice, freedom, and peace. Bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen.

Prayer for the day...

Grow us slowly, persistently, and deeply, Lord, to be -people who watch without distraction, listen without interruption, and stay put without inclination to flee. 

Amen.

Being a MENSCH...

Just read Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki and he speaks of, in leadership, we ought to be aiming to be not just good leaders but great humans that attempts to make the world a better place and give people the benefit of the doubt.  Good thoughts!

Becoming the Answer...

Fresh off of Memorial Day, I thought this recent article from commonprayer.net today was relevant for those who are part of the community of Jesus Christ...

Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: A Few Ideas

1.   Wash your clothes by hand and dry them on a line. Remember the 1.6 billion -people who do not have electricity.

2.   Learn to sew. Try making your own clothes for a year.

3.   Eat only one bowl of rice a day for a week. (Be sure also to take a multivitamin.) And remember the twenty-five thousand -people who die of malnutrition and starvation each day.

4.   Keep the Sabbath holy. Rest one day a week this year — ​don’t answer the phone or the door, and don’t use the internet. Do something that brings you life that day.

5.   Go to a city council meeting. Pray. Speak as the Spirit leads.

Where does help come from?

I read and pondered this Psalm today.  When we are in need, where is the first place we turn?  To Jesus or to friends, family, the church, government, etc.?  We are tempted to try and either fix it ourselves or find the easiest short term relief.  Yet, the psalmist gives us something else which echoes Jesus telling us to seek first His kingdom and righteousness and all these things will be added to us.  The hymn tells us plainly, "I lift my eyes up to the hills.  From where does my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."

Lord, teach us to come to You first.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+121&version=ESV

Lectio Divina or Sacred Reading

In the last few years I have become aware of some ancient practices that have helped followers of Christ for centuries and some have been helpful for me.  One of those is called 'lectio divina' or the practice of sacred reading.  The idea is simple but powerful.  It breaks down like this:

Preparation - find a quiet place, take deep breaths, and relax.  To help quiet your mind you might recite the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner) or simple phrases like "here I am Lord", "Speak Lord for your servant is listening" or even just "come Lord Jesus".

Read - now you read and ponder a passage of Scripture - Psalms are great for this.  Listen for a word or phrase that you sense God directing your attention to.

Reflect - you now meditate and consider what this passage is saying to you? How does it connect with your story and life right now?

Respond - what can you speak back to the Lord based on what you have encountered?

Rest - coming back to square one you settle back down and rest in God's Word.

Resolve - pray and begin to live out what God's Word spoke to you.

Summer teaching series on Galatians is heating up folks!

I'm so excited to be going verse by verse and drawing out what the Lord wants our church to hear this summer in the letter of Paul to the Galatians!  I've been studying up for awhile on this 6 chapter letter and have enjoyed NT Wright's work on the letter.  In fact, when this series kicks off in June, I'll be departing from my usual use of the English Standard Version and using his translation of Galatians as our key text!  You can get a copy via Amazon if you so choose...it is a nice addition to other translations.

Here is a sample from HarperCollins:

Return to the Psalms

I just finished another class towards my master's degree from Hope International University, and, it was a great class focused on Psalms.  What struck me about the class was the reality that a good portion of the songs, hymns and poetry of the Psalms comes in the form of lament.  When do we lament in our corporate worship gatherings on Sundays?  Where do we voice our honest complaints and concerns to God corporately?  Ancient Israel didn't seem to shy away from such raw emotion - why do we?  Isn't God big enough to handle our frustrations that the world is not quite what it is supposed to be?  I'm pondering how to put more of this ancient hymnbook into our modern worship environments...

Oh, this was a great article I read today...http://worshipleader.com/worship/the-psalms/

Ben

Old School Devos...

I often post prayers and thoughts from this website resource that I discovered a few years back after reading some of Shane Claiborne's work.  He wrote The Irresistible Revolution and Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.  It might help spark some new thinking in your devotional life.  Here is the website:  www.commonprayer.net.

In Christ!
Pastor Ben

The Jesus Prayer

I've used a simple prayer from the early days of the church that some call The Jesus Prayer.  It is a simple prayer that helps me center my focus on Jesus in our crazy, busy, noisy world.  It goes like this:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy On Me, A Sinner."

No, it is not some kind of magical formula or touchy-feely mantra to repeat over and over but a way to refocus a wandering mind in prayer.

I hope that helps you as much as it has helped me to be more prayerful this year!

Pastor Ben

Spring Madness!

TIME FOR A BLOG UPDATE...Well, it has been an interesting year for my family to say the least!  As of last week, we are relocated into a new (to us) home in Dallas.  I am also happy to be in the last phase of finishing up my Masters of Ministry from Hope International University.   Our daughter Emma will turn 20 in July and get married to her fiancé Tyler the first week in August at my parents' farm near Sheridan, Oregon.  Dylan is becoming quite the musician, singer and actor while also getting back into pitching baseball for Dallas High School.  Jackie and I celebrated 23 years of marriage.  She is still my sweetheart.  Dallas Church celebrated 2 years of being in our own facility last weekend.  I bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and sold my trusty old 1951 Chevrolet Pickup.  American politics are weird right now.  Feeling like God is maturing me this year as my ONE WORD for the year (instead of a list of goals) was "prayerful".  All in all, I know God is in control and He is truly good!

Deep & Wide

I just finished reading Andy Stanley's book Deep & Wide and I'm once again pumped up about being part of a church that is relentless in expecting, welcoming and being irresistible to those who are not part of it!  He writes in his conclusion, "Let's decide not to do anything that makes it unnecessarily difficult for those who are turning to God" (Stanley 2012, 317).

Amen.

Tough Questions Series

I'll be attempting to bring some answers to some of the tough questions raised in our sermon series called "Tough Questions" for July and August at Dallas Church.  Don't miss a Sunday as we navigate real questions that we often wonder about and maybe keep us up at night!

From commonprayer.net today:

"Twentieth-century Presbyterian theologian and writer Frederick Buechner has written, “Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits -people? Every person has his own tale to tell, including the person who would not believe in God if you paid him. Some moment happens in your life that makes you say Yes right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. Laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. Waking up to the first snow. Being in bed with somebody you love. Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you try to turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to Business as Usual, it may lose you the whole ball game. If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul. How about the person you know who as far as you can possibly tell has never had such a moment? Maybe for that person the moment that has to happen is you.”