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Is Jesus Your Reason for the Season?

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By Bill Naron

Christmas approaching is another reminder that another year is ending. The Christmas season is a great time of year for reorienting our lives around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, with only weeks left in the year, I find myself reflecting on the greatest point of growth in our family. One of the things that has tremendously blessed our family is the practice of family discipleship.

In the Scriptures in Deuteronomy 6:7, we are given the command to teach the words and statutes of God diligently to our children. In Ephesians 6:4, fathers are encouraged to not provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It was through these Scriptures that I realized I needed to more diligently pursue the discipling of my family. As my wife and I have tried to incorporate consistent and purposeful discipleship in the house, we have learned a few valuable lessons.

The first lesson that I have learned when it comes to family discipleship is that it looks different from family to family. This point may not seem so profound, but it has been huge for me. I spent countless numbers of hours online trying to figure out what a strong and successful family discipleship program looks like. I found some resources of liturgical readings, some great hymnal resources for families, and even found some blog posts that were filled with suggestions of how to successfully disciple your family. All of these resources are helpful, but what I have come to realize is that how you disciple is not nearly as important as what you teach.

In a lot of ways, we can become so stuck on making sure that we do something the right way that we miss the point entirely. The Scriptures do not call us to disciple our children in a specific way; rather, the concern is that we teach them the words of God. The goal of family discipleship is that Jesus would be at the center of everything we do. Discipleship takes people and helps them shape their lives around the gospel.

The second lesson that has been extremely valuable to me and my wife is learning to have grace for ourselves when Bible time is inconsistent. None of us are Jesus, and we are not going to hit the mark every single time. It is important that as one attempts to disciple their family that they extend themselves grace. The important thing is to make sure that Jesus is at the center of everything. I know from personal experience that when we attempt to consistently get into the Word as a family, it gets messy. This is because so many things are pulling for our attention.

This brings me to the third lesson that I have learned. In our pursuit of family discipleship, we have learned that we have to intentionally place priority on discipleship. Within the average household, each family member is splitting his or her time several different ways. For this reason, it is important that we set time aside and make sure that it is distraction-free. We typically schedule ours for nighttime, because this is what works best with the rhythm of our house. But this is not the only time it takes place. For instance, our family works through a biblical-character calendar. This allows us to take the character qualities we are learning about and identify real-life applications during our days and weeks.

This is a topic that I have become truly passionate about. I desire to see family discipleship become an integral part of the Church in America. I believe that the call in Deuteronomy 6:7 and the call of Ephesians 6:4 are easy to overlook. However, this is a huge responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of parents. Since we have started doing family discipleship more intentionally, our family has been tremendously blessed. We get to see our children grow in the way that they process spiritual things, and as we learn and teach them, we grow as well.

In closing, I want to leave you, the reader, with some encouragement this holiday season. My encouragement is to take the time you are given this season and commit now to a more diligent approach to family discipleship. I encourage you to figure out how your family discipleship will look. Try different approaches; you will never know how it will work until you try. Remember that it will be messy and inconsistent. It is a growth process for every family, so do not get discouraged. Above all, my encouragement to you, the reader, is to examine what is at the center of your family in an honest way. Ask yourself if your top priority is Jesus and how He shapes your family’s decisions.

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The Antidote for Burnout

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By Larry Short

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. (Romans 12:11-13, MSG)

In challenging times such as these, which seem to take an extraordinary level of effort to hold onto whatever hope can be had—when we are tempted to throw in the towel and retreat into ourselves—we seriously need the perspective that the Apostle Paul provides us with in his letter to the Romans.

What is God’s will for us, when we are in danger of burnout? “Keep yourselves fueled and aflame.” And how exactly do we do this?

  1. Realize that we are not the bosses of ourselves! We have a Master. He is calling us to reject cynicism and to be “cheerfully expectant.” He is the God of all hope; and even when we can’t see the sunrise on the horizon, He promises that it is coming. “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). We must not quit in hard times, but stick to our commitment to keep on keepin’ on until we see Him finish the good work that He has begun in us and has promised that He will finish (Philippians 1:6).
  2. “Pray all the harder.” I don’t know about you, but I have to confess that I don’t pray all that hard. I can do a lot of things hard—complain hard, lick my own wounds hard, or guard my own self-interests hard. But pray hard? In times when we feel like quitting, God is calling us to pray harder instead.
  3. Help needy Christians. As we walk down this hard-packed path of life, we are surrounded by people with needs. Do we keep our eyes open to those needs, allowing them to touch our hearts? For Jesus, when He saw human need, He had compassion and was moved to action. “Lift your eyes,” He told us, “for the fields are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). The executive fire chief for Central Pierce County recently told me that the majority of calls his 9-1-1 operators received were not specifically related to emergencies, but were made by lonely, hurting, and desperate people who just needed to connect with people who cared. Are we willing to “lift our eyes” and see these needs around us? Ironically, spending ourselves to help others is a key way to “keep ourselves fueled and aflame.”
  4. And this is one I really think Elim needs to hear. Paul says, “Be inventive in hospitality.” Literally, “pursue hospitality.” Not simply “practice hospitality” or “be hospitable,” but be passionate and creative in pursuit of it! God calls us to open our hearts and lives to those around us who aren’t necessarily “in our circle,” to those who are on the fringe, to outsiders. We are very good at connecting with those inside our circle, but not nearly as good at breaking the circle and inviting others in. The extent to which we will be energetically inventive in hospitality is the extent to which we ourselves will be kept aflame and refueled.

Do you feel like you are out of gas? Close to burnout? Do you want to give up, to retreat, to withdraw? Trust in God’s Word and do the exact opposite of what you feel your “own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is calling you to do. Rather than hunker down, hop up and open up your arms to others around you. Embrace a cheerful hope. Pray hard. Invest in helping others. And pursue creative ways to open up your life to those outside your circle!

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What Is Happening with the Transition Team?

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by Pastor Steve McCoy

It has been over five months since I’ve come to serve here. The initial months were filled with interviewing some 124 people.

Starting in the fall, I began working with a 26-person Transition Team. We began by doing a number of analyses and assessments. Currently, we are working on drafting a mission statement. This is a brief, broad, biblical statement of what the church is supposed to be doing. You might call this it a biblical job description for the church. This is a very challenging exercise, but once it is done, it will really help the church to focus on what it needs to do.

A multi-month assignment for the Transition Team is to conduct interviews themselves. I’ve challenged each team member to interview three unchurched people. They have a one-page question sheet to help them connect and discover perceptions of the church.

On top of this, I have challenged each member to conduct three other interviews with school officials, government leaders, business leaders, community leaders, etc. They have another interview form to help them sniff out community needs.

The Transition Team will take about six months. If all goes well, we will finish up in February or March of 2020. After that, we will launch the Pastoral Search Team. The ultimate goal is to help our church find the next pastor.

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In Everything . . . Give Thanks

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by Brian Waple

“Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NLT)

Driving home from a meeting this morning, I passed a church with this message on their sign: “In Everything Give Thanks.” After reading that, it made me think about what it meant. I mean, during this time of Thanksgiving, I know we all get caught up in the trappings of Thanksgiving dinners and football games and visiting relatives, and we often need to be reminded to actually be thankful. And certainly in the good times, I am very thankful—thankful for my family, thankful for a job, thankful for good health, thankful for a community in which to worship God. I thank God always for these things.

But I think Paul means more than that in this first letter to the Thessalonians. He had taught them that in spite of any persecution they may be suffering, or worldly temptations they might be facing, they should be thankful God loves them so much that He is constantly working among them to accomplish His will. Throughout much of what is now Turkey, Paul had been preaching the Good News. And what was that Good News? That God Himself had come to Earth in the form of a Jewish baby named Jesus; that He had lived a sinless life; that He had preached the true God and ministered to the masses; that because of Pharisaical prejudice and fear, He was taken captive, tried, convicted, and put to death on a cross; and that He was buried and three days later rose from the dead to mediate on our behalf. Thankful for the crucifixion? Absolutely, especially when you consider that through that heinous act, the free gift of salvation and eternal life was made available to those who believe.

So does that mean I should be thankful for the bad things that happen, as well as the good? Bad things happen. But one thing I’m continuing to learn about God is that regardless of what’s happening to me or those around me, God is present. And God is good. Even when I sense that prayers are not being answered or I don’t understand what’s happening, I believe that God knows and God acts. And in that, I can truly be thankful.

So, as we celebrate the season, may we be reminded of everything we have to be thankful for—the good and the not so good. Because God is in all of it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Surrender Never Gives Up

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By Jeff Foerster

The commands of God can seem daunting—there are over 600 listed throughout Scripture. That may conjure an image of a multipage checklist that might best be used to overwhelm rather than instruct. Add to this what James says: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” Now that’s a downer if I’ve ever heard one. Breaking even one command, even once, bears the guilt of breaking it all. Now before you throw caution, and good theology, to the wind and say, What’s the use? it’s important to understand the purpose of the law—the commands of God.

The law has become our instructor, our “tutor,” to give us a clear picture of our dire situation before God. All religions build a stairway to heaven, one step after another—works or actions, things to do or things to deny oneself. Not so with Jesus. He, and He alone, has completed the law, living a perfect life on Earth, in the presence of man and God. Our pathway IS Jesus, not mimicking His behaviors or tailor selecting some commands of God to emphasize and proudly display to others. You bring nothing to salvation. God’s work in you produces a humble spirit, one willing to say as Jesus did, “Not as I will, but as You will.”

And there it is. A right understanding and heart acceptance of the commands of God produces obedience, not hopelessness. It brings life and not burden. It brings contentment and joy, not anxiety and despair. This idea strikes a chord in me, personally. I recall a few years back when I was frequenting the King County jail system, visiting inmates. We would organize an informal service with singing, a message, and prayer. It was in this regular time that I heard my fellow worker (we went in as pairs) as he spoke of “peace.” He did so frequently and, quite frankly, I wasn’t feeling it. I felt exhausted, tired from work, tired from service—just plain exhausted.

I remember hearing about the fruit of the Christian life being joy and contentment. And I thought, “Great, something else on my plate.” I felt I had yet another task: to produce a smile and a positive attitude to attract nonbelieving folks to Christ. That, as I saw it, was my duty as a follower of Jesus. Exhausted. The commands of God can look the same—more work to do. What was the problem? My way of living was heavy on “doing.” Living in Christ is like being saved in Christ: works follow, they don’t construct, they don’t create a relationship with Jesus. Works don’t maintain or replace a relationship with God—time spent is what nourishes.

More and more, my enthusiasm for life and service comes from my time of quiet, my time with the Lord and His instruction, His commands. Instruction comes from Scripture and from prompting of the Holy Spirit applying God’s word. “Your word I have treasured in my heart.” If you desire detail and precision on working this out, I understand. Many questions I myself have asked. Yet the answers don’t come from me. We must go directly to God.

Don’t have time to spend with God? Allow me to stab at the heart of American consumerism: we all need downtime. We don’t need entertainment. If your pace is frantic, entertainment, often found in screen time, will not bring you the peace that your soul needs. Only time with Jesus can do that. Know anyone who says they spend too much time with God? That their life could benefit from more entertainment? There is fulfillment in no other thing and no other person. We were made for relationship with the Almighty, for communion with our true soul mate.

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Identity

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By Brian Sharpe

Fear can be debilitating. I hate failing. Sometimes I would rather not try than fail. This fear of failure is ultimately rooted in a proper placement of identity. As believers, we are given a new identity. We learn in 1 Peter 2:10 that we went from people with no identity to a people who have an identity in Christ. Our identity as believers is different from other people’s identity. For those who do not follow God, their identity has been placed in what they do. As believer, our identity must be in what God says about us.

As a kid, I just wanted to be liked. In junior high, I was the class clown, because it was a way my peers would respond to me. I remember one time I received a box of hand-me-downs from someone in our church. I wore them to school the next day, and people commented on how good I looked. I remember feeling accepted by my peers. From that point forward, I always wanted to dress nice. In fact, when I went into high school and got a job, I spent a lot of money on clothes that I thought would make me look and feel good about myself. My identity was wrapped up in what others thought of me.

As humans, our identity can be wrapped up in many things. It could be how much money we make or the job title we have in front of our name. It could be the friends we have or our family. Our identity could be wrapped in how good of a musician we are or how great a fan we are of our favorite team (Go Bills!). Our identity could be wrapped in so many things that when things aren’t going the way they should, we are led to debilitating fear.

Instead of having our identity wrapped in what other people think of us, our identity needs to be wrapped up in what God says about us. What does God say about us?

Who I Am in Christ

(originally compiled by Neil Anderson)

I Am Accepted

John 1:12 – I am God’s child.

John 15:15 – As a disciple, I am a friend of Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1 – I have been justified (declared righteous).

1 Corinthians 6:17 – I am united with the Lord, and I am one with Him in spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 – I have been bought with a price and I belong to God.

1 Corinthians 12:27 – I am a member of Christ’s body.

Ephesians 1:3–8 – I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child.

Colossians 1:13–14 – I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins.

Colossians 2:9–10 – I am complete in Christ.

Hebrews 4:14–16 – I have direct access to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ.

I Am Secure

Romans 8:1–2 – I am free from condemnation.

Romans 8:28 – I am assured that God works for my good in all circumstances.

Romans 8:31–39 – I am free from any condemnation brought against me and I cannot be

separated from the love of God.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 – I have been established, anointed, and sealed by God.

Colossians 3:1–4 – I am hidden with Christ in God.

Philippians 1:6 – I am confident that God will complete the good work He started in me.

Philippians 3:20 – I am a citizen of heaven.

2 Timothy 1:7 – I have been given a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind.

1 John 5:18 – I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me.

I Am Significant

John 15:5 – I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine, and a channel of His life.

John 15:16 – I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit.

1 Corinthians 3:16 – I am God’s temple.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 – I am a minister of reconciliation for God.

Ephesians 2:6 – I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm.

Ephesians 2:10 – I am God’s workmanship.

Ephesians 3:12 – I may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

As believers, we need to focus on what we know to be true about ourselves based on what God says. We do not need to be bound by our past sins and failures. Our family-of-origin issues can be overcome because of who Christ is and what He has done for us. We need to trust God with our identity and our life and surrender our life to Him. We do not have to live in fear, because perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18)!

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