Category: Dan Amos

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by Dan Amos

I’ve been thinking a lot about life and our American standard of living over the last couple of years. With our economy tanking, people losing jobs and homes, it has made me contemplate what God has promised us. He promises to love us, to forgive us, to make us his own, to give us eternal life, to remember our sins no more. He gave us his son who lived our life, never sinned, died in our place, paid our penalty, rose again, and reigns forever more. That’s everything! Is it enough, enough to be our source of joy?

We are not promised jobs, medical care, homes, family, health, two cars and a dog. In Matthew 5 Jesus sat his disciples down and gave them a counter cultural sermon. He told them to forget what they had been taught about anger and murder, adultery and divorce, keeping their word, revenge and gave them the heart attitude they should have instead.

Continuing into chapter 6 he taught them how to pray–simply and seeking God’s will. Then he continued into living his righteousness, for his kingdom and not here, and to not worry about what life brings. If he cares for the birds of the field, how much more does he care for us? After all, he sent his son to die in our place.

We reject the “health and wealth” doctrine some churches preach. That is, a life lived in Christ results in material blessings. Pastor Mark Driscoll lampoons that false teaching as thinking of God as a cosmic piñata that we can whack and goodies fall out. But, I’ve come to realize in some way I (maybe we?) have embraced the same doctrine, just with a lower threshold. In the last few months as I’ve seen my job become precarious and then canceled, people have encouraged me with the thought I will find another, better job. Well…maybe…maybe not.

But, if I find a job, even a better job, is God good? Yes. If I don’t find a better job and we lose our house and our stuff, is God good? Yes. God never changes and if he is good in the good times, he is good in the difficult times. God is good; he always has been and always will be. And if I have God, if I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, do I have everything that matters? Yes, I do. Is it enough? Is it enough for you, too?

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by Dan Amos

Saying “I will let you down” is not a statement of intent, it’s merely an acknowledgement that it happens. I often think I should warn people of this because I’ve known me for a long time and I know it’s the truth. I can get cranky and selfish. I can stick my size 11 foot in my mouth and I can make the wrong choice. What I don’t want is to have my perfect savior judged by my imperfect actions.

These thoughts are inspired by things I’ve seen on Facebook recently where I enjoy reading what is posted by our young adults. It’s not always easy because they tend to post wildly divergent thoughts in sentence-long bursts that are nearly always devoid of context. They swing from the thoughtful to the silly, to the ones that make me wince. Still, they make me think.

My niece had expressed astonishment the KKK still exists. It doesn’t surprise me because there’s so much hate in the world and sometimes it is practiced by those who claim to be Christians but who really are not. And one of our own wrote, “Everyone’s practicing the exact opposite of what they’re preaching.” I don’t know the context of what he was saying, but often it is true. If we believe in Christ and our lives are being transformed, why do we do the opposite of what we know we should?

So, outside the body of Christ there’s hate and self-centeredness. Inside the Church we follow a God who lived as a loving, selfless, serving, sinless man. When he calls us and we are made a part of his family the Bible says we are being transformed, being made new. But this doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process that lasts as long as we remain in this life and isn’t completed until we are face-to-face with him.

We still make mistakes. Even Paul made mistakes and he was miraculously saved by Jesus on the road to Damascus and spent one-on-one, face-to-face time with the risen and glorified Lord. I’ve even thought if only I had this type of encounter I would have so much more faith, but that’s not how it works. Paul’s life was completely redirected and he still lamented that he would do the things he didn’t want to do and that he was the chief of sinners.

The point here is we don’t follow people; we can’t. We are instructed to live a life as an example to others and to learn from others’ examples. But, we follow Christ and must keep our eyes on him. On occasion we will let each other down but Christ never will. He never has and never will. Don’t give up on Jesus because of his people. Instead exercise the grace and mercy he has shown each of us and we’ll grow together—imperfectly and sometimes annoying each other—and we’ll be perfected when we all are in heaven with Jesus and without the scars of sin.

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by Dan Amos

I grew up with church on Sunday mornings and Sunday and Wednesday nights and Sunday School all year round. Even in Germany we had everything except Wednesday nights; we had something called AWANA then. So, when we came to Washington 16 years ago it was a bit of a shock to find pretty much everywhere that things seemed to shut down in the summer, even here at Elim. Appearances can be deceiving!

It’s true we don’t have those regular events that I grew up with, but I never said I actually liked them either. Wednesday nights were excruciating and, truthfully, soured me on corporate prayer. I think it is God’s sense of humor that he took one of the least in prayer to be part of The Gathering where we have a good time worshiping him in prayer. So if you feel like I did, come join us during The Gathering and see if God doesn’t change your mind (and heart), too.

It’s also true that many of our community groups take the summer off and Women’s Bible Study takes a break. Sure, there are lots of youth activities and families do a lot during the summer, but what about our church family? This was brought to me as a need and I took it to the Elder Board. Very shortly the building that Elim calls home is going to get torn up during construction and re-carpeting. We call Sunday morning “church” and we call the building “the church” but really collectively we are the church and church meets whenever we do.

Below you’ll find a list of the group activities when our church has plans to meet this summer. If I added Sunday mornings to it, it would be even longer. I also left out 5-day clubs, youth, and young adults. The women have coffees and Connecting Hearts events. The latter alternate between evening and morning meetings to allow more women to participate in at least some of them. The men even have a couple of events in there, too.

“Family Time” though is something the Elder Board added to get our whole body, the church, together four times during the summer. The idea is to come together, eat together, and play together. Pretty much everyone I know eats on Wednesdays, so instead of eating at home, bring your dinner to the place we call “church” and eat it together with the people we call “family” who are the church at Elim. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks and hopefully by the end of June we’ll have some dry weather.

The calendar is packed and our first Family Time will be while our youth and their leaders are at Challenge in Ohio. We’ll still have a good time, but if you have any ideas for pick-up activities, like volleyball, please let me know.

I know many are looking forward to our summer Sunday morning schedule with just the single service (starts at 9:30). We are excited because our whole family will worship together at the same time. We’ll get to see everybody together and get acquainted but only if you’re there. And if the sun finally shines on Sundays, we will start our mornings worshiping the Son indoors with our church family in the building Elim calls home.

Date – Target Group – Event

6/6 – All – Farewell to Champneys
6/12 – All- Workday
6/12 – Women – Coffee
6/13 – All – Picnic
6/19 – All – Yard Sale
6/19 – All – Gathering
6/30 – All – Family Time
7/7 – Men – Shooting Range
7/10 – Women – Coffee
7/10 – All – Gathering
7/14 6 pm – Women – Connecting Hearts
7/14 – Jr High/Parents – Family Fun Center
7/17 – Sr High/Parents – Hike
7/21 – All – Family Time
7/28 9 am – Women – Connecting Hearts
7/28 – All – Feed the Homeless
8/4 – Men – Batting Cages
8/6-8/8 – All – Family Camp/Gathering
8/9-8/13 – All – Soccer Camp
8/11 6 pm – Women – Connecting Hearts
8/14 – Women – Coffee
8/18 – All – Family Time
8/25 9 am – Women – Connecting Hearts

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by Dan Amos

I know the clichéd commercial’s line ends “…I can’t get up” but if you don’t have any margin the effect is the same. Margins are the available space on the page of life where we can add the extra sentence when we’ve already filled the page. It’s that space where we experience the unexpected. My margins have been on my mind constantly.

Martin presented a sermon last year on creating space for others and margin in our finances so we build financial space to act when someone needs help. I am finding the concept applies to pretty much every part of my life.

For instance, when I was receiving career transition assistance (in 1996) the counselors would tell everyone to make sure we exercised, ate nutritious meals and got plenty of sleep because the process was going to be stressful. This concept applies to all of my life now that I’m older and less resilient.

It applies to relationships too. I can’t buy relationships; they only prosper and grow with the time I put into them. My family and friends give me the grace when I have to move into the margins for a short while. But this only works if I’ve established healthy margins during the rest of the time.

Where I really need to follow Jesus’ example is in creating my spiritual margin. Jesus was surrounded by sick and hurting people and he was uniquely able to help them. Though living as a man, he lived in the power of the Holy Spirit and he knew the scriptures like no one else. But we see him get away from the crowds, rest, and spend time with the Father. He actively worked on his margin.

When his time came and there was no more margin left, he was prepared because he lived his life with margins, within the will of the Father. This is where I need to be too. The financial, physical, and emotional margins take intentional effort to create and maintain. I need to put the same effort into extending my spiritual margin

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by Dan Amos

The fear of the Lord can be a difficult concept to grasp. It didn’t make sense to me that a God who created us to have communion with him would want us to be afraid of him.

A little light came on for me when I was a second lieutenant. In my first assignment I had the fortune of being assigned to two men with warrior spirits. My supervisor was Capt Williams who had transferred to the Air Force from the Marines. The motto of our office was “to close with and destroy the enemy using firepower and maneuver.” This was pretty ambitious for a bunch of intelligence analysts, but it set the tone.

Our commander was Lieutenant Colonel Bohn. I learned many things from him, but in this note I’ll only talk about fear.

You didn’t go to the commander’s office, you reported. That meant marching to the front of his desk, coming to attention with heels together and feet angled 45 degrees, back straight, left hand grasping an imaginary roll of quarters and thumb pointing down the seam of my pants. With my eyes forward and head not moving I’d salute with my right hand, forefinger just touching my eyebrow.

Now he might return my salute immediately and put me at ease or he might let me stand there for what seemed an eternity until he would return my salute and leave me at attention. It depended greatly whether I was there for reward, assignment, or discipline. I got to experience all three.

When I accepted my commission I gave up certain rights and put my destiny in the hands of others. Lt Col Bohn could make or break my career. My time in his command could be rewarding or it could be absolute misery. I wanted to do my best and it was through him that I would know whether I was in line with the mission.

For me this became an imperfect picture of my fear of the Lord. He has numbered my days. He is active in my life and my life is his. I willingly serve him and strive to set aside my will for his. He gives me assignments and it is my job to carry them out. And, like the tools in Harold Eash’s carpenter story, it is my job to do what God has called me to do.

So, when I was asked to return to the Elder Board I immediately said yes. I know the timing of nominations and was prepared if asked. At the annual meeting I and several others will have that invitation to serve confirmed or rejected. But either way, I know I don’t have to fear the result.

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