Skip to content

Pastor’s Paragraphs – August 29, 2014

Dr. Rick MarshallI am pleased to have the opportunity for some reflection and planning with our staff leadership team on Monday and Tuesday of this week. We look forward to developing stronger ministries and improving communication as we evaluate needs and potential in our church. Much of what we seek to do comes from feedback you give us as well as challenges God has laid on our heart. It is our desire to give our church the best leadership possible for the day and time we live in.

By the time you read this I will have offered a word for the staff to consider and will for all of us in the church. It is this, “We may not be able to change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust the sails.” It will be the theme of my work with not only our staff, but other areas of leadership in our church in the coming months.

On the other side of our work, your ministers are praying for a strong sense of concern and renewed commitment to the Lord’s work through our church. The role of ministers is to point the way and “equip the saints.” Ministry is all of our jobs. Paul made the pointed contrast when he urged the Romans to be “transformed into Christ” rather than “conformed to the world.” It still remains the great challenge for believers twenty centuries later.

In particular, let me offer a word of challenge to our young families. It is not intended as criticism, but concern. I realize the vulnerability to the world’s pressures on time and energy they face. My prayer is that we will be seen as an ally, not just another entity pulling on the family. My concern is that many are losing out on some of the most important training spiritually they could receive. I urge parents to consider carefully and prayerfully your role in the spiritual development of your children. What is distinctive about Christian families is the place God has in their home and the commitments they make to spiritual training. Surely God is not honored and the world is not changed if Christian families have no different priorities than a lost world.

I wish for each of you a safe and happy Labor Day weekend!

 

L. Rick Marshall

Share this post

Related posts

FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

God Leads Us

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge…

God is Enough

Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.…