Power of Presence

If you know me, you know that one of my great passions in life is baseball. Specifically coaching baseball. The other day, while helping a group of catchers practice different mobilities for blocking pitches, I thought to myself...”I could be here all day.”  I just love coaching youth players!

Well, my team (Bothell Rockies) has a short list of values that we constantly review. One of them is the value of “togetherness” and the other day, I read them this quote from Babe Ruth who said, “the way a team plays as a whole determines its success”.  If you’ve ever played on a team, or work within a team at your job...you know these are true words.

Not only is togetherness crucial to a team, it’s crucial for every church. It’s something every follower of Jesus should value if they desire to have gospel-effectiveness in their community and the world. But this value of togetherness isn’t as easy as some may think.

We live within a culture that is quickly losing its grasp of togetherness and leaning more and more towards celebrating individualism. The cost? Too many have wandered into the desert of isolation where all sense of team, unity and community go to dry up and die.

One, if not the best reason a church should value togetherness is because the Bible has a lot to say about it. Jesus said...”wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there.”  The Apostle Paul speaks to the church being like a physical body made up of parts that rely on each other for proper function and effectiveness.

One reason I believe some find togetherness hard to commit to is because they think they somehow have to be just. like. everyone. else.

Not true!

Our differences, when not looked upon as right, or wrong...better, or worse - but actually celebrated, are what make the Church so valuable to the world. A City on a hill kind of church like Jesus described!

I’m excited to talk more about the real power of being present this Sunday, and to look closely at some of Jesus’s teaching about why it’s such a crucial value for us who make up Washington Cathedral, as we live in these urgent times.

Will you join me, and maybe bring a friend? See you Sunday!

Grace and Peace.

Pastor Rex

Ask! Seek! Knock!

This next Sunday I will again be preaching on New Year – New Miracles, only now I am led to share how the Bible teaches us to step out in faith.  Next week Pastor Rex will be teaching from Matthew 11 on the passage where Jesus tells the disciples of John the Baptist to “go, and tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”  Matthew 11:4  He is helping us to see how to not get trapped in the ‘Name It and Claim It’ theology.  We want people to look at our lives and see Jesus working.  It will be a great conclusion to the series on miracles.  But this week, before Pastor Rex’s dramatic conclusion on Super bowl weekend, I will be preaching on a message that will set up his message;  our role is stepping out in faith if we want to see God work.  Thus the words of Jesus in the sermon on the mount;  Ask – Seek – Knock.  When Jesus healed someone he would say, “do you want to get well?”  That is a miraculous question! Our act of faith plays into the formula for amazing miracles.  Can you imagine a relationship with God where we expect, through magical thinking, that God did everything and we did nothing?  We could live a life in defiance of obeying God, treating God as just a force that did what we told him to.  I would pray, “God make me lose all the weight I need to lose and to be in amazing shape”, and then I walk in front of a mirror and see a perfect body.  That would be weird wouldn’t it? Instead God says, “I will help you but you have to eat less and exercise more.  And it’s going to take a while.”

I pray that we will learn the power of Mountain moving faith.

 For example:

 Last week Washington Cathedral was packed with people who were celebrating the life of Suzette Dalpez.  I have been her pastor for over 20 years.  Just before she died she still had a smile on her face and twinkles in her eyes.  She was the love of Steve Dalpez and they led two TLCs.  For 19 years these TLCs have been feeding homeless teenagers in our community.  It all takes place above and beyond their normal tithes and offerings and it’s just the way these wonderful people lived their lives.  Steve showed me where Suzette had her quiet times in her home doing her daily devotion.  Just a short time before Suzette passed she was at a church Christmas party and after the party she was carrying chairs (which Steve and Suzette got San Michelle Winery to donate to the church).  She was twinkling and loving Steve to the moment she passed to heaven.  Her faith was mountain moving and all her family wanted to report what they had heard and seen in the way Suzette acted out her loving obedience to the way of Jesus Christ.

 Another example:

 Last Saturday night one of my best friends in the world passed on to heaven. Rod Halvorson was just a great man.  He had just read all the way through the Bible before being diagnosed with liver cancer.  Rod was always one of the biggest encouragements in my life.  We would go to the movies together or watch games together and it was always a party.  His eyes twinkled and, like his twin brother Randy, he was a handsome man.  I watched how he ran his business and worked so honestly and forthrightly with his employees.  When I got out of the hospital one time after a massive pulmonary embolism, he told me he was going to kick my butt if I ever went to the hospital again without telling him.  He and Randy are the longest surviving patients with Duchene’s Muscular Dystrophy. Rod had the most generous heart for children and for those whose life was spent in a wheel chair.  He asked me to take him to the tent city village that we are watching after –and we planned on going to a movie together but both were not to be. Like Suzette, Rod always had a twinkle in his eyes. Right up until he walked into heaven holding the hand of Jesus, he was loving everyone around him.  Go and tell about what you have seen and heard in the lives of Rod Halvorson and Suzette Dalpez.  They loved greatly, they dreamed big.  With the power of faith God worked the impossible through their lives.  The way they thought, prayed, worked, and dreamed was faith in Jesus Christ. 

 This is what we are going to learn this week.  Mountain moving faith.  Not just talk or magical thinking, but action. Ask, Seek, Knock.

 Would you join me this weekend for this life changing message?

Pastor Tim

Miracles, Waiting and Kadosh

A woman waits in a doctor’s office to hear what her test results are. The wait is difficult...

A little boy anxiously waits in his bed for Christmas morning to arrive. The wait seems endless...

A groom patiently stands at the alter waiting to see his beautiful bride walk down the aisle. The wait is sacred...

Waiting - even for the good, happy and beautiful things of life is difficult. Why? Because we simply don’t wait well!

Many of us who might be reading this are in need of some kind of miracle. Healing...a new job...restored marriage...an acceptance letter to that dream university. Miracles place our faith in the reality where we’ve accepted that we’ve done all we can do and now it’s God’s time to powerfully, lovingly and mysteriously make a way for what now seems impossible.

While we wait and endure in the tension of our doubt and hope, we can wait for our miracle in one of two ways: passively, or expectantly.

We passively wait when we simply ask God to do something big for us and then go about life as normal. Work...homework...TV...Facebook...Etc...  It’s not that passively waiting is wrong. But isn't there more?  Shouldn’t we show God and ourselves a little more urgency? After all, we’re talking about miracles here, right?

In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God tells the people of Israel to be “holy”. The prophet Isaiah once saw a choir of angels singing to each other, “holy, holy, holy”.

The word holy here in its original language (Hebrew) is Kadosh. Kadosh means “distinction”, or “set apart”. Kadosh has nothing to do with being better than (holier than thou), rather it has everything to do with putting ourselves in a place where we have a deep awareness of our self and need for God.

When we need and wait for our miracle, God asks us to be holy. To realize that we can’t fix this...we’re not in control of this. So we set our hearts apart from the busy, mundane distractions and we seek Kadosh.  Holiness.

I hope you’ll join me this Sunday morning as we explore this further and get honest about the struggle of waiting for our miracle; God’s desire for us to be holy and how we can have hearts that expectantly wait for our miracle.

Grace and Peace.

Rex

Alone No More

Have you ever had a slightly (or maybe not so slight) irrational fear of something?  I think we all have something that frightens us and we really can’t quite figure out why, but it is still there.  My fear was of being alone.  It did start when I was a child, but as a child I can’t think of one time that I did not have either my mom or my dad in the house with me at night.  Even in college I had a roommate asleep in the other room at night.  When I was a live-in nanny, I had the family I worked for with me.  So it wasn’t until I got married that I had my first experience of being totally alone.

My husband, Rich, was in the Air Force and he had times that he would need to travel and I would be left in our apartment alone.  This was in Forest Hill, Maryland, and I knew no one.  My parents were 3,000 miles away (literally) and I had not had time to get acquainted with our neighbors.  I laid awake all night tossing, turning, and crying.  It was so bad that Rich finally called my mom and dad, unbeknownst to me, and arranged to have my dog flown out to live with us.  That was really sweet and I will love him forever for his kindness, but Gidget weighed all of 15 lbs and was not what you would call a watch dog. 

Even after Rich was discharged from active duty and took a job at an advertising agency in Philadelphia, he still traveled.  My fear kept me awake most of the nights he was gone.  This continued for about 30 years of our marriage.  I could not seem to shake it.  It was so bad that even installing an alarm system did not help me sleep. 

I kept telling myself it was not rational and I needed to get over this.  But all the self-talk in the world was not making a difference.  I loved my life, I knew I had many loving friends, I knew that I was loved by God, but being alone haunted me.

One night I was crying out to God to take away my fear and I opened up my Bible to Psalm 91.  The entire Psalm spoke right to my heart, but the words that jumped out to me were “You will not fear the terror of night…If you make the Most High your dwelling – even the Lord, who is my refuge – then no harm will befall you….For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”  I felt a peace come over me.  That night I slept so soundly and awoke refreshed and renewed. 

From that point forward, if I ever felt anxious, I recalled God’s angels standing guard.  I thanked Him that He was with me.  It became real to me at that time, that I am never alone.  You are never alone either.  God’s loves you.  He designed you specifically to live in relationship with Him and He will never leave you.  That is not my promise to you.  That is His.

Pastor Linda Skinner

What are you wearing?

What do Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars and Miley Cyrus all have in common?  I learned after attending a seminar that just mentioning one of their names in a blog will increase the attention you get on the web.  I didn’t, however, learn who they are because I belong to the secret society of the ‘uncool’, which prevents all members from knowing anything about what is cool.  It is kind of a “bizzaro world” to find I am the opposite of today’s cool young pastors.   But happily I am part of the church, which is the family of God where we are all loved and accepted.

Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free.  Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. Colossians 3:10-11

Have you intentionally put on your new nature today?  I remember when I was a football player we had a cowboy on our team who used to put his pants on two legs at a time. I asked him once why he did such an odd thing and he responded, “Well, right now the other teams coach is telling his players not to worry about us, we put our pants on one leg at a time. I am proving to them that they need to worry about me.”

Putting clothes on is an intentional act.  Have you ever tried to dress a two year old? They squirm – they run away. In fact, I think they would rather be naked like some vestige left from the Adam and Eve linage from the Garden of Eden.

Putting on our “new Christ like nature” clothing is also purposeful.  We clothe ourselves with tenderheartedness, mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  We make allowance for each other’s faults.  And above all else we clothe ourselves with Christ’s love.  Just like we decide what we are going to wear for the day every morning, we need to make the choice to put on a Christ like nature.

For some of us it is slipping on a cross necklace everyday.  For others it is kneeling at the foot of our bed to dedicate the day to Jesus before we tackle the challenges ahead of us. There are so many ways to make that choice ranging from daily devotions to verse memorization to quiet time in prayer to many other practices. What purposeful steps are you taking to dedicate each and everyday to filling your life with Christ?

There are so many different ways, find the one that centers your heart on Christ. Be willing to change up your routine if your heart isn’t following your actions. And remember you are not alone in pursuing a deeper relationship with Christ, your church family (the same one that accepts my uncoolness) is there to encourage and support you.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypBccI8YBH8

Big Faith In A Behind the Scenes God

I, like many of you, love a great action movie full of stunts and special effects. Every once in a while a great film comes around and will buy it on DVD so I can watch it long after it’s left the theaters. Most of today’s movies come with special features on the DVD like “deleted scenes” or a “behind the scenes look” at how the special effects were done. I never watch those features. Why? Because it erases all of my awe and wonder of simply enjoying the movie. I don’t need to know how the stunts were done. Rather, I just need to believe that somehow, someway they made something impossible look real and then I get the benefit of engaging in the story of the film.

Thousands of years ago, the prophet Isaiah foretold of a day in which God would give Israel a Messiah. A king of all kings who would deliver them from oppression and free them once and for all. 700 long years would pass before Isaiah’s prophecy would come true in the birth of Jesus.

700 years of waiting and hoping while God worked behind the scenes.

What was God doing all this time? Who knows. Why did it take so long? Your guess is as good as mine.

Scripture is full of stories where people waited on God. Waiting seems to be inseparable from our faith. We pray and seek God for answers and then almost always, we wait. Sometimes we wait a very long time and yet God comes through. Why? Because it’s His nature to be faithful. Leaving us stranded with unanswered prayers or empty hope is NEVER a part of God’s plans!

When we’re in that place of waiting on God, the point isn’t to try and figure Him out when He seems silent or becoming anxious over wondering if He’s doing anything at all. The point is to live in His peace, while knowing that the waiting is for our benefit.

After all, God said through the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

Are you frustrated with God today? Wondering if he’s listening to your prayers? Are you finding yourself living in more anxiety than peace?

Try this little practice: find a time and place of solitude this week and begin to recall (even if it means going back to your childhood) when God answered your prayers. Often, when we remember His faithfulness in our past, we can be at peace in our today while we wait and He works behind the scenes for our good.

Grace and Peace.

Pastor Rex

Photo Credit

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1V_qtyg8AI

If Only

Written by Pastor Tim White  Statisticians say that the average 80 year has said “if only” an average of 24.7 times a day their lifetime. That’s a lot of wasted time.   A famous statistician once said, that it is proven that 87.8% of all statistics quoted are made up on the spot.

Ba dum dum tisk!

That would be my way of telling a joke. The point is that when we study Samson’s life in Judges 13-16, you can’t help but think ‘wow he had so much potential but he kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over again.’ His whole life was an “if only.”

But there was another judge in Scripture that pastor Ben McCary is preaching on this week. His name is Samuel and he lived his entire life with integrity. At the end of his life he stood before the nation and asked, “Does anyone have anything they can say negatively about me?” The people, many of whom Samuel had rebuked for their actions, had to admit that there was nothing in his life where he had stepped out of integrity.

But you, dear friends, must continue to build your lives on the foundation of your holy faith. And continue to pray as you are directed by the Holy Spirit.    Jude 1:20 (NLT)

Just by looking at these two Judges of Israel for many centuries ago we see the importance of moving from think “If only” to challenging ourselves with “Next Time, Boldly”. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes and being caught in the quick sand of the poison of our sinfulness, let God lift us to next time boldly.

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The Rest of the Story… Deborah, the prophetess and leader of the Israelites

Written by Fiona Monaghan What do we have in common with the Old Testament Israelites today? Probably not living in tents or measuring our wealth by the number of camels we own, but we do face a same choice as we go about our lives: Do we choose to obey or disobey a direction from God?

One of the stories that I have recently been studying is the story of Deborah in Judges. At the beginning of her story the Israelite people were following the familiar cycle in the Old Testament, falling into disobedience once again and had begun to worship local gods forsaking their allegiance to the one true God of Moses. As a result, they had been allowed by God to be oppressed under Caananite rule for the past 20 years.

Deborah was a Judge and Prophetess during this time. The people of Israelite would come to her and have their local and personal disputes settled. She would listen to the people and in turn listen to God. Using the wisdom given to her by God she would these issues. There was no written text to follow at this time; so what she spoke was purely that which she received from the Lord.

One day God told her it was time for an uprising on the part of Israel and that a man named Barak was the one to lead the revolt. However, Barak wasn’t too keen on the idea as Sisera, the general of the Canaanites, was much better equipped with 900 bronze chariots. Barak entreated Deborah to come with him. She complied but pointed out that it wouldn’t look very good if God delivered Sisera into the hands of woman and that he that needed to lead. Deborah knew that God had already planned out how the uprising would go, but He needed the people to believe and make it happen. He needed to use the arms, legs, and bodies of Israelites to do the work- to be obedient. They could say to God “go ahead and do what you need to do” but He works through people, using their arms and their legs, their hearts and their minds.

So what do we have in common with the Israelites? We have an opportunity to trust God and do great things. Do we trust God by being his hands and feet to make happen what He already has arranged OR do we continue in the years of bondage, frustration and unhealthy choices that are around us and within our families?

He already has a plan. He knows what it will take to bring it about. You need to choose whether you will fit into his plan and be the hands and feet in order to make it happen or go about life haphazard and wandering and wondering what happened. Make a decision what you are going to do.

Choose this day who you will serve. Make a difference in your life and in your family’s life. Get to know God personally and ask Him what he has for you to do. What it is that is needed to bring about change within yourself and those you care about? He will share His plan with you if you ask.

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Did you miss Pastor Tim's sermon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnpA90SllnE

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