The Biggest "But" In The Bible

A single mom who put herself through college in hopes of providing a better life for her family gets the call from HR after interviewing for her dream job. She hears, “You have amazing strengths and qualifications, BUT we just don’t feel like you’re the right fit for us at this time.” Her disappointment seems crushing!

A 15 year old boy spends all summer training and practicing for for high school football tryouts. He gives 110% and feels confident he’s made the team. Until the coach calls him into his office to say...”You gave a great effort kid, BUT we feel you aren’t quite ready. Keep practicing and try again next year...” It's a massive setback for his hopes of being a high school athlete!

A man who God called to do some seemingly impossible things answers, “you’ve got the wrong guy”, but eventually obeys and becomes the leader of an entire nation. Despite his insecurities and fears, he continues to trust God and faithfully leads His people through all the ups and downs with the hope that they would arrive in the land promised to them. Near the end of his days, God leads him to a mountain and shows him the promised land. The long, difficult journey is over and the hard-earned reward is there for him to enjoy!

Until God says this in Deuteronomy 34: “I have now allowed you to see it with your own eyes, BUT you will not enter the land.” (There’s that “but” word again bringing with it disappointments and setbacks!)

It’s the biggest “but” in the Bible and I can’t help but be gripped with disappointment for Moses every time I read the story. Can you imagine how he may have felt standing on that mountain? Yet the story ends by saying Moses was the greatest of all the prophets. Moses’s life is a model to us for giving our all to God even when we’re going through all of it.

I hope you’ll join me this weekend as we talk more about living lives of authentic worship to God, even when we’re in the mess of disappointments, setback and failures. I’m praying now that people will find hope and strength as they desire to trust God, while navigating their own life’s troubles. It’s never easy, but it is possible!

Grace and Peace.

Pastor Rex

Think Spring

My wife Jackie, bought a decoration that said ‘Think Spring’ and it is the first thing we see when we walk through our front door.

 In Seattle, meteorologists tell us we have only had four days without rain since November, so yes, we are ready to think spring. On Sunday we had a spring day. Day five on the count-down for nice days this winter. The birds were singing at dawn. I had not heard them sing with so much gusto! Maybe Seasonal Affective Disorder affects song birds too. The day was just rejuvenating for all of our community. I like to think we all need renewal or springtime in our soul. Artists, authors, CEO's, grade school children, athletes, marrieds and singles. Springtime is not only a phenomena of nature, it is a state-of-mind. So let’s think newness, sunshine, realistic optimism, and enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by. Let’s think spring.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim

The One Who Does Impossible

A teenage girl lays on her bed praying...begging God to help her parents stop the fighting and yelling. Her days are filled with worry that they will divorce and her family will be torn apart. She prays- unsure her words are getting past the ceiling of her bedroom. Her prayers come from a real and deep place of desperation, but she’s never met the One who does impossible, so she has no idea what to expect. Who knows what will happen?

A successful man who is well respected within his church and known as a man of great faith prays for someone who is very sick. His prayer is confident and loud as he boldly states...”I CLAIM healing over you!” and then walks away without giving any more thought to his prayer. Will his extreme confidence move God to heal? Who knows what will happen?

A busy, single mother of 2 young children sits exhausted on her couch after finally getting the kids to bed and the house picked up. No energy to even see what’s new on Netflix. She sits in her exhausted state and begins to think about the bills that are piling up. Some surprise medical costs have her very worried about keeping up with the rent, so she begins to pray. She needs a financial miracle! As she prays, her voice trembles a bit with emotion. She’s scared about her future, but also knows that God has never before left her high and dry. She prays from a place of tension where there are the real questions of “what if?”, but also with confidence, because the One who does impossible has always been good. Who knows what will happen?

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is in real trouble and he sends his followers to Jesus with this question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”. Jesus’s answer is powerful, fascinating and very important for all of us today who are in need of a miracle!

Would you join me with Sunday as we look honestly into the tension of both expecting our miracle and wondering what happens if it doesn’t come?  The One who does impossible is so good and our miracle might be right around the corner! I look forward to seeking, learning and growing with you on Sunday.

Grace and Peace.

Pastor Rex

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

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

---

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