Ryan Upton will be performing his Christian Hip-Hop at a totally secular event on December 14th at Davey’s Uptown.  It would be great to see several of us show up and support Ryan.  Here is some info as stated in the flyer:

WATCH BANDS BATTLE LIVE AND VOTE FOR WHO YOU THINK DESERVES A $1 MILLION RECORDING CONTRACT. 

December 14, 2007 at Davey’s Uptown  3402 Main Street - Kansas City, MO  64111

Doors open at 6:00 pm - Ages 21+

Buy tickets now at BODOGLIFE.NET

bodogBATTLE - ONE BAND.  ONE CONTRACT.  ONE MILLION

It’s funny how deluded we can be as to where we are in our walk with the Lord.  We often tend to think we are further down the road than what we really are.  And we wonder why God has not already done the thing that we think He should have done by now.  WE AREN’T READY!  It could destroy us if God provided us with blessing we weren’t equipped to handle.  So He blesses gradually as we grow.

There are some profound truths that are in one of the opening chapters of the Green Letters that were a good wake-up call to me.  Each of these truths may require a week to ponder but I wanted to share them as a way for us to understand how much more growing up we have to do.  Here are the words of Wm. R. Newell as quoted in the Green Letters:

“To believe, and to consent to be loved while unworthy, is the great secret.”

“To refuse to make ‘resolutions’ and ‘vows’; for that is to trust in the flesh.”

“To expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more lack of worth.”

“To rely on God’s chastening (child training) hand as a mark of His kindness.”

“To ‘hope to be better’ (hence acceptable) is to fail to see yourself in Christ only.”

“To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself.”

“To be discouraged is unbelief - as to God’s purpose and plan of blessing for you.”

“To be proud, is to be blind!  For we have no standing before God, in ourselves.”

“The lack of Divine blessing, therefore, comes from unbelief, and not from failure of devotion.”

“To preach devotion first, and blessing second, is to reverse God’s order, and preach law, not grace.  The Law made man’s blessing depend on devotion; Grace confers undeserved, unconditional blessing:  our devotion may follow, but does not always do so - in proper measure.”

These are life-transforming truths.  Pray through these and trust the Lord to perform them in your life. 

If you have been following the College reading log you know that this morning’s reading took us into the book of I Chronicles.  If you glance at the first several chapters you will see it filled with geneologies.  One might be tempted to say, “Ugghh!  What am I supposed to get out of that?”  Well, I’ll tell you what I got out of the first two chapters…  At one section in those chapters you will see name after name, each followed with “and he died.”  And then someone else is mentioned and you see “and he died.”  You will read about all of  these people whose lives are summed up for us by half a verse and we are told “and he died.”

Here’s what it got me thinking…  We are so caught up with the here and now.  We aren’t much different than my small boys who, upon hearing that Christmas is a month away, would say, “But that takes too long!”  These passages of Scripture go to show how quickly generation after generation after generation goes by to God.

Have you heard the verse in Scripture that states “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”?  There are a couple of ways of looking at that verse but one way is to see that a thousand years ARE LIKE ONE DAY TO GOD.  That is how fast a thousand years go by to Him.  The Bible also states that the years we spend on this earth are threescore and ten and how those who make fourscore have days filled with trouble.  (By the way, a “score” is 20 years so He saying man typically lives 70 years on this earth but if he reaches 80, his life is filled with trouble.)

Think about it…  If 1000 years go by like a single day to God and we only live 70 years, how long do our lives last to God? - I did the math!  If you live to be 70, to God you live on earth 1.68 hours.  In other words, you live 1 hr., 40 min., 48 sec.!  YOUR LIFE ON EARTH IS JUST A SHORT MOVIE TO GOD!

The moral of this story is that we should live in and for eternity and stop living in and for the here and now.  We need to live in the here and now when it comes to communing with the Lord but when it comes to God’s promises for us, we need to live in eternity.  RELAX!!!  REST IN THE LORD.  IT WILL HAPPEN IN TIME IF IT IS GOD’S WILL.  If it isn’t God’s will, it won’t happen no matter how much you fret.  So stop fretting and get back to what God’s will is for you.  People, we are supposed to enjoy the Lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  An eternal perspective is the only perspective that will provide you with clarity.

A series of quotations from the Green Letters…

Alexander R. Hay states:  “Faith must be based upon certainty.  There must be definite knowledge of God’s purpose and will.  Without that there can be no true faith.  For faith is not a force that we exercise or a striving to believe that something shall be, thinking that if we believe hard enough it will come to pass.”  Miles Stanford comments:  “That may be positive thinking, but certainly not biblical faith.”

Evan Hopkins writes:  “Faith needs facts to rest upon.  Presumption can take fancy instead of fact.  God in His Word reveals to us the facts with which faith has to deal.”  Stanfords says, “There can be no steadfastness apart from immovable facts.  Peter’s burden was, ‘That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.’ (1 Peter 1:7).”

In other words, God will test your faith ON PURPOSE.  It is only with opposition that resistance can be built up.  God desires to develop that strength in us so that we can more effectively fight the good fight of faith and grow strong in the Lord and the power of His might.

Is your faith being challenged in some way?  A word of advice…  What does GOD SAY about it?  Revisit that promise and live there.  Dwell in that promise.  Another way of saying this is:  Stay in positional thinking.  Your conditions will change with the wind.  Your position is a fortress that cannot be moved.   

Looking for a way to get involved? Here’s a few upcoming events to get you started.

Prayer

8:00am Sunday morning in the Upper Room

Q&A Bible Study

Do you have questions about the life and the Bible? Join Jim Lee in the Upper Room at 7pm Tuesday evenings to get them answered! This is a great opportunity to invite friends and co-workers to meet Jim, too.

Campus Bible Studies

The Longview Bible Study meets at the Basham’s on Tuesday nights at 7 - talk to Nick for more info.

The Next Level (UMKC Bible Study) meets Thursday nights at 7pm in Florsheim Hall Room 305.

Paul’s and Timothy’s

Looking for someone older in their faith to help teach you about the Lord? Talk to Craig and Lori Rookstool about the Directions study!

Junior High Sold Out and High School Home Groups are great ways for you to be a Paul to someone else - take the things the Lord has revealed to you and help the next generation! Sold Out meets 7pm Wednesday nights at the Point; Home Groups meet around the KC-Metro area throughout the week.

Connections Teams

Sunday mornings are a key time for new people to come into our family. Join one of our seven Connections teams and help them feel more at home! Whether you ware looking to help setup the room, serving coffees, take attendance, greet our guests as they enter or help with traffic flow, there is a spot for you! Sign up with Devon Paul today!

Chambers quotes 1 Corinthians 10:31 from the reading for Thanksgiving Day!  “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”  Some of the thoughts that were conveyed in this reading are worth passing along.  He talks about the importance of the seemingly unimportant things of our lives…

“Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound…  To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps:  the ocean has a shore.  The shallow amenities of life, eating and drinking, walking and talking, are all ordained by God.  These are the things in which Our Lord lived.  He lived in them as the Son of God, and He said that ‘the disciple is not above his Master.’”

When I read this it makes me think of how entrusting we are to the Lord in the big things and how free of God we are in the small things.  We understand our desperation for the Lord in those things that are beyond us but the shallow things of life are unimportant, and therefore, can be handled by us without the help of God.  The shallow times of our lives are our “free pass” to live in the power of the flesh apart from God.

Yesterday I preached Kelly’s grandma’s funeral. - This was a big deal.  I knew I needed the Lord.  I asked for prayer from everyone I came into contact with.  But today, having all of that behind me, I find myself in the same place…  needing the Lord….  wanting the Lord…  desiring that He take me and use me…  and lead me…  even though today is a simple day of just fellowshipping around food and drink and fun.

Find God in the shallow things!

2 Chronicles 1 - 5 “chronicles” the building of God’s temple. It is a picture for you and me of how God builds His church and His people. Here is what I got this morning that intrigued me. Up until the end of this section of Scripture dealing with the building of the temple, it is all about putting things in their place. It focuses on the furnishings and the craftsmanship. Preparations are made, skilled artists and workers are employed, and we learn all about how this place was put together.

Well then the kicker… God SO SHOWS UP after everything is in its place. You see how God doesn’t just bless without any means to deal with the blessing. He didn’t pour out His Spirit until the walls were up, the furnishings were in their place, and the sacrifices were made. There is a lesson in this for us corporately as well as individually. What do you have “out of place” in your own life? Do your part and prepare your temple. For our College ministry there is a lesson as well… We are in the process of putting together our new Connections Ministry which is set for the training of leaders and caring for the sheep. The only requirements for being involved is making the sacrifice of being at 8 am prayer and then consistently fulfilling the work of the ministry. Getting this ministry functional is important if we want God to work among us and bless us with fruit. Now, check out how 2 Chronicles 5 ends…

I’m learning to believe past my emotional state and live in reality. It seems that the Lord keeps challenging this death in me, to ignore the self-life of my circumstantial feelings and live in TRUE VICTORY. And I’m sure that this is a life-long quest as well. But, praise the LORD, because I know He is growing me up. There is such a hold on us to maintain SELF; because SELF is who we are comfortable with. Or, maybe a better way of saying it is that, at least with SELF, I know what I’m getting. There is the unknown element with the Spirit. It reminds me of how abused children prefer the place of abuse in their homes to the unknown place of where they may end up. They want to stay where they are because at least they know what they are getting. As Christians, we can’t live this way. The unknown element we don’t like requires what the Bible refers to as “faith.” Faith is how we are to live. Let go of your emotional dictates of funk and BELIEVE.

Chambers writes: “We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of the hole-and-corner business of our experience into abandoned devotion to Him. Think Who the New Testament says that Jesus Christ is, and then think of the despicable meanness of the miserable faith we have… We have to get out into faith in Jesus continually; not a prayer meeting Jesus Christ, nor a book Jesus Christ, but the New Testament Jesus Christ, Who is God Incarnate, and Who ought to strike us to His feet as dead… Jesus Christ wants our absolute abandon of devotion to Himself.”

On Wednesday, as I was pulling out of the driveway to go into church, I was thinking “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…” This was in the context of thinking about our finances. We had just been hit for a total of over $4500 in vehicle bills.

And so, as I was driving through Grain Valley to get onto the highway, I started fiddling with the radio and found myself listening to the “The Files of the Unshackled” where people talk about how they came to Christ. Right in the middle of this testimony, some three minutes after I was thinking “Seek ye first…,” he quotes Matthew 6:33 “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

And then yesterday it was on Kent’s heart to share with me what God has been showing him. He had several passages that had popped out to him that were all saying “Seek God.” And then he even had a weird situation pop up at Benetti’s where a guy encouraged him to read from Acts 15 where it spoke of seeking God.

Well, this morning, in my daily reading I came across 1 Chronicles 28:8 “Now therefore in the sight of all Israel the congregation of the LORD, and in the audience of our God, keep and seek for all the commandments of the LORD your God: that ye may possess this good land,…” It reminds me of the end of Matthew 6:33 where it says “… and all these things shall be added unto you.”

In other words, seeking God must be our preeminent goal. It is so easy to get faked out and start addressing other areas of our lives like our finances. We begin to think too much about them. In time, we begin to meditate on them. What?!!?!!? Our hearts aren’t to be fixed on our finances. Our hearts are supposed to be fixed on God. We are to SEEK HIM.

OK, so something else in my daily reading from Psalms 62:10. (For those of you doing the College reading you will have also just read this.) Verse 10 ends with “… if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” When I read that, I just thought, hummmm…..

Get back to seeking the Lord. Hit the “reset button” on your heart to “God, talk to me. I wait on you.”

Due to unforeseen circumstances our site was down for a few days. Everything’s up and running again, but things have moved around a bit.

Jim’s blog is now front and center - be sure to register so you can let him know what you’re thinking! You’ll find links to College Audio and Announcement in the right sidebar. Matt Hicks’ blog from Kosovo is here; you’ll find updates from Lori Wetmore in the Missions section of kcbt.org.