by Pastor James Bell

I have faced God. Really.

Okay, it was not in the sense of seeing Him as Isaiah did. I definitely didn’t experience what John did on the Isle of Patmos. My experiences have been more along the lines of Jesus words, “as long as you did it to these, you did it unto me”. What I have seen is the expression of God with flesh wrapped around it. I have seen the Savior looking back at me through real eyes, eyes of different colors, eyes that stopped me in my tracks.

Have you ever had one of those “facing God” moments? I have seen God while looking into the face of a gifted preacher in a Mexican village, who worked in the cane fields by day and studied the Bible at night. Jesus was in the face of a nurse who whispered her prayers for me in the cardiology unit. Jesus once told me he loved me, through the voice of a complete stranger. God often smiles at me through my grandchildren.

Of course, the day will come when every child of God will actually see Jesus face to face. How indescribable that experience must be! But before He was glorified, Jesus appeared to look like most other men. When Philip was confused by the metaphors Jesus was using, he said, “Lord, just show us the Father and that will be enough”. Jesus said, “Philip, have I been with you this long and you still don’t know me?” He was looking at God fairly often, but never realized it.

For the non-believer, facing God is a fear more than a reality. It’s something they prefer not to think about that much. On the other hand, believers have a tendency to think about God, to talk about God, to even feel that we have a relationship with God….without actually facing God.

To face God means to be responsible for what you see. When He speaks, or even when He expresses a thought with just a look, while using the countenances of earthly people like we all are, something happens that demands a response. This is when we really face God. It’s as if He says, “Now you know.”

Are you ready to face God about your life? Want to talk with Him about the hidden parts of your heart? When you decide to face God about everything, you are in some very good company. Prophets, priests, and kings have been transformed by facing God.

One day we will actually see Him face to face. Today He is looking at us in myriad ways, through all kinds of eyes. Will you know Him when you see Him? I’m looking for Him every day, and I’m finding Him more and more.

Face time happens.

by Pastor James Bell

The title of our new sermon series might seem a little arrogant. Actually, it’s a reference to the sad truth that we get it wrong about God sometimes. Would you believe lots of times? Our culture’s concept of God seems a bit skewed, to say the least. Maybe that’s why the Bible tells us to be transformed, not conformed, in the way we think.

It’s pretty obvious that people create their own gods today. How often have you heard, “The god I serve doesn’t do (this or that, fill in the blanks).” We take the liberty of defining God according to our own personal moral standards and beliefs. We assume God is on our side because, after all, we’re right about practically everything. Some are even deluded enough that they pray to, and think they hear from, the one true God, not knowing that it’s really their own self-created “god”. This is often an over-active conscience or an egocentric imagination that has led many sincere Christians from true charismatic giftedness to an overstated (but spiritually insignificant) charismatic folly. Bottom line: It never was really God to begin with.

What is even more common, and is the focus of our series, happens when people of faith incorrectly understand the nature and character of God. We think He is mad at us. We aren’t sure He is always walking with us. We are intimidated by His holiness and our (sometimes gross) humanity. We anticipate His wrath and at times we hope He isn’t looking at us right now, at this very moment. We need to re-think our view of God.

The Bible is a real good place to look when re-thinking God. It is, after all, the ultimate resource for a definitive view of God. Jesus came to give us an understanding of God from a human perspective, which is, incidentally, the only perspective we are much good at understanding.

Intimacy with God is a blessed experience, a taste of eternity. This happens through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But even intimacy with God is defined, as well as encouraged, by biblical principles about the wonder and majesty of God.

Remember the character who said, “Sometimes I sit and think. Other times I just sit”? Well, let’s not just sit! Re-thinking your concept of God might open some new doors of spiritual growth in your life.

Let’s do it together!

Thoughtfully,

James

by Pastor Kenny Innes

We know that God is gracious, loving and merciful. We know that God forgives sin. Does that mean that God doesn’t care about our sin, and therefore, neither should we?

There is a false grace movement on the fringes of our faith which says that we can sin all we like because God will forgive us anyway. This “grace” of God “frees” us to indulge our sinful desires, safe in the knowledge that God will forgive us for it all. This is an evil thought.

God hates sin, and wants people to be free from the sinful desires that separate them from Him. Furthermore, God says that He will judge all sin, and the consequence of an unrepentant life is death and eternity in Hell. To those who repent, He offers forgiveness.

The forgiveness that God offers us is not free. It was bought with a price. Jesus, God’s Son, became a man to live the perfect life that we cannot live, to die the death that we deserve to die, and to rise again to offer us new life. God poured out all of the wrath and judgment for our sin onto His own Son. When we believe and trust in Jesus, His righteousness is given to us. Our forgiveness is very costly indeed.

The cross shows us another very clear thing about our sin – we are not able to pay for it ourselves. It takes action on God’s part to remove the stain of the very sin that we commit against Him. All of our good deeds are not enough to satisfy the wrath and judgment of God towards our sinfulness. We need to throw ourselves on His mercy, confess our rebellion and wrongdoing, and surrender ourselves to His forgiving, healing, changing power. Only then can we gain any power over the sin that holds us back.

This is what David recognized in Psalm 51. He couldn’t appeal to his own goodness as a basis for forgiveness. He could only appeal to God’s merciful character upon those who sincerely repent and desire to be changed. So David, distraught by his own sin and unable to see a way to change within himself, cries out to God to rescue him.

Many church members forget that God is the only source of change and forgiveness. Instead, they try to hide their sinfulness under an outward appearance of godliness and good works. This works-based righteousness leads to a life of defeat, guilt, and shame. No matter how hard they work to cover their sin, they still have no power over it.

What God desires is for His Church to conquer their sin by depending on the work of His Son upon the cross to forgive them. Every one in the church will battle the sinful desires of the flesh. Those who hide it from God and from others will struggle in their faith. Those who confess their sins and cling to the cross will have victory after victory over sin as they experience the sanctifying work of God’s grace in their lives.

Trusting in Him alone,

Kenny

by Pastor James Bell

The willful ignorance of God and his purposes by the media and the entertainment industry has perpetuated a disturbing and false concept of God. For the most part, our culture is buying into it big time.

The idea is that God is somewhere up there sneering and snarling at you because you are so messed up. The message is that you have two choices available to you with regard to religious convictions:

You are incapable of being good and you are honest about it.

Or

You are incapable of being good and you are a hypocrite.

You choose. According to the what is culturally acceptable, you only get to choose one. Okay, what do you suppose is the best choice? Here is how it might be described:

“It is to be aware that you are upsetting “the Good Lord” by the way you live, but you are an honest sinner, who might actually be so real and so honestly human that God begins to like you and feel a little sympathy toward you. I mean, at least you are not a hypocrite, whom God and everybody else despises. God will let you know how he feels about you by the things that happen, or don’t happen, to you in your life. If things get rough, you might want to attend a church service pretty soon to show a little respect. But don’t let that hypocrisy rub off on you.”

Just one problem with that concept, though. It’s totally bogus. Two thousand plus years ago, Jesus came to earth and changed everything. Knowing that we are incapable of being good, the Son of God was punished in our place, paying the price for our sins. God loved us too much to leave us separated from himself. There is a difference between imperfection (as we grow spiritually) and being a hypocrite. It is not hypocritical to take a stand for what is right, even though you need forgiveness when you don’t do the right thing. That is progress. That is growth. It can also make you a target for those who have failed to create their own righteousness and criticize the righteousness of Christ in others. They have “dumbed down” Christian teachings to formulate their own pseudo-spirituality that they will take with them to the judgement and eventually to an eternal hell.

One startling fact has not changed since Jesus walked the dusty roads of Judea and Galilee. It is the religious who hate Christ the most. Jesus was executed by Roman soldiers, but he was killed by the religious. The same misunderstanding of the righteousness of God permeates “Christian America” today. To be “good” has become a bad thing. To be “bad” is now a good thing.

God’s response is unchanging. He continues to love those who sin against him, and he offers them a better way. But, being limited by our own mortality, every person has their last time to reject him before it is too late. Understanding that God is not your enemy, you have a great opportunity to experience eternal life, beginning right now. Think about this prayer:

God our Father, we find it difficult to come to you,
because our knowledge of you is imperfect.
In our ignorance we have imagined you to be our enemy;
we have wrongly thought that you take pleasure in punishing our sins;
and we have foolishly conceived you to be a tyrant over human life.

But since Jesus came among us, he has shown that you are loving,
that you are on our side against all that stunts life,
and that our resentment against you was groundless.
So we come to you, asking you to forgive our past ignorance,
and wanting to know more and more of you and your forgiving love,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Stunned by the brevity and depth of this prayer, written by St. Augustine, I can only say, “Amen”.

How about you?

Question 1: Was there a time in your life when you ‘wandered”, when you did not fully understand what it meant to be set apart?

Question 2: Can you describe the moment of realization? That time when you suddenly saw things from God’s perspective instead of your own?

Question 3: How did you respond? How did this response change you as an individual?

Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (NKJV)

When wrestling with the idea that a loving God allows pain to exist in our lives, C.S. Lewis uses an analogy to help his readers.

He talks about an artist who, when creating something for a small child to hang on their wall, may take a short time to sketch out something fun that will please the child. However, when he undertakes his life’s greatest work, that painting which will define his artistry and speak volumes about who he is, he will take as much time as is needed. Indeed, in the process of making that painting perfect, he will suffer for, and cause much suffering to the painting.

Lewis imagines that if we could hear that painting talk, it may say,

“Oh, I wish I were a thumbnail sketch! Then the artist would bother less with my perfection! I cannot stand the way he scrapes, rubs and starts me over again and again!”

The painting wishes it were something less, something not so important, something not so glorious. But the artist has destined this painting to be the crown of his achievements. He loves the painting with passion, and will not cease until it becomes what he always imagined it would be.

Lewis says that God is much the same way with His creation. From our perspective, pain can often seem random and meaningless. We often desire that God would leave us alone, and accuse Him of not loving us. The truth is that God loves us so much that He is not content with making us merely happy, but with making us holy.

Times of pain and struggling are opportunities for us to cling to God, drawing nearer to Him and letting His tremendous love work in and perfect us, until we become more and more the glorious people that He planned for us to be.