Lake Mills United Methodist Church Pastor's Blog. For everyone who wants to explore the life of the spirit and the love of God in and through this growing and sharing congregation.
(DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog are the personal views of Reverend William R. McBride and may not necessarily represent the views of Lake Mills UMC or the Wisconsin Conference UMC. Every attempt has been made to accurately represent the above entities on this blog.)
You know what? It is really easy to complain about everything isn't it? We carry our tendency to complain right into the church family don't we? Does this kind of behavior help anything or build up anything? Not at all.
What I'd like to challenge you with this week is to work really hard at lifting up the good things about your Church family and being a part of what is RIGHT about your church.
I find a lot that is right about my church. Here are some.
Inclusive
Diverse
Down to earth
Caring
Welcoming
Energetic
Loving
What can you find in your Church that is "right?" And what can you do this week to keep it right?
Think about the Church as your extended family. The place with people of faith for whom loving, forgiving, caring and sharing are utmost ideals and actions.
What do you like and appreciate the most about your Church?
Loving acceptance
Gentle teaching and guidance
Honest and open communication
Others who eagerly lift you burdens and help you with your challenges.
If this describes your Church family then be thankful and dedicate yourself this week to continuing these behaviors.
If this is not your church, then make a commitment to model these active and energetic steps in your church. Give an energetic witness by what you say and how you act as to the work and role of your Church family in your neighborhood.
God bless you this week as you help your church family be the best it can be in your community.
we continue our series on the Church/church by looking at two ways to really build up your church
PRAYER IS ONE OF THE WAYS - Do you pray for your church every day? Do you pray for your pastor every day? Do you pray for yourself and what you will do this week to be a part of the building up of your Church? Please pray.
LOVE IS THE SECOND WAY. Do you seek to show others your love? Even when it is hard to love someone, do you make up your mind that you will try to love them anyway? Do you show your love in your church with your spiritual family? Love, really love this week. This is how you build up your Church. Please Love.
So, how do you grow your church? First we must understand that our church is more than our building. Ultimately, our church is our people who seek to grow spiritually. And as Christians we seek to grow closer to God as we follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
I offer to you a 2 part, broader understanding of church.
1. The PEOPLE of God gathered together to worship, serve and love.
2. The special PLACE where God's people gather for worship, Christian instruction and support.
Godly Goals from Calvary Chapel Olympia on Vimeo.
What does God desire from us? In this video blog, Pastor Chuck Lind discusses the importance of pursuing Godly goals and the blessings those pursuits can bring.
Churches do not grow by accident, they grow by intention. By grow we mean first of all growing in spirit, trust, life and health. By grow we also mean; that if we do the first grow things right, we will grow in size and stature.
What Can We do to be the church and grow the Church?
1. PRAY – We must always bathe everything we do in sincere prayer. Pray for your pastor, staff and the Administrative Council leaders. Ask that God would continue to make them wise. Talk openly and eagerly with them about your needs, your hopes and your dreams. Pray and ask God what you can do to make and take your church to the next level. Let’s get energized and shine brightly for Christ again!
2. PARTICIPATE – Come to church with the eagerness and willingness to roll up your sleeves and go to work. The more you give of your time, your talent and your treasure the more God will give back to you. That’s how it works. If you attend worship on average once a month, take it up to twice a month for the next three months. Whatever your level of attending church, raise it up a notch. Tithe, giving ten percent of your income for the next three months. Try it and see what happens to you and your church health and life.
3. INVITE – We all have a network of friends, colleagues and neighbors; many who may not have a church home as interesting, welcoming, and inclusive as ours. Invite and bring your network with you to church. Whenever you send an email to your contacts, include the church website, www.lakemillsumc.org & facebook page address, www.facebook.com/LMUMC in your signature line. Tell folks about how your church helps and supports you.
4. GIVE – Your church really needs your support, AND you really need to give. It is a proven spiritual truth that we are created with the God-given need to share ourselves and give ourselves to those things that we believe are important in our community and in our world. Your church is one of those things and she will be well equipped to make your community and your world a better place if and when you give.
5. DESIGNATE – extra and special giving, above and beyond your regular giving for upcoming and much needed ministries and building improvements. Your Staff Parish Committee is working on a job description for a new youth director. Wouldn’t it be grand to be ready to hire one next January? Our children and youth deserve it and need it. You can make it happen. Your Trustees and Construction Committee have some exciting ideas to vastly improve and update our building. You can make it happen.
6. CREATE – new and innovative ways you can enliven and energize our life together. Wouldn’t it be exciting to develop a kid’s choir and have our children share in worship with music played and sung on a regular basis? You can make it happen. All things can happen when we trust and work together.
God bless you this week as you be the Church and grow your church.
No matter what the world brings our way or what we bring into the world every day, things sure can go better and outcomes can bring peace when we live in hope.
Where is your HOPE?
Do we go through our week living in chance or some wishful thinking or do we base our thoughts, feelings and actions on something and someone far greater and stronger than anything we will face?
Hope is the assurance we carry when we know that the Bible is true and what God says to us about forgiveness, love and resurrection is true for us and for all.
There is HOPE for you this week. Hope from God is stronger than all our fear and even conquers our greatest darkness and doubt. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ we know that we are moving each day closer to our own resurrection to eternal life, healing and peace.
It's called the GOSPEL. The story of God forgiving us, coming to us,living within us and guding us to a better day in a better way. AND THIS will give you hope.
Realize for just a minute that you stand at a crossroads. AND you get to choose which road you follow and the destination you incur. This is both a blessing and a challenge. BLESSING - We are free to choose, no manipulation or force placed on us. CHALLENGE - Choose wisely because you must live with the results. Choices are not always that easy. Temptations happen.
I like what this author has to say about choosing and how God wants the very best for us.
The author, Tom Long writes, "It has been my observation that somewhere deep in the forest of life many Christians come to a fork in the path. Some head in one direction, traveling their last few days in bitterness, shouting at the world for its iniquity, wagging their heads over the sad plight of our time, cursing 'what this world has come to nowadays.' Others, however, are given the gift of traveling the other way, the path of a cheerful confidence in providence...This is the path that knows that a banquet table awaits at the end and that a house of music and dancing can already be heard in the distance. This is the path that sees a world full of miracles. This is the way of blessing, the path of gratitude.
I am convinced that it is the risen Christ who stands at this parting of the ways. If the good news of Easter is true, then we have hope, and it is hope that sustains us when we face our darkest hours. We each have to choose which path we will travel. God loves us enough to point us in the right direction; but will allow us to choose.
Easter. Resurrection. New Life. Alive Again. That is what we celebrate. We have died with Christ, died to self...only to live again in Him, to rise with Him! We are a new creation. We are alive again. On Easter we boldly proclaimed that reality. We too have walked from the tomb. The tomb is empty!
God guide you in your choosing and God bless you as you choose life and faith and HOPE!!
Now this week you have got to be kidding. I know my life can be challenging at times but you want me to figure out how to "trudge" through the cemetery and do it with style?
I'd just as soon take a nice walk through the park if it is the same to you; please and thank you.
BUT HOLD on for just bit captain. You know why we might wish life was always a walk in the park, lets face it, sometimes it just isn't. we all have to take the trudge through the cemetery on occasion; literally and figuratively. Unless we intend to live with our heads buried in the sand; and I wouldn't call that living. Would you?
So the key is to find out how we can gain strength and endurance for that trudge so to speak. How can we live well so that when our day comes we can also die well?
Ask God for help and strength.
Find a friend who is trudging too and walk with them.
Find a church community that will always support you.
Trust that there is more to your life than meets the eye.
Have a blessed week and walk with strength and perseverance.
Ever wonder or try to figure out why you have to hurt and feel pain? Isn't my faith supposed to protect me from everything bad and painful?
NOT AT All! This week see if you can find the purpose and the lesson that comes to you in and through your pain.
Here is what one woman learned about her pain; her literal pain.
The scriptures speak to us about pain and hurt. A real life story about real living; which includes some pain. Yet God never deserts us in our pain or leaves us to get buried in our problems. God gives new life to our dried out bones, as described in Ezekiel 37 and Jesus knowing some pain; in losing a friend Lazarus and weeping over this death, also understands us when we hurt and feel pain.
Seeking to see life on a larger perspective and a spiritual path can help us when we feel our pain, especially when we weep at the death of love one.
So the good news is that we are never alone in our pain and that even when we hurt we can learn and we can grow and become better people because and through our pain.
Ever been thirsty? Really, really thirsty? Where do you go and what do you do to quench your thirst; that thirst for loving acceptance and a hopeful tomorrow? What will you do to quench your thirst this week?
An encouraging understanding of God is that our creator seeks to satisfy our physical and our spiritual needs. As we see in Exodus 17-God created water in the desert for his people, when Moses struck a rock with his staff. As we see in John 4 - Jesus compared his teachings to those of water saying "The water I give to you will last you for your lifetime.
How can we quench our thrist for meaning, fulfillment and peace? This movie talks and shows us how.
Psalm 42 speaks well to our longing and desire for God. "As the deer pants for the water, so my sould longs for God." May we seek after God this week and be refreshed by God's love.
Be refreshed and blessed this week as you quench your thirst for God with God.
Actually in the history of religion the concept of being literally born again was taught and accepted. It wasn't until sometime in the 6TH CENTURYthat the organized church in Rome started teaching against this topic, called "Reincarnation." (Reincarnation was removed from the bible during the COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE [ 6TH CENTURY AD])
Some even today in the larger spiritual realms still teach it, believe it and have developed process to help one get in touch with their "past lives." (Here is a short news story to just get you thinking)
So while this concept of being born again, reincarnated literally is still in vogue today, there is strong split division amongst believers about its truth and reality.
BUT the one more spiritual concept we are actually addressing today is the spiritual understanding of being "REBORN" again in a real spiritual sense. This is the lesson Jesus taught a learned Pharisee and scholar by the name of Nicodemus in John 3:1-18.
Can one enter a second time into their mother's womb and be born again? That was the Nicodemus question to Jesus Christ one dark and question-filled evening. Christ then taught that just as one is born of the water, they too must be born of the spirit to enter the kingdom of God.
REBIRTH? Yes very real and possible in the strictest spiritual sense, by opening one's heart, mind and soul to the influence and presence of God's Spirit.
Reincarnation - a physical rebirth when our souls and minds are reborn into another physical body? Maybe. Don't know for sure. But that is not the focus of today's post. Intriguing, but better left for another day. Let's focus on being born of the spirit and the heart.
You'd think by the way some people act, maybe some folks you know, they really love getting tempted? Do we walk right toward a temptation or put ourselves into the midst of a situation where we know we will be tempted to make a choice that is unhealthy, life-diminishing and bad for us and others?
Maybe you think you can not resist temptation? Like the BORG attack, you quickly say "Resistance is Futile." That's what the BORG thought in the face of Captain Picard. Is resistance futile like this movie clip would suggest?
What can we do this week to resist temptation?
Watch this movie for some sound ideas.
How 2 Resist Temptation from Bill McBride on Vimeo.
We all get tempted. The question is what can we do to remain strong in the face of temptation and make choices that enhance my life and others? Resistance is possible.
Great. Now are you telling me I have to wait? Yes and no. So much of the things in our world demand we wait. Right? Here is a short movie about the good thing about waiting.
Think of all the things you wait for.
Traffic lights
Pedestrians crossing the street
Lines in the store
The elevator at work
The proverbial "Waiting Room" before an appointment.
Other people to get ready.
Can you add a few more to this list?
Now let me tell you that waiting well and in the right way can build character and add style.
Waiting can show trust in God and patience for others. Waiting also can bring about some rewards you may not have experienced had you not waited.
Worry can kill you. Worry wastes your time, your money, your health, your energy and your God given and God inspired spirit.
We discard this rather cute song about worry and say "Right only fools don't worry; I am a mature adult I have to worry." REALLY NOW. You do??
WORRY is contray to God's word. AND there are some kernals of truth in the about song by Bobby McFerrn.
Every life has some trouble, but when you worry you make it double.
When you worry your face will frown and that will bring everybody down.
It will soon pass whatever it is, so don't worry.
Matthew 6 addresses our nature to worry ourselves to death. Some people are set up by their personality to worry themselves sick and some people are not “worry warts” as much as others. But we all worry.
Worry will rob you of your wealth and your well being if you let it.
Yes, you are in control of your life and even your worry. There is an antidote to worry. Worry is not inevitable, it is a choice.
God’s word has an answer and prescription for our worry.
Matthw 6:33-34 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Seek God this week and trust Him with your all and especially your cares.
It can be hard at time to make the kind of choices that ultimately lead to life. We are tempted all the time to choose what seems flashy or tantilizing or even easy at first. But ultimately some choices lead us down a dead end and finally to frustration and anything but fulfillment.
The Bible in Deuteronomy 30 talks about making hard choices.
Deuteronomy 30:16 "And I command you today: Love God, your God. Walk in his ways. Keep his commandments, regulations, and rules so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly, blessed by God, your God, in the land you are about to enter and possess.
Are you making the best choices for your life this week?
Seek God's wisdom in prayer
Read your Bible a bit every day
Get sound advice from spiritual sources
Sometimes the best way may not seem like it at first. Trust and obey.
What Direction are you pointing? We can learn a lot about ourselves when we understand the direction we are pointing. Where we point is where we go.
Are you pointing toward God and uncovering what God wants you to do and be this week?
By the choices we make, the direction we point and the life we live as people of faith, we are revealing God to others. Are you a good sign for God this week?
God loves every person so much and is so close that we can point ourselves to God and know that God will love us and guide us this week.
Point yourself toward God through prayer, Bible reading, worship and good deeds and you will heading in the right direction.
How does it feel being ordinary? Yes you and I are just plain ordinary, every day people. Feel good about that? I hope so. Because being ordinary is a good thing. It means then, that God has a lot of room in your life and your spirit to do extraordinary things.
God is in the business of blessing our world with extraordinary accomplishments and things, but God requires ordinary people who are not so full of themselves that they have no room for the creative source for all good works.
Recall the verse from 2 Corinthians 4:7 7-12 If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us.
The Bible record is full of stories of ordinary folks who did indeed accomplish extraordinary things. We make a mistake when we confuse the work with the worker. We see a great act like Noah building the ark and saving animal and humankind and we think he must have been a great guy to do all that. Not so. The final result was great, but God began with a plain old guy.
What do you suppose God will do with you and through you this week?
Have you ever wondered about time. Is there a time for everything under heaven? Is the movement of time linear, or like an ever flowing stream or perhaps circular?
This week we think about the passage of time and how as time moves along so do we. As one person said, "The only constant in our world is that everything changes."
So, who is in charge and in control of time and the changes of life? As Christians, we say that God is ultimately in charge and in control. The rest of life and the movement of time is really a mystery. The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes has much to say about time. While his words in Ecclesiastes 3 is filled with some cynicism, he still helps keep us grounded about time.
How does your faith in God affect your view of time. And is the fact that we are always changing really a bad thing or something to be avoided?
Think about your life and your time this week. What will you do to make the most of the time you have to live, love, share and care; while you still have the time?
You know what? It is really easy to complain about everything isn't it? We carry our tendency to complain right into the church family don't we? Does this kind of behavior help anything or build up anything? Not at all.
