The Only Prayer God Can't Answer

Is the one you never pray.

What I tried to do yesterday was give the congregation some examples of when Jesus responded to people reaching out with whatever amount of faith that they had. Faith that had holes in it. Faith that was only sure that they had to do something.

I tried to answer some questions that we've left unspoken for fear we might be looked on as less.

And with the last example - the Father who had been let down so many times, who had prayed so many prayers, who had just enough faith to try one more time...

we get honesty - "I do believe, as far as I can, but you are going to have to help me believe like THIS."

Just enough faith to keep asking, to keep hoping, to keep believing that THIS time it would be different.

The only prayer God cannot answer is the one we never ask.

Ask. Seek. Knock.

Don't quit believing.

Hope in the afternoon

There are a lot of stories about Easter. So many ways to look at what happened that day. The one story that jumped out at me this year was one where two people went home after hearing about the events of the morning - still depressed and discouraged. They had heard that others had seen the risen Christ, but they hadn't themselves. It took a visit from Christ to change their hearts.

One of the key takeaways from this passage is that we all have a story we see ourselves in. Everything we've experienced as well as our hopes, dreams, failures, and regrets make up those stories. We see what we can see. But God sees so much more. He can take our story and place it in the context of His Big Story and show us just how He can overcome evil with good. He can explain the Bible in a way that we connect and understand it and are able to see how to live in light of it.

I used this story this morning to illustrate how we can think we know a story, but at times we only know part of it.

A man and a woman had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about. For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000. He asked her about the contents. "When we were to be married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness. "Honey," he said "that explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?" "Oh, that?" she said.  "That's the money I made from selling the dolls." - from Lion Brand Yarn's website

He didn't really know, did he?

The people on the Emmaus road didn't know all the story either. All they know was that their hopes were crushed and their future looked dark. They just wanted to go home.

Then Jesus showed up and it all made sense.

We cannot let the world write our story.
We cannot assume that our view of our story is correct.
We have to seek God and enter into a deep and abiding relationship with Him where we can see our lives from His perspective.

Christ changed everything when He paid the price for our sins and provided hope beyond the grave through His resurrection.

So failure is NEVER final.

And we can have our stories rewritten by a loving God.

Let Him.

Ed Stetzer On Small Churches

Ed Stetzer writes in Outreach Magazine:

Church leaders in America also tend to think big is good and bigger is better, but Jesus says that small is reflective of the kingdom of God. It starts as something small, but it will not stay small and, ultimately, it will change everything. A revolutionary movement begins with only a handful of subversives, but eventually expands so widely that it can overthrow a king with an army. The subversive kingdom starts small, but ultimately overwhelms the Devil and his minions when Jesus returns as reigning King, replacing the deepest darkness with brilliant light.

Jesus is unembarrassed, unashamed and unperturbed by describing the Kingdom using small things. That is His point. He says the mustard seed "is the smallest of all the seeds." He is emphasizing the smallness of the kingdom of God. But more to the point, He is describing how small can be subversive.

from this excellent article

At New Hope Valparaiso, we're small. But the impact that we are having in our community would have you think we are bigger than we are. There's no way we should be here. No way we should do what we do. Except God is in it. I could tell you story after story of how He's led, He's provided, He's opened doors for us to be His hands and His feet.

Don't misunderstand. We want to grow. We work hard to let people know and encourage them to come and join us on the journey. We hope to see this mission spread to other people captivated by Jesus' call to follow.

But we're not measuring ourselves against other churches. We're only looking to see how faithful we are to the call. If you are interested in joining a group of people who see God at work every week, come and see us. We'll make room. :)

Sowing Seeds, Reaping A Harvest

I attended a webinar Tuesday that was probably the most helpful one I've ever participated in. I'm sharing the video of it below and here's the link to the page as long as it stays up. New Hope folks, lots of ideas in here as well as positive identification on what we aren't doing that we need to be doing. Very, very, helpful. Take a minute and check it out.

4 Areas for Churches to "Sow the Seed" of the Gospel from Chris Walker on Vimeo.

Outside Looking In - The Wrong Window

 Not at New Hope!

 I started scanning an article on the Daily News website that was comparing the area's support of dogs and cats through shelters and the lack of the same for homeless people. The writer made her case that something seemed wrong in an area where there was such an outpouring of caring for animals, but over ten years, despite numerous attempts, no homeless shelter has been built. Then she wrote:

"a network of churches shelters the homeless when temperatures drop below 40 degrees. Churches also have cobbled together a feeding program" -Wendy Victora of the Daily News

A commenter then wrote
"Wow, how very humane that the area churches can help on occasion. Otherwise, they're to busy using their tax free funds to build more church stuff, buy more property (taking off the tax rolls), and go to retreats. A real caring lot those church going folks."

That's the view from the outside I guess, but he's looking in the window of the wrong kind of church.
There are times when it feels like the mission we are on at New Hope is completely out of step with what the majority of churches in our area are seeking after. Yes, we have buildings, and a mortgage. But that writer should come and see how we agonize over spending money on anything other than our mission. Every time we think about the two A/C units that went out earlier in the year, we put their cost in this context - "we could have drilled two wells with that money." Two wells that would have supplied 2000 people with clean water and lowered their chance of water-borne disease. We had to replace them - people in Florida expect to be cooled at church - but it spoke volumes that we counted the cost in a different way that most.

We send out every penny we can to those the Bible refers to as "the least of these."

And we are a blue collar church, a smaller church in a small community that's shrinking and may shrink more with the F-35 noise abatement issues. One employee - me. I wear many hats, and my wife some more. We serve alongside other people who volunteer their time and give their money to make a difference for God locally, in the States, and around the world. They "do something!" to change this world.

We've helped Love146 , The Water Project , From HIV To Home, Africa Bags, and more outside of the disaster relief, hunger help, and other activities funded by our participation in the SBC. Our members sponsor kids in the Compassion and World Vision programs, and one class also supports the Amazima orphanage in Uganda. We've sent Buckets of Hope to Haiti, and our girls program Child2Child has been more active in more ways that most churches as a whole are. Blankets to the Navajo elders, formula to orphanages, stainless steel bowls to Haitians, those are just a few of the projects they have taken on. They actually kicked the whole church into high gear and we haven't let up. During Thanksgiving week, we'll be challenging each other to eat rice and beans at each meal and give the money we would have spent to the drilling of a well. Does that sound like we don't care?

It's cost us to be this kind of church. We don't measure with the same metric as most other churches do. We don't follow the same consumerist path. As a result, we're not nearly as visible, and frankly not as attractive to people who want to come in and observe and be cared for as opposed to our "Do Something!" method of operation where all of us - children, youth and aged - new believers and older saints - work together to love and serve. It ain't about us - it's about Jesus. Our growth has been slow and at times unsteady. Our finances - well, let's just say my prayer life has been strengthened. But I want the writer of that comment as well as those who may share his views to know - there's a church that isn't on a mission to buy and build. We're on a mission to share and to love.

I keep thinking and praying to God that one day we'll see people like the writer decide to look for a church that really is trying - with all our imperfections not withstanding - to give and to serve - to sacrifice to help those who need it. We've got room. The writer should know he's just looking through the wrong window. We'd love to do more. Maybe he could come and give us some ideas. Or maybe he could come and help.

How about you?