The Power of Salvation

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18 NKJV)

We are starting a new series of messages, “The Kingdom of Heaven”. As I am thinking about heaven it occurs to me that while Heaven certainly is a literal place, it also is the representation of man’s restoration to God. When we get to Heaven we will be in the very presence of God without the barrier of evil that hinders us in the world today. So when we get there we will be able to relate to God in ways that are unimaginable to us now!

Heaven will put things back to way they were before sin interrupted our relationship with God. But there will be one difference between the way things were before man sinned and the Heaven that awaits us – SALVATION! The power of salvation is so great that after it is all said and done, things will actually be better! When we get to Heaven we will go to Paradise, not the Garden of Eden, we will always be in the very presence of God, not just in the “cool of the day” (Genesis 3). When we get to Heaven there will be the tree of life (Revelation 22), but not the tree of “Knowledge of Good and Evil”. God will be there, Jesus will be there, the Holy Spirit will be there, but Satan will not. Why? Because Jesus’ salvation is so powerful that the eternity originally planned for Adam and Eve in the garden is surpassed. The freedom we get from salvation also means eternal freedom. Freedom from the wickedness of sin that tempts us. The Garden Eden was not perfect, it contained temptation and a tempter, but heaven will be perfect! There will be nothing to entice us away from God!

The Devil meant to destroy us, to ruin God’s plan for eternal fellowship with Him, but salvation gave us an even better future and left Satan with nothing! You and I will go beyond the Garden of Eden to Heaven by the power of salvation!

Between Here & There

For just a moment I want to take you on a journey, a journey much like the one Dad embarked on Saturday August 14, 2010.

What if when you closed your eyes instead of darkness there was a great light? What if when you closed your eyes instead of the fogginess of a dream there was clarity and focus? What if when you closed your eyes instead of shadows there was revelation?

Imagine if you will, being inside a vessel that is slowly but surely shutting itself down. Parts of this vessel no longer operate; they don’t function as they had before. You just have snippets of awareness as you start to leave this vessel in which you have traveled for 81 years. There are your loved ones around you as you awake and then sleep and then awake again. Light, darkness, light again for a brief time.

You ask yourself if you’re dreaming. It may be hard to know what is real and what is not. This happens to you for some time, it is an experience that you have never had before, yet somehow seems familiar. You awaken and hear someone praying and then a brief flash of awareness as you hear someone say the name of Jesus. As you open your eyes you see the people you love and then back to the dream. And then there is something that draws your attention far off in the distance. At first you’re not sure, but then you recognize that someone is calling your name. A voice that you can’t place at first, but then you know that you have often heard it before. You have heard it in the middle of the night, when you couldn’t sleep, you heard it speaking to you when you prayed, and you’ve heard it give you comfort, guidance, and even understanding. You still can’t see who it is that is calling you; they are just too far away.

But then there He is, is it really? Am I dreaming again? But now the voices and prayers of your loved ones have slowly faded, and now all you hear is the voice of the Master calling your name.

I also wonder if somewhere in heaven an angel taps my mother on the shoulder – come follow me I want you to see something…Imagine Dad walking into the gates of heaven with multitudes waiting for his arrival.

You know we can never know for certain what Dad experienced on that day but I do know this. For him that was the greatest moment ever for him as he crossed from this life to his eternal reward.

Failure is always obvious, while success is often obscure

So here is something I have been thinking about lately…it seems that whenever there is something negative that happens it gets a lot more attention than the good. I have also noticed that we tend to listen to negative people more than those who are positive. We even criticize positive people by saying things like “they have their head in the clouds”, while praising the negative people by saying that they are being realistic. Really? Is that really true? That the positive person is the one having trouble with the truth, while the negative person is more honest in their assessment. Well you can call me naive if you want but I think I am going to start believing the positive reports and ideas. What if honesty and truth can co-exist with a positive attitude?

If something is broken and needs to be fixed it takes a positive person to believe and see a way to repair what is broken. The negative person will just believe nothing can be done and quit. By the way, it is easier and takes much less work to be negative, because negative people never contribute to the work, they just stand back and tell us that it can’t be done. At the end of the day the negative person walks away with their complaints and the positive walks away with accomplishment!

Failure is always obvious, while success is often obscure. I have never had to convince anyone of failure within the church, but I spend a great deal time having to defend, and prove success!

I believe God is doing amazing things in the Church or do I have my head in the clouds? The weather is fine up here!

Scary Stuff

So how do you tell someone that if they don’t get saved now before the rapture that the only way to get to heaven afterwards is to be beheaded and not sound scary?

I have to tell you I like the Sunday messages where I get to tell you guys about all the wonderful things about God. But every once in a while we need to be reminded that we have a choice: We will either face Jesus as a loving and caring savior or a righteous and just judge. And I believe that one of my jobs as pastor is to see to it that you get to heaven and so from time to time we need to have a talk about the consequences of allowing the world to crowd out what the Spirit is trying to do through us. You see the truth is there are a lot of people who are trying to find salvation through a different means than the one God created for us.

I don’t want to die and go to hell! I don’t want Jesus to return and be left behind! I have had this fear ever since I was a child. So I decided a long time ago to learn and study everything I could about Bible prophecy. I will be honest some of it is scary, but the scary stuff won’t happen to believers. If we are saved we will miss all of that. The more I learn and the more I study about the last days, the more I am comforted in the knowledge that I am going to go to heaven. And that is what I want for you, I want you to be secure in the knowledge that God has provided you with everything you need so that should you die or should Jesus come today, you will go to heaven.

For us who are be lievers, the study of the last days will be a source of comfort! For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. THEREFORE COMFORT ONE ANOTHER WITH THESE WORDS. --1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

You see, that isn’t so scary!

Christian Liberty

So last night in teaching the part of scripture where Paul is talking about the subject of eating meat offered to idols, I was surprised to learn how unfamiliar we are with the concept of liberty as believers. I even asked the question, “has anyone taught this to you before?” and the answer was no. (Actually the answer should have been yes because I taught Romans chapters 7 and 8 just last year. Maybe it wasn’t all that memorable!) So I want to use this page to address the issue. We need to know that as Christians we have been given the gift of liberty!

Here is the problem – we who have been saved a long time too easily forget that Christianity is not about following the rules it is all about establishing a relationship with God. After all that is why God created Adam and Eve, He wanted to establish a relationship or even better, a friendship with us, but we chose to reject that friendship. Salvation is all about putting us back into friendship with God! The reason for the rules was to give us the chance to either choose or reject God as our friend. God doesn’t want us to be coerced into being His friend. But far too often the church has reduced the Christian life as following the regulations God has given us. But here is something I want you to think about: as I begin to truly love God there is less need for the laws. The more I love God following His rules just becomes a part of who I am.

Just like being raised by my parents, they taught me how to be a good, safe, and courteous man by giving me rules when I was a child. But at some point they realized that I no longer needed their direction because I had become the kind of person they had raised me to be. (Just a disclaimer, my Dad might not really want to take credit for the kind of person I have become, nevertheless, I’m giving it to him, whether he likes it or not, because I am an adult and I am no longer afraid that he will ground me.) In other words, they no longer punish me for not obeying their rules, because I just instinctively live within them. So really at some point if I am growing as a Christian, God gets to start treating me as an adult. And then I get to live in the liberty that God has given me from the law.

Here is the key – I don’t live according to the laws, but according to the Spirit. What is the difference? Living according to the Spirit means I am living in relationship with God. The law is inanimate, while the Spirit is the person of God. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1 NKJV)

The reason this is so important is that we Christians need to do a better job at sharing our faith, because if we keep thinking that Christianity is about following the rules two things will happen, no one will want to be a Christian, why would anyone choose bondage? And secondly, new believers will become frustrated and walk away from the faith. Christianity is about relating and interacting with the Spirit and the Church is about relating and interacting with God’s people. God is a relational God and He wants us in community with Him and each other. Through this we have true liberty!

I will be adding more thoughts about this in coming days!

A Big Thank You

I just wanted to say a great big thank you to Merry Weber and all of her helpers for a great VBS. I may have had just as much fun as the kids did! I don't know if people are getting tired of it but once again Eastside proved to be a great church. I also want to thank everyone who came last night to put our church back in order!

I will be away on vacation this week; someone told me not to think about the church this week, but I really love thinking and praying about our church because I know that God has some really great things in store for us!

Thank you for loving me and my family, we will see you when we get back!

Prayer Meetings

Ok, I want to share something with you that may not be something a believer, much less a pastor should admit. I don’t like prayer meetings. Every time I go to a prayer meeting my one thought is, “how can I get out of here!" I know, I know, this isn’t good, but for some reason I just don’t like spending large amounts of time praying and prayer meetings obligate to something I am incapable of doing. I have to be honest, when I have shared my secret with other believers I never got the help I was looking for, instead I was told all the reasons why we should pray. So my guilt over this has been an obstacle in my faith. What I didn’t do was take it to God. And when I did I found this quote: “I don’t often spend more than half an hour in prayer at one time, but I never go more than half an hour without praying”. --Smith Wigglesworth. Imagine my surprise to find out that the greatest Pentecostal evangelist of the 19th and 20th centuries didn’t spend long periods of time praying. What he did was exactly what the Bible tells us to do. “Pray without ceasing…” 1 Thessalonians 5:17. This is something I can do and frankly have been doing all along.


I know that there is benefit to devoting a segment of time to praying, and believe me when the circumstance presents itself I can pray and pray intensely. But here is what I want the people of Eastside to know. God has designed prayer in such a way that we can all do it no matter what our personality dictates. God likes all prayers and He wants us to pray! No excuses! Just pray.


Just so you know, I believe that by God’s help I will be able to develop the discipline to pray better and who knows maybe even longer. But I will pray and from now one I will actually enjoy doing it. And how great was last night’s prayer meeting, I walk away from the church knowing I had been in the very presence of God!