Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Why the HEART is the key...

We talked about the PULSE point of the heart a couple of weeks ago. We talked about how it was the "seat of all of our motives". To illustrate, we had two treasure chests. In the one, we had different pictures or objects to show the different motives that we could live our life for and we talked about how most of us struggle with several motives, that at times compete against each other for dominance in our decisions. In the second chest, we had an envelope with the word "Christ" on it and we talked about how desiring a pure heart is a heart with only one motive in the chest...so to speak. We talked about all the "good" motives, such as family or being a good steward of what we have, things God has commanded us in His Word to handle responsibly and take care of. How are those taken care of if I only have one motive? The answer is that Christ takes care of all those things. Ecclesiastes 8:5 tells us the wise heart knows the proper time and the proper procedure for every delight and as we know from Psalm 9:10, wisdom begins when your #1 priority is set...that priority being God.

This battle for the heart is KEY to our lives here on earth. Why? Check out this verse below.

Mark 7
20
And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you.
21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.
23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”

From our hearts, we sink or swim. When our hearts are pure, or basically have the one motive of Christ, we just follow them, sometimes with the opposition of our other senses. Still, we must always check ourselves and make sure our motive is not compromised in our decisions and actions, because that's where the problems begin.

Please continue to pray for us as we keep trying to be the church in Palm Bay at Bay West Church. Please pray that our hearts as individuals that make up the church can be centered on His purpose...only one motive in the chest.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A cool verse that goes along with our first PULSE point, our ears...

This message from PULSE was a couple of Sundays ago, but in my Quiet Time Tuesday morning, I ran across this verse, so I thought I'd share.

At Bay West Church, we're in this series PULSE and the idea is to check our spiritual pulse by reading 5 pulse points: ears, heart, mouth, eyes, and the feet. We get these from Proverbs 4:20-27.

The first week we talked about our ears and how we should be listening to the Word of God. A lot of people hear God's Word, but they never really listen to it. Psalm 1:2 tells us to "meditate on it day and night" and we talked about how that doesn't mean to sit in a corner with crossed knees and just think all day and night...that would violate other places in Scripture. What it meant was that God's Word should always be in your field of vision when you make any decision...it should always be the first consult and the last decision maker. Everything goes through that lens...when you do this, you really begin to see how it applies to every situation and you really listen to it. This is the point that most of us fail.

I was reading on www.oneyearbibleonline.com (which is where I try to read every day for my quiet time) and I came across this verse in Matthew. The disciples asked Jesus why he used parables to teach the people. Parables are stories that illustrate what Jesus is talking about in real life or in an artisitic way that sheds further understanding on the principle Jesus is explaining. Anyway, Jesus answered them this way...

13 That is why I use these parables, For they look, but they don’t really see.
They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.
Matthew 13:13

You see...the reason He taught how He did was to make us not just hear something that sounds nice, but to have to use our brains to think about it, thereby understanding the concept more fully. It was to give examples of how to integrate it in our lives or to make us dissect the concept intellectually or to peak our understanding by engaging our brain in something that drew us in, but expected us to put a little effort into understanding. In other words, to make us listen.

Just thought it was cool and figured I'd share. Please continue to pray for us as we try to be a church in Palm Bay, Florida.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

FYI on the FL Bapt. Convention's Haiti Disaster Relief efforts

Just wanted to keep you guys up to date on what our offerings are going toward right now and how God is working through this crisis. Between our two campuses, we took up over 23,000 dollars for the relief effort last Sunday and we are still set up to take donations through our online giving on the website, baywestchurch.org . Everything we take up goes directly to purchases for the people of Haiti, as described below.

Got this email a few minutes ago. I'm c-n-p'ing the text. Dr. Sullivan is the Executive Director for the Florida Baptist Convention.

Haiti Update, January 19, 2010 - From Dr. John Sullivan
Subject: The Miracle of Multiplication

The Biblical miracle of the fishes and loaves had a modern day twist for the Florida Baptist Convention when it made an initial purchase of 21 tons of rice for use in Haiti relief efforts. An Arkansas Baptist church's matching gift of rice has multiplied the initial commitment into a total 84 tons of rice being earmarked for Haiti.

This miracle of multiplication started on Friday, January 15, when Executive Director John Sullivan negotiated to purchase 42,000 pounds of rice from a grain distributor in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Sullivan negotiated for a low price of $20 per hundred pound bag. With the deal confirmed, the Convention arranged to send one of its disaster relief semi-trailer units to Stuttgart to take delivery of the rice. On Monday, January 18, a second order was placed for another 21 tons of rice for delivery at the end of February.

On Tuesday, January 19, Sullivan received a call from Pastor Sam Roberts of the First Baptist Church, Stuttgart, Arkansas, who had learned of the Convention's purchase and planned use of the rice. He told of the church's mission committee authorization to purchase 42 tons of rice to supplement the Convention's commitment to feed Haitians. The combined purchase and donation brings the total commitment to 84 tons or 168,000 pounds of rice which will be distributed in Haiti as soon as possible.

Sullivan noted that the average Haitian subsists on a quarter cup of rice each day. He went on to observe that every Baptist can be a part of the Haiti relief effort by sending $20 to buy a one hundred pound bag of rice. "That one bag of rice will feed a family of four for a long time in Haiti," he explained.

Once the grain is delivered in Haiti, distribution of the rice will occur from the many Haitian Baptist churches in and around Port au Prince. Florida Baptists' 15 years of partnership and assistance provided to Haitian Baptists has resulted in a model effort to distribute food and clothing without the chaos experienced at government-controlled food distribution points.

On another developing front in the effort to aid Haitians, the U. S. government is preparing to airlift orphans and other Haitian refugees from Port au Prince to Miami. According to the Miami Herald, federal agencies are gearing up under an existing crisis plan called "Operation Vigilant Sentry," drawn up in 2003 to help prepare for any mass migration from the Caribbean. Miami-Dade officials are looking at housing the refugees in the currently closed Krome Detention Center in West Miami-Dade and the old Baptist hospital facility in Kendall.

The influx of refugees will present a unique ministry opportunity for Florida Baptists in South Florida. As a result, the Convention has directed its Church and Community Ministries personnel, led by Marc Johnston, to begin developing action plans to assist in receiving, processing and re-settlement of these Haitian refugees.

Details are few given that the situation is very fluid. However, additional information on the Convention's response will be posted on the Convention's website
www.flbaptist.org.

The devastation is immense in Haiti, but this is just one religious organization of one state...there are loads of other relief efforts, secular and religious, that are responding to the disaster in Haiti.

Just thought I'd keep you up to date with what's going on with the relief efforts and this is just one of the things that are going on. I'll post some updates from time to time as I get info.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Just a little mop up on your Heart from PULSE

I kind of zipped through a couple of things yesterday on PULSE at Bay West Church, so I thought I'd slow it down and emphasize something about the whole heart thing.

A key verse that we talked about yesterday is found in 1 Chronicles 28:9 where David is giving Solomon some of the last instructions that Solomon will get from his father before David's death...important words, in other words. There's a lot in this verse, but I want to hit one particular thing.

9 "And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever.


There's a key point in here. Obviously, David tells Solomon that he needs to serve God with a wholehearted devotion...as we talked about yesterday, that's living your life with only one motive in your chest...honoring God. We can all be divided in our heart by trying to live with many motives that drive what we do...our career path, our kids, our health, our entertainment, our goals...but a "wholehearted devotion" to God puts all these things to the side and lives every decision answering one question "What will honor God the most here?"

What trips most of us up in this pursuit is when our brain gets in the way. I play music, sometimes by ear, and I was telling a friend that the biggest problem to doing that is when I let my "brain get in the way". I'm playing along and my fingers are just going to what's the next deal...almost like there's a connection from the ear to my fingers and there you are. Then all of a sudden, for some reason, I think "hey this is too easy" and there's a hiccup in the process when I try to "think" about the next chord I'm going to play...and that's usually when I make the mistake and blow it. I don't trust the process, because I don't understand it fully.

For us it's the same way in life. When God's Word tells us to do something or outlines this plan for a situation in life, when we balk is when our "brain gets in the way". We don't trust the process, because we don't understand it fully...we can't see how THAT would work. This verse in 1 Chronicles gives us some wisdom on that subject. David tells Solomon to serve God with a "wholehearted devotion" (only one motive...for God) and with a "willing mind". In other words, have a mind that is open to what God tells you...it's not an "understanding mind" or a "comprehending mind" or a "mind that sees the whole plan and can connect all the dots to why it will work, allowing you to trust in that"...nope...just being open to doing what God tells you to do. You just have to trust "God". Don't let your brain get in the way.

We've had to do that as we've tried to be a church in Palm Bay. A lot of people, even in FBC Melbourne, haven't fully grasped what we are trying to do here..."aren't you starting a church?" "satellite campus?". I get people all the time, when I'm back at the Melbourne Campus for dinner that say, "Hey, so sorry you left us to start a new church" and I say "I never left, just think about it as if I go to a different service than you...we are all FBC." Many things that we've done to this point are things that if we let our brains get in the way of what God was telling us to do, we'd have missed the great opportunity to see the end of God's plan, because we wanted the explanation of how it was coming first.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Interesting side note on PULSE the series

We've started this new series, PULSE, at Bay West Church in Palm Bay, Florida and it's proving interesting in the study. The whole idea for the series comes from Proverbs 4:20-27 and the title framework for the series comes from the practice of taking your pulse after a run or some exertion. We do that by pressing our finger against a pulse point to check our heart rate. This practice allows us to check the signs of our body and to see that our body is functioning properly.


It doesn't have to stop there. We can do this spiritually and hence the series PULSE. In Proverbs 4, we identify 5 spiritual pulse points...the ears, the heart, the mouth, the eyes, and the feet.


An interesting aspect that we find out in searching the Scriptures how all these points are linked together Scripturally. As in Proverbs 4:20-27, these areas seem to be mentioned in tandem at least two or three at a time and it's hard to find places where only one is alluded to. That's because, like the body, all these areas of our spiritual lives are linked. When one isn't working correctly, others are effected, because the health of one increases or helps the health of the other.


It's the same way in our families or our marriages or any of our relationships, we are the body of Christ and when one person is failing, it effects us all. This principle of the body carries over into many aspects of our lives so that we see that the Creator has a theme. It's interesting to see His handprint all over things.


Please pray for us as we continue to be a church in palm bay and bring Christ to west Palm Bay.