Kids Will Do the Darnedest Things

Jesus disciples were prodding him for who God’s favorite kind of people were. Actually the term they used was “greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” This was Jesus response to their inquiry: And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:2-4). God’s favorite kinds of people are the ones who can be like kids. I know you were told that God has no favorites, but that’s not how Jesus put it. In order for this analogy to work you need to forget for a moment about all of the bad exposure you’ve had to really bratty kids and think about some good and childish qualities.

My granddaughter in her naivety once asked her great grandmother why she had wrinkles to which she was told, “Because I am old.” My granddaughter’s very innocent response was, “Oh! You must be really old.” Kids will say and do the darnedest things. They are simple in their understanding and their responses. They can be very naïve and unsophisticated. It doesn’t take a lot to persuade them and they will readily do very foolish things, even taking risks because they are so trusting. Kids are very reliant on others, especially mom and dad, to help them and provide answers. They haven’t yet learned a lot of independence and they’re okay with that. Another thing about kids, they come easily to tears and repentance, and in an environment of love and acceptance are eager to please and obey.

As we move toward adulthood we learn to distrust and we get more and more selfish. Simple understanding and acceptance of things changes to needing everything to make sense according to our rationality grid. We are much less prone to act on instructions that seem at all foolish or to take risks. Our self importance has ballooned and we learn to be very independent. Many barriers get erected in our lives preventing us from acting on the promptings and simple steps of obedience that God puts in front of us. We need to relearn some of the impetuous qualities of children such as: trust, compliance, and being loving and forgiving so that God can use us. He works best through people who can be like this.

God’s favorites, or to put it another way, the kind of people that have the most value to the kingdom cause are the ones who can learn to be like kids. We need to learn to get past our rational barriers and learn to respond to God’s promptings. We need to become childish enough to be foolish and take risks for God. Our hearts need to get softened to the point that repentance and tears flow easily in the sight of God’s discipline. There is some unlearning of increasingly selfish lifestyles that is order so we can give ourselves to our Father’s wishes. We need to digress in our prerequisites for obedience to where only the simplest of payment is enough – God’s unconditional love.

So is this possible? Can we become like a child again? I think so or else Jesus wouldn’t have suggested. In fact he said, “…turn and become like children.” What he’s talking about is repentance. We have to admit our adulthood, humble ourselves and ask God that he would help us to be childish again. Sounds kind of weird doesn’t it, to repent for being too grown up. But that’s exactly what is implied here. If we want to be the most useful that we can be for God’s cause, childish changes must take place in us. We can transform by the working of the Holy Spirit in us and we can learn to obey and take risks for God. We can if we want to. Do you?

-Tom Maus

It’s Not always Apple Pie and Ice Cream

As they [Jesus and his disciples] were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed (Matt 17:22-23). Whoa, talk about getting bad news! This guy was their messiah, the guy that the prophets had been talking about for many generations. All their lives they had heard about the promise of his coming, he was finally in front of them, and now he’s telling them that he’s going to be killed. This just cannot be! This must be some kind of bad humor; surely God doesn’t work like this, does he?

 It strikes me that we tend to think in victories and good times and blessings when it comes to our imagining of spiritual progress. Our fantasies of God’s purposes moving forward don’t usually include a lot of pain or suffering or bad news; at least not for us personally. We like to think that when we’re right in the middle of God’s will then things will be apple pie and ice cream for us. Bad things usually indicate to us that either we’re suffering an attack from the enemy or we’re straying from God’s path. And yet, from this text in Matthew neither of these things are true. In fact they were right in the middle of God’s will and it was God that was orchestrating this set of events and not the enemy.

 God’s plans aren’t always all about good times, at least not as we would define them. In the progressive agenda of God’s purposes there will be suffering, birthing pains, and even death. Some of what we value and hold very dear will be affected in these ways and this will cause us great distress. I am reminded that in the birthing of a child there is great pain and suffering involved. It could even feel like a death of sorts but something beautiful and wondrous is birthed as a result. Even in the taking of traditional wedding vows there is a pledging of loyalty in good times as well as in bad times. It’s like admitting right up front that life will not always fit our fantasies.

 “In this world you will have trouble,” was Jesus promise to us in John 16:33. The continuation of this promise was: “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” We must not lose sight of the sovereignty of God; “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). It is important that we realize that the “good” that God is working is what He has orchestrated in moving His redemptive plan forward.

 We are in the midst of some challenging and, for some, very distressing times at this present time. Many face the prospect of losing their homes and/or their livelihood. For some, health issues have become more and more distressing. Although I believe that God is able to heal and deliver from any and all of our distresses, I also know that our timetable and our picture of deliverance can differ drastically from God’s.

 This is my hope for me as well as for you: that we would be more prone to faith and trust and hope rather than distress in the face of bad news. I remind myself even as I sit here in this wheelchair that my God who still heals and is not helpless to deliver me is also in control and knows what is best; and especially what is best for the redemption of this whole world. If we stick with God in hope and do not forsake serving His purposes rather than our own, I believe that we will see all of the provision that we have need of because “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3a).

-Tom Maus

Getting Your Head in the Game – Part Five

As I send my blog out into cyberspace each week, I can’t help but wonder if anybody reads them. An even more intriguing question I have is, does anyone relate to the thoughts and challenges that I put forth? There certainly have been a few of them as we have moved through this series of articles on getting our head into God’s game plan. By way of quick review, I’ll list again some of the core challenges. Getting engaged in God’s game plan means moving away from casualness and selfishness in our Christianity and getting into a revelatory place of God’s perspective where we are communing with Him and learning what He wants to do through us. It means that the worldly orientation that we default to needs to be replaced by a kingdom and destiny orientation.

The final challenge that I want to put forth in the conclusion of these articles comes out of Matthew 16:24-25 where it says: Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

In my opinion, the principle of “self-denial” has been somewhat lost in our current Christian way of life. We have become caught up in a culture of grace. This has been a good thing and personally has been very liberating to go from a legalistic mindset of living by a set of rules to coming to grips with what it really means to be under grace. This shift has been very necessary for the propagation of a Christianity that is truly unearned and unmerited.

At the same time, our headlong running toward living under grace has introduced us to a very slippery slope that we need to be careful of. The slope that we so easily slip on is this: Our flesh desires many things and can easily convince us that we are okay to involve ourselves in these things under the banner of grace. Because we are free and there are so many things in life that appeal to us, we are at risk of becoming ruled by our flesh. Part of the danger for us is that we justify our involvements on the basis of not being outwardly sinful. Being sinful or not sinful should not be our only criteria; being more or less kingdom of God oriented should. The big problem with giving into more and more of what appeals to our flesh is that less and less are we inclined to have our heads into God’s game.

I wonder if you are anything like me. I tend to give more and more of my time to computer and internet related activities (like facebook surfing and writing blogs). My finances, recreational goals, and the upkeep and improvement of my home are on my mind a lot. I think and plan what I want to eat, drink, play, and spend my time doing for my personal enjoyment. I could go on, but it’s too painful. None of these things are in themselves sinful. I just recognize that my flesh needs to be reigned in so that I am not being ruled by these things instead of a missional mindset. The Apostle Paul said that lots of things are legal for me to involve myself in as a Christian but not all of those things are in the best interest of the kingdom (my own words). He also said that a healthy relationship with grace will teach me to say “no” to things that will lead me away from God’s way (again my own words).

The conclusion I have come to is this: God wants me vitally invested in His kingdom work. Even though I am free in Christ, I need to consciously give myself to the agenda and ruling of the Holy Spirit at the expense of denying many of the desires of my flesh. Any productivity or fruit I hope to be involved in for the kingdom of God depends on my relationship to these principles. I personally want to come back to a fresh relationship of denying my flesh much of what it desires so that I may experience more of God’s grace working through me. I am purposing to curtail my activity on many levels so that I give more time towards communing with God and seeking His agenda.

I wonder, are you with me on this? Where are you with some of these challenges? I want to ask you to do something for me. Please post a comment. Write a short response if you’re reading this and tell me what God is saying to you personally. I ask you to do more than just browse, take the time to write a quick response to what God is saying to you through this. Doing so will not only give my ego a boost it will be healthy for you to think more than a few seconds on what this means to you. It is also quite possible that we might get some clue about what kind of CSCC Blog readership we have.

Getting Your Head in the Game – Part Four

We began this current series of articles in Matthew 16:18 when Peter, upon having a wonderful revelation about who Jesus was, was told that the future church would be built upon this knowledge. With this kind of revelation activated, nothing, not even hell itself will stand in the way of God’s agenda being orchestrated through His church. Multitudes of unlocked destinies will lie in the wake of those moving forward in God’s anointing. Our challenge is to get ourselves engaged in an active role with what God’s agenda is.

Reading on from here, let’s pick up the story in Matthew 16:21-23: From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

As we are trying to get ourselves engaged in God’s game plan, this last verse reveals a very real problem for us. In our humanity, we tend to have our minds on earthly and fleshly things. We are so limited in our perspective by what our eyes see, what our minds comprehend, and what our experiences have been. So much of what we pray for and seek after is influenced by these things. This is why it is so dangerous for us to get ourselves too caught up in the values of our worldly environment and the concerns of our life here. I am sure that very often what we are setting our aim upon must be running cross-purpose to what God’s will really is. We are, as Jesus told Peter that he was, a hindrance to what God wants to accomplish through us.

This is why it is so important that we get the mind of Christ. God said through Isaiah that his thoughts and ways are of a much higher perspective than what we are humanly accustomed to (Isa. 55:8-9). There is no way that we will ever proceed forward in God’s will, His purposes flowing through our efforts, without a lot of seeking of His mind on our part. In light of this, provision has been made for us to be able to get caught up into His perspective. God has given us the Holy Spirit whereby we can get totally filled up with Him and become influenced toward His agenda to a greater degree. It is imperative that we avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit’s influence to the fullest extent possible. We must make it our business to seek this filling and continue stirred up in the game plan of God.

I am convinced that the life we as Christians have been called to live on this earth is meant to have a much greater involvement with God’s agenda than what we are currently cozy with. There is no reason to feel condemned, as I am sure we can identify with Peter who at one moment could experience wonderful spiritual revelation and the next moment be totally ruled by his human perspective. There is definitely a challenge though, that compels us through this scriptural text to position ourselves to be influenced more by God’s perspective. I hope that you feel obliged as I do to be more filled up by the Holy Spirit and stirred by the things that are important to God. Let’s do what it takes to move this direction.

As we enter this level of relationship with Him we can expect to be privy to greater and greater levels of revelation. There will be more and more experiences of moving in God’s supernatural power. Lives being changed will be the fruit of our labors. Doesn’t this sound inviting? We can also expect to be faced with increased challenge to “deny ourselves”, but we’ll save that subject for the concluding portion of this five-part article of getting our head into God’s game plan.

God Bless . . .

Tom Maus

Getting Your Head in the Game – Part 3

We’ll come back some very important elements of Matthew chapter sixteen in part four, but in this third installment in this subject of getting our heads into God’s game plan I want to skip ahead. There is a very significant experience noted in chapter seventeen that I want to appeal to you from. In Matthew 17:1-3, we have the following narrative: And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him.

These three guys (Peter, James & John) were like the inner circle of the disciples. They were the ones that were the closest to Jesus. It wasn’t that Jesus wasn’t good friends with each of the twelve, but He was especially close to these three. As we observe what transpired in this story, I am struck by a thought that I believe to be true, and that is: there are special things and greater revelations that God will share with those that are closest to Him. It’s not like some people are more special to God than others, but those who take the time to become really intimate with Him will find themselves in the midst of amazing experiences with Him. In this case it happened on a mountain top.

Where I grew up in Alaska, we lived at the base of a mountain. It wasn’t particularly high, but it was a mountain nonetheless. For a good reference for Washington residents, Mount Si in North Bend would be about the equivalent. Now, although thousands of people live in the general vicinity of this mountain and are acquainted with its location, probably less than 2% of these people have ever experienced the view from on top of it. I had the privilege of climbing to the top of this mountain on several occasions and can say that the view is spectacular. Similarly all Christians have access to amazing revelatory experiences with Jesus but few will put forth the needed effort to encounter them.

These three men invested the time in a close relationship with Jesus and they also exerted themselves by making a climb with Him. Directly after witnessing this amazing transfiguration Peter remarked, “It is really good that we came up here” (my paraphrase); but they would never have experienced it had they not positioned themselves for it. I find myself both attracted as well as deeply convicted by this colorful event. I want so much to experience God sharing Himself with me like this, but I also know that I must invest myself much more in the relationship and exert myself to climb with Him. I wonder if I want it enough. I wonder if you want it?

The reason that I wanted to expose you to this story before we finish chapter sixteen is to tempt you with what you will find on top of the mountain. We’re going to be getting challenged with the subjects of denying ourselves and being too worldly minded, but it’s important for us to recognize that there is a reward for our efforts. Serving God is not just about discipline and rigorous effort. There are some amazing, off-the-charts experiences in store for us. It is of absolute significance that we grasp the merits of investing ourselves. God wants to expose us to revelatory perspectives and supernatural insights, and He will if we will go with Him.

Getting our head into God’s game means taking this very seriously; what He wants to do through us will require more than a casual attitude of fellowship with Him. We must see that being related to Him is a call to be continually related to all that He is working at in the world around us. In this relationship that only a small percentage of Christians will actually thrust themselves into, there will be some amazing views to behold. These views and the efforts that we exert in positioning for them will launch us into great kingdom productivity. I invite you to come with me and make the climb, it will be worth it!

Getting Your Head in the Game – Part Two

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:15-17). What a great blessing it is that we, like Peter, can really know the person of God!

In my previous blog I talked about the work that God is doing on the earth and posed the question, “Are you involved in the game plan of God or are you just playing your own little game?” In response to Peter’s spiritual revelation, Jesus prophesies about the future role His church would play in exerting all of the power of heaven to unlock people’s destinies. The pivotal tenet connecting us to this place in the arena of affecting destinies according to God’s game plan is that we commune with God and really know Him.

When Jesus first asked the question about who He was, there were varied responses based upon personal observation. It wasn’t like they didn’t really know him; by this time at least a year of their lives had been spent traveling with Jesus and witnessing His teaching and miraculous abilities. They had spent time in the marketplaces together as well as time around camp fires and in lodging places. Certainly they had a lot of respect and reverence for Him. But while everyone else had a relationship based on what their emotions and senses told them, Peter had a revelation in his spirit. What Peter experienced went beyond his fleshly senses where his being was flooded with supernatural understanding and suddenly he really knew Jesus.

I want that kind of experience with God, don’t you? I’m not talking about just a onetime occurrence either, although for some of you, you’re still hoping for that first time. There is relationship level in Christ that is possible to experience where you can hear and know in your spirit the very plans of God. It is exactly this kind of relationship that will enable us to be involved in God’s strategies in pushing back spiritual forces. God wants us involved with Him on this level. He wants to involve us in His work which is constantly going on all around us. The wheels have been set in motion long ago of a partnership between the sovereign and almighty God working His agenda through people who will incline themselves toward hearing His voice and acting on His promptings.

What we’re talking about here is not a casual relationship, nor is it selfish. Your current status of knowing God on a first name basis but not really spending a lot of personal time with Him is not going to cut it. Your selfish relationship where most of your time spent with God is oriented toward trying to get Him to bless you and praying for all of the things on your wish list is going to have to get ditched. If you really want the quality of experience that is possible, then some changes are in order.

For me personally, I know that it is critical that I spend regular and deliberate time getting in a place of worship and communion with God. I find that solitude, worship music, meditation, prayer and journaling are very important elements for getting my spirit to a place of revelation. My focus has to be one of meeting with God and expecting Him to speak into my life. What we’re not talking about is doing a Bible study. The difference is that rather than trying to find out all there is on a particular subject I am consciously opening up my life, my mind and my heart and saying, “Your kingdom come, your will be done in my life; speak to me concerning these things.” Action and obedience are also key factors for obvious reasons.

I wonder if any of this strikes a chord with you. Do you really want to know God like this? Are there changes in order for your relationship with Him? I’d like to share a word with you that motivates me and should motivate you as well. That word is “Destiny”. My own personal Destiny has been affected by the power and grace of God and there are many other Destinies waiting to be affected. It is your calling as well as mine to be more than a Christian who has been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is our Destiny to pull ourselves away from our computers and everything else that we fill up our time with and get in a place where the Holy Spirit can commune with our spirits and activate us in God’s game plan. It’s time to get our head into the game!

- Tom Maus

Getting Your Head in the Game – Part One

I’ve been satisfied up until now with doing blogs on nice devotional thoughts from my reading in the book of Matthew. Today I’m going deviate from this path a little bit, at least the part about them being nice devotional thoughts. God has been speaking to me a great deal as I have been on this journey through Matthew.  One thing that has been a constant as He has been speaking has been this thought: “Are you going to settle for your casual approach to Christianity or are you going to get involved in what God are really doing?” Today, rather than settling with putting a little thought out there that a few people may or may not be able to relate to, I want to challenge you to action. There is a work that is God’s and I want to dare you to get involved in it.

The seed thought for what I want to challenge you with comes out of Matthew 16:18-19. Peter had just responded to Jesus with this revelation that the Holy Spirit had given him concerning who Jesus really was. At a later time I want to come back to the significance of this revelation, but right now, the implications of what Jesus replied back to Peter with should cause us to stop us dead in our tracks. What Jesus said to Peter was this: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

What we see unfolding here is that Jesus was establishing His representative community through whom the purposes of heaven would be affected upon the earth. Through Peter, or ultimately through the church, spiritual forces would be locked and unlocked affecting ultimate destinies. Whatever all of the “binding” and “loosing” actually looks like (there have been some crazy ideas over the years) one truth resounds: God is going to push His agenda forward and get His will done! God is in the business of affecting people’s destinies and no amount of hellish power is going to withstand this happening.

The chosen instrument through which all of this is going to be accomplished is the church. When we are talking about church here we are not referring to your nice little gathering of Christians on the corner of the country road. The church that Jesus is talking about is not the so-called Christian club that most of us belong to. The context for the church that Jesus referred to is one of revelation. God revealed who He was and what He was doing to Peter, and then He said that through this kind of revelation and those who receive it He can exert great spiritual power.

The big question I want to bluntly lay on you is this: “Are you involved in the same game that God is playing or are you playing your own little game?” I don’t really think that what God is doing is a game, but it certainly is a good representation of what our Christian lives come to look like. We have our little Christian lives that we live where we go to church and we interact with other Christians. We feign at our relationship to what God’s word is all about, but are we really related to it? People’s destinies are in spiritual lock-up and we are most concerned with our little social circle.

It may not be totally true of you that you are playing your own little game, but it is true that the most you are doing is just warming the bench rather that actually being involved as a player in God’s game plan.  How much of God’s revelation related to unlocking spiritual destinies are you personally involved in? I have more to follow in another article, but for now I want to challenge you to make some choices to get yourself in the game. There is a work that God is really doing and it is high time that we got our head and our heart into it!

- Tom Maus

Battling the Effects of Our Relationships

Reading this morning from Matthew 16, I happened upon a warning from Jesus that caught my attention. In verse 6, “Jesus said to them (the disciples), “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”” After a little discussion that ensued and Jesus figuratively smacking them on the side of the head for missing his point, “They understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees (verse 12).”

I’ll give you a little helpful background to make this more meaningful. The Pharisees at one time (about 144 years previous to this time) really did have a devotion to God but they had become pulled so deeply into the exactness of religious rite and piety, their relationship to God was now really in word only. They had totally lost the life-force of service to God and instead held tightly to outward regulations. The Sadducees also laid claim to being servants of God, but their service was really to written tradition and they did not have a view of any future hope outside of this life. Hence, they lived only for this life.

The warning of Jesus is to watch out for the leavening effects of such teachings and lifestyles. Receiving any part of a teaching or viewpoint such as these has a way of affecting our whole life much like yeast affecting a whole batch of dough. When we give these things a place in our Christianity, they have a tendency to deeply affect the product of our service to God.

I pause to consider this warning from Jesus and wonder at its application to my own life. How much of what I do as a Christian is driven by religious tradition or experience? This could be a simple as how I approach worship or what I deem as important in worship. It could be borne out by a mental assenting to God’s words with little real fruit being produced in my spirit. How much do I live like the Sadducees, with no real future hope and only a concern for today and the benefits of this life? Materialistic hopes easily blend into a Christian life that is more rooted in this world than in a future hope.

Even as I wonder at this warning God is speaking to me through three separate scriptures. The first is from John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing.” The truth of this is that I need to examine the vitality of my relationship with God and see if it is truly with his person or with the religious practices that have been passed down from others who were related to him.

Secondly, this thought is found in James 4:8, where it says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” I am reminded that when I don’t feel the vitality of the relationship, the fault lies with me and not God. When I rid myself of duplicity in my life and truly give myself to true openness with him, he always rewards me with his fellowship.

The third scripture is Eph 5:18-20: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is up to me to fill myself up with God’s Spirit. It is easy to be filled up with all kinds of other things and none of these things will contribute to the desired result of vitality and fruitfulness in Christ. I must make it my urgent mission to fill myself with the things that God would speak to me personally and the life-force of what his will is on this earth.

I am convinced that if you, like me, will give yourself to these truths that I have mentioned, we will be injecting ourselves with the antidote to the poison of religious and worldly leaven. It is of utmost importance that we give ourselves to the urgency of this warning from Jesus himself. True kingdom fruitfulness awaits us as we are honest enough to admit that this warning applies to us!

Choose to be Moved by Compassion

This morning as I got into the church office and began to get my day in order, I checked the phone for messages. There was a message from several days ago from a woman desperately asking for help. She did not give specifics but simply asked for a call back. As I considered my response to this call I am ashamed to say that I considered just dismissing it. I mean, when you work for a church, you have no shortage of people calling on you requesting a handout. It’s easy to get callous towards these constant pleas for help in situations that are mostly the fruits of people’s own poor choices.

Before doing anything about responding to this call, I opened my Bible. My regular reading has been taking me through the gospel of Matthew. This particular morning’s reading started in chapter fifteen, verse thirty-two where it reads: Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.” Just to give you the context, Jesus had been spending some time along the Sea of Galilee. Word had gotten out of his presence there and crowds were streaming to him bringing their friends and loved ones needing to be healed.

The word that seemed to leap off of the page at me as I read was “compassion.” Not only did Jesus confess to possess it, he exemplified its meaning. He was doing things like teaching them God’s word and taking care of their need for physical healing, things that we would classify as spiritual needs. But then he took it to another level. Jesus showed concern for something as basic as putting food in their stomach. Jesus could easily have blamed their hunger on their own irresponsibility, and he would have been justified in doing so. I mean, who takes off from home on a three day road trip without considering where their meals are going to come from? The reason why they were in need simply wasn’t an issue to Jesus. He chose to be moved with compassion for them rather than withholding ministry to a need that was of their own doing.

I am deeply convicted by his example in this situation. How many times have I passed by a need and judged it according to what my eyes told me? How many times have I been devoid of compassion and failed to minister as Jesus would? I am happy to tell you that I did call this woman back and was able to pray with her as well as direct her toward the assistance that she needed.  I am also hopeful that this is more than a little story to you from a day in the life of Pastor Tom. Hopefully you are encouraged to give place to compassion and will find yourself in ministry opportunities as I did that you would easily have passed right on by.

- Tom Maus

Living in Community

Out of all of the various blessings of being a follower of Jesus, living in community has to be close to the top of the list. It is amazing that God not only forgives us and redeems us, but He also sets us in a family. As part of that family, we find friendship, belonging and purpose.

The foundation of the family of God is found in our fellowship with Christ and that relationship finds its roots in the covenant God has made with His creation. Throughout history, God has repeatedly stated His purpose to save and reunite us with Him. God has always shown himself to be faithful to His covenant, giving us great confidence in Him and His commitment to us. Our God is a covenant-keeping God!

The question that this brings up in my mind is, “Are we covenant-keeping people?” The way we live our lives should be an accurate reflection of our Father. When we live as covenant keepers, we mirror to the world how faithful, true and steadfast the Father is.

Not only is covenant-keeping good for God’s image. It is necessary so that the community, (the local church, in particular), can become relationally healthy. We must see the connection our life has with each other member of the body of Christ and the impact our words and actions carry with them.

•    Are we devoted to the faith?
•    Are we loyal to one another?
•    Do we stand by our promises?
•    Do we live by the standards and creed of our community of faith?

No breach of covenant is limited in its effect to the violator alone. Every sin I commit, every lapse in judgment, every broken promise impacts not only me, but my entire community as well. Romans 14:7 states “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.” A healthy church is filled with covenant-keepers whose concern is for the good of the whole above the good of themselves.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:13-14)

- Chris Brannon