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30 Days in God’s Story

god is love

The best resolution you can make today, and is completely do-able in the next 30 days, is to read through all of the New Testament and immerse yourself into God’s story.

Amazing things will happen as you read through God’s message to us in the New Testament! The Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, so as you begin to read, meditate upon and digest all that God has to say to you in the next 30 days, I know that faith will be unleashed in your life!

As you read, find a comfortable space with limited distractions. That could be a challenge in and of itself! Also, you might want to keep a journal, or a notepad and pencil handy to write down what God is revealing to you as you read. I am sure you will have some insights and some epiphanies throughout the next 30 days.

Finally, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate your reading. The Bible is alive, it is God’s living revelation to you! In it God is revealing who He is, and leading you deeper into who you are becoming! So write down what seems to jump at you from the pages. You may not even know why it is sticking out to you, but as you pray and meditate on it, God will reveal why He decided to bring that to your attention!

Feel free to send me your insights and epiphanies during the next 30 days to pastormonty@svaonline.org

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Advent Longing…

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The Advent season is always pregnant with possibilities.

A subconscious knowing resides deep within gnawing, in an awakening way, opening eyes and heart to a truer reality available only to those who seek it.

There is so much more to life…there is a deeper peace… a greater capacity to love…an irremovable anchor of hope.

Imagine feeling an inescapable smile, an unexplained joy resonating deep within, and a sliver of grace that pierces your soul for no apparent reason.

These are around and available all the time, yet we rush around with Black Friday hearts and choose to settle for far less than God graced our planet with and offers through  benefits of the Incarnation.

I like what Thomas Kelly, a 20th century Quaker wrote:

“Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound!”  ~Thomas Kelly

The following line of Kelly’s causes me to pause, “We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.” Ah…he is onto something here.

This is not a pipe-dream for God lovers and seekers, rather it is available, right now right where you are. No matter what stress, struggle, hurt or habit has you submerged, Advent shouts  God came to earth…God came and infused His divinity with humanity…Jesus, then is the definition of who God is…Jesus came to rescue, not condemn, and He offers everyone a better hope of drawing near to God.

Advent also reminds us of longing…the longing for Messiah to come…

The longing for God to show up…

The longing for help beyond our capabilities…

The longing to know that we all matter, and that God cares and is involved…

The longing for the better hope of God’s presence,

May you slip over today into that center and find the silence which is the source of the sounds of life.

Monty

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It’s Time To Get Back To Church

September 16th (next weekend) is national Back to Church Sunday…For me the fact that there actually is a “National Back To Church Sunday”  is a mixed love-hate relationship. The campaign exists because summertime is full of trips, excursions, vacations and a million other adventures that can easily draw you away, knowingly or unknowingly, from engaging with your community of faith.

On The Plus Side…

I love it (NBTCS) in the way that we have a re-gathering of people back towards the life of faith and community. The National Back To Church Sunday campaign works kind of like a get out of jail free card for truant church-goers who might be feeling some guilt or shame for being AWOL from the church for a while. I think we all need the occasional get-out-of-jail-free card. Theologically most people know that the church would easily welcome them back and that God is gracious, but often we are hard on ourselves and we create justifiable excuses to disengage.

Another group of people who disconnect from church are those who feel they don’t have anything to offer, or perhaps they are experiencing hard times financially and their inability to participate financially becomes for them a reason to stay away until they are in a better position to give. This absolutely breaks my heart and misses the point of why God established the church in the first place. I just want to see you, not your cash.

A community of faith is supposed to be the place where guilt is forgiven and the person is freed from the weight of Shame. The church is supposed to be a place where you are loved and supported particularly if you have hit some hard times financially or other. Shame on the church if it continue to places loads of guilt on people, and erecting barriers to the life of God’s community.

So maybe you have elicited some of those reasons, or reasons noted in the video, for staying away from church. If you have, it’s time to get some good theology, and immerse yourself back  in the atmosphere where God can more powerfully work in and through you. This will begin to address the areas of struggle or doubt and realign you with the grace and abundance of God. You’ll be amazed at how God has designed the church to be a safe place, a forgiving place, a guilt-free place so that you can grow some serious spiritual muscle.

It has been about a 100% truism in my 26 years of ministry that those who for whatever have disconnected from the life of God’s community of people are the ones who are in the most desperate need of what it can truly offer.

So the love side of this equation for me is that I would say to you”Come home…the door is open and the light is on and you’ll find whatever you need in the fridge…no cost, no story, no guilt, no shame, we just simply miss you and long to journey together with you! So come this Sunday and reestablish some powerful God-patterns in your life!

On the minus side…

The hate side of the equation for me is that we even have to have a day called “National Back To Church Sunday.” God is at work in and through His people all the time, yet we forget Him and the spiritual life so easily. I love being with God’s people. I love my community of faith…I love the energy that transpires between a full congregation and the pastors…this makes for a greater dynamic in the worship, preaching, energy and total experience.

I know that church happens every day, but there is something powerful about the gathering of God’s people as one family each week whether that is on Saturday or Sunday. The overwhelming sense of God’s presence revealed as peace, power and empowerment is something that I truly long for everyone to experince…not just once in a while…but whenever we gather together.

While God is with me everywhere I go, there is something mysterious about a community of grace gathering together…so I wish we didn’t have to have a day to try to market going back to church as if it was another American commodity…it makes me sad.

So my mind wanders and prays…

O’ God, that we would become a people who desire you and long for you above all things…
O’ God, may you remove our bad theology of toxic faith that make the church a bunch of dead rules and regulations that so easily create justifications for disengagement…
O’ God would you show up in such a way as we gather that the greatest human experience fades in comparison…
O’ God may we not turn church into something other than your people gathered to center on your centrality
…..love each other unconditionally
………..serve each other and our communities passionately
……………….and hear your voice through Word and Heart
…………………….and make Jesus famous by our actions.

So I wish there didn’t have to be a National Back To Church Sunday, but I’m glad there is one so that grace can again be the ingrediate that lathers us all in God’s love as the prodigals return.

So would you go out there this week, and with grace and authenticity, invite that friend, family member, or co-worker to get back to church with you…It just might be the most spiritual thing you do all week as you choose to reengage…no need to say where you’ve been…just show up, the Body of Christ needs you, and God is waiting for you to move in faith…I promise you, He’ll reach you before you reach Him 🙂

~Monty

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To Russia With Love

Amy and I are going to be in St. Petersburg-Russia soon. We were  in Moscow a few years ago and loved it!  Even though the people were hard to engage, there was something about the city that drew us. St. Petersburg is different from Moscow as it is the most European of Russian cities. The Hermitage Museum (which I am stoked to see) holds Rembrandt’s painting “The Prodigal Son.”  I have a print of that work on my office wall and I am beyond excited to have the opportunity to gaze at it for a while! From the descriptions I have heard and the images I have seen, St Pete looks and sounds beautiful. It would seem we also get a double blessing as we will be experiencing the White Nights” while we are there. The White Nights are a perpetual dusk…it never gets dark…

As we are getting prepped and set to take off, I thought it would be good to absorb to the words of some famous Russian writers, Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy…

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“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“To love someone means to see him as God intended him.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Beauty will save the world”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“rest, nature, books, music…such is my idea of happiness…”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him. ”
― Leo Tolstoy

“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Music is the shorthand of emotion”
― Leo Tolstoy