​97 trees! Tables and tables of decorations donated. Money came pouring in from everywhere- business and individuals, organizations, and churches. It just kept coming. 

We were able to give away 85 trees, all the decorations, so many cookies and many gallons of hot cocoa. Plus, every single family that came through our lot last weekend was given a gas card as a gift, to show them they are loved. And then the volunteers that showed up when needed, who helped set up everything, and then helped clean it all up afterwards!

And this miracle happened because of people all over this community and beyond who were filled with the love of God, whether they knew it or not, who chose to give, whether it was a tree they had in their attic, decorations they bought from the store, or they gave money to help us get the things we needed- they gave, and because of it, people received- and Jesus was there- and so was hope! 

He greeted families through the welcoming of our volunteers. He reminded the volunteers why they were there through the smiles and appreciation of the families who came. Every Merry Christmas, and God bless you proclaimed the truth that there is hope in this world!

And I don’t care what any naysayer may say, on that day, Jesus Christ was alive and loving on His people, through simple Christmas trees and boxes of lights, through cookies and candy canes, through smiles and even through tears, through every story that was shared and every life that was touched! 

So I know when God’s people give, that amazing things happen; God honors it, and lives are changed! On Saturday, December 4th, God’s hope was proclaimed because God’s people gave.

Now just imagine what more things we could do, more lives we impact, more hope we could proclaim! Church, our God is amazing, and so are you! Thank you! 

Each Thursday morning, from 8-10am, I have a standing Zoom meeting. There are very few things that I let interfere with this appointment, because it’s an important one; one that I need, and one that I really do enjoy.

Each Thursday I meet with my band-mate… no, I am not in a band. Anyone who has heard me sing knows that can’t be true. This band isn’t a musical group, but it’s a Wesleyan-style very-small discipleship growth group. My good friend and fellow pastor is my band-mate. We’re working on adding a couple more band-mates, but for right now, it’s just us…

​This past Sunday, we launched our Fall Stewardship Campaign and I wanted to take a minute to share it with you if you missed it, or if you need to hear it again!

And I want to start by giving thanks!

Church, I give thanks for you today! I give thanks to our God because of each and every one of you, because we get the privilege of joining together here today whether online or in person at the church, we get to worship together, we get to share life together, we get to carry one another’s burdens and celebrate each other’s joys. 

I give thanks for you because of all you do in the name of the Lord to bring joy and peace and love to this world, to share with others what God has done in your life. I give thanks because together, we are the body of Christ, we are the church, and we get to bring glory to God through all we do, whether together or individually, whether here at church, or out there wherever we find ourselves. 

I hope you see how amazing a thing that is, and how wonderful it is to be able to give thanks to God for it all!

Part of our Power of Thanks message series focus this Fall is celebrating the good things God is doing now, and preparing for the amazing things God will do in the future. Because we know that God has been, is, and will continue to call us, use us, and lead us in this great kingdom work as His church!

As we prepare for that unknown future, we as the leadership of your church are asking you to join with us in praising God and trusting Him with that future. 

We exist as a church because of the grace of God, and we function because of the work, and the gifts given, by every person here. Because of who you are, what you do, and the heart with which you give, we get the wonderful privilege of doing this church-thing! 

In the mail this week, you will be getting a letter from the church to start our Fall Stewardship Campain. Each year, we ask those who call this church home to prayerfully commit to supporting the church financially in the next year. With the letter will be a pledge card. 

Now, this is where things sometimes get awkward. Oh no, I knew it, the church just wants my money. I hear it all the time from church folk and non church folk alike. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

We don’t want your money. We want you. We need you in fact. Without you, and you and all the other yous, we couldn’t do this great work for God that we do in our community. We couldn’t be a beacon of hope in a hopeless world. We could be the place that our community comes to for welcome, for support, to get their needs met, to find friendships and healing, to experience love and support. 

Without you, we can’t be the church. So we ask you to commit to that great work. It is God who calls us to commit our whole selves to that work, including our talents, including our time, and yeah, including our treasures. 

The truth is, we as a church cannot continue without the financial giving of our people. Without folks like you giving, and giving passionately, giving sacrificial, we can’t keep operating our building, and paying our staff, and running our programs, and offering support to those in need, and partnering with other churches and businesses and organizations to do even greater things for those around us to bring glory to God.

Our pledge cards ask us to think through what we can and would like to give to the church in the next year. We use those numbers to plan our budget, to prepare for the ministries we feel led to engage in in the next year. No, your pledge card is not a bill. It’s a prayer. It’s a hope. It’s you saying, with God’s help, I will support the church with this amount of money. 

When you look at it, it may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but when you bring yours along with yours and mine and all of ours together, with a heart that desires to love God, then God can accomplish great things!

So we ask you over the next two weeks, to take that card, and talk with God and your family about it. What do you give now? Can you continue that in the next year? Can you give more? Can you give up something in order to sacrifice for God’s church and His people? 

I can’t answer those questions for you. Only you and your family and God can. But what I can tell you is that when you trust God, when you commit your resources to Him, when you come together with others, God will do great things, God will be honored, and we will be blessed through it!

I ask you to pray, and to make that commitment. When you do, send your pledge card into the church. If you don’t receive one in the mail this week, it’s likely we don’t have your contact information. But if you would like to join in, you can find a pledge card on our website. Send them in. Come join us for worship in person one Sunday in the next couple weeks and bring it with you. 

Let’s bring our prayers and commitments and resources together as God’s people, trusting Him, and working together to do this great work He has for us.

And like I said at the start of this talk, I give thanks to God for each of you! I given thanks to Him for the faith you have, even if you think it’s small. I give thanks for the life you have, because through you, God is glorified! I give thanks for you because, with you, we are the church! And in that, there is great power!

​

One of the hardest things for us as humans is to know how best to use our time. I don't now about you, but I'm really good at wasting a lot of time doing nothing...at least nothing of much importance. Netflix binging hasn't helped with that, either.

So, as followers of Christ who are called to greater things, how do we redeem our use of our time? Ephesians 5:1 tells us that we are to "be imitators of God." Well, that's all well and good, but what does that actually look like? How to I imitate God? We do that by following the example of Christ. So what's that, you may ask?

After Jesus was baptized by His cousin, John the Baptist, in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit led Him out into the wilderness/desert for a period of forty days. While He was there, He didn't eat or drink anything- NOTHING at all for almost 6 weeks! And during this time, both Luke and Matthew tell us that the devil came to Jesus and tempted Him with several things- power, luxury, and food. 

After 40 days, any of us would be starving, and probably willing to do just about anything to fill our bellies with something. Satan comes to Jesus and tells Him to prove He is the Son of God by turning some stones on the ground around Him into bread to eat.

In a fashion only Jesus can pull off, He responds to this tempting offer by quoting Daniel 8:3: "People do not live off bread alone, but on every word that flows from the mouth of God!" #micdrop! 

In the midst of a culture, and even a world, where much of what we do is dictated by our next meal, or snack, or second breakfast, Jesus tells us that there is something we need in life more than food. We need God! Repeat after me: "WE NEED GOD!" And yet, we become so distracted by the things of this world, by our physical needs and comforts, that we often times allow those things to take the place of God, or keep us from seeking after Him more fully.

Enter fasting. Fasting is the biblical concept of voluntarily denial ourselves an otherwise typical or normal activity for the sake of a spiritual activity. Basically,fasting is a great practice that typically involves not eating for a certain amount of time, in order to focus more on God. But it can also involve giving up video games, time on the computer, spending money, or any other activity that causes us to lose focus on God. It's about sacrificing something in our lives so that we can have more time with the God who sacrificed so much for us!


So how do we fast?


Start by preparing your heart. Make sure that you are fasting for the right reason- because you want to become closer to God. Then determine what you will fast from and how long you will do it. (This next step is key) Then remove those things you are fasting of from your immediate vicinity. It is hard to resist the temptation of another Snickers bar when the bowl is right next to your desk. Lastly, and this is what makes fasting different from just giving stuff up: Fill that void with more of God, by praying, worshiping with others or on your own, Bible reading, devotions, etc.


By putting our physical hunger aside for a time, we are able to realize and feed our spiritual hunger!


Your challenge for this week: Fast from something three times this week! And as you're doing that, take some time to consider these follow-up questions: Do you think you could give up eating for a meal or longer? Why? What kinds of things distract you from thinking about God? What could we as a family fast from so we could grow closer to God?

What is a jerk? Webster's dictionary defines a jerk as a stupid person, or a person who is not well-liked or who treats people badly. Google has a more succinct description: a contemptibly obnoxious person. Or, as I said on Sunday, a jerk is often just "a big meanie-head!"

We all know someone who would be described by those definitions; someone who is just a jerk, and we really don't like being around them, whether they are at our jobs, in our families, or part of our church.

But this week, we're not looking at how to get THEM to stop being jerks. We're looking at how WE- Me and You- can go about not being a Jerk! 

How do we live our lives in a way that people don't write us off because of what we say or how we say it? How do we, as Christians, ensure that people will hear what we have to say about who God is and why we follow Him?

Last week, we looked at the importance of the state of our hearts- the intent, or the WHY, behind the things we say and do. In Matthew 12:33-37, Jesus reminds us that good fruit comes from good trees and evil fruit comes from evil trees. The things we say and do come from the state of our hearts. If we are jerks, if we are meanie-heads, if we are just all around obnoxious and rude and angry and arrogant, then we have to question the state of our heart. 

Inversely, if we claim to have God in our hearts, to have dedicated our lives to serving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then we need to make sure that our words and actions reflect that! Christians have such a bad reputation in our culture for being jerks about things, especially about our beliefs. And because of that, many people will completely tune us out when we start talking like that.

So how do we make sure we say what needs to be said (things that are kind, challenging, affirming, or firm) in a way that people will hear us, and more importantly, hear about the God whom we love?

John Wesley had a great model for this. He called it the "3 General Rules." These are a great metric for weighing what we say and how we say it. 

1) Do no harm, 2) Do good, 3) Stay in love with God. Pretty simple, huh? That's the point. A simple framework for assessing how we say things, and what we say. Try it this week. Take a few seconds before you respond to things and ask yourself: will this do harm to the other person? Will this bring about good? Will this show that I am in love with God and will it help others to love God? Try it. And let me know how it goes!

I remember very well the first words my daughter learned how to say, "No!" followed very soon by "mama!" (I would have preferred a different order on those, but...) She picked up on the whole talking thing very quickly, just like most of us do.

Talking comes naturally to us humans. But talking well, in ways that are holy, that build people up? That takes more work. 

So we need to learn how to do it, and how to do it well. It takes practice. It takes grace. And it takes a willingness to look at ourselves humbly and honestly, because what we say, how we say it, and why we say it matters!

This last Sunday, we looked at the concept of having holy conversations with God and others. And we focused on the concept of why we say things- the intent behind our words.

Consider some of your conversations this week. How much of what you said did you actually think about before you said it? And how much of it was reactionary, emotion-based, or "off-the-cuff?" Jesus reminds us, in Matthew 15:18, that "the words you speak come from the heart..." What we say comes from the state of our hearts. Ouch... I don't know about you, but considering some of the things that come from my mouth, I have to wonder about the state of my heart...

Are you saying things that betray a proud, angry, selfish heart? Or do your words betray your allegiance to Christ above all things? See, why we say things matters! What we say, and how we say it matters too- and we'll get to that next week. But for this week, here's some advice, advice I'll be taking as well.

Before you speak- think! If the words that are about to come out of your mouth are not holy, or encouraging, or good, or helpful (see Ephesians 4:29), then don't say them! Instead, spend some time heart-searching with God. Why do you want to respond that way? Is there something in your life you need God to work on so that your immediate response is less...ugly?

Here are some questions to consider this week:

When was the last time you said something you shouldn’t have?

What happened when you did that? What could you have said differently?

How can God help us to have holy conversations with everyone?