Month: November 2018

November 13, 2018 Believers Church Duluth

Our Service Schedule

Greetings from Duluth!  It’s so awesome to be a part of this.  God is letting us participate in some cool things, indeed.  Our weekly schedule starts early Sunday morning with a class where the group is learning about the Holy Spirit. We’re learning about his work in the world in general, in calling all people to salvation, and in those who are being saved specifically.  Pretty neat stuff.  Next is the Sunday worship service, which consists of singing praise to God and learning from the preaching of his word.  Jumping to Wednesday, our privilege is to gather together in the evening and let our vocal cords loose again in bringing him praise and tune our ears and our minds and hearts to learn from his word as we study the Old Testament.  Can you believe we get to do this?!  Ah, but there’s more…

Street Level – UW-Superior Update

Street Level is the college-age group, which focuses on ministering to UW-Superior in particular, meeting regularly on campus Sunday evenings, and just off campus at Big Apple Bagels every Tuesday for a meal and Bible study.  They recently had a retreat where the topic was Discipleship.  It was a great opportunity to connect with the Street Level members from Stout and River Falls, too.  Most recently, they had a super Halloween bash at the Moss residence, complete with caramel apples, pumpkin carving, and some all-out costumes to boot!

The Community Group

Community Group is a group of not-so-young-anymore 😉 servants at church who still want to do something! Thankfully, church leadership has devised a plan to keep us engaged, serving Christ, his people, and the Duluth community at large.  On a rotating basis, we do seasonally-appropriate tasty treat giveaways at different locations in the city.  Whether it be ice cream in summer or a bowl of hot chili in the fall, it’s a great way to get out and meet our neighbors near and far, and a good opportunity to make at least a few minutes of their day more enjoyable, (but hopefully a much greater impact than that).  On other Sunday afternoons, we’ll meet in someone’s house for a shared meal and video discussion, or head to a local hang-out and beat each other at board games and watch various team beat each other in a good football game.

Other Happenings

Outside of those two specific groups, the church has regular all-church workdays, some volunteers who teach monthly Sunday church to inmates in Superior’s county jail, occasional men’s and women’s Bible studies, and various other goings-on.  Did I mention that for most everything we do, there’s time before and after to hang out, eat food, laugh, pray and cry together?  Praise God that he lets us in on what he’s doing – changing us and changing the world through all these interactions, large and small.

JFBelievers Duluth MN working

November 10, 2018 Pastor Jesse Moss | Duluth

A quick google search will find you 2,880 different “world records” for different balancing acts. You’ll find thousands of desperate attempts at fame such as: “longest time on balance beam while also singing and playing the ukulele” (3 minutes 35 seconds) or “most hockey pucks balanced on the forehead” (31) and even “longest time balancing a running lawnmower on chin” (3 minutes 34 seconds). Many of the attempts at balancing are rather pathetic, but a few are actually quite impressive. Some people have even become world famous for their incredible feats of balance. Philippe Petit, for example, wowed onlookers by crossing between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974.

You may not have ever found yourself with a ridiculous amount of hockey pucks on your forehead or shaken in fear of tipping off the high wire and falling to your death, but have you ever had more to do than time to do it? Have you ever had so many things vying for your attention that you didn’t know which way to turn? So many responsibilities and passions that you didn’t know where to place your concentration? It’s easy for your life to begin to feel like an intricately complicated balancing act far more difficult than holding up a hockey puck because you are trying to balance all the different aspects of your life all of which are unique in their size, weight, and shape. How are you supposed to hold up your work, family life, church involvement, time spent with God, hobbies, duties at home, and maintain your social life all at the same time?

That was the question I recently heard asked, “how are you to balance all of the different parts of your life?” How much do you put into your school work or how much effort do you put into your job in order to do it well, but not get lost in it and to still have time for God? I’ve been there with all the different parts of my life precariously propped up by my varying amounts of time and effort, everything carefully stacked upon each other. The problem was that if a little bit of effort was diverted somewhere else or time spent on the wrong thing that perfect balance that was holding everything up would be thrown off and everything would fall crashing down in a mess causing a domino effect of destruction. So what are we to do?

Stop the Balancing Act

Stop trying to get a perfect balance and exhausting yourself holding everything up. You can’t, at least not for long. The answer isn’t to divide up all you have and put 60% towards God, 20% towards work, 10% towards church, 5% into entertainment, and 5% into double checking your math to make sure you have all your percents. The Bible doesn’t speak in those terms. The Bible doesn’t divide our lives up like that as if each part is autonomous of the others. Instead, God says things like, “Seek first the Kingdom of God” and “Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, mind, and soul.”  We are to go all in on God. 100% of all that we have, all of our time, all of our effort, all of our love, all of our mind, and all of our body go to God. That’s the perfect balance. It all goes to Him.

Our lives are not intended to be lived out as a conglomerate of individual self-sustained parts. If you are a Christian, you do not get to have different lives: church life, work life, social life, and family life. You have one life and all of those seemingly separate aspects of your life are all linked together. And all of them should be driven by your relationship with God. When you give God all that you have, all of those different parts come together to form the whole. That is when they all can be sustained.

When God is in control of all we have we can give everything else the attention that it needs. It isn’t as though we now don’t go to work, or take care of our homes, or spend time with family, but In giving everything to God He will then direct the rest of our lives. The Bible says that if we seek first the kingdom of God He will take care of everything else.

Colossians 3:23 states whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men. This breaks down the separation of life categories we tend to create. If we give God 100%, that means how we function at school and work, how we interact with friends and family, what we do at church and how we serve all flow out of our relationship with God. Now instead of struggling through trying to decide for yourself how to operate in all these areas, you ask God what He would have you do in those situations. He is in control of it all and seeks to be glorified in every aspect of your life, so you can bet that He will direct you through it all.

Think of those old school balances with a plate to hold weights on either side. As you add more weight to one plate, the other goes up, take weight from one and the other goes down. Now imagine one of those with enough plates to represent each area of your life. You can carefully distribute all that you have evenly trying to keep any from falling, desperate to keep everything in the air and not leave one neglected. But as things change and grow you will constantly have to be adjusting.  You will constantly have to be adding to and taking away to keep everything in the air. Or, instead, you could put all the weight, all the time, all the efforts, all of who you are squarely in the middle of the plate for God. There will be no fear of anything moving, no fear of anything crashing to destruction because everything is being held up by what you have given to God.

God calls us to a lot. He has a lot for us to do and to consider. If you try to figure it all out on your own you will fail, you will not be able to hold everything up in perfect balance indefinitely. So do not even try, instead give it all to God. Not because you want Him to uphold all those other areas of your life. Not so he can help you succeed at work, school, and church. Give it all to Him because He is worth it. He already gave it all to you.   

November 5, 2018 Believers Church

Recommended Media – November 2018:

SHAM CONVERSION

SERMON NO. 2928
A SERMON DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON DECEMBER 10, 1876.

“And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them. They feared the LORD and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD.”
2 Kings 17:25, 33, 34.

If only we had the mp3. This is the text from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon entitled “Sham Conversion”. In this insightful message, he calls our own conversion to mind causing us to compare ourselves to the Samaritan “converts” in 2Kings 17. What are the fruits of true conversion? What are the elements of a sham conversion? Read on to see what Spurgeon explained…

READ THE SERMON HERE. (8-page pdf)

 

November 2, 2018 Believers Church

“31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  -Ephesians 4:31-32

What’s up with all the Sin?

One thing I have learned from reading and studying the bible is that the writers of the epistle letters spent an awful lot of time talking about problem sins in the church. There is so much practical direction given in these letters. It was eye-opening for me to realize that the reasoning wasn’t primarily so that churches and Christians could establish a code of doctrine to run the church by. What I mean is, when Paul addressed lying and immorality in his letters, it wasn’t just for the sake of writing a how-to manual on church management. People were actually committing these sins in the church.

It was no shock to the Apostles that sinners would, well… sin… and sin badly sometimes! So, they wrote the letters to help correct these issues. See, sin is expected from church people, but sin is not excusable and the writings clearly convey that sins in the church need to be corrected for the sake of the people and for righteousness and growth. If you have a heart for God, you will be thankful for the instructions in the bible.

I have a dang good reason!

In the scripture we’re looking at, Paul conveys a switch of progression for us that I think we have a hard time with. He tells us to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away along with malice. I don’t know about you but all of these things can really puff me up inside and they have NEVER produced positive results. It is interesting that something so evil as this list of emotions and feelings is something we so easily allow. We defend our right to feel these feelings because it’s possible we had been unfairly treated or have had our rights infringed upon. At any rate, we allow these feelings and emotions to pressurize in us slowly over time.

“He can’t talk to ME that way! Who does he think he is?”
“How is it I am ALWAYS overlooked when the church is picking someone to help with _________”
“All the guys seem to fawn over THAT girl? if they only knew what she really was like.”
“Did you hear about SO-AND-SO? Something bad happened to them and it’s about time!”
“They didn’t ask for my help. They must think something bad about me.”

The Time-Bomb

We often feel justified in the way we think. When you harbor sinful feelings like these, they don’t remain controlled. They will eventually rupture into other attitudes and reactions. When we give in and leave space for our hearts to be devilish, something gets altered inside. We begin to accommodate the darkness in us. Where this leads in time is isolation. Consider this scenario: if there is a brother or sister you begin to feel this way about, you will begin to avoid them. When other brothers and sisters don’t feel the same as you, you separate from them. When sermons and the Bible convict you, you separate from it. Then you begin to feel like there is a secret vendetta; covert meetings and discussions organized to set you aside.

Over the years I have observed that people in melt-down mode have one commonality between them. All of them have it in one degree or another: isolation… disconnection. Eventually, that person will explode, no holds barred, writing off and tarnishing every friendship and relationship they once held dear. I have seen people even do it to their own spouses and children.

Nothing Good Will Come of It

Wake up, guys. Big explosions like these are always fueled by this crop of permitted feelings inside: bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. James adds in his first chapter, “19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” The anger of man does produce something: self-righteousness. That’s about it.

In my past and even in the present but to a much lesser degree, I would go through dark times in my life where rough feelings would stew within. I would become cynical and suspicious about what people were doing around me. It drove me to feel like I couldn’t trust anybody. Isolation was the result and I felt like everyone around me was trying to stick it to me in some way or that they just didn’t care about me. I still get duped by my emotions today but the presence of the Holy Spirit and the practical thinking of the Bible offer help to re-focus… dispel the pressure… disarm the bomb.

What’s a person to do?

Paul in Ephesians 4 gives us something simple to do. He says to “let” these feelings and emotions “be put away.” It’s like he is saying “turn it off!” and that’s not easy, right? He doesn’t stop there (because Paul is not a moron). He knows it requires a change of mind; correct perspective. We need the Holy Spirit to empower us to replace destructive thinking with correct thinking. He goes on to instruct us to “be” something else. He says “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving.” Here’s where Paul’s direction amps up, and follow me by assessing your life with these questions:

Are you a sinner? -yes. Are you born again by the grace of Christ? -yes. Before salvation, where you aimed for hell? -yes. Did you do vile things? -yes. How vile? -Extremely vile. Did you think vile things? -yes. Often? -yes! So, listen… we are to use that measuring stick (how much God forgave us in His kindness and tenderheartedness) to measure our kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness toward others. When you contemplate how much God forgave you, you cannot help but to humbly forgive those around you. The side effects of this are unity, fellowship, and love. Inclusion… family… connection. The death of Christ for each of us should level us… it disarms us… to humbly love.