Joy for the Journey

The journeys of today are not like those in the times of Jesus. As a young child and into my teenage years wherever we lived in Peru, IN or Melbourne, FL we would take many trips.

Most of the trips we made would include family. It didn’t matter if we were traveling back to Indiana or to Texas we always visited with relatives. Dad was one of 9 children and he had relatives all over. If we travel through North Carolina we would stop to visit each of my cousins, aunts and uncles, all of whom lived close to each other. When we traveled west we stayed with Dad’s sister in Texas and played with my cousins in that State. We even travelled to California we stayed with Aunt Thelma. Each family would offer us a place to stay, food and a glass of iced tea. Continue reading →

Faith is choosing to believe God’s dream for your life and the life of your church.

While sitting in an apartment in Riga, Latvia with two new children I spent some time on what the future was going to hold. Each morning I start my time with a number of devotional readings and one by Rick Warren caught my attention. While he wrote it for a person I believe we can also apply to the Church. Continue reading →

This Wednesday I sang a little song with the weekday children during the chapel time. We sang the line, “God is Love, God is Love.” Notice the line doesn’t say God is a form of love or God represents love. . . No it is GOD is LOVE. My contention is that until we have a relationship with the Father (God) through the Son (Jesus) empowered by the Spirit (Holy Spirit) we can never truly know what LOVE is. We have all kinds of experiences around us that are forms of love but never the true love like God’s Love.

All of us go through times of doubt in the spiritual journey, seasons where it seems like we don’t really know God like we thought we did. It’s a normal part of the spiritual journey for us to struggle with doubts about our faith, doubts about whether we’re truly following Jesus Christ or not. If you’ve struggled with those kinds of doubts, that’s probably a pret-ty good indication that you are following Jesus, because people who don’t follow Jesus Christ really aren’t all that con-cerned about it.

These seasons of doubt cause our hearts to condemn us, our feelings accuse us of not being Christians, of being failures, of not measuring up. God’s invitation to love so radically impacts us and we realize how far short we fall, and often our hearts become anxious and even condemning, and we wonder if we truly know Christ the way we thought we did. So John (we have been studying 1 John each Sunday) wants us to put that struggle in proper perspective, that it’s not whether our feelings are at rest or whether our feelings condemn us that determines whether or not we’re on this spiritu-al journey, but it’s whether God has received us through our faith in Jesus Christ.

You see, God is greater than our feelings, he is bigger than our emotions of doubt or assurance, and what God thinks carries more weight than what I’m feeling at the moment. So how do we set our hearts at ease? By remembering that our assurance doesn’t rely on our emotions but on God and then by pressing forward to obey God’s commands. John sums up God’s commands in the words “believe” and “love.” The order is vitally important, that we first trust our lives to Jesus Christ, we place our faith in him to forgive our sins and to bring us into a relationship with God built on grace. Then once we do that, we launch on a spiritual journey of loving other followers of Christ, to walk together on this journey we’re on. Believing comes first, then belonging. We first establish a personal relationship with God through belief in Jesus Christ, and then we find ourselves on this journey the bible calls church, of walking this journey together.

More and more people in our culture are trying to live the spiritual life alone–just by believing but not by belonging, or by just being spiritual (I hear that one a lot these days, “oh they are so spiritual.”) –yet John says that both are vitally important to live the spiritual journey of the Christian life.

So here we find another way our love for others demonstrates our faith. Is your heart at rest before him, are you filled with assurance and peace. God’s inviting you to an even greater level of boldness and confidence in loving others, that this will enable you to ask God for what you need to love with confidence, and then as you see needs you’ll want to meet those needs. God looks to our obedience to his commands to believe and to belong with each other as a demon-stration of our faith. How do we demonstrate our Christian faith in a world that’s going crazy? The primary means is by our love for each other. When we love each other we demonstrate our difference to the world, we demonstrate our care to Christians, and we demonstrate our obedience to God. When we refuse to love each other we demonstrate our resem-blance to the world, we demonstrate our callousness to Christians, and we demonstrate our rebellion to God. Which kind of statement do you want to make?

Pastor Mark Gough

I am very excited about the Series we began last Sunday called: A Roadmap for the Journey.

We will spend the next number of weeks in the book of 1 John because the little book of 1 John provides us with a reliable guide to navigate the rough terrain we’re likely to encounter in this spiritual journey we find ourselves in.

You see, the apostle John–who wrote the book of 1 John–was the only one of Jesus Christ’s original apostles to not be murdered by the Roman government. Not that they didn’t try! But John was a codgy old man who didn’t die easily. Eventually the Roman government banished John to an Island called Patmos. John was an eyewitness of Jesus Christ, one of the first of Jesus’ followers, and he wrote five books in our New Testament: The gospel according to John (the fourth book of the New Testament), three let-ters–1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and then finally the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. Before being banished to the Is-land of Patmos by the Roman Government, John served for many years as an overseer for all the churches in ancient Asia Minor.

John lived as a kind of spiritual mentor–the last living apostolic witness to Christ’s life and resurrection–so he kept himself busy helping the Christians in Asia Minor develop into fully devoted followers of Jesus. John most likely wrote his Gospel for use among these churches in Asia Minor, to give them an accurate account of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. John wrote his first letter in order to encourage people in the Christian and to keep them from taking dangerous side trips in their spiritual journey. John is writing this letter as a roadmap to help the confused and troubled Christians in Asia Minor (the people he originally wrote the letter to) navigate these unexpected twists and turns in the Christian journey, to help them stay focused on the true Jesus and not be led astray down a different path. John wanted to re-ignite joy in this spiritual journey.

Each week we will be lifting up areas that will help us along the way in our spiritual life now matter what stage of the journey we find ourselves in. . .

The first Sunday we covered four points to the roadmap under the title of “Joy For the Journey.” Those points were as follows:
Building On the Right Foundation (1 John 1:1-2)
The Right Companions (1 John 1:3-4)
The Right Source (1 John 1:5)
The Right Goal (1 John 1:6-7)

People today are striving for joy in the journey, turning over every rock along the way to try to find the secret. Some pursue it in pleasure and success, still others in money and security. John would tell us that joy is to be found by having the right foundation, the right companions, the right source, and the right goal. If we build our spiritual journey on reality, share it with other Christians, based it on God’s revealed truth in the Bible, and allow it to transform our lives, our joy will be full, even as John’s was when he wrote this letter.

I hope you will plan to join us each Sunday as we discover the “Roadmap for the Journey.” Oh, yes and bring your friends and relatives. I promise it could change their lives.

Pastor Mark

We are now 6 weeks into our new beginning at Crescent Avenue. Some great work was done the months prior to July. We are all thankful for the outstanding leadership of the members of CAUMC, the interim pastor Phil and the music director Paul.

But now is the time for all of us to step up and do something. Most people who do not attend church say it is because nobody ever ask them. So here is what I would like for you to consider over the next few weeks. INVITE SOMEONE TO CHURCH. I have listed below a few steps on how.

1. Live and display the spirit of love with all you encounter
2. Share a personal testimony of God’s work in your life
3. Display an excitement about your relationship with Jesus
4. Display excitement about the ministry in which you serve (your church)
5. Share information about your church’s worship
6. Take the leap! INVITE THEM TO CHURCH!
7. Demonstrate excitement at their attendance
8. Introduce them to others
9. Now that they have attended tell them how excited you were to have them attend with you and that you hope they will attend again

This is the easiest thing we can do. . . but it pays large dividends in the Kingdom of God.

Mark Gough