PCPrays

So last week I wrote about short term mission trips and about my concern about them.  Today I want to try to go a little deeper into the problem.  Today I talk more about all mission work not just “short term mission trips”.  Anyways first we will talk about football (that’s a first for me).

Let’s say that a person wants to play in the Super Bowl.  You can not start at the super bowl.  First this person (and their team) would have to play in games (and win).

But even before this person plays games with their team they must go to practice.  The team practice together and they learn how each person fits into the team.

And for years before this person was ever picked to play for the NFL he spent time doing personal practice.  Just him, him and friends, high school, etc.

Now playing in the super bowl is more grand than a guy going to the gym.  But it would be imposable for a person to get to the point where they can go to the super bowl without going to the gym.

Now I want to say the same thing is true in the normal Christian life (I say normal because I believe that God does grant special grace to people who are in jail or persecuted countries where they can not do corporate worship, or they might just not have a family).

The thing is that we think that we (and our children) can grow into healthy Christian men and women living only in the top two or three levels.

Personal Bible reading, prayer and fasting are foundation to the Christian life.  And daily family worship is as important to the Christian life as going to practice is for a NFL player.

Yes, dear Christian parent, you have the main responsibility to raise your child in God’s ways.  It’s not the youth pastor’s job to do so. Using mission trips to help “mature” our children spiritually would be like playing in the super bowl to learn about football.  Yet we treat it as the norm to send our young adults – who spend no time in the Word, who don’t pray, have never fasted (apart from a “soda” fast for lent one year) and who parents have never sought to teach them God’s way – to do mission work in hope that it will mature them.

It does not work.  We can not spend all our time (or even most of it) with our kids playing sports or watching tv.  It is our job as parents to lay a Christian foundation for our children to build upon.

So maybe the problem is that we have parents who are not passionate about the Gospel.  We have people who have no spiritual foundation of their own bringing up worldly children and instead of trying to build a solid foundation of Christian disciplines we send them off to West Virginia for a week.

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Just showing off my baby.

And by the way I love that picture of Marci and Nyssa in the last post.  I have it as the back ground on my phone and it always makes me smile  

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So I got to go geocaching with Nyssa, Marci and Allen this past weekend.  It was fun.  First time we ever took Marci out caching.  To be honest I like caching out in the woods better then city caching, but I like city caching better then house work    And I it’s Marci is not ready to be out in the woods yet.

Anyways, we went out to celebrate Allen’s birthday he wanted to do a series of caches called “Cache to Eagle – GRC Thunderbird Cache #” then 1 – 12.  We found 6 of them so that was not bad.  I also got to try out my Droid at geocaching.  It was really nice because it gave us driving directions to get us really close to the caches.

So a big thank you to Nyssa and Marci for letting Allen and my self go out.  And for going with us.  It was fun 

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Just an observation.  Most people don’t like hymns.  Even the people who say that they do, don’t really like them.  What they should say is “I like these 50 (or so) hymns”.

Now I don’t want to say that “Holy, Holy, Holy” or “Amazing Grace” or “Nothing But The Blood” are not great hymns.  They are.  In fact out of all the hymns that we sing there is only one that I don’t like “He lives” (…”You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heat”…  NO!  Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the father…  Sigh).

But try to get “new” hymns added is like pulling teath.  “Jesus I Come” and “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” are two of the best.  But they are not part of that package of 50 (or so) hymns and so we don’t sing them.

I did take me a long time to find this out.  Being new to the church I did not notice that when we sing hymns we only sang the same ones over and over.  I had a hard time trying to get “Before the Throne” to be song at church.  Even when it was it was as a choir song not as a congregation song (I sang along    ).  But maybe in another 50 years I will only want to sing “God of Wonders”..  I’m not sure, but it just seems like a shame that we don’t use the rich collection of songs from past generations.

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But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings,  sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.  For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.  Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.  For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.  For,

“Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Hebrews 10:32-39

So I must say that what ever had Pastor Don pumped up for last weeks sermon was still going this week.  And that’s a good thing.  We need a passion for God in our church and it’s refreshing to see Pastor Don with that passion.

Overall a great sermon.  The main point of the sermon was “Never.  Never.  Never, give up”  It was a call to stay faithful to Jesus.  To remember back when we first believed and to keep on keeping on.

Now just a few notes (because I have to make everything difficult    ).

There are several different views on what will happen during the “end times”.  If you go back about 10-20 years most Christians believed in a “better and better” end time.  That is that the world will become a “heaven on earth” and then Jesus will come back when everything is Tony the Tiger Great!

However the last few years the mood of most Christians have been changing.  Now most Christians believe in a “worse and worse” end time.  We think that the world is decaying and will only get worse and worse.

The problem with both “end time” worldviews is that they are to short sighted.  It’s true the generation before Pastor Don was a great time for the American church and so they said that everything is going to get better and better.  But Pastor Don’s generation has seen the American church go from it’s height to where it’s at today and so they say that everything is getting worse and worse.

However if you look at all of the Church’s history you can not say that things have always gotten better or worse.  Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.

The only other thing that I would mention is that Pastor Don said that the “reward” that the writer of Hebrews talks about is “people”.  I’m sorry but no.  If you want to go to heaven to hand out with me forever, you’re going to be hugely disappointed.  Jesus is our reward.  That we get to see Him and to be like Him and to worship Him.  Jesus is our reward, He is the Gospel.

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