Title – 12 Steps Illustrated (IF library – #362.29 G)
Author – Karen Greene
Publisher – Hyperion, New York, New York, 1991
I decided to re-familiarize myself with the famous “12 steps” and the history behind them by reading this little book. This is Karen Greene’s way of seeking to provide hope in conquering compulsive behaviors and attaining life-long dreams.
This last weekend, I spoke to my own family and to men and their boys during a breakfast about Rosh Hashanah. It is the new start on the Jewish calendar.
And the season reminds me of the following:
Our new start spiritually in Christ.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” – II Corinthians 5:17
Our new start in the seasons of the year.
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Our new beginnings with various aspects of our lives
“Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” – Isaiah 43:19
In the end, everything will be new with God.
“Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.” – Revelation 21:5a
So I celebrated in Rosh Hashana style the goodness of God.
Life is boring and frustrating. Welcome to philosophy class 101.
Observation
Interpretation
Application
1. The multiplication of church plants increase the number of places where people can taste and see that the Lord is good. The Idaho Falls yellow pages list 252 restaurants. Probably, in the greater Idaho Falls area, including Ucon, Iona, Ammon, and Shelley, we would have the options of 300+ places where an individual could go and eat when physically hungry. We are blessed to have such quantity, quality, and variety when it comes to our daily bread in Idaho Falls. So why not have 300+ churches in Idaho Falls? Places where individuals can taste and enjoy the spiritual manna from heaven? Would not this be a cause for rejoicing? Wouldn’t it be great that every community had as many places to spiritually eat as they have to physically eat?
2. The multiplication of church plants establish the proclamation of God’s truth through all types of personalities. Look at the different types of messengers that God has created. Why not let the preaching of God’s Word come through the full spectrum of God’s ambassadors?
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” – Isaiah 52:7
3. The multiplication of church plants is helpful in the way that Idahoans reseed their land and garden plots to secure full coverage, growth, and harvest. It is possible for farmers to overuse their land. But where in Idaho, has there been an over seeding of the gospel or the problem of too many laborers in the harvest field? Consider Rexburg, Idaho and its demographics. Do you think that there is an over saturation of evangelical Christianity in the I-15 Corridor? Do you really believe that biblical Christianity is growing faster than the percentage of increase for the cities? For most of my 45 years, I have lived in Southeastern Idaho. It has never been seriously proposed to me that there is an overabundance of churches that love God, teach the Bible, serve the community, and share gospel grace. We have experienced 150 years of church history in the I-15 Corridor, and in many ways, we are still in the pioneering stages of Christian missions. It has some of “the least infrastructure of traditional Christianity in the nation.” Therefore in 2015, let us not simply maintain or even worse, decline. Let’s advance.
Here is my personal conviction. I believe that every county in America has room for another church planter.
Church planting pushes the good news proclamation of Jesus to the forefront. The pioneering pastors are thinking as missionaries. Ample amounts of prayer and preparation during each week are devoted chiefly to glorifying God through gospel outreach. For ambassadors of Christ, the ambition of the day is to spread the word of reconciliation, looking outward for new opportunities, connections, friendships, and events. Being an intentional witness is the way of life.
Church planting mobilizes everyone in the fellowship for service to Jesus. If you are a part of the original start-up, you cannot just be sitting and absorbing week after week. Established fellowships have people in positions of service. In a church plant, what you do is what gets done for Jesus. If you don’t actively serve, who else is going to do it?
Church planting embraces the fringes where Jesus is needed. In established churches, you have a temptation to gravitate to people who are like you. In a church plant, it is hitting the streets and inviting people from the highways and hedges, and compelling people to come and fill the house of God. There is no luxury to just hang with those who make you most comfortable.
Church planting accentuates new vision for Jesus. The plan is simple: preach Jesus and Him crucified to everyone you can in order to make disciples. You go. You baptize. You teach. Everywhere. And it is not just the preacher caught up in this great task. Also, the location is flexible: church in a house, at the park, downtown, or in the woods. Church planting is open to lots of suggestions — new ideas that spark and excite.
Church planting does not minimize small beginnings that come through Jesus. Long ago among the Israelites, a new temple was built after the old was destroyed. Some wept over the longing of former glory. But the young shouted with joy over humble, new beginnings. Small things are actually very BIG praises in church planting. It is the miraculous work of God, and it’s glorious.
Church planting drives those involved to utter dependence upon Jesus. There is no safety net for financial income, no comfort through established groups, no building, and no operating program. There is just Jesus. Yet with Jesus, you have everything that you need for seeing a city change.
Book Review of A Time to Die (2014) by Nadine Brandes.
389 pages.
Published by Enclave Publishing, 5025 N. Central Ave., #635, Phoenix, AZ 85012, www.enclavepublishing.com.
Nadine’s dedication:
“This book is dedicated to the personal and loving Master of my life, the bringer of shalom, Yahweh.”
We are all going to die. And unfortunately, life is not long. It fleets by. A mere vapor. This dystopian novel projects us to a future world where the government assists and administrates the known time clocks of people’s lives. Parvin Blackwater is an independent 17-year-old who longs to finish the last year of her life in such a way that memorializes her for generations to come. If she is going to die, why not die in a big way? Dying famous could help with the meaningless of life. Parvin craves neither wealth nor power. She hungers for prestige, the acclaim that she has made a radical impact, a revolutionary difference in people’s lives.
But even in one’s final days, life has a way of dishing out the unexpected. We try to control our time. We might even attempt to buy more years. But there is always the twist in the plans. The curve ball.
Parvin is cast out of her society, thrust into the wasteland. Yet it’s a death sentence that is laced with adventure. Mostly, very bad stuff. Our young heroine reminds me of an outdoor Idaho/techno geek girl on steroids. Surviving in the woods, she battles beasts and environmental purists. Living in the high city, she is tested with the latest technological advancements. And through it all, there is one reality that scars her in both worlds – broken shalom.
Sound familiar?
Perhaps you have read the Hunger Games trilogy. I read a part of the first book in the series. I sensed anticipation, action, and future deliverance. But then I skipped the second book and went straight to the last to see a conclusion of no purpose. Life is meaningless. A fantasy of peace demolished to a ground zero.
Yet I can tell that our author has been spending some time with a wise and wealthy philosopher, the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes. Nadine interweaves some ancient wisdom motifs into the fabric of her debut novel.
She is passionately pursuing like a hound dog one central idea:
“Shalom—wholeness and completeness in God. The way things were intended to be.”
There is hope. It will be interesting to see how she unfolds this with Parvin in her next novel, A Time to Speak.
School has already started for some of you; and for others, school commences this week. Your parents have been weighing all the options in Idaho Falls — homeschool, private Christian school, charter school, or a traditional public school, etc. Now it is upon you.
You are registered for classes. All of your school supplies have been purchased after a last minute trip to Walmart. You have been connecting with friends through a continuous stream of phone texts, face chatting and facebook. There is a twinge of anxiety, maybe dread, as you think about your teachers, your classes, and your looming study demands. Honestly, I am a tad concerned about my daughter, a senior at Skyline, and her first trimester schedule: College trigonometry and pre-calculus, AP English, Economics, AP Biology, AP Government, and College Spanish. It’s a good thing that she has a smart mother to go to for questions. Back in 1988, when my wife and I graduated from Skyline High School, my favorite topics were lunchtime, playing basketball, and chasing after Kristie on the campus.
You might be wishing that you had a few more weeks of summer. Unfortunately, our summer days fly by like the Idaho wind, but its ok. You are ready for the 2015-2016 academic year. Right? Let me briefly encourage you with three thoughts.
May the Lord’s grace and peace fill your heart in this new school year.
My daughter Mariah’s take:
Close your eyes. What do you see? Is it something ugly or beautiful? Both words are typically based on what we see, whether it be a mountain, sunset, architecture, or a human face. I find physical, tangible beauty rather boring. Sure, some people considered “ugly” have hearts of gold. However, much like beauty, ugly is relative and depends on the eye of the beholder, making all ugly/beautiful discussions, relating to sight, irrelevant. Everyone is beautiful so long as they think so. Instead of choosing a physical beauty topic I choose something ugly that affects our human existence.
Eighty percent of the world’s population lives on less than ten dollars a day. The poorest forty percent accounts for only five percent of the global income. An estimated twenty-one thousand people die a day from hunger. Poverty is not some idea we can or should hide from. It is the rule not the exception. Vile things happen all over the world, but the eradication of poverty is hardly an easy feat. While researching statistics I discovered countless stories of people living in destitution; it appeared impossible to find a silvery lining. I began to think of the people in poverty. Why does it seem to be that the people, who have the least, tend to give the most? The smiles on the children’s faces that find joy in a corn, husk doll or trash ball are the epitome of beauty in tragedy. It is refreshing to see kindness in the eyes of fathers and mothers. Not so much see, but feel the raw humanity that should have been the norm. While I was in Puerto Rico, the people were welcoming and shared what meager food they had. The sad truth is in America, even with everything we have, most will never feel the silent contentment of one who sees a meal as a gift meant to be shared.
My take:
Permit me to relate something on the lighter side.
Three particular cars make our front yard look like a boomin’ business for an auto repair and detail shop: (1) a 1997 Plymouth Voyager Van, (2) a 1992 Buick Park Avenue, and (3) my all-time favorite, a 1985 Toyota pickup that I fought and won in a .22 gauge rifle war with some other Idahoans.
As you can see, chunks of paint and plastic decal are falling off my van to reveal sandy patches of rust.
My Buick sports a two-tone color. If I were to repair a few other exterior breaks and dents, what parts from the junk yard would you suggest to provide dynamic accents to the tan and white?
In regards to the interior, how would you handle the collapsing ceiling fabric? For now, I have resorted to a staple gun.
And then there is my ol’ Toyota riddled with holes.
It has weathered many Idaho seasons and collisions. By the way, I am just kidding that I gained this small pickup truck through a gun war. Yet doesn’t this beauty fit the bill for an Idaho redneck? I need to plaster the whole exterior with all my favorite outdoor gear and recreation stickers.
So can you judge a man by what he or she drives? Though I admire sleek, shiny cars just as much as anybody else, I can also own and drive an ugly car through the streets of Idaho Falls. It bothers me not. And believe it or not, each one of these vehicles packs a silver lining.
The Plymouth Voyager
I have lost count of all the ministry trips that I have made hauling young people to church services or youth activities. At times, I know that I have been on the verge of packing illegally this van to the point of competing with a Kenyan matatu. We have had some wild rides in this blue wave. And of course, we won’t even begin to tell all the tales of our big-road trip family vacations. Year after year, our van never failed in giving us some kind of adventure. The silver lining is the funny memories.
The Buick Park Avenue
Each one of the battle scars on this low rider point to a good friend or a spiritual lesson. The car used to belong to a Northwest Baptist church planter/missionary in Wyoming. He hit a deer and decided to discard the vehicle. The director of Red Cliff Bible Camp rebuilt the whole front end. He told me that Pastor Patrick Heeney installed the sound system. The bass is so powerful, I can make the car literally rumble. So after buying this car, you will notice that it has received over the years a few fender-bender scars in Idaho, ahem . . . ahem . . . through my oldest teenage boy in his learning how to drive. I will never forget staring at a financial bill after picking up the Buick from a local body shop. There were three big words in red stamped over the cost – “PAID IN FULL”. It was anonymous.
And do you see this dent? It is on the driver’s side and above the back wheel.
I received this anonymously from someone turning in the church parking lot from First Street. On that particular Sunday morning, I was preaching on the text, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Who says that God does not have a sense of humor? The silver lining is the visual reminders of people to pray for and gospel promises to believe.
The Toyota Pickup
This bucket of bolts has close to 250,000 miles on its odometer. It’s got a cracked windshield, metal wires poking through seat cushioning, and lots of dents and scrapes. But here is the silver lining. Out of the eight cars that my wife and I have owned in our twenty-three years of marriage, this has been by far the most humorous and fun thing that I have ever driven. And for the icing on the cake—it gets thirty-five miles to the gallon.
I bet you have a silver lining connected to the ugly cars you drive.
Inductive Questions
Philemon (verses 21-25)
Observation
Interpretation
Application
Philemon verses 8 -20
Observation
Interpretation
Application
Providence Downtown - Roots by the River 