John’s best friend

We’re back in our summer series “John’s best friend” where we’re looking at Jesus through the eyes of an eyewitness, the Apostle John.  Personally, I like John’s account of Jesus’ life.  It’s definitely different than the other three; Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  John takes a different approach when recording the life of Jesus, he doesn’t include any of Jesus’ parables.  Ever noticed that?  Some other interesting tidbits about the book of John is in his quest to prove that Jesus was who he said he was, John often uses contrasts, or dualisms, to describe Jesus.  For example, he uses “light and darkness” 7 times, “life and death” 40 times, and “truth and falsehood” 47 times. 

John also wanted to make sure people understood that Jesus is God.  The opening of his letter makes that clear.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  From there John goes on to show that Jesus claimed equality with the Father an additional 100 times!  Yea, I think John’s trying to make a point.   Throughout the rest of the series I’ll try to bring you a few other interesting facts about John’s gospel.

On a different note, keep pastor Bob in your prayers.  Pray that God would give him clarity of thought as he (hopefully) finishes his book, and pray that God would recharge and refresh his soul during his brief time away this summer.  We have a fall coming up that’s going to be huge.  It’s going to be big for us as a church, and God willing, big for the Kingdom as well.

Hypotasso

Nothing like learing a little Greek.  The subject of last weekends message was “control” and we looked at what Paul has to say about resolving control issues in our marriage.  He writes in Ephesians 5 that the way to resolve the power struggles we experience in our marriage is through mutual submission.  The word for “submit” in the originial Greek is “hypotasso.”  (Hoop-o-tas-o)  It means “to voluntarily give in,” “to cooperate,” or “bear a burden.”  Think about how different marriage would be if we really lived with a mindset of mutual submission.  If we voluntarily gave in and put the needs of our spouse ahead of our needs.  If we cooperated the way God created us to, as coequals with complimentary roles.  If we beared the burden to assure our family lived according to God’s principles.  If we lived that way do you think our marriages would be more stable, more lasting, more enjoyable, and more loving?  I call that a “no brainer.”  Paul was definitely right when he said the path to oneness and unity in marriage is throught mutual submission.

Truly, madly, deeply, stuck

This past weekend we kicked off the “truly, madly, deeply, stuck” marriage series, and a few of the highlights for me were the conversations after the service.  I prayed with people whose marriage are in the “stuck” stage, but that day made a committment to doing what they had to do in order to make their marriage work and get better.   They committed to a covenant marriage and said divorce was not going to be an option for them. 

Another highlight was watching a couple after one service walk up on the platform together and they stood in front of the cross and prayed together.   The oneness and unity presented in that moment moved me to tears. 

And then there were the stories of people who put their faith in Jesus for the first time.  After hearing that one ingredient to a healthy marriage is making God our hightest priority in life, some people realized they had never done that before and asked Jesus to be their Lord and savior.  I continue to be amazed at how God works every weekend. 

I look forward to what’s going to happen throughout this series…what I’m not looking forward to is the construction.  I’m speaking specifically about Lino Lakes now, but there’s going to be road construction happening for the next 6 weeks that’s going to create delays getting to church.  I encourage you to find a different route to Lino or just plan on leaving an extra 5-10 minutes early from home.  Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Hmmm, what service for Easter

Hard to believe Easter is almost here.  And as you know with Easter comes RSVPs, meaning we need everyone to let us know what service you plan on attending.  This way we can spread out the attendance across all services and make sure every person has a seat at every service.  I just was given the number of responses so far for Lino and only about 20% of attenders have responded.  Now, I understand we live in a last minute culture, but please don’t wait until the last minute to pick what service you want to go to because all the seats may be taken.   If you RSVP online you’ll see how much space is available at each time.  So, if you haven’t already, please RSVP ASAP.

Vintage Character – Nehemiah

This weekend I will be wrapping up the Vintage Character series talking about Nehemiah.  He is one of my favorite people in all the Bible.  If you’ve never read his story, he doesn’t have as much of a personal disadvantage to overcome (like the other characters we’ve look at from the Bible) as he does a national disadvantage.  Well…Nehemiah was a cup bearer, which means he had to take a drink of the king’s wine before the king did to see if it was poisoned, so I guess you could call that a disadvantage.  You never had to ask a cup bearer if he had a good day at work because if he came home alive…it was a good day.  Anyways, we can learn a lot from Nehemiah and the way he led through the national disadvantages he faced. 

On a different note, for those of you who attend the Lino Lakes campus, the 11am service is full.  And by full I mean anytime a service is more than 80% full the perception is it’s full.  We’ve been over the 80% mark for a long time, so I’m asking those of you who are regular attenders to think about moving to any other service but 11am.  4 or 6 on Saturday or even the 9am on Sunday has more room.  The reason this is so important is because people who are brand new to church, or far from God, typically come to the 11am.  If we don’t have room, we can’t accomplish the mission God has given us: To reach people for Christ. 

If you go on Saturday night, thank you, keep it up.  But if your schedule will let you, please consider making a move off Sunday at 11am to a different time.  You’ll be helping Eagle Brook accomplish our mission by doing so. 

P.S. Don’t forget it’s daylight savings time this weekend.

Campus Pastor at Lino Lakes

Since Bob announced the news that I’m the new campus pastor at Lino Lakes I’ve had some people ask me what exactly is the role of a campus pastor?  My role will be a little different than Steve at Spring Lake Park or Don at White Bear, because I still have my teaching responsibilities, but here’s the way I think about it:

First, for the staff and volunteers that serve primarily at the Lino campus my job is to lead and care for them on the weekend.  We have an incredible staff all of whom are very good at what they do.  As a staff we’re all together in the office during the week with our own group.  For example, the elementary team works together during the week preparing for the weekend, but when the weekend comes everyone splits up and goes to their own campus.  Part of my role is to bring the staff and ministries together as a team so we can reach the goals we have as a campus. 

Second, for the congregation I see my role as the connector.  What Lino’s been missing is the consistent face that people know they can connect with and ask questions of.  My plan is to be in the lobby as much as possible to be that person.  Lino’s a big campus and it’s easy to stay unknown.  And to a certain extent we want to allow people the space to remain unknown if they want, but when someone is ready to be known, we want to be there for them.  I, along with all the staff and volunteers at Lino, want to help people take the next step in their relationship with Jesus.

There you go.  If you have any other questions about the whole campus pastor thing, let me know.

Can you repeat that?

We’ve had some questions this week looking for additional clarity around something Bob talked about in his message, on the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  First, what is blasphemy? In the Old Testament it is the improper use of God’s name (Lev 24:14-16).  It’s using His name along with an attitude of disrespect.  The New Testament expands the definition to include actions against Christ and his church (1 Tim 1:13, 1 Pet 4:4).  These were folks who denied Jesus was the Messiah and rejected His unity with the Father (Mark 15:29; Luke 22:65; 23:39).  Blasphemy is a sin that can be forgiven, but there is one form of blasphemy that the Bible tells us is not forgivable and it involves the Holy Spirit.  Bob said, “If you’re concerned that maybe you’ve done it, that’s a sign that you haven’t.”   The sin itself is mentioned in Matt 12:32; Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10, and according to the Holman Bible Dictionary:

“It is a state of hardness in which one consciously and willfully resists God’s saving power and grace.  It is a desperate condition that is beyond the situation of forgivneess because one is not able to recognize and repent of sin.  Thus one wanting to repent of blasphemy against the Spirit cannot have comitted the sin.” 

In other words, it’s only the non believer who can commit this sin and he or she wouldn’t be interested in seeking forgiveness for it in the first place.  They’ve rejected God and the what Jesus did on the cross, and that grieves the Holy Spirit.  Bottom line, followers of Christ cannot commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.   Hope this helps and puts some fears to rest.