Balancing Ministry N' Work

Prayer is one of those things I like to take time each year for us to look at. The Book of James may be short but it does tell us a lot about prayer. “ 5  Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. 6  But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind.” - James 1:5-6 “ 2  You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3  You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” - James 4:2-3 “ 10  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” - James 4:10 “ 4  Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.” - James 5:4 “ 13  Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone

Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!” All Glory and Honor belong to our God!  May the Lord’s Peace fall on each of us. May the Peace that defies all logic and reasoning be with you. Peace is one of those things that has escaped many of us at times in 2020. The struggles many faced with job issues, medical issues, family uncertainty, and more made it hard to hold on to Peace. Part of the problem I think is that we were trying to find our own peace. When things are starting to get to us one of the first things many of us do is to attempt to create peace on our own. We may go sit in a dark and quiet room, take a long hot bath, listen to some music, spend time in the workshop, sew, or whatever we think will help us step away from the craziness that is getting to us. Doing these types of things to bring calm may help for a while, they may help us step away, but the reality is they do not help us to have the full Peace of the Lord

As we started Christmas here it Littleby we looked throughout the Bible to see that Jesus lives up to the name Immanuel, God is with us. I hope that over the last week you remembered that Jesus is with you. Scripture shows us that He will never leave us, He will never forsake us, and that He lives in us. As a child of God, you are NEVER alone. This was all part of the Master’s Plan. God knew we could not earn our way to heaven and knew that we were going to need help. Simply put our God knew we were going to need a Savior; He knew we were going to need Christmas. This morning let’s take a look at how God prepared for Christmas. Luke 1:1-4 “ 1  Many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us,  2  just as the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed them down to us.  3  So it also seemed good to me, since I have carefully investigated everything from the very first, to write to you in an orderly sequence, most honorable 

On any given Sunday I will call Jesus several different names. That statement alone sound pretty bad. Ok, moving on, I tend to call Jesus names such as Lord, Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Lord and Savior, and Jesus Christ throughout my time up front each Sunday.   If you use that great theological resource Google, ok it is not that great of a theological resource, but if you use it you can find many different lists of names and titles for our Lord Jesus. One of the lists I looked at had 102 different names for Jesus. This morning I want to focus on one of His names, that fits the season and is found in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.” Then while Mary was found to be pregnant and Joseph was contemplating what was the best course of action for him to take and angel appeared to him and quoted Isaiah’s prophecy that was from the la

Happy Thanksgiving! Last week we looked at a few things that we have to be thankful for. As followers of Jesus we are part of God’s family, which means we have been chosen by God to spend an eternity in Glory. We have been made holy, meaning all of our sin has been washed completely away so that we can be in God’s presence. We are dearly loved, not just appreciated, thought about… but Dearly Loved. I love that phrase; we are Dearly Loved. To me it shows how close the connection or bond is. We have a lot to be thankful for. That is part of the reason Paul told the Thessalonians to embrace the will of God and Rejoice Always, Pray Constantly, and Give Thanks in Everything. It is our Lord’s desire that we live our lives in this manner. If we focus on the here and now, that will be difficult. The trick is to focus on God and remember the indescribable gift our Lord has given us. The more we can do that, the more we can remember to Rejoice, Pray, and Give Thanks. Think of your time

 As we head into Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are taking a break from the Things We Need… series. Most years we do spend several weeks focused on Christmas, but do not usual break for Thanksgiving. This year more than others, I felt we needed to take some extra time and remember what we truly have to be thankful for. If I were to say ‘2020 has been a rough year.’ Some of you might tell me that is a bit of an understatement! The year started hearing about this virus in China and we started praying for them and praying that it would not be as serious as we were hearing. Political turmoil followed based on decisions to limit travel. Then the virus hit our country and many people lost their jobs, forced to take unpaid time off, businesses have closed, and the overall economy has been hurt. Sadly, instead of our leaders pulling together for the good of the nation, we saw more political turmoil. If that was not enough a couple of bad people did some bad things, which triggered protests

“When arrogance comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.” – Proverbs 11:2 Our last Things We Need… was Humility which leads to the next Things We Need… Wisdom. One might ask, how does Humility lead to Wisdom? As we allow ourselves to recognize who we are in this grand world we live in, we begin to accept our place in it. Knowing who we are and who we are not, is part of being Humble. Add to this an understanding of who God is, how we are lost without Him, how much we need Him, and learning to depend on Him, also increases our Humility. As we accept who God is and how we are truly lost without Him, our Things We Need… Humility grows. As we let the Holy Spirit take that Humility and work in us, the Things We Need… Wisdom begins to take shape. Humility is the foundation of Wisdom. We cannot grow in the Things We Need… Wisdom, without understanding who we are in this world and how much we need and depend on our God. Which is why the Proverb states that ‘with humility

Things We Need… Jesus the most of important of all, Excitement with a focus on being excited for God’s Word, Simplicity reminded us that we don’t have a bunch of rules to follow we simply need to repent and follow Jesus, and then we need to remember to Praise God always and in all things. Today we will look at our next Things We Need… Humility. Before we get into what the Things We Need… Humility is, I want to point out what it is not. The Things We Need… Humility is not having a low self-esteem, it is not thinking of oneself as inferior to others, it is not deserving to be treated poorly, and so forth. Humility is something we should pursue, but it does not mean we are less than others. The Things We Need… Humility is something that was modeled to us by our Lord. As we walk with Jesus we need to be following in His footsteps and humble ourselves before our God and in service to others. Humility is not something to be avoided, it is not a bad thing, it is a virtue to embrace. “