The Triumphant Entry

Today is Palm Sunday. This is a day that we tend to pass over. We take it simply as a reminder that Easter is coming in a week, but there were significant things happening on this day. Read Matthew 21. Read the account of Jesus and His triumphant entry.

We see the people praising Him as king. We see prophecy fulfilled in the fact that He rides in on a donkey. We see that "out of the mouth of babes" He receives His praise. But the thing that hit me just now was what happened in chapter 22.

In Matthew 22 we see what Jesus decided to do first after He entered as king. He cleans out God's house! This is probably the most violent passage about Jesus. He goes into the temple with a whip, throws over tables, and chases all the people out who were disrespecting God's house.

When reading this passage God gave me a challenge that i want to pass on to all of you. We are now all "temples of the Holy Ghost"! In other words, we are God's house! What is in your life that is defiling God's house? What in your life needs to be chased out with a whip? What in your life needs to be flipped over.

This year, in this week as we prepare for Easter, let us join Jesus in cleaning out the House of God! Let us join Jesus in chasing the impurities out of God's temple, out of us!

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Pursuing Your Dream

Sorry I haven't written lately. I've recently started school and with working, being a youth pastor, and going to school something was bound to drop out. But this is still something that I feel was God's idea for me to do, so I may not write as often as I was, but I do still want to write.

As I mentioned, I recently began school. I am in my first semester of a general transfer associate's degree at the local community college. But my plan is to eventually be certified as a teacher. God brought me back to the same word from Him that I mentioned in my first post Undeveloped Dream. The first thing I ever heard from God was 'You are to be a preacher, teacher, and a writer.' Now it's interesting how we try and explain things in our own term. When I first heard that I was twelve years old and I was certain that the 'preacher' and 'teacher' were separate callings. People would say, "maybe that means a preacher and teacher of the Word", but I was sure that the 'preacher' was referring to the Word, and the 'teacher' was referring to a school setting.

Well over the years I have done my best to follow God in each step that I have taken. I went to Bible school right after high school, then I worked for a year, then God led me to Germany for four years with YWAM. The further along in life I went, the more I looked at that Word that I received so many years ago, and began to redefine it. Even in my post, that I linked to above, I told you that I had developed my preaching and teaching skills and the only one left was writing. Well since then my wife and I started talking about school. We began talking about how nice it would be for us to go back and get our degrees, and as I prayed about it, guess what I remembered; this Word. I remembered God speaking to me fourteen years ago, and I remembered what the immediate interpretation was.

Did God give me a heart for full-time ministry? Yes of course! But He also gave me a heart to teach, to help develop young people in their education. Help them to find their passion and inspiration. This is something that I can and will fulfill as a youth pastor, but now God has put me in a place to receive the training and the skills to do it in a school setting.

There are still a lot of questions as to how this dream will be fulfilled. Will I be teaching full-time or part-time? Will I teach in a Christian school, where I can also use my Bible knowledge to inspire young Christians to make a difference? Or will I teach in a public school in which I can be a positive Christian role model while having to be careful what I say? Will I teach in the United States, Ethiopia, Germany? I don't have it all figured out yet, but God has provided my wife and I what we need to be in school right now and if there is one thing I know about God, it is that He will make the right path clear, at the right time. Until then, He leaves us in suspense!

It's Time To Go!

Tomorrow (Friday, April 1st 2011) I will be on the radio! A friend of mine from my church, Connection Ministries, has a program on 1330 AM every Friday at 5:00, and he asked me to be a guest. So I thought I would invite all of you, who are in the area, to listen. If you are not in the area you can also listen online at radiotime.com. I also thought I would give you a sneak preview of what we are going to talk about.

Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15-20 are both popular scriptures. They are the two most commonly referred to scriptures when talking about 'The Great Commission', the last thing that Jesus commanded His disciples before ascending to heaven. Here they are for comparison:

"And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen."     Matthew 28:19-20

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.     Mark 16:15-20

In reviewing these two sections there are a lot of differences but two major similarities stick out to me. One is how they start and the other is how they end. They both start with the command to "Go" and end with the Lord being with them. Today I want to focus on the command to "go".

Our churches today often seem to have more of a policy of 'come'. We invite people to come to our building, to our meetings, to our programs, and we think that we are fulfilling the great commission. We want to create a nice, comfortable Christian community and hope that a non-Christian happens upon it so that we can tell them about Jesus, and we think that we are fulfilling the great commission. This is not what Jesus said to do! Jesus told us to go out to the people.

Going takes action, initiative, and creativity. We need to do something! We can't be lazy and sit back in our nice, Christian community. We need to get out, find the hurting, and help! It's time to go! When we do that we then have the promise that Jesus will go with us! This means if you go you won't be alone. In fact in Mark it says He went with them and confirmed the Word with signs and wonders. Charismatics always seem to be seeking manifestations of the spirt. They want to see miracles, well it seems simple to me. If you go out and preach the Word, the Word will be confirmed with signs and wonders!