In times of darkness, we have an opportunity to shine the light of God. How can you push through even the darkest circumstances in order to show the love of God?
Can you figure out who’s the suspect of this murder mystery? Leave a comment below if you have an idea!
-Micah Darden
Pastor of Young Adults and High School
“Be happy in your hope. Do not give up when trouble comes. Do not let anything stop you from praying”
It is now the penultimate week of Lent. Our time of fasting and remembering Christ’s suffering is almost complete, and soon we will celebrate his defeat over death.
That said, no matter what day of the Church Calendar it is, it can often feel like the suffering is never ending. The 24-hour news cycles, social media, and surrounding circumstances all tend to remind us how awful things can be. And for whatever reason, it always feels like the bad stuff in these outlets is 10 times louder than the good stuff.
Apparently, there is a name for the exhaustion with constant bad news: ”Global Compassion Fatigue.“ And apparently, we’re all feeling it right now.
So if we are all prone to this exhaustion, how are we supposed to “be happy in our hope”? How are we, mere humans, supposed to “not give up when trouble comes”? We can start by taking tips from a few pages of Jesus’ playbook.
Sometimes we forget that Jesus was fully human as well as fully God, meaning that he experienced suffering and trauma in a very real way when he was on Earth. So what did he do when he experienced suffering? According to John 11:35, “Jesus wept.”
That’s it. That’s the whole verse.
When his good friend, Lazarus, died, Jesus did exactly what any of us would do in similar situations: he felt and expressed grief. He did not internalize or intellectualize his pain. He did not brush off the grief as an avoidable waste of time. He acknowledged the truth of the situation, and it was only after doing so that he was able to perform the miracle of raising his friend from the dead.
So if you are just bone-tired of the news, if you are feeling a lot of emotions because of the suffering surrounding you, know that you are in good and holy company. But also, let’s take comfort in knowing that Jesus overcame the suffering! So let’s try doing what Jesus did in times of suffering: allow ourselves to grieve (John 11:35), step away to be in God’s presence (Mark 1:35), and rest (Mark 14:13). In doing so, we can experience that hope that Jesus had; that hope in the God who caused Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead!
For more about the Christian response to Global Compassion Fatigue, click here.
-Travis Morrill
Communications and Facilities Administrator at Friends Community Church
This post first appeared as a devotional in Barclay Press in 2012.
In my neighborhood a big box book store recently went out of business. Many people were upset that this was a sign of the times: “No one is reading books anymore.” In the Health Food Store I manage we reduced the size of our book section only to receive similar grumblings. Some newspapers are stopping the presses forever. School and public libraries are closing everyday. When was the last time you bought an encyclopedia set?
Is it all doom and gloom for the next generation?
The world is changing. It seems the world is moving and changing faster than ever before. More books are being published than ever before, many in the form of e-books. My Kindle has a book case worth of books on it. Information can be found at our fingertips. More people are sharing, writing and contributing than ever before.
I have a shelf of Bibles, in various translations, in my study but I mostly use the one digitally loaded onto my phone. I search Wikipedia frequently for information. I even get medical advice from the Internet. The message hasn’t changed, we receive it differently.
Have you ever considered how many different ways God has delivered his messages to us? God has used angels and prophets to deliver His messages. Once He even used a donkey.
And one night, many years ago, angels announced to a group of lowly shepherds that the Savior of the world had been born. And ever since that birth, wise men and women still seek Him.
Two prayer thoughts: How is God communicating to you? How are you communicating God’s message?
Bible Reading: Luke 2:8-20
-Pastor Rick Ellis
Pastor at Friends Community Church
Today’s post includes an excerpt from a book called My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (initially published in 1924). You can read this devotional as well as other devotionals by Oswald Chambers and find out more by clicking here.
Once you read the devotional, you can reflect on what you read by going through the Reflection Questions at the bottom written by Pastor Tyler Lemen.
“Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work— that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master’s orders— the key is prayer. “Pray the Lord of the harvest….” In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.
From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person— Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father’s or your brother’s life— are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, “Oh, but I have a special work to do!” No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, “a servant [who] is not greater than his master” (John 13:16), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work— He calls us to Himself. “Pray the Lord of the harvest,” and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.
Reflection Questions:
1) What are your initial reactions/emotions toward what the author is saying?
2) After sitting with those emotions for a moment, what do you feel God is speaking to you in reaction to those reactions?
3) Read the surrounding context of Matthew 9:38 (Particularly Matthew 9:27-10:42)
4) What lessons is Matthew highlighting in these verses?
5) What fields has God placed you in? Which one seems the most ripe? The least ripe?
6) Which line from the above devotional stood out to you the most? Why?
7) Does anything need to change in your prayer life after reading this?
-Pastor Tyler Lemen
Associate Pastor of Family Ministries at Friends Community Church
“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
With everything going on right now, I think it’s understandably easy to forget that we are in the season of Lent, the 40 days of fasting and discipline before Easter. I, myself, accidentally and absent-mindedly ate takeout orange chicken this past Friday even though I had made “No-Meat-Fridays” part of my Lent fast.
Mea culpa.
Funny enough, even though the days are all blurring together for some of us and causing us to forget what day of the church calendar it is, much of what is going on is still making us experience the true meaning of the Lenten season.
Think about it: what are some of the things we have given up over the past few weeks? Watching sports on TV? Spending gratuitous amounts of money at Starbucks? Heading out to Guitar Center to stare longingly and covetously at all of the musical gear that I can’t afford?
Was that last one just me?
However, think about it this way as well: what are some of the things that we have taken up over the past few weeks? More time with family? Helping those around us with their grocery shopping? Walks and bike-rides outside (with small groups of people, of course)?
A forced (but still beneficial) time of sabbath?
The 40 days of Lent are meant to commemorate Jesus’ time in the desert fasting and confronting Satan (“the tempter”). Matthew 4:1-11 shows us that Christ’s first temptation was to break his fast. Jesus was fully capable of turning stones into bread as his tempter commanded him to, but rather than succumbing to temptation, Jesus quoted and acted on a short section from the book of Deuteronomy: “... man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Jesus performed many food-related miracles while on Earth: changing water into wine and turning a small snack into a feast for 5000+ people just to name a few. He could have easily turned that stone into bread, but Christ took comfort in being in the presence of the Lord and following his commandments. He knew that what the Lord had in store for him was better and more beneficial than anything that humankind can dream up.
Present circumstances are inconvenient to say the least, but now more than ever, we as the Church have been called to give up our temptations and idolatries and trust the Lord as Christ did in the desert. We must remember that God’s plans are far and away better than anything we have in mind.
To paraphrase the book of Deuteronomy: “... man does not live on sports or Starbucks or boutique reverb pedals that would totally sound perfect with my Fender Telecaster alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
To catch our Lent verse of the week, follow @fccbrea on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter:
-Travis Morrill
Communications and Facilities Administrator at Friends Community Church