River Valley Blog

"The Story" coming to River Valley Community Church in 2012

2011-12-16T10:12:00.005-06:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

If you attended service last week you saw our initial promotional video for our upcoming discipleship curriculum The Story. We are so excited about discipleship this next year, I wanted to take some time to introduce you to what’s to come.

The Story is a 31 week group study using materials composed by the writers and publishers of this program. Included is a translation of the Bible put into narrative form; essentially a 31 chapter novel-version of the Bible, and a group study workbook. Groups gather once a week to watch a DVD teaching on the historical background of whatever chapter is being studied and to discuss the material using the workbook questions. Then, individually, each person will read through the following week’s chapter in preparation for the next group meeting.

The goal behind The Story is to excite each of us about Bible reading. Whether you’ve felt overwhelmed in the past and never opened the book, or you’ve read it a dozen times, this curriculum will open your eyes to new understanding about God’s word by looking at it in a different way.

We are a story-culture, after all. Our society is constructed of the stories we have passed from one generation to the next. The Bible is a part of that same culture, but for many of us, we have only looked at it as a helpful guide to be pulled out in times of trouble, or as an ancient text with no real bearing on our lives today. The Story challenges all of that by pointing to Jesus throughout the Old and New Testaments. God’s Son is ever-present in the entire Scripture, and when you’re able to hear His story come alive, your story of a new life in relationship with Him will take shape and challenge you in new and exciting ways.

We will begin our Story groups the week of January 29th. Groups will meet, as we have done in years past, for 15 consecutive weeks, taking a break for the summer following the week of May 6th. We will then pick up right where we left off for the final 16 weeks of study on September 9th running through the week of December 16th. The summer break is to ensure that groups are able to take full advantage of the community element of reading Scripture we so value at River Valley.

A number of our groups have already committed to The Story in 2012, and we are praying for enough groups to accommodate every single person who is a part of our church family meeting on various nights throughout the week. If you are interested in finding more information about The Story visit their website www.thestory.com. We will begin sign ups for groups starting after the new year, at which time you can purchase the materials directly from us at 50% off the regular price.

If you have any questions, or would like to sign up immediately, please call me at the office 630.844.9115. I’m looking forward to studying The Story this year with my group; I hope you are too.

in Him,

Eli

Missions Update at River Valley Community Church

2011-11-03T13:04:00.004-05:00

Make sure to join us this Sunday for worship at 10:00AM. Rich and Richelle Howard, missionaries RVCC supports, have just returned from Central Africa where they have been training local pastors and church planters. They will be joining us for worship to share all that God has done through their ministry this past year. You can find more information about their work by visiting our missions page at www.rivervalleycommunity.org, or by visiting their ministry's homepage www.tri-m.org. Hope to see you there!

It's the Great Pumpkin River Valley Community Church!

2011-10-20T10:51:00.004-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

A word you don’t hear too often in church these days is “apologetics.” The idea and practice has become somewhat associated with the argumentative religious debates that framed modern evangelism concerning things like proving Jesus’s resurrection, advocating for literal creation, and such conversations that, in our more postmodern culture today, seem to do more harm than good. The p

ractice of apologetics itself, however, still has an important role to play in how we talk about our faith in God with others.

Simply defined, it means making Jesus plausible to your context; helping those around you connect to the living God by “clearing away the underbrush” of their concerns and doubts. For some, this may still involve explaining the scientific concerns of Christianity, but for most the issues are more focused on whether or not Christians can be trusted; whether or not the church is a safe place to belong free from judgment; helping people find purpose and identity in Jesus’s atonement and the Spirit’s transformation. None of this can happen, however, if we as Christians are unable to find ways of connecting Jesus’s kingdom gospel to our culture in positive ways, similar to the way’s Jesus connected His good news to Jewish culture through parables and the Rabbinic tradition. That’s what River Valley’s young adult MATCHbox group will be doing this year for Halloween with an awakenings514.com event.

Halloween has become a holiday avoided by the church in America in recent years due to its association with the occult, and while this can be justified, especially for parents of young children whom they don’t want exposed to such things, it does leave the millions of people outside of the church who enjoy Halloween for either spiritual or nominal reasons with a picture of Christians as isolated and unwilling to relate. Could there be a way to find some common ground here?

Join us on October 31st to find out. We’ll be having a Halloween party at Eli and Katie Suddarth’s house (617 Gates Ave. in Aurora) starting at 6:00 p.m. All the traditional fun activities will be there, including games, pumpkin carving, carmel apple dipping, and a costume contest. We’ll also spend some time talking a little about the history of Halloween and some ways of helping people discover Jesus on those terms. Everyone’s invited so we hope to see you there (“dressed your best” if you know what I mean).

Eli

Couples Seminar October 15th

2011-09-29T11:29:00.003-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

My wife Katie and I celebrated our third anniversary this year making us relative newly-weds still. In our first three years of marriage we have experienced nearly every high and low marriage counselors site as common for young couples: financial issues, r

adical job changes, moving, more financial issues, spiritual connectedness, moving again, and many more. Without a doubt I can point to our relationship with Jesus as the glue that has held us together in our toughest moments, and has been the mountain top from which we rejoice in our triumphs. Without Him our relationship would not be what it is today, and without the positive Christian influences in our community encouraging that relationship it would have been easy for us to fall away. Couples need Jesus, and couples need their community to help them know and love Jesus more.

Saturday October 15th River V

alley will be sponsoring a Couples’ Seminar at the offices of Associates in Family Care downtown Aurora for those seriously dating, engaged, recently married or remarried. Dr. Doug McKinley Psy.D will facilitate the program running from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cost is $60 per couple which includes all materials and lunch.

This is a great opportunity for you or someone you know to deepen their relationship with each other and with God, so please consider joining us there or inviting another you know would benefit from such a program.

To register, call Associates in

Family Care at 630.983.0600 or visit www.associatesinfamilycare.com to learn more.

For more information regarding all the ways we as a church invest in relationships, give me a call at the office 630.844.9115. Thanks.

Eli

Life Groups at River Valley Community Church set to begin in the next week!

2011-08-25T14:45:00.000-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

We hope you all can join us this Sunday at the Schuettes’ for our annual baptism service, but we’re also using this weekend as our kickoff for the Fall Life Group term.

We’re very excited to get back into our small group schedule and I am personally looking forward to seeing what God will do over the next fifteen weeks in the lives of our group members.

If you still haven’t had a chance to join one of our groups, I would encourage you to check out the discipleship page of our website www.rivervalleycommunity.org to find out a little more of what we do in our smaller communities. It’s such a blessing to work on these groups throughout the year and to see the fruit that comes in the lives of those involved. Please consider getting more involved with River Valley Community Church through our Life Groups; you’ll have the chance to meet new people, and deepen your relationship with God by growing closer to and more like Jesus.

Call me with any questions you may have at 630.844.9115.

See you all this Sunday!

Eli

Baptism at River Valley Community Church

2011-08-18T16:11:00.001-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

Next Sunday, River Valley Community Church will once again meet for our yearly baptism service in Sugar Grove at the home of Jay and Gretchen Schuette. These events are always a fun and enjoyable way to reconnect and welcome new members into God’s family. There is also a very serious side to this occasion, and the meaning behind a person’s decision to publicly declare their faith in God and belief in His Son Jesus is not be missed.

The act of baptism touches the very core of Christianity in that it upholds the elemental characteristics of what it means to worship God: the total immersion of one’s life into a relationship with Jesus. And though it may seem to be a strange ritual, out of touch with today’s culture, that is another of the very reasons we employ it as the public signifier of one’s new allegiance to the kingdom of God.

The early church also struggled greatly with the public perception of its practices that not only seemed out of place in its host culture, but also was considered a threat to the Roman empire. They did not, however, use this as reason for altering important worship elements for early Christians. Historian Alan Kreider writes of the first-century church that...

Christian worship was designed to enable Christians to worship God. It was not designed to attract non-Christians; it was not “seeker-sensitive,” for seekers were not allowed in. If Christian worship did assist in the outreach of churches, it did so incidentally, as a by-product, by shaping the consciousness of the individual Christians and the character of their communities so that their lives - and their interactions with outsiders - would be attractive and question posing.

By holding to the practices of our belief in Jesus and the command that He gave to make disciples and baptize them into the family in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, we demonstrate to the world around us a unity among Christian brothers and sisters that cannot be broken and that will never be sacrificed for the mere sake of relevancy. This is what will be attractive to a world filled with increasing, middle-of-the-road mediocrity: Christians behaving the way Jesus did and said.

Join us next week to celebrate all of this in a time of corporate worship at the Schuettes’. 457 Haverhill Court, Sugar Grove at 10:00 a.m. Breakfast is included before. It’s also not too late to make this decision to be baptized - call the church office at 630.844.9115 for more information.

New Series Starting This Sunday at River Valley Community Church

2011-07-28T11:46:00.003-05:00

~From Eli Suddarth

Join us this Sunday for the start of our New Series “One Another’s.” There are over 50 examples in Scripture of instances when God asked His people to do things for others, and as we are a community focused on connecting to God and connecting to one another, this will be an important series for us.

Andy will deliver our first installment this Sunday speaking on “Accepting One Another.” If you’d like to prepare for this new journey, take a look at Romans 15 and begin memorizing Romans 15:7.

Hope to see you all there!

RVCC

Join us in Joplin

2011-07-27T10:55:00.001-05:00

~From Andy Morgan

These days news travels fast, but sometimes that can be an unfortunate turn as we look past the tragedies that have taken place to the next, new thing. As Joplin, MO is still reeling from the most deadly tornado in US history, River Valley still has a desire to go down there and work to make things a little bit better for the residents there and to bring the love of Jesus into their lives through acts of service.
August 6th through the 10th we have room for eight people to travel with us and First Presbyterian of Aurora to stay at New Creation Church in downtown Joplin. They will provide three meals a day, a cot to sleep on, places to shower, and plenty of projects to work on, all we have to do is get there with our own bedding, clothes, and toiletries. River Valley will even help those interested in going with the cost of transportation.
If you’d like to serve on this team, pray diligently for direction and wisdom from God, and call Pam at the office (630.844.9115); she will set you up with the rest of the information you’ll need to know.

Thanks and God bless.

River Valley Community Church

Risks and Rewards of River Valley Community Church

2011-06-30T09:44:00.001-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

Though the moving process is in full swing around River Valley (finishing the zoning changes, trying to get occupancy and building permits, renovation work, meetings with architects, designers, and engineers, etc.), we as a staff managed to sit together for our weekly meeting and take some time to reflect on the season from where we’ve just come while discussing the book we’ve been reading together for the past couple of months.

The book, called Leadership as an Art, was written by corporate leadership innovator and Christ-follower Max DePree, and is generally considered one of the best books on, not just Christian leadership, but leadership in any context. Because the text is written with the wider world in mind, it can be difficult to glean helpful insights for what goes on inside of the church, and the chapter we set out to discuss this week was one of the more challenging.

The chapter in question looks at the necessary sharing of risks and rewards that must take place in any organization with the thesis that unless everyone involved, whether CEO, department manager, or line worker is on-board with the mission and vision of the company, to the point that they all share equal amounts of risk and reward, that company will inevitably look and feel like a top-down hierarchy rather than an organic body of equally important individuals, without whom the whole would not survive. As River Valley Community Church has in its sights the end of this long and winding road, it becomes easier to see how an idea like risk and reward sharing applies to a church as unique as ours.

If RVCC is anything, it is so first because God made it that way, but second, it is because you who are reading this have assumed personal risk to fight for the church’s mission and vision. While many church structures depend on the strength of their leaders, River Valley depends on every single person who attends a service, serves in a ministry, witnesses in their workplaces and neighborhoods, and contributes their time, talent, and financial resources.

It has been a blessing to reflect this week with the staff on all the ways the people who make up this church enjoy sharing risks with us. You have risked your identity attending services in various temporary locations throughout this year while a plethora of established church buildings exist within walking distance; you have risked, most recently, your physical comfort as our present temporary facility lacks air conditioning; you have risked financially by contributing to an organization that is committed to giving a substantial percentage of whatever it has to work going on outside of the organization itself, even while this move has been going on; you have risked your reputation by continuing to invite others to share our times of praise, though we look quite different from the conventional picture of “church.” The list of risks goes on, but here’s the reward: Not only has God blessed us with a permanent location in Aurora out of which to continue our ministry efforts, but He has also used this refining fire of trial and risk to forge River Valley into a more effective tool for His kingdom mission here, and we are already seeing the fruit.

This does not mean that we will now only experience reward and no longer take risks together, but it is an exciting prospect to enter into this new season as a church linked arm-in-arm with fellow risk-takers who are eager to do whatever is necessary to see God’s kingdom come to our city.

Thank you to all of you brothers and sisters who take risks with us.

Blessings.

A few pictures on the progress at River Valley Community Church

2011-06-28T15:14:00.009-05:00

Things are really starting to come together around here. We've moved into our new offices at 888 S Edgelawn and construction is underway turning five separate strip-mall spaces into one continuous space for use by the church community. Here are a few shots of the progress being made...we're hoping to hold services here really soon (pray for our final zoning meeting with this city this afternoon)!

What will soon be the front entrance...

Children's space...

Looking through each section of the new space...

A meeting/event/youth space with a door to the cafe/fellowship space on the left...

What you'll see upon entering: a cafe/fellowship area with a large opening to the worship venue on the right...

The new 3100 sq. ft. worship venue (view from the stage looking to the entrance)...

The new worship venue looking from the back of the room to where the stage area will be...

Help River Valley Community Church Send Aid to Joplin

2011-06-08T14:17:00.004-05:00

This has been an unprecedented tornado season in our nation's history, and we have seen devastation throughout the United States as a result. Hardest hit has been the city of Joplin, Missouri, and River Valley would like to help.

If you are interested in helping the recovery in Joplin there is a church I am acquainted with in Joplin. They are a part of the EPC denomination with

which I am ordained.

New Creation Church is a mission church located in a poor community 2 blocks from the worst damage in Joplin. The congregation already has solid relationship in the community and has been designated as a food distribution center for the relief efforts. They are currently housing up to 75 people, including victims and volunteers in the relief effort.

1st Pres, in Aurora, and Kishwaukee Community EPC, in Stillman Valley are talking about sending work teams down to Joplin and are still looking for people to join these teams. Teams already there are helping with clean up and helping people move into new living spaces. Team workers are also needed to help manage and run

their distribution center of food and supplies. This will be a continuing need and anticipate needing teams through June. By the end of June they anticipate the focus changing, perhaps to helping repair and rebuild homes.

Kishwaukee Community is putting together a team that will leave as early as next Wednesday and stay for 3-5 days, however, people can stay longer.

New Creation Church is housing these teams and are not charging for room and board. Thus, the cost to team participants would be their own expenses to and from Joplin along with any extras they want.

If you are interested in being a part of a work team you can contact Kishwaukee Community at 815-965-1940 or New Creation Church at 417-782-8200 www.newcreation-joplin.com

For those of you who would be willing to donate items for these relief efforts here is a list of immediate needs.

Any donations can be brought to the new church office at 1749 Jericho Road, to our church service on Sunday mornings, or to this Friday’s awakenings514.com event starting at 6:00 p.m. at River’s Edge Cafe. Any questions please feel free to call the church office at 630-844-9115

Blessings,

Andy

Joplin MO Needs:

Antihistamines (Benadryl), Sunblock, Insect Repellant, Aloe Vera, Chapstick, Denture Supplies (paste), Small and Medium Depends, Shaving Cream, Respiratory or Surgical Masks, Liquid Laundry Soap, Flip Flops, Gift Cards to Walmart, Rolls of Duck Tape, Dry Milk, Non-perishable Food Items.

Help us send relief to Joplin...

2011-06-02T12:50:00.002-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

This has been an unprecedented tornado season in our nation’s history, and we have seen devastation throughout the United States as a result. Hardest hit has been the city of Joplin, Missouri, and River Valley Community Church plans to send relief their way as soon as possible.

New Creation Church in Joplin is now a dedicated distribution center for the recovery effort and River Valley will be sending aid through them. They have sent a list of needs and we would like to fill as many of them as we are able as quickly as possible. Among them are perishable and non-perishable food items, men’s and women’s hygienic products, trash bags, tools, rubbermaid containers and many other things.

We have a comprehensive list at the office, so if you would like to donate goods or money to their effort in Joplin, call us at 630.844.9115 and we’ll let you know more about how we’re trying to get involved.

Blessings.

Spiritual Gifts Test

2011-05-31T15:11:00.003-05:00

This past weekend we continued our series CoRE Practices by discussing Spiritual Gifts. If you'd like to find out more about your own gifts and they ways you could use them in our church and in our city, visit the "discipleship" page linked at the top and click on the icon that says Spiritual Gifts. This is a free online test that, while certainly not the end-all-be-all of spiritual formation tools, is a great way to begin discovering the invaluable purpose God has for your life. Once you have your results, give us a call 630.844.9115 to talk about it!

River Valley Community Church Is Moving!

2011-05-26T10:15:00.002-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

River Valley Community Church is moving!

Today our search to find a home for our times of worship and outreach has come to a blessed end with the signing of a lease that will put us into the property at the corner of Edgelawn and Jericho Rd. (1749 Jericho Rd.) in Aurora. The property owners have been ever more gracious in their dealings with us over the last month after having reopened negotiations with them, and they have made it possible for us to move into our new offices at the beginning of June. Because of the finances involved, we feel it appropriate to make that move as soon as we are able, which is why were organizing a moving day for Saturday June 4th.

That’s right...NEXT SATURDAY, JUNE 4 at 8:00 a.m. we will gather at the new location to unload our storage trailer and assemble the office area. We need as many people there as possible to make this, not only a productive day, but a fun beginning of a new chapter in our church’s young history. God has great things planned for us with this fresh opportunity to serve from a new location, so please join us next saturday at 8 to pray for and open up RVCC’s new location.

See you there!

River Valley Community Church Missions Page

2011-05-17T15:46:00.003-05:00

~ From Pam Abuhl - Administrative Director

If you were to visit River Valley Community Church for the first time you would notice several things immediately: we don’t own any property (currently we meet in the gym at 801 Illinois Ave while waiting for a rental lease at a strip mall in Aurora), and we don’t have any dedicated weekly programs (all of our meetings take place in the context of our Life Groups). This does not indicate an oversight on our part; these elements are strategic to our mission’s strategy both locally and globally. As a church we desire for the bulk of our resources (personal, financial, etc.) to be allocated outside of the four walls of our church’s meeting space, and we would like for all of the members of our church to be able to find out more regarding our missions efforts here in Aurora and around the world.

Over the last few weeks we have made several changes to the RVCC website, but one of the more significant is how we have restructured our “missions” page, which now consists of three parts:

The Main Page: here you will find our church’s written covenantal commitment to the missions we support. At the bottom of this page is a section we will regularly update that highlights a recent or ongoing missions opportunity in which we are participating.
The Local Ministries Page: here you can see a break-down of all of the local ministries River Valley supports along with testimonies from church members who are specifically involved with each mission. It is our hope that by reading each description you will be able to find an area of the city to which you feel called and a people whom you can serve as a representative of Christ’s kingdom.
The Missionaries Page: here you will find a list of the international/national missionaries River Valley supports, both financially and in prayer. Each missionary bio will also contain a link to their attached monthly newsletter so that you can stay informed and in prayer for these amazingly faithful front-line servants who are advancing the kingdom around the globe.

Please take some time to visit our new “missions” page at

http://rivervalleycommunity.org/Missions

...and if you have any questions or would like to know more about any of the missions we support, please call the church office at 630.844.9115

Blessings,

Pam

awakenings514

2011-05-11T12:35:00.004-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

River Valley Community Church is committed to building relationships in the city of Aurora so that through those connections people can experience the love of Jesus Christ. One of the ways we’re working to accomplish this is through our awakenings514 events.

Our first event back in February was a lot of fun. Those who came heard live music, had some good food, and watched a great film all for the purposes of exploring God in popular culture. Our next event will take place In one month at River’s Edge Cafe. We will make use of the cafe space, the deck (hoping for a nice June evening on the river)

and the meeting space of Associates in Family Care (all located at 20 W. Downer in Aurora).

Our plan is to have some great cafe food, we’ll have a DJ mixing out on the deck, and we’ll watch the film Reign Over Me together. All of these elements will focus on the theme for the night “Brokenness.” While this doesn’t sound like a fun topic, it’s one that continues to show up in culture and events that continue to shake our world.

How does the church respond to brokenness? Do people who don’t have a relationship with God see Christ-followers as compassionate towards suffering individuals? Do Christians even see themselves that way? Let’s have this conversation together in the context of community connected by a shared love of culture and a desire to get to know each other and God better.

Join us Friday, June 10th at 6:00 PM at River’s Edge Cafe for food, music, film, and compelling dialogue. The event is free to attend but please be aware that the food at River’s Edge will be for sale.

More information can be found at awakenings514.com or on the awakenings514 facebook page.

Peace.

Move Update

2011-05-05T12:20:00.003-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

The staff at River Valley wanted to communicate to everyone in the RVCC family that we had an amazing meeting this morning with the owners of the property on the corner of Jericho and Edgelawn. This had been a space we pursued until negotiations feel through, but God has brought us back to this location and has indeed softened the hearts and changed the minds of the owners.All of our talks were positive and they were more than willing to accommodate us in areas that had been sticking points in the past.

This prospective plan would have us occupying four continuous spaces in the west-facing side of the property; we would then join these spaces together creating a 3,000 sq. foot worship space, two smaller meeting/cafe spaces, a dedicated children's’ space and a kitchen. Our office center would likely be in a unit not connected to the main gathering area, but those finer details are still on the table.

Please continue praying for the various aspects of this move. If all goes to plan, we could be moving our office space over to the new location in a month with the rest of the renovations being completed this summer. We are still talking with the city regarding zoning and are praying that they allow us to pick up where we left off with this property back in

February.

Thanks so much for all your support, and feel free to forward this blessed news to whomever you wish so that we as a church body could give all of the glory for this process to God.

Blessings.

Summer Discipleship

2011-04-28T14:02:00.003-05:00

~ From Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

It’s hard to believe, but the first 15-week Life Group term of 2011 is coming to an end in the coming few days. We’ve had an amazing winter/spring season and feel blessed by how God has chosen to grow our small group ministry this year. I want to thank every leader, host, and participant for making sermon-based home Bible study groups at River Valley Community Church such a blessing to be a part of, and I can’t wait until August when our summer/fall 15-week term kicks off.

In the mean time, you may be asking yourself what we plan to do for discipleship over the summer break. August is a long way off and we still want to get together to enjoy our unique community, get to know new-comers, and serve the city of Aurora, so here are a few options we’ve got cooked up (please contact me at the office if you would like to be involved, or if you have any other ideas how to continue to increase discipleship at River Valley):

Each of the Life Groups that currently exist have communicated that through the summer they plan to continue activities together. These won’t be weekly meetings, as with the Life Group terms, but will include informal get-togethers and some study time. We will continue to produce our weekly Life Group content based on that week’s sermon, but it will come in the form of “Tidbits” which are abbreviated versions of the study guides. All are welcome to these groups and can contact me (Eli) to get plugged in (630.777.1267).
This summer, following our June awakenings514 event (more info to come on that), we will be putting together River Valley’s first Alpha group. Alpha is a unique, more structured small group format in which participants share a meal, watch a video lesson, and answer study questions discussing the foundational aspects of God and the Christian Way. You can visit alphausa.org to find out more and to decide if you would like to be involved.

Regarding Alpha, we would like to send anyone interested to a training session on Sunday, May 15th to learn how to host/lead Alpha groups. Leading is extremely fun and requires surprisingly little work ahead of time; it simply requires a desire to get to know new people, invite them into your home or to a secondary location such as our church office or cafe, and lead a discussion. The training involves no cost or commitment and would be a great way for you to discover ways God has gifted you to serve your community. Give me a call (630.777.1267) if you’re interested.

Of course, we have a number of other opportunities for you to be involved at River Valley this summer, and we’ll announce those every Sunday during our worship service, and send them out in this newsletter as they come up. You can also check the calendar on our website www.rivervalleycommunity.org to see what else is going on.

Have a blessed spring and summer; hope to see you this Sunday at 10:00!

Blessings.

31st Day of Lent

2011-04-09T08:57:00.000-05:00

A Prayer for Today...

Mercifully hear our prayers, O Lord, and spare all those who confess their sins to You; that those whose conscience are accused by sin may be Your merciful pardon be absolved; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I hope you enjoy your day of rest tomorrow and would encourage you to join River Valley Community Church for worship tomorrow at 801 Illinois in Aurora for our continuation of our CoRE Beliefs and Practices series. If you indeed struggle with the accusation of sin, as the above prayer mentions, you might find some comfort from Andy's message tomorrow on the role of the Trinity. We start at 10:00am.

Blessings.

30th Day of Lent

2011-04-08T11:56:00.002-05:00

A Prayer for Today...

O God, You have given us the Good News of Your abounding love in Your Son Jesus Christ: so fill our hearts with thankfulness that we may rejoice to proclaim the good tidings we have received; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Blessings.

29th Day of Lent

2011-04-07T09:33:00.004-05:00

A Prayer for Today...

Almighty and most merciful God, drive from us all weakness of body, mind and spirit; that, being restored to wholeness, we may with free hearts become what You intend us to be and accomplish what You want us to do; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I am reminded this morning of a very famous quote delivered by one of the foremost ministry minds of the 20th century, Oswald Chambers. Chambers ultimately gave his life to the ministry to which God had called him: an army chaplain serving in Africa during the first World War, but following his death, his wife complied and published his extensive writings on life with God doing the work of His kingdom. Chambers indelible words concerning our identity in Jesus Christ still ring true...

"If Jesus was only a teacher, then all He can do is to tantalize us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But if we know Him first as Savior by being born again from above, we know that He did not come to teach us only; He came to make us what He teaches we should be."

The weakness we pray to be driven from us is not a prayer for personal righteousness. Rather, it is a prayer that we would more faithfully grasp the true identity Christ offers to all who would follow Him as righteous in God's eyes. When I submit to Jesus' kingdom reign over my life, I can be confident that, just as Chaplain Chambers wrote, I am daily being transformed into the image of my righteous and loving Savior.

If you would like to explore some of Chambers's similar reflections, www.myutmost.org is a useful site to check out.

Blessings.

28th Day of Lent

2011-04-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

A Prayer for Today...

O Lord, our God, You sustained your ancient people in the wilderness with bread from heaven: Feed now Your pilgrim flock with the food that endures to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

27th Day of Lent

2011-04-05T15:13:00.003-05:00

A prayer for today from Shane Claiborne's "Common Prayer..."

Jesus, You are the King of Glory and the King of Creation. Teach us to recognize the ways of Your kingdom that we might participate as faithful and devout residents in the space between a broken world and the coming kingdom of God. Amen.

Original Image uploaded to Flickr by David Goehring

This past weekend during worship, we discussed our church's belief in "humanity." All of life is precious to God, and He looks upon His creation with the desire that the people in it reach their full potential and joy through a knowledge of their identity in Jesus Christ. It is the responsibility for those of us who believe to do just as the above prayer states: take up the space between a broken world (offering peace and help to the end of restoration) and the coming kingdom (a time when every tear will be wiped away (Revelation 21)). I would encourage you to listen to this sermon (you can access it from the Sermon Series link at the bottom of the homepage) and even follow along using our Life Group curriculum available for download here.

It's important to remember that the church is a part of God's plan for restoration in this world, and that without a proper love for humanity, we risk becoming cold and hard to the needs and pain of others in the world who need the love God offers through His Son.

Blessings.

23rd Day of Lent

2011-03-31T15:08:00.006-05:00

Please continue to pray for River Valley Community Church as we progress through the process of finding a permanent home in the city of Aurora. We have done everything possible to secure space in the Northgate Shopping Center on Rt. 31 near downtown, but are still waiting to hear back from one of the national lease-holders on permission to sign our lease. God will guide us and open the doors He chooses in His timing. Here is a lenten prayer for the church today...

Keep watch over Your church, O Lord, with Your unfailing love; and since it is grounded in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid,

protect it from all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

{Here's a shot of the space we're praying for on Palace Ave}

Blessings.

Eli

22nd Day of Lent

2011-03-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

A prayer for today...

Give ear to our prayers, O Lord, and direct the way of Your servants in safety under Your protection, that, amid all the changes of our earthly pilgrimage, we may be guarded by Your mighty aid; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

21st Day of Lent

2011-03-29T14:51:00.006-05:00

Today I want to use this lenten reflection to highlight what River Valley is currently going through. As a part of our current move, we have begun a series focusing on our Core Beliefs and Practices so that as a church we can become more unified in our vision for God's plan for this church.

This past weekend, guest speaker Vince Gaddis preached on our belief that we have our "Identity in Christ" and you can listen to that whole sermon by clicking this link to the audio page of our website: http://rivervalleycommunity.org/rivervalley/Multimedia.aspx?Tags=sermon

As I was in God's word today reflecting on, not only what was said Sunday, but much of what God has been teaching me over the last three weeks, I was struck by my complete dependance on God; not just His attributes (love, grace, mercy, strength, etc.), but on who He is by His nature of being God. It's difficult to explain, but the more you dig into the identity we have in Christ, the more apparent it becomes that our new self in Christ is all-consuming. The way the Bible describes this transformation isn't that we merely receive some of God's good qualities, but that God becomes for us everything He needs us to be.

Deuteronomy 8 discusses this in some tangible ways...

"Beware that you do not forget the Lord Your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinance and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord Your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (v. 11-14).

How many times do I look into my circumstances and well up with pride for what I claim to have accomplished; over righteousness for which I think I am responsible, when it is God and God alone who, through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, has become righteousness for me? I am reminded of C.J. Mahaney's words in his book Humility: True Greatness... "Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holiness and our sinfulness." Apart from God, not only can I do nothing, I am nothing. Praise God for ever and ever that He graciously makes us into what we ought to be, and gives us an eternal purpose that glorifies Him.

Blessings.

20th Day of Lent

2011-03-28T10:20:00.001-05:00

A prayer for today...

Look upon the heart-felt desires of Your humble servants, Almighty God, and stretch forth the right hand of Your majesty to be our defense against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

18th Day of Lent

2011-03-26T10:18:00.002-05:00

A prayer for today...

Grant, most merciful Lord, to Your faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve You with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

17th Day of Lent

2011-03-25T10:16:00.003-05:00

A prayer for today...

Grant O Lord, that as Your Son Jesus Christ prayed for His enemies on the cross, so we may have grace to forgive those who wrongfully or scornfully use us, that we ourselves may be able to receive Your forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God for ever and ever. Amen.

16th Day of Lent

2011-03-24T13:42:00.008-05:00

For today's reflection I'll be borrowing from Shane Claiborne's new book "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals." It's a fantastic tool for anyone interested in a different approach to their walk with God. You can get a copy here:

http://www.amazon.com/Common-Prayer-Liturgy-Ordinary-Radicals/dp/0310326192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300992303&sr=8-1

I wouldn't have known this apart from reading today's prayer section in "Common Prayer," but today is the 31st anniversary of the shooting death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a Salvadorian priest known for his prophetic speaking out against the repression of the peoples of El Salvador throughout the 1970's. Though he spoke widely concerning this evil and was able to raise considerable international awareness, ultimately, Romero died never having seen an end to the injustice he fought. Scores of Salvadorians were killed or driven from their homes even after he was murdered, but the Archbishop had a perspective on living for Jesus Christ that compelled him to maintain his ministry's fervor up to his death: He said, "A bishop will die, but the church of God - the people - will not perish." We are each a part of a much larger body and story that will continue until God calls us all home.

Romero went on to say, "It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts: it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. That is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own."

As we continue this lenten season to press into the disciplines that grow us closer to God by bringing His heart to the fore of our minds daily, let's pray and remember that God is the One reconciling all things, including our lives, to Himself, and it is not our efforts that get us there. As the poet Bob Dylan wrote "I am hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan, like every sparrow falling, and like every grain of sand." God's perfect plan for us is complete in His timing; we have the privilege of experiencing Him in this life of our free will and desire and seeing some of the fruit of this world being made better by His efforts through humble servants.

Blessings.

15th Day of Lent

2011-03-23T10:06:00.009-05:00

Here's a link for today's lenten reflection...

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/03/23/lent-3-seven-deadly-sins-jeff-cook/

If you've been around River Valley for any length of time, you've heard my (Eli) testimony of God overcoming the sins of lust in my life. Jeff Cook in the link above does an excellent job synthesizing some thoughts on the subject as they pertain to this Easter season. As we meditate on all that Christ has done for us it is nearly impossible for us not to take a long, hard look at ourselves and see exactly what kinds of sin and corruption God has purged from our lives as a result of Christ's atoning work on the cross.

In asking God for forgiveness for these things, it is necessary to be specific in naming your sin; not for the act of beating yourself up or falling into a shame spiral, but so that you will be reminded of what you've been saved from through Christ's blood shed on the cross. I've heard it preached that if you confess your smallest sins, then you have a small savior, but if you confess your greatest sins, then indeed you see your Savior Jesus Christ as great for He has the power to overcome them all. Confession and repentance reminds us of that fact.

Blessings.

14th Day of Lent

2011-03-22T09:38:00.003-05:00

A Daily prayer for Lent...

O God, You willed to redeem us from all iniquity by Your Son: Deliver us when we are tempted to regard sin without abhorrence, and let the virtue of His passion come between us and our mortal enemy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

This is a prayer I need daily. It brings to mind the nature of sin in that it is the temptation to allow our desire to overtake God's will in our lives. Regarding sin with abhorrence in light of Christ's sacrifice to negate its power over us is a helpful practice this season as each of us seeks to grow closer to God.

Blessings.

13th Day of Lent

2011-03-21T15:16:00.005-05:00

Please forgive the brief hiatus in posts...I spent most of last week fighting illness, but thankfully I'm getting back to normal.

We had a tremendous time of worship Sunday morning at River Valley Community Church continuing our series CoRE: Beliefs & Practices. Lead Pastor Andy Morgan spoke about our belief in a Personal God, and it made me reflect on what we've been doing for Lent this year.

Digging into Scripture brings you face to face with a God who has demonstrated throughout human history that He deeply cares for all of mankind. Psalm 121, the verses we discussed during our worship time on Sunday, talks about our Father who provides constant help for those in need, and who, in spite of the world's brokenness, will not allow our foot to slip. (If you would like to explore a few more examples of this, check out this week's Life Group Homework).

As I have been spending a great deal more time with God in His word and in prayer, I have found that the kind of peace the Bible talks about when it describes God becomes that much more real; that James was telling the truth in James 4:7-8 when he said, "Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded."

While this may have some ominous tones, I can tell you that the experience is real: when we are intentional about spending time with God, we are much more able to sense His presence near to us; and His is a peaceful, comforting presence indeed.

Draw near to Him this week and He will draw near to you.

Blessings.

Tenth Day of Lent

2011-03-18T13:54:00.002-05:00

Prayer for today:

Lord Christ, our eternal Redeemer, grant us such fellowship in Your sufferings that, filled with Your Holy Spirit, we may subdue the flesh to the spirit, and the spirit to You, and at the last attain to the glory of Your resurrection; who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Japan Relief

2011-03-16T14:29:00.003-05:00

As the tragedy unfolding in Japan worsens by the day, people around the world are responding in generous ways to aid this hurting country. River Valley Community Church will be joining this effort immediately through the Samaritan’s Purse relief organization that is sending over plane-loads of food, water, blankets, medical supplies, and necessary items for the tens of thousands of Japanese people affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor fallout.

Japan is a country with over 125,000,000 people and has the worlds third largest economy, but the population of Christians living there makes up only 1.5%. We have an opportunity to reach out in loving, tangible ways to the people there as a witness to God’s care for the brokenhearted in the world. If you have yet to contribute in some way to the relief effort, please consider joining River Valley in doing so.

We will be sending a percentage of our 2011 global mission’s budget through Samaritan’s Purse to their efforts there. As a part of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Samaritan’s Purse has coordinated international relief efforts for nearly 40 years all over the globe, and remains one of the most trusted and financially accountable relief organizations in the world. If you would like to donate directly to their efforts in Japan, click the following link:

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/pray_for_japan/#

If you would rather have your donation go through the church, please make a check payable to River Valley Community Church and write “Japan Relief” in the memo. We will accept those checks either by mail to our PO Box 7755, Aurora IL. or in the offering baskets at Sunday morning services. Total receipts for those donations can be made available through the church financial administrator so you can be confident that your donation went directly to the relief effort in Japan.

Finally, please remember to daily lift up this tragedy in prayer. As the media slowly but surely allocates less coverage to the story, it will be all too easy to forget the thousands upon thousands of hurting souls who have nothing to eat and drink, and no place to call home. Pray that relief would find all who are in need. Pray that God would supernaturally heal the wounded and dying. Pray that families would be restored. Pray that the situation does not grow worse with the growing nuclear reactor meltdowns. Pray that Christ-followers around the world would lovingly bear God’s standard to the nation of Japan so that many new believers would be welcomed into His family for all of eternity.

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

1 John 3:16-18

Eighth Day of Lent

2011-03-16T10:46:00.004-05:00

I wanted to share a simple post today about the nature of sin. I've heard it said that your views of God are shaped by your views of sin, and to the degree that you believe in an evil from which man must be saved is the degree to which you believe in a God who can save you.

A lenten prayer for today says, "Bless us, O God, in this holy season, in which our hearts seek your help and healing; and so purify us by Your discipline that we may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Recently I heard Todd Hunter, former president of Vineyard and Alpha USA, describe sin as the convergence of temptation and desire. Too often we blame our shortcomings on our circumstances or the material things that "tempt" us, but it is really our desires that cause us problems. When the psalmist prayed for a new heart and a restored spirit, he was praying that God would transform his desires. Yes, we can pray that temptation be removed from us, but God must also change our desires to better line up with His will. Pray for both of those things as we continue pursuing God's discipline through this season.

Here's a link to another blog from today regarding sin...

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/03/16/lent-2-seven-deadly-sins-jeff-cook/

Seventh Day of Lent

2011-03-15T10:09:00.006-05:00

I want to spend just one more day discussing a specific spiritual discipline so that we have a framework for the remainder of the lenten calendar leading up to Easter.

The practice of fasting is quite possibly the most misunderstood of all the spiritual disciplines, but it is still an important one. For me, the practice has always been a way of reorienting my mindset back toward God, especially while going through particularly trying times. It helps remind me that God ultimately provides for all of my needs (material, nutritional, spiritual, emotional) and allows me to more intensely focus on my relationship with my Provider.

I like Brian McLaren's simple, yet effective definition in his book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices; a fantastic read for anyone interested in Christian praxis...here's a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Our-Way-Again-Practices/dp/B0023RSZU0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300202218&sr=8-1

"Fasting & Self-Denial: Reducing the consumption of food or other pleasures as a way of strengthening spiritual health and resolve - often on certain days imbued by the faith community with certain meanings."

There are numerous biblical examples of various kinds of fasts: whole fasts (Jesus in the desert), partial fasts (Daniel eating only raw foods), etc. For us it can mean abstinence from anything that would cause us to "hunger" throughout the fasting period. This isn't for the mere purpose of "doing without;" it's a way of worshiping the Father who daily sustains our very lives. If this is new for you, start small: pick something to leave out of your day that you normally wouldn't (coffee is actually one of my favorite simple fasts, just to remind me that I only need God to stay awake :), and pray that God would use whatever craving you experience to focus on His desire for Your day. As you get more adventurous with this discipline, you can be more creative by choosing to go without food for an entire day, or several days. Though this can seem extreme, days I've spent fasting and praying have been some of my closest with the Holy Spirit as I lean on Him for strength. This is my intention for today (a whole fast), and for one day every week through Lent.

So those are our disciplines: Daily repentance from sin; daily Bible reading; daily prayer (intercessory and meditative, which I will continue to talk more about in coming days); practicing one day per week for a time of rest (Sabbath); intentional biblical community; and fasting (either day by day or selecting something to do without throughout the remainder of Lent). Each day I'll continue to reflect on those practices as I seek to apply them to my life in a more methodical and disciplined way. I earnestly desire to see my life transformed as I grow closer to God through these means, and I pray the same for you as well.

Blessings.

Sixth Day of Lent

2011-03-14T18:04:00.005-05:00

How was your day of rest? I think that may be one of the more difficult disciplines to nail down, given the culture in which we live and the demands to constantly perform, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending a day refraining from work.

Today, getting back into our daily routine, I want to introduce another of the spiritual disciplines which River Valley Community Church upholds as vital for the spiritual, emotional, and mental health of any Christ-follower: the practice of Biblical Community. For some, this practice comes easy; many people are naturally blessed with a desire to spend time with others for the purpose of growing closer to God and closer to others in their church family. If you're like me, however, this discipline can actually be quite hard.

As a church, we believe that a follower of Jesus Christ cannot develop in a healthy way outside of the context of the local church. The early church as described in Acts 2 notes that the body met daily in each others' homes for times worshiping God. In order to make that a priority, River Valley centers all of its activities around our small groups that meet weekly in different homes and businesses around the Aurora area. My Life Group meets tonight at 7:00, and I'm excited to use that time to learn from others' experiences as we discuss God and our involvement with His work in this city. We don't simply use these times to sequester ourselves from the world, but as times when we can look together at what God might be doing through our group so that we can position ourselves to be more effective tools for His kingdom advancement. Every group commits to serve the city in some meaningful way during our 15 week sessions, as well as to care for the needs of others in the church.

As I already mentioned, this type of thing doesn't come naturally to me; I am much more inclined to spend time alone practicing the other disciplines we've discussed (prayer, Bible reading, Sabbath, etc.), but I have found time and time again that some of my richest moments pursuing God's will for my life have come when I am intentional about letting others into my situation for a time to offer insight and prayer. Scripture is replete with examples of Biblical figures achieving greater potential when introduced to fellow believers whom they engage for the purposes of spiritual maturity and mission (David & Jonathan; Moses & Aaron; Jesus & the Disciples; Paul & Barnabas then Timothy and many more, etc.). We were made by God to live in community with others. This will be an intentional part of this lenten calendar for me as I pursue (and welcome others to pursue) a deeper level of intimacy with God.

If you're lacking in opportunities to engage with a biblical community, please check out the discipleship link on this website for how to connect with our various Life Groups and Bible study groups. All are welcome!

Blessings.

Fourth Day of Lent

2011-03-12T14:10:00.004-06:00

As we go, I'll be detailing more specifically what this project is meant to do, but for these first few days having a basic understanding of the spiritual disciplines we'll focus on during Lent is necessary for the objective to make sense. Additionally, since a large part of that objective is to document the evidences (what the Bible calls "fruit") of this kind of spiritual discipline, we'll need some time to witness those results; though I can say that having been so methodical in prayer and Bible reading just over the last four days has already produced a great deal more peace for me during my day to day activities (particularly while driving in the car).

Having discussed both prayer (in part) and Bible reading over the past couple of days, I want to introduce another important practice: keeping the Sabbath. This idea is the simple command God gives His followers to rest one day of the week from doing work...a pretty sweet deal. You could probably read a number of different, painfully specific works regarding what the Bible calls Sabbath: what day of the week it actually is; what consists of "rest" and "work"; if it's a strictly Jewish practice that doesn't translate into evangelical Christianity. All of these arguments, for me, seem unimportant when I read the rationale God gives His followers regarding all of His commands, including the Sabbath.

If you read through Deuteronomy chapter 5 in the Bible (near the front end), one of God's early followers named Moses basically recounts the Ten Commandments for the Israelite people. Resoundingly, the reason God gives His people for following His word is that their lives may be "prolonged" on the earth. It is in our best interest to do what God says, especially concerning rest, not because He'll punish us if we don't, but because He simply says we'll live longer, more fulfilled lives because of it.

good ole Chuck...

The Christian God cares about the quality of our lives; a theme you can find throughout the Bible. And I would contend that this idea that being a Christian in America is working tirelessly in our churches for various ministries, programs, etc. all-the-while investing heavily at our jobs and in our families at home, never taking time to quiet ourselves with our Creator and allow Him to be strength for us, is simply sin. When we refuse to take intentional time off from the daily grind, we are sinning. God wants us to spend time with Him in quiet rest because He cares for us and knows that without that time, our lives are resigned to a rat race in which we will never find the purpose we seek; purpose that can only come through Him. That's Sabbath, and for me, that's tomorrow.

While I will be serving in River Valley Community Church, I do that not as a part of my job, but as part of my rest in God. Sunday morning service starts my day of rest by committing myself once again to Him in humble worship. The remainder of the day, I will refrain from any task that is not related to spending time growing closer to God, which can include (and some may disagree with me) doing absolutely nothing for a time. Jesus asked His followers if they thought they could add an hour to their lives by worrying about their daily provisions, and the answer is, of course we can't. God will provide everything for us when we trust Him. Tomorrow I will practice that in mind and deed.

This also means that I will not post on this blog tomorrow, or any Sunday through Lent, but will be sure to come back to it Monday to let you know how it went. Additionally, since I believe Sabbath is incredibly personal (in that it's time spent in rest with our Father, and rest looks different for different people), I would love to hear comments regarding how you either do or plan to adhere to this practice.

Blessings.

Third Day of Lent

2011-03-11T15:22:00.004-06:00

By now, we have all seen the devastation in Japan and throughout the Pacific caused by yesterday's massive earthquake. Still no one is able to determine the extent of the damage and loss of life, and images that continue to find their way onto media outlets are heart-wrenching...

Since Lent is the time of year when we look to Jesus Christ laying down His own life to reconcile humanity to God and to begin the total restoration of His created work, it is tragic that the fallen nature of the world sees these kinds of horrific events happen globally all to often.

Today I used my time with God simply to cry out to the Father on behalf of the thousands of people affected by this disaster; they need our prayers today.

Second Day of Lent

2011-03-10T15:51:00.004-06:00

Prayer today, the first day after Ash Wednesday, has to do with asking God's help with the work He is doing through us. As mentioned yesterday, it can sometimes be difficult to see how our spiritual discipline translates into missional activity, but that is the whole point of discipline: that our times practicing God's presence will strengthen and instruct us for greater service in God's kingdom here on earth.

I spent a lot of time today reading God's word to see what He might have to say through the Bible regarding this missional element of spiritual discipline. Here's where He led me in Luke 6:

"Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will sow you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great."

The issue here isn't laziness; both metaphorical men built houses. The issue here, Jesus says, is what those houses are built on. When we spend time with God in His word, in prayer, fasting, communicating with others about Him, what we are really doing is laying a foundation for the house He wants us to build. But Jesus is clear, that words without actions (i.e. reading what Jesus did and asks of His followers without doing them) are meaningless, both to us and to the world.

I have to say that spending extended, disciplined time in God's word today was extremely energizing, even though I spent the last three days attending graduate classes, which had me reading, writing, and talking for nine hours straight. While that kind of study is informative and helpful, it can never replace the foundational truths and wisdom found in God's word. We must spend time there, and for the remainder of this lenten season I have committed to that extended time in His word to see the missional benefits described in Luke 6: I want to simply do the things Jesus said to do.

If you too are curious about the ways your life could tangibly change simply by spending more time with God, let's pray today that He would direct us in all our doings in the coming weeks; that they would be for His glory in the world, and not merely for our own personal benefit. If you already have a Bible study that you follow, commit to doing it every single day until Easter. Remember yesterday that we discussed Lent as an opportunity to take on that which makes us more like Christ. If you don't have a Bible study that you already do, I would invite you to do the reading plan I do each day:

Read one chapter from each of the six major sections of the Bible. Starting out, that means on day one you would read Genesis 1 (The section the Bible calls the Pentateuch), Joshua 1 (History), Job 1 (Poetry), Isaiah 1 (Prophecy), Matthew 1 (Gospels), Acts 1 (The Church). Then do the next chapters on the next day and so on. This can seem like a lot, but you will be surprised at how much the Bible starts to communicate to you about God's whole involvement with mankind over time. As you go, God will start to intersect various books on some days and use that to give you a clear message about Himself that you can apply in your life. It really is amazing, and somedays can be down-right spooky when all six sections talk about the same ideas! But if this seems like too much, especially if this is your first attempt at Bible reading, just take one section (The Gospels, for instance) and read a chapter from it each day.

If we make it consistent, God will be faithful to speak to us through it, which will, in turn, compel us all to greater kingdom service.

Blessings.

First Day of Lent - Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T15:08:00.003-06:00

Today is the first day of Lent, forty days in the traditional church calendar when we who believe in Jesus Christ prepare ourselves for the celebration of Easter. It's a long story as to why Lent has forty days, but for me, the reason why today is called Ash Wednesday is more compelling.

Preparing for Easter, the day we celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the crucifixion He suffered three days earlier, we can be reminded that Colossians chapter one says that Jesus is the first born from the dead; namely that He is the first among humanity to overcome the grave. But we who are God's creation need constant reminder that we are not God, and that resurrection comes for Christ's followers only when the Son of God returns to annihilate the power of evil over this world once and for all.

The ashes are to remind us that we who are human beings were born from dust and it is to dust that we shall return. Today as I attended the Ash Wednesday service at a local Anglican church, they spoke those words to me as the priest used ashes to make the sign of the cross on my forehead. "From dust you have come and to dust you shall return...repent and believe in Jesus Christ." This is where Lent really begins: at the place of recognizing my total dependance upon God and His Son's atoning work on the cross. Without it, my future is dust.

So where does Lent go from here? The common cultural understanding is that Christians simply give up some kind of vice for forty days as a reminder of God in their lives, but the elemental aspects of this upcoming period of time have less to do with giving up this or that thing than they do with gaining a better understanding of the spiritual practices Christians are to do to remain in a closer relationship with the God who sustains them, so that they may be better equipped and strengthened to take His light into the world.

Put simply, Lent is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to commit to getting closer to God by any means necessary, not for the mere purpose of being a better person, though that is not a bad thing, but so that we would be Christ-followers who live in this world so assured of our salvation and relationship with the Father, that we can participate in the ongoing, kingdom expanding, atoning work of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine how radically different your life and the lives of the people around you would be if daily you did everything you could to get closer to God?

That's what we'll be doing for the next forty days here. My commitment for Lent is to spend the next forty days chasing down every possible spiritual discipline the Bible talks about in an effort to grow closer to God and to behave more missionally in the world. After all, discipline without purpose is egoism. I invite you who will read this to go on this journey with me. Each day, I'll post on this blog my experiences for the day, and how the various spiritual disciplines, employed methodically with dedication for a missional aim, tangibly change my life. I expect great things to happen in the next forty days, and would love any comments you might have as you prepare for the day of the Easter weekend when we praise God for His Son's work on the cross.

I want to leave you with the traditional Ash Wednesday Scripture. Let these words sink into your heart as you contemplate how Psalm 51 could look for you during Lent.

Be gracious to me, O god, according to Your lovingkindness;

According to the greatness of Your compassion

Blot out my sins.

Wash me completely from my iniquity

And cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight,

So that You are justified when You speak

And blameless when You judge.

Behold, I was born in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being

And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.

Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me to hear joy and gladness, let the bones which You have broken rejoice.

Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors of Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.

Deliver me from guilt, O God, the God of my salvation;

Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare Your praise.

For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;

You are not pleased with burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Church

2011-03-03T10:43:00.003-06:00

~ from Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

Serendipitously, this first week of our new sermon series “CoRE” has us discussing River Valley’s belief in The Church, while at the same time finalizing our negotiations with North Gate Shopping Center on Lake Street in Aurora for us to move into a few of their store fronts as a permanent location for our church community to gather. The Holy Spirit has been guiding us every step of the way, and Him orchestrating our study of the church with our movement in this city is remarkable.

A few of the particulars, in case you’re interested, regarding this new location: We would occupy two storefronts on the north east side of the complex (closest to Palace St. adjacent to the Riddle Highlands neighborhood). We would be increasing the size of our space to accommodate up to 300 people at one time in what would become our worship venue, while still maintaining our cafe-style atmosphere throughout. There would be ample classroom space for youth and children, and our offices would be on-site as well.

North Gate has been, to this point, quite easy to work with and has welcomed the idea of us moving into their location. The city of Aurora has also been a blessing during the negotiation process. Today, as I write this, our final hurdle to obtaining a lease is finding out whether or not the national lessors in the shopping center (Citi Trends, TJ Maxx, Liberty Income Tax, etc.) will sign off on us being there. Please be praying for this important step; that God would open the hearts of these national executives so that we could positively influence a part of our city that needs rejuvenation.

While going through this process, God has been faithful to keep everyone at River Valley humble in our understanding of what this means for our future as a church. We believe that, as the Bible tells us, God does not reside in structures made with human hands (Acts 7 & 17); He has made His Spirit to dwell in each of us who believe in His Son Jesus Christ and the atonement offered through Him to the Father and with the world. For this reason, we have committed to not owning the property where we will worship.

Though we easily could have built a new building or purchased an existing structure, we have chosen the more difficult process of working with businesses and the city to find a place to rent. This will help restore the city by continuing to provide tax money and by revitalizing previously vacated and derelict storefronts. This will also provide us an opportunity to use the space inside and outside to build up local neighborhoods and provide services throughout the week.

Please continue praying over this process. We are confident that God is moving River Valley to the part of this city where He wants us to work and serve and we want to be faithful to follow. And join us this Sunday at 801 Illinois Ave. for the first week of our new series: CoRE Beliefs & Practices to hear more about our vision for the church and its mission for God’s kingdom advancement in Aurora.

Blessings,

Eli

CORE

2011-02-24T12:28:00.003-06:00

~ from Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

This week we will conclude the series we’ve been studying through the book of Galatians. It has been a fulfilling look into an honest letter written to the early church regarding the new identity we all have afforded to us in a relationship with God’s Son Jesus Christ. Though we did not specifically plan it to work this way, this final week studying Galatians 6:11-18 transitions us perfectly into the next series in which we will define and explore the core beliefs and practices of River Valley Community Church.

Paul ends his letter to the Galatians by pleading with them not to behave spiritually simply to “make a good showing in the flesh.” This theme is present throughout the letter: our relationship with God ought not be about putting up a good front or looking better than anyone else, it’s about God; that’s where our core beliefs come in. Everything we as a church believe about the One God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit have everything to do with who He is. We who believe in God only find out about our identity when we find out more about God’s.

This is also true of the practices we adopt as a church. Too often, Christian behavior is attributed to this idea, that it’s about looking good or simply not embarrassing ourselves to the point of seeming hypocritical, but that attitude voids spiritual disciplines of their true purpose: mission. Everything we do is a part of God’s ongoing mission to restore this world to His original perfect order. Whether we pray, worship through the arts, read the Bible, gather in community, meditate on Him and His word, serve in our city, or tell people about a relationship with Jesus Christ, all of those things involve a missional impulse to align ourselves with God’s restorative work in people and in the world.

This is why so much of the Bible is less about telling Christians what to do and more about having a God-honoring reason for why we do anything at all. So as we look forward to discussing River Valley’s beliefs and practices we will be asking the important question “why?” and I would encourage you to do the same.

Why do you pray? Why do you sing music in church? Why do you read the Bible? Why do you or don’t you drink alcohol? Why do you or don’t you eat certain kinds of food? Why do you or don’t you use offensive language? These are the questions God wants us to ask ourselves and Him, because ultimately it’s the answers to our asking the “why” question that help us know whether or not we are carrying out God’s missional plan through the way we live our lives.

If you would like someone to bounce these questions off of, or if you’re curious about River Valley Community Church and the things we do here, please give me a call or email me and I’d be happy to talk it over with you.

630.844.9115

eli.suddarth@rivervalleycommunity.org

Blessings,

Eli

You can also read here about our core values, beliefs, and practices

God's Manifold Wisdom

2011-02-11T05:25:00.002-06:00

~ from Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

This week during our staff meeting, we had a great discussion regarding opinions about God that are different from our own. The reason Evangelical Christianity is such a diverse collection of denominations and practices is that there are an infinite number of ways to describe our amazing heavenly Father. We all hold to the truths of our faith: that there is One God; that His Son Jesus lived on the earth to establish His kingdom authority, died to save us from sin and to demonstrate ultimate humility, and rose from the grave conquering death; that the the Holy Spirit dwells in His believers empowering us to live worshipful lives that impact the world around us; and several other truths that we would describe as “absolute.” But the amazing thing is that God is so big and His good news so great, that the ways of expressing Him in worship, thought, and even church practice, are numerous and beautiful.

This is what the apostle Paul talks about in the book of Ephesians chapter 3 verses 7-10. “...to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

That is our mission as Christians and as a church; to use whatever we’ve got to bring to light the mystery of who God is, and that is what we’re going to be doing at our first Awakening’s event in downtown Aurora. Employing popular music and film, we’ll welcome people into a conversation about God using a language everyone can understand. We can explore God through our culture and pray that the Holy Spirit will use our efforts to bring more into a relationship with the Father.

Please join us tonight at 6:00 at 14 W. Downer Pl. in Aurora to encounter God in a new way and to further develop a community of people who desire to know Him in as many creative ways as possible.

www.awakenings514.com

Blessings.

Eli

Happy Birthday Andy!

2011-01-28T13:47:00.000-06:00

~ from Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

Typically, this newsletter will address issues discussed during River Valley’s weekly staff meeting, but this week, our staff meeting took place at the newly re-opened River’s Edge Cafe in honor of our senior pastor Andy Morgan’s birthday. It was a wonderful time celebrating all that Andy has done through and for River Valley over these past six years, and to look forward to all of the things God will do in the near future.

Andy has been an amazing source of guidance and inspiration for me personally, as well as for our church as a whole, so I wanted to thank him in this way for all he does to impact lives in our city for God’s glory.

Andy’s vision for the church has always been that it would be an unusually friendly place where people feel like they immediately belong; a community of people in every sense of the word. A large part of our efforts to realize that vision are our home Bible studies that we call Life Groups. The spring group term starts this week, so it’s not too late to get involved in these wonderful small communities to study who God is and how He directs the ways we live our lives. Life Groups meet in Aurora, Sugar Grove, and Batavia on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays.

If you would like more information about Life Groups or any of our other attempts at making River Valley a genuine community, such as our men’s and women’s ministries, Crown Financial Seminar, Awakenings, or Focus, give me a call at 630.777.1267. And if you want to wish Andy a happy belated birthday, I’m sure he would love it! andymorgan@aol.com

Blessings.

Eli

Awakenings

2011-01-21T13:40:00.002-06:00

awakenings 514.com

~ from Eli Suddarth - Director of Worship & Discipleship

“Awake, sleeper. Arise from the dead, and the light of Christ will shine on you.”

Ephesians 5:14

An important question to ask any church is, “What are you doing to help new people come into a relationship with Jesus Christ?” River Valley has alway had a relational approach to evangelism, and we have seen a number of new believers welcomed into God’s family over the years, but this year we’re going to try something a little different.

On Friday, February 11th, we’re going to get together at 6:00pm at the offices of Associates in Family Care (14 W Downer Pl. in Aurora) for our first “Awakenings” event. What these events are designed to do is help us look at popular culture to find out and respond to what the culture is talking about; the kinds of questions it’s asking and problems it’s wrestling with. When we look closely enough, we find out that Christians and non-Christians alike often struggle with the same kinds of things: inadequacy, love, pain, loss. So we’re going to spend a night in the context of popular culture and see if our vision of who God is becomes clearer in the process.

The aim of the night is to provide a place of common ground for people from any faith background, so if you have family, friends, neighbors, or coworkers who do not yet know about Jesus Christ, this is the perfect place to bring them. We’re going to watch a movie, play some live music with the band from River Valley, and discuss what God has to say about the event theme “True Love.”

If this sounds interesting to you, please check out the website we’ve put together that’s dedicated to these events www.awakenings514.com, or you can email me at esuddarth@gmail.com.

Blessings.

Eli

Advent Devo 27

2010-12-25T05:30:00.000-06:00

Saturday, Day 00511

Faith to Obey

“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Luke 1:32-33

Today take some time to read through the first chapter of Luke (perhaps make it a family activity to enjoy together on Christmas day). This whole first chapter details the events of lives God involved in the coming of Jesus; lives which required great faith to respond to the incredible message that God was entering the world as a baby borne of a virgin.

As I have said, I don’t feel that we today are much different from the people in Jesus’s time. We can read the events surrounding Jesus’s life with the same amount of awe and wonder as the people who witnessed them firsthand. We can also respond in ways similar to theirs. God asked some incredible things of the people you will read about in Luke 1. He asked a virgin to believe in and physically carry God’s Son in her womb. He told a barren couple that their baby would be the last prophet to prepare the way for Jesus’s ministry in the world. He asked a Jewish man to walk faithfully with his wife who would encounter much skepticism for her pregnancy. He asked kings from another nation to visit the Christ child to witness His miraculous birth. They all responded in faith.

Will you respond similarly?

All that God asks from those who would follow Him is belief that He is the one true God. The God you’ve been reading about this past month wants to have a personal relationship with you to make you into all that He created you to be; to reach your highest potential; to become more like His Son Jesus. All that is required is belief.

If this is a decision you would like to make, or one about which you would simply like more information, please email me at eli.suddarth@rivervalleycommunity.org. I can’t wait to talk with you.
God bless you in the coming year.

Advent Devo 26

2010-12-24T13:30:00.001-06:00

Friday, Day 0051

The King Comes

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

I have to confess, I did not know how this study was going to end when I began it. I laid out a plan for how each day should go, but I did not anticipate feeling the way I feel writing today’s lesson. Over the past twenty five days we’ve looked intently at the person of Jesus Christ, how He lived His life and what He taught, and I feel overwhelmed to finally be staring at the words in Luke that simply tell us that He was born.

God, in a desire to be near to us, entered our sinful world to save us. He took desperate measures to ensure our heavenly salvation and to bring His kingdom authority to the world. What an amazing God we serve who accomplishes all these things. How remarkable that He reveals these things to we who are the weak and lowly of the world. How marvelous that He offers us the opportunity to tell others about this great story. Merry Christmas

Advent Devo 25

2010-12-23T13:29:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Day 005

The Kingdom Revealed

“In the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were so afraid. The angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased.’”

Luke 2:8-14

Throughout the Bible, God used the shepherd as an important symbol to represent parts of His character. David, one of Israel’s first kings who we studied earlier, grew up as a shepherd defending his flock from predators, and Jesus often used this image to both tell of His desire to care for the lost souls in the world (Luke 15:4-7), and to also point to His kingship in the prophecy told of the King coming in David’s lineage to set the world free from sin (see day 8 of this study).

Shepherds also represent a very humble quality. Their lives are spent either alone with their flock or with a few other shepherds. They defend their sheep with their lives and suffer greatly just to survive doing what they do, so it is quite telling of who God is for Him to celebrate this moment with some shepherds. Shepherds are God’s people...they’re the ones He wanted to call up late at night with the news that His Son had been born.

This is an important element of who God is: He does not care about worldly status. Over and over in Jesus’s life, He reminds those listening that the last in the world will be first in heaven (Matthew 11:25-30), and that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the least among mankind (Matthew 5:3). God has use for those of us who don’t see ourselves as necessarily useful, and God gives purpose to those of use who don’t necessarily see ourselves as purposeful.

Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. How does this help clarify some of these considerations?

Advent Devo 24

2010-12-22T11:29:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, Day 0015

Purpose

“There was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus...he took him up in his arms and blessed God saying, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that You have prepared in the presence of all peoples.’”

Luke 2:25-31

Here again we encounter a character who is commonly left out of the Christmas story, but whose life is very intriguing. All we are told about Simeon is what we read above: he was a devout man who loved God and who received a simple promise that He would get to see the Messiah in the flesh before He died. That’s it. For all we know, he spent the whole of his long life waiting for this day; the day when He would get to see Jesus in person. And then he is reconciled to his own death following this encounter.

I don’t think people of our time are all that different from the people who lived in Jesus’s day. We all still want our lives to matter; we are all still struggling to be important, even if just to a few people, but for Simeon it was enough that He got to see Jesus, and that a promise that was given to him from God was fulfilled. His life was important, not because of any spectacular accomplishment or revolutionary idea; His life was important because he found his worth in the God of heaven and His Son coming to earth to save the people of the world.

So too, your life can be meaningful if you spend it seeking God and finding your worth in Him. Trust me, it’s a worthwhile investment.

What are some of the areas of your life where you still try to find self-worth? What are the areas where accomplishments are more important to you than God telling you that you matter to Him? Ask God to move your heart from valuing those things to valuing Him. Read through Matthew 10:26-33 for more insight into finding your worth in God alone.

Advent Devo 23

2010-12-21T12:53:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, Day 00111

Prepare the Way

“The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Luke 3:2-4

Over the next few days leading up to Christmas Eve we’ll be looking at some of the people who were on the periphery of Jesus’s story. God used a lot of people in some seemingly small ways to call attention to His Son coming to earth, and the man mentioned in today’s Scripture, commonly referred to as John the Baptist, was one of those people whose purpose in life was to be a sign pointing to the Messiah.

In these verses we see John calling people to repent of their sin as a way of preparing for Jesus Christ, but if you’ve been following this study you already know that Jesus accomplished the forgiveness of sins by dying on the cross, so why would John be calling people to repent before coming to Jesus?

This time of year, many of us have to shovel snow off of our driveways in order for our cars to leave the garage. Certainly, our cars are capable of driving over the unplowed snow to get to the street, but we shovel nonetheless because it makes the journey from garage to street much less dangerous. That’s what repentance is for us. In our lives, we can come to Jesus as the forgiver of sins even when we are in sin itself, but if we live in repentance, we are working to keep the junk off of our souls so that Jesus is easier to get to; so that a clear path between our lives and the life of our Redeemer exists, making this journey less treacherous. Repentance doesn’t forgive us of sin, Jesus did that. Repentance, rather acknowledges that the sin that is in our lives needs to be checked and rechecked on the road to God making our lives look more like His Son’s.

Where are you on this journey? Does Jesus seem difficult to reach because of sin for which you have not asked forgiveness? Remember that He is not far off and He wants to be near to you. Pray through the words in James 4:7-10 as you seek to draw near to God.

Advent Devo 22

2010-12-20T14:31:00.000-06:00

Monday, Day 0011

Temptation

“And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by satan.”

Luke 4:1-2

Jesus was a man. Think about that for a minute.

Two thousand years after He lived and died, we talk about Jesus as God, which He is; we talk about Him as an idea; we throw His name around in religious or church conversations; at Christmas time we place His plastic figure in a wooden box on our kitchen counter; but He was a real man who lived on the earth.

In this instance, we see a man who was about 30 years old, being tempted by satan to sin by denying God’s authority in His life. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like my life. Fortunately for all of us, Jesus being fully man and fully God, dealt much better with the temptation that came His way than you or I could, but the same things we experience as temptation that pull our hearts away from God, Jesus felt when He was alive. He felt loneliness, he felt starvation, he cried, he laughed, he ate and drank (Matt.11:19).

Remember what we studied concerning the Holy Spirit back on the second day of this study: we have Him with us just as Jesus did, which was the reason why He was able to resist the devil’s temptations. It wasn’t Jesus’s divinity that allowed Him to overcome evil in those weak moments; it was His desire to allow God’s strength to become His strength through the Spirit.

In what ways do you feel you can learn to lean more on the Holy Spirit for strength in times of temptation and weakness? If you’re having difficulty coming up with anything, it can start with a simple prayer asking God for help.

Advent Devo 21

2010-12-19T14:30:00.000-06:00

Sunday, Day 001

Good News

“‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”

Luke 4:18-21

We’ve come to a pivotal moment in Jesus’s life. Gradually we have been working backwards through His ministry and teachings about the kingdom, and these verses above represent the first sermon Jesus preached: the thesis of His ministry.

These verses can also be found in the book of Isaiah in the Bible, chapter 61:1-2. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would come to execute this justice in the world; that He wouldn’t merely talk about good news, He would live it, and show others how to live it as well. As we have seen over these past few weeks, this prophecy is true of Jesus Christ. He didn’t just talk about love, He was love; He didn’t simply talk about opening the eyes of the blind, He opened them; He didn’t talk about salvation, He died on a cross to save us all. This is the Good News of a humble child coming to earth at Christmas time: not just that He came, but that He changed the world for good.

Advent Devo 20

2010-12-18T14:29:00.000-06:00

Saturday, Day 00

Sent Out

“And He called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”

Luke 9:1-2

Look at how closely telling people about the kingdom of God is related to an action that demonstrates the truth and power of that kingdom. Last week we studied how Jesus coming to earth ushered in His authority which is actively overthrowing the evil that once held power here. As followers of Christ we are empowered to take part in that activity with the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a disciple and an apostle? Here it is. As we studied yesterday, a disciple is one who follows; an apostle is one who is sent out to do the things the leader taught. Each one of us as Christ’s followers are commanded in the Bible to go into the world to preach this good news to those who need to hear it, as well as to do the things Jesus did and taught. Jesus could have easily mandated that the whole world instantly follow Him, then miraculously, He could have made it so. Instead, He desires that His followers take part in this work with Him. Generously, Jesus allows His people and His church to work along side the Holy Spirit to do this kingdom work.

Read this command in Matthew 28:18-20.

Advent Devo 19

2010-12-17T10:37:00.000-06:00

Friday, Day 010

Our Cross

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”

Luke 9:23-25

After having looked at what Jesus did on the cross and what He taught concerning His kingdom reign, we need to take some time to investigate how that impacted Jesus’s life and how it should transform the lives of those who follow Him.

The word “disciple” is one that has become a part of Christian jargon in America. It has come to mean a number of different things related to life as a part of a church community, but in Jesus’s time, that word was used to describe a lifestyle. It was common for Jewish teachers (Rabbis) to have a small group of disciples who would literally follow him from place to place learning how to live and teach like that leader. This is why it’s not a big surprise that when Jesus asked His disciples to follow Him, they dropped what they were doing in order to be one of His chosen disciples; it was considered a tremendous honor.

Part of the discipleship process was learning how and why the teacher lived his life in a certain way, and for Jesus and His followers this looked quite different from the other Jewish Rabbis. Jesus lived a life of extreme sacrifice while teaching about God’s kingdom filled with love. The expectation was that as a disciple your life would look similar to your teacher’s so that when people saw you, they would recognize whose teaching you followed. Jesus wanted His disciples to look like Him in the love and sacrifice they displayed for those around them. That’s why the final part of Luke 9:25 asks if it’s better for a disciple to gain what the world offers in exchange for their very own identity; following Christ becomes who you are.

How does Luke 6:40 help clarify these concepts?

Advent Devo 18

2010-12-16T09:59:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Day 05111

The Sower

“A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seeds fell long the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Matthew 13:3-8

I used to read this parable as instructive; that we who have God’s word in the good news need to spread it as seeds regardless of where it may fall, but after studying the themes present in the other kingdom parables it is clear how inconsistent that interpretation is with Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom.

We’ve already seen this week that in the kingdom God plays the central role and mankind is affected by His actions. This parable is no different. Our senior pastor Andy Morgan preached on this parable once, and rightly related each individual to a condition described in these verses. Our hearts are the soils in which Jesus, as God’s Word, is sown, and God wants us to be aware of how He is received in the world, even by His followers.

If I had to be honest I would say my heart too often looks like the soil where the thorns grow. I allow the distractions in this world and the temptations satan sends my way to choke out the truth God gives. When we live receptive to Jesus and His authority, He tells us that our lives will show it.

Which of the four “soils” do you think describes the current condition of your heart? If you’re like me, there might be some work to do, but rather than beating yourself up, ask God how He can move you to a receptive condition that sees the fruit of a life lived in God’s truth.

Advent Devo 17

2010-12-15T09:56:00.000-06:00

Wednesday, Day 0511

The Mustard Seed

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

Matthew 13:31-32

I hate surprises. Don’t get me wrong, I like being surprised, but I hate having a surprise for someone else that’s such a good surprise that I want nothing more than to spoil it by giving away the secret early. I’ve been torturing my wife for days now wanting to tell her what I got her for Christmas because it’s such a good gift.

Can you imagine being Jesus, knowing how this whole thing we call existence is going to culminate in divine rapture, but not being able to tell anyone, mostly because they wouldn’t understand? So here He gives a poetic picture of what’s to come, perhaps to let out just enough of the mystery so that He can get it off of His chest.

Notice how the kingdom isn’t the result of the seed planted, it’s compared to the seed itself. It’s the smallest of the other seeds in the garden, but the future is to be bigger than seems possible from such tiny beginnings. There are other seeds out there too, which may be bigger and grow faster, but that are dwarfed by what the mustard seed becomes.

God’s kingdom is mysteriously humble and glorious at the same time. It’s hidden yet shines the brightest light. It’s underground but blossoms in beauty. It has competition in this world; there are other ideas out there that may even look similar to the kingdom, but are mere forgeries that will one day be found out. Jesus gives His disciples a glimpse at the ending in as much as He paints a simple picture of beauty and supremacy; “It will be alright.” he seems to say, and leaves it at that.

Some parables about the kingdom don’t need to be high theology that require great reason in order to be understood. This is, after all, a grand story in which good triumphs over evil, the hero overcomes great odds and is victorious, and we who believe will live happily ever after.

We’ve studied three parables about the kingdom of heaven over the past three days. Put all three together to make one picture of what Jesus says the kingdom is like. What do they all have in common that gives you better understanding of who God is and who we are?

Advent Devo 16

2010-12-14T09:28:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, Day 051

Treasure

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells as that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Matthew 13:44-46

Typically when these verses are read, the focus is placed mainly on the price that was paid. We think, “How remarkable that the purchaser sold everything in order to obtain this treasure or pearl.” However, take a look at what was purchased in the case of the man buying a field. He bought the whole stinking field!

Robert Capon again elaborates, “The church, like the purchaser of the field, can never afford to leave ‘unbought’ any part of the earthly field in which God has hidden the treasure of the mystery. It does not dare to risk its own sure knowledge of where the mystery of the Word is...by failing to purchase to itself every last bit of the field. The man who discovered the treasure did not simply buy the cubic yard or so of nice clean dirt in which he cleverly buried it. He bought the whole property: sinkholes, dungheaps, poison ivy, and sticker bushes, plus all of the rats, mice, flies, and beetles that came with it. So too the church: if it can’t bring itself to buy all sorts and conditions of human beings...it can’t even begin to pretend it’s [universal].”

The question then becomes not what am I willing to give up to experience God’s kingdom, but who or what am I willing to surround myself with for that experience? Remember that Jesus, at His birth, was not surrounded entirely by the finer things of this world. The visiting kings brought treasure but had to set it on the ground next to the cattle in the barn where Jesus was born. This is the world that Jesus chose; it’s the world He wants His followers to experience; it’s the mystery of God’s kingdom.

What other illustrations of this mystery do you notice at Christmas time? How else does following Christ display juxtapositions that make the experience whole? For example, the beauty of snow mixed with the freezing cold that goes with it.

Advent Devo 15

2010-12-13T09:32:00.000-06:00

Monday, Day 05

The Net

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the corrupt.”

Matthew 13:47-48

[This week as we study some of what Jesus taught about His kingdom, I want to first give a disclaimer: A good bit of content for this week’s study has been inspired by the work of Robert Farrar Capon, an author and theologian whose beautiful writing on the kingdom parables is well worth reading. His book The Parables of the Kingdom, a 1985 Zondervan publication would be a good place to start.]

Whenever you read “the kingdom of heaven is like...” in the Bible, it’s a good place to pay attention; these are windows Jesus gave the world to help us understand what He wanted His followers to do and to look like. In this window Jesus used a word that is not found anywhere else in the Bible: sagene in the Greek, which we translate as “net” or “dragnet.” This word in Jesus’s day was used by fisherman who, rather than baiting hooks to lure a specific kind of fish, would cast a wide net that would drag on the bottom of whatever body of water they were fishing to bring up whatever was down there.

Jesus calls His church, the physical representation of His kingdom on earth, to behave in this way. We live in the age when the net is still dragging along indiscriminately gathering everything. An age will indeed come when God will sort out good from evil, but that time has not yet come and it is not the church’s responsibility to serve as judge. Capon remarks, “Jesus didn’t shy away from sinners, so why should the church?” He told His disciples that they would be “fishers of men” not sorters of men, so let’s keep our focus on the task at hand, not God’s responsibility later.

How do you evaluate yourself in light of this parable? If you’re a part of a church, how do you evaluate your church’s ability to gather people indiscriminately?

Advent Devo 14

2010-12-12T09:31:00.000-06:00

Sunday, Day 015

The Harvest Continued

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who planted good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and bore grain, the weeds became evident also...His men said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and gather up the weeds?’ He said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the weeds, you may uproot the weeds with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

Matthew 13:24-29

I’ve always had this irrational need to have to control everything. When I was a kid, I would constantly boss my sister around; when I was in college I’m sure my professors hated me because I was always in their offices making sure my work was exactly the way it was supposed to be; after I got married I tried to tell my wife how to decorate our apartment (that came to an abrupt end). If you’re like me, you may perceive the wrongs in this world and wonder why some things appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral; part of our answer is in the passage above.

Like the farmer’s workers in Jesus’s story, many of us see a problem and think the best way to fix it would be to remove the symptoms we perceive, but God knows (and wants us to understand) that the evil in this world is a symptom of sin and of satan’s involvement in people’s lives; that while His kingdom is here in part, it has not yet fully come, which means that there is still evil and sin that can ruin lives.

As God’s servants and Christ’s followers, our first response when encountering the brokenness in the world needs to be to demonstrate His love and to intercede (pray for) the ones affected by that brokenness. The dangerous point at which we feel personally responsible for curing brokenness is the point where we inappropriately try to do the job God says belongs to Him alone.

On a blank piece of paper make two columns. At the top of one write “God’s Job” and on the top of the other write “My Job.” Then read John 15:1-16:11. As you read, categorize the responsibilities and responses Jesus is talking about into one of those columns. What is interesting about how your columns turned out?

Advent Devo 13

2010-12-11T09:30:00.001-06:00

Saturday, Day 0111

The Harvest

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Luke 10:2

Up to this point, we’ve studied the Good News of Jesus (His death and resurrection on the cross), what He offers to those who believe in Him, and His believers’ mission in the world (advancing His kingdom). Now we need to look at the mission field.

The whole chapter of Luke 10 in the Bible is dedicated to helping Jesus’s followers learn about the mission field. In it we see evidence that God’s reign and authority have influence over the evil in the world, but we can also read the parable of “The Good Samaritan” in which Jesus describes one person coming to another’s aid in spite of social, racial, and economic barriers.

There are people all over this world who do not know this Good News, and it is God’s desire that His followers would seek out their neighbors in order that His love and mercy would be displayed to all who need it, regardless of the differences that may physically separate one person from another.

Read Luke 10. Which part of this chapter best describes your current situation? What can you take away from reading about it?

Advent Devo 12

2010-12-10T09:56:00.000-06:00

Friday, Day 011

The Kingdom to Come

“Pray then in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”

Matthew 6:9-10

There’s more to the story that we started yesterday. Obviously, there’s something more to be done, another part of this kingdom that isn’t here yet, if Jesus wants His followers to pray that it would come.

Christ promised to return a second time to accomplish the final redemptive work of defeating satan and evil once and for all, and in this way, God’s kingdom will fully come into the world and become the fullness of reality for everyone who follows Jesus Christ. But for Christ to ask His followers to pray that God’s will wold also be done on earth as it is in heaven, implies that before this final coming, there is kingdom work to be done here and now. Let’s once again refer to theologian George Ladd:

“We pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ The confidence that this prayer is to be answered when God brings human history to the divinely ordained consummation enables the Christian to retain his balance and sanity of mind in this mad world in which we live. Our hearts go out to those who have no such hope. Thank God, His Kingdom is coming, and it will fill all the earth.

But when we pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ we also ask that God’s will be done here and now, today. This is the primary concern of these expositions, that the reader might meet the Kingdom of God, or rather, that the Kingdom of God might meet him. We should also pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done’ in my church as it is in heaven. The life and fellowship of a Christian church ought to be a fellowship of people among whom God’s will is done - a bit of heaven on earth.”

This Christmas season, there are too many of those people mentioned who do not have the hope of Jesus Christ. What can you do to bring “a bit of heaven on earth” into their lives to help them encounter His love?

Advent Devo 11

2010-12-09T09:35:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Day 01

The Kingdom that is Here

“Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There!” for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.’”

Luke 17:20-21

For as much as could be said and written about God’s kingdom, it can mostly be boiled down into two categories: The part of the kingdom that Jesus brought into the world through His life, and the rest of the kingdom that Jesus will bring when He returns for judgement and rapture. Tomorrow we’ll talk about that second part, but the first, that of the kingdom that’s here already, is something Jesus cared a lot about, as we can see in the verse above.

When Jesus began preaching He would go around saying, “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” By God’s Son entering into human history, He radically transformed the way mankind can relate to God and to the world where we live. Before Christ, satan was the ruling authority on earth, and his evil pervaded people’s lives, but when Jesus began casting demons out of people and healing the sick, He was demonstrating that by His kingdom penetrating earth, satan would no longer have authority over mankind; that Jesus was now in charge.

Theologian George Ladd wrote, “In the spiritual realm, the kingdom now offers to men the blessings of God’s rule, delivering them from the power of satan and sin.” Our lives here on earth can be delivered from satan’s power by trusting in Jesus as our King.

Read Mark 3:27 and substitute “strong man” with “satan.” How does this verse help clarify what we studied today?

Advent Devo 10

2010-12-08T09:27:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, Day 0

Receiving the Kingdom

“Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Luke 18:17

If we stick with our definition from yesterday’s study of the word used in the Bible that is translated into kingdom as “authority”, what would it mean to receive God’s authority, His reign, His sovereignty like a child?

In Jesus’s day, children were not regarded by religious leaders as important until they were physically strong enough to help their families; similarly, they were not regarded as intelligent enough to begin learning about God, and were therefore largely ignored. When Jesus contradicts this thinking by making the above statement that unless a person follows God and His Son with childlike faith and trust, they will be unable to perceive God’s kingdom and reign, He is making a statement about the condition of the follower.

I often have to ask myself if my pride is getting in the way of me genuinely following God. Sometimes its more tempting to approach God with all of the things I think I know in order to demonstrate in some way that I understand more than I really do, than it is to trust that He is all wisdom and truth. In order to pursue this more fully we must do what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 so that we would “not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”

Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5. What does this tell you about the nature of God’s relationship with mankind?

Advent Devo 9

2010-12-07T11:55:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, Day 9

The Kingdom

“Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Matthew 4:17

It may not seem like it, but we are indeed still working backwards through Jesus’s life and teaching. Last week we studied the salvation that Jesus accomplished by dying on a cross and overcoming death; today we want to focus on the subject that Jesus taught throughout His life: The kingdom. Jesus talked about how to be saved by believing in His sacrifice on the cross a recorded seven times in the Bible; He taught on the kingdom of God more than 80 times, and if we accept Jesus’s identity as King, we should explore His kingdom.

When I hear the word “kingdom” the first thing that comes to my mind is a place where a king reigns, but the Greek word that the Bible uses in this instance (basilea) doesn’t refer to a place, but rather to the authority of the king. When Jesus says “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” what He’s saying is that God’s authority is now present through Him on earth.

How does this definition of the kingdom of God change the way you think about who Jesus is?

Advent Devo 8

2010-12-06T10:45:00.000-06:00

Monday, Day 8

Jesus’s Identity as King

“As He drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ And he cried out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ ... Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to Him. When he came near, He asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, let me recover my sight.’ Jesus said to him, ‘recover your sight; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately, he could see and began following Jesus.”

Luke 18:35-43

Hundreds of years before Jesus’s life on earth, there lived an Israelite king named David. David’s life is detailed in the Old Testament of the Bible in the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, and he is also responsible for writing many of the Bible’s Psalms. He was a great king who followed God passionately, and God blessed his reign over the Jewish nation. God promised David that He would watch over his lineage and continue to bless the nations through the “House of David,” but David’s sons and heirs to his throne did not ultimately obey God and they turned the Jewish people from God’s direction.

Seven generations after David, his offspring were still ruling over Israel, though they had fallen on some decidedly hard times. A prophet named Isaiah heard from God that indeed a “Son of David” would come to redeem all the people of the world from their sins; that He would usher in a reign of peace on the earth and bring freedom from the oppression of sin (You can read this prophecy in the book of Isaiah 9:1-7).

In the first chapter of the book of Matthew in the Bible, you can read the entire genealogy of Jesus and indeed we find that He is a part of David’s line! Jesus Christ is the promised King sent to free the world from darkness, and when the blind man in Luke 18 calls Jesus the “Son of David” he is openly acknowledging Jesus’s identity as the Messiah. Jesus then opens the man’s eyes as a symbol of the justice He came to establish on earth (Read Psalm 72:1-4).

Read the verses in Isaiah mentioned above. Make a list of the characteristics of the Prince of Peace. What is the most important characteristic for you to remember and why?

Advent Devo 7

2010-12-05T07:38:00.000-06:00

Sunday, Day 7

The Lord’s Supper

“While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after blessing it, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink from it all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for man for forgiveness of sins. I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.’”

Matthew 26:26-29

We still take communion together as a way of remembering and giving thanks for what Christ did for us on the cross, but we also take it to look forward to the promise that He made that He will return to welcome us into God’s perfect kingdom. Jesus promised to return, and when He does, those of us who follow Him will be with Him in His full presence forever.

We will continue to investigate more about God’s kingdom in the coming weeks, but to end this week of study, spend some time in prayer talking to God about what you have learned. What is the most important thing from this week that you need to remember?

Advent Devo 6

2010-12-04T14:16:00.000-06:00

Saturday, Day 6

True Greatness

“And there arose also a dispute among the disciples as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest. And Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called “benefactors.” But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant.’”

Luke 22:24-26

The night before Jesus was killed, His followers and closest friends were arguing about who was greatest among them. They knew that Jesus was the King (though they didn’t fully understand what that meant), so they wanted to see who would have the highest place of honor in Christ’s kingdom. Jesus, continuing in what was one of the central messages of His ministry, convicted them all by stating plainly that in His kingdom, the greatest is the one who serves; the one who puts him or herself last for the benefit of others.

The Kingdom of God is one of service. There is no climbing the ladder, no promotion. To follow Christ means to do exactly what He did when He was alive, which can be summed up in His two greatest commandments: Love God with all of yourself, and love others as you love yourself.

Read those two commandments in Matthew 22:36-39. How could you, this Christmas season, serve those around you thereby demonstrating for them the love that Christ has shown you?

Advent Devo 5

2010-12-03T10:08:00.000-06:00

Friday, Day 5

“Good” Friday

“So he handed Jesus over to them to be crucified. They took Jesus and He went out

bearing His own cross to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified Him...”

John 19:16-18

Traditionally, Christians call the day when Jesus Christ gave up His life on the cross, Good Friday. It has always troubled me that we would label such a tragic day as good, but when I consider how important this part of the story is in relation to what the world calls “good” I can never leave this element out of a message about who Jesus was.

No other belief system or religion in the world has its central figure sacrificing himself for the salvation of all of mankind. This is a critical difference between Christianity and everything else: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, out of love for all of us, willingly laid down His life so that we could be free from the punishment of sin, and we cannot divorce the birth and life of Christ from the death He suffered for us.

More than other belief systems, nothing the world offers compares to this kind of love, because the love that Christ demonstrated on the cross comes with no strings attached; he offers it as a free gift that you can accept or reject. Everything this world calls “good” asks for something in return: if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. But Jesus gave everything asking for nothing...that is good.

Read Romans 5:8-9. What does this kind of love tell you about God?

Advent Devo 4

2010-12-02T09:32:00.000-06:00

Thursday, Day 4

Liberty

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”

Romans 8:1-2

How different would your life look if your sins were really forgiven? How would you feel about yourself to know that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, you are no longer a slave to guilt but free to live your life as God’s son or daughter, adopted into His eternal family?

It is tempting to think that we have to do more in order to earn the salvation that God freely offers through His Son; that belief in Jesus couldn’t possibly be enough. We try to add to Christ’s finished work on the cross with the feeling that even though God tells us we are now justified before Him, we have to make up for the wrongs we have done.

But the reality is that because of Jesus Christ and the work that He did to set us free from sin and death, God no longer sees us as sinful people. In Romans 8 it goes on to say that God now sees us as His adopted children, and that we can cry out to Him in our times of distress as sons and daughters who cry out to their Dad for help. That’s the kind of relationship He wants with you. He wants each of us to live free from guilt and shame so that we can follow Him completely, without reservation.

What are some areas of your life in which you still try to earn salvation? If there are any, ask God to open your eyes to the beauty of the relationship with Him that offers a whole and finished salvation through Jesus.

Advent Devo 3

2010-12-01T09:29:00.002-06:00

Wednesday, Day 3

Belief

“Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

See my hands and feet, that it is I myself.

Touch me and see. For a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

Luke 24:38-39

The Bible says that over 500 people saw Jesus alive after he had been dead and buried for three days. He appeared before His followers on numerous occasions, and in the example above even conversed with His disciples and asked them to physically touch His body to see that He really did overcome death and the grave!

Because of Jesus’ resurrection, those of us who believe in Him as God’s Son are now reconciled in relationship to God the Father, and we are told in 1 Corinthians 15 that we are heirs to the kingdom of God; that we need no longer fear separation from God after death but are offered eternal life with Him in heaven.

God offers this to us freely, and part of our belief must be that we cannot save ourselves from sin: we are not the ones who overcame the grave, Jesus was, and when we believe in Him, as it says in Acts 16:31, we will be saved.

Read 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. What does it mean to you that Jesus Christ is victorious over death and that we no longer have to fear it as a consequence for sin.

Advent Devo 2

2010-11-30T10:42:00.001-06:00

Tuesday, Day 2

The Holy Spirit

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,

and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea

and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

Who is the Holy Spirit? Why don’t we talk about Him that much? What does He have to do with Jesus?

I’ve asked all of these questions repeatedly during my journey with God and have felt that no one could really give me a straight answer. He’s the third part of the Trinity that is God, but beyond that, what part does He play in our ongoing relationship with Jesus?

In this verse in Acts, Jesus is speaking to His followers following His death and resurrection before He is about to ascend into heaven to be with the Father. His followers are concerned about Jesus’ leaving, and even though they know He has promised to come back, they are unsure of what will happen in the interim. Jesus makes the simple promise that the Holy Spirit will now live in the hearts of everyone who believes in Him, and in this way will “always be with us, even to the end” as Matthew 28 tells us. When we believe in God, God lives in us!

This verse in Acts also tells us that this Holy Spirit living inside us gives us power to be God’s witness everywhere we go. Paul, one of the first Christian missionaries, told the early church in Corinth that while we as humans are inadequate to live lives that demonstrate all of Christ’s love, the Holy Spirit living inside of us is adequate and will use those who believe in Him to glorify God (2 Corinthians 3:1-6). What an amazing promise.

Read those verses in 2 Corinthians. What encourages you about having the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you all of the time?

Advent Devo 1

2010-11-29T15:30:00.002-06:00

Monday, Day 1

Welcome

Has anyone ever tried to convince you that they knew something “forwards and backwards”? When someone tells me that, I can’t help picturing myself sitting in the passenger seat of their car hearing them proudly exclaim, “Look! I know how to drive in reverse!” As I imagine white-knuckling the door handle while considering the prospect of a tuck-and-roll maneuver, I puzzle at this, thinking that a backwards knowing of anything would only confuse whatever it was that I was supposed to know, but in the study we’re about to enter into together, we might just understand how this concept could be helpful.

Over the next 27 days, we will be studying the life of Jesus Christ backwards leading up to the story of His birth that we celebrate on Christmas day. Why would we do this? Mostly because it seemed like a fun idea that would help us think outside of the classic Christmas stories, but also because when we understand the life Jesus lived, we can better understand why His birth was such a big deal.

So let’s begin our time by praying together that God would open our eyes and ears to a whole telling of who His Son Jesus was, what He taught and cared about, and how our lives can worshipfully respond to that message.