Being moldable....

No. No. No. No. Maybe later. No. Let me pray about it and get back to you (they don’t usually and if so, the answer is mostly no). No. No. No. No. and No. 

I haven’t developed a stuttering problem with my computer keyboard, I’m just listing typical responses this year to our nominating committee who’s been tasked with the responsibility to ask people to serve here at Calvary in various ministry responsibilities. This is an unprecedented response from God’s people in being unwilling to serve in ministry this year. Many have said yes and have taken on more than they are already doing because they don’t want to see ministry hindered, but sadly, the majority are saying no to requests to serve the Lord Jesus at Calvary. In my devotions the other morning, I read God’s instructions to Jeremiah the prophet to go to a potter’s house and observe what happened. God demonstrated to Jeremiah the children of Israel were like clay in the potter’s hand, he molded the clay from a “marred vessel into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to make” (Jer.18:4). In talking with the Lord about this dire situation of people saying no to requests to serve, I realized the problem is that people are not willing to be molded the way God intends. Later in chapter 19, Jeremiah is told to go purchase a flask from the potter and take it out and break it in the presence of the leaders as a sign that God is going to break the children of Israel for their idolatry and disobedience. In our  case, I believe we’ve made an idol out of convenience. If it is not convenient to serve, we say no. If it requires commitment and faithfulness, we say no. If it will interfere with our leisure, pleasure our hobbies or whatever else we can imagine, we say no.

Now I realize that everyone believes they have a good reason for saying no and maybe that’s true. There is an epidemic of people not being willing to serve and we are facing some serious problems in our various ministries if people don’t say yes to serving. Last year, we had an average of 85 children in our AWANA ministry, but as of today, we still have no AWANA commander and fewer workers. We could be faced with the very real possibility we’d have to say “No” to some kids and limit our ministry to a certain number of children. How do I pick which kids will not be allowed to come? As of this writing, we do not have a chairman for our food services committee, could we be forced to say: “Calvary will no longer provide any food for anyone and the kitchen is now closed for lack of leadership.” We have no preschool director who can organize our preschool and extended care workers. Would we be forced to say “All preschoolers must attend worship with their parents.” What message would this send to young families we’re trying to reach? While it is true, we have some dedicated servants but many of these folks have been doing multiple jobs for so long, they are flat exhausted. I understand that in a real & tangible way from my experiences in church life.

We are living in critical days in our society, culture and church life. I believe the Lord’s return is soon, but He is delaying so everyone has an opportunity to hear the gospel and be discipled.  The Great Commission mandate of making disciples does not afford the luxury of not serving the Lord Jesus, our Commander in Chief. Last year in Harford County, 3012 babies were born and 1727 people died. How will we reach those children if we limit our ministries to young families and do not care for their children? Nearly 5 people step into eternity in our county every day and the reality is, most of those people will be in Hell forever. How can we rest and be at ease when the Potter is trying to mold us into servants and soldiers to reach these people? So are you moldable? If God wants to make you a children’s worker, will you be moldable? If God wants you to be a kitchen servant, to feed someone who comes to Wednesday worship and then gives their life to Christ, is that okay? If you don’t have a place of ministry, when will you say yes? A disciple of Jesus Christ must be a servant, that’s God’s plan, that’s God’s purpose for you. Souls are hanging in the balance while you pray about it. God is molding me and shaping me into being a pastor, something I did not choose on my own. What about you? What has the Potter chosen for you? Praying in my little corner for laborers for the harvest…

Posted via email from Pastor Ralph

Commitment

Commitment....

We live in a day and age that is saturated with self-interest, self-satisfaction, and just plain selfishness all round. This "what's in it for me" attitude permeates every sector of society. I have a friend who was a police chief tell me once they have such difficulty in finding qualified recruits and when they find them they have to deal with the attitudes of selfishness where they don't want to work graveyard shift because it interferes with their sleep or ability to party and they balk at having Sunday & Monday off. I guess they want to "protect and to serve" if it's convenient. If you manage employees, or own a business; I bet you are saying "Amen" on that.

 

Sadly, churches have to deal with this kind of societal attitude as well. "Me-church” is what people are looking for because after all, "it's all about me." So people are content to come enjoy the children's programs, the youth events, the fellowship, and the music (if they play what I like). If the preacher makes me feel good, I'll keep coming. Ask the "me-church" crowd to help by getting involved and serve in a ministry - "no way, we're out of here. After all we're not "members" anyway. We'll go down the road to the mega-church where no one knows me." No commitments, no ties, no accountability, nothing to cramp "my style." Some church members in many cases act this way too. When asked to serve, they respond with something like "I'll pray about it" which has become code for "not in this lifetime." I call this phenomenon "buffet Christianity." People pick and choose much like a buffet what they like and leave what they don't, usually the "service" component gets left like beats at a salad bar.

 

Our culture has replaced Christian commitment involving sacrifice and service, investing in others, carrying the cross of Christ daily as His bond servants with a non-committal, non-denominational, lukewarm, touchy-feely, consumer driven "church" which does little more than entertain, let alone make disciples.

 

As I was patting myself on the back for my commitment to the God who saved me and basking in the glow of my self-approval, casting stones at all these self-serving people who come to church off and on; I read in my morning Bible study yesterday Is. 20:2 "...'Go and remove the sackcloth from your body, and take your sandals off your feet'. And he (Isaiah) did so, walking naked and barefoot." Verse 3 continues telling us that God had Isaiah do this for three years as a sign against Egypt!  Almost to add insult to injury, this wasn't even a sign for the people of Israel; it was to send a message to a foreign nation. God had His prophet walk around naked for three years in a humiliating condition for foreigners! Isaiah did this; he was obedient to his God because Isaiah was not pastor of "me-church."

 

I thought of my own commitment to Jesus and I immediately thanked God for not asking me to do this. They'd throw me in a nut house and I'd lose everything because no one would believe the explanation! I also had to repent as usually happens when I read God's Word. I was forced to examine my own commitment to the Lord. Am I willing to pay any price, do anything my God asks me to do?  Would I be willing to suffer shame, humiliation and embarrassment to reach people who are foreign to me? Old Isaiah did and so did all of God's prophets and His Apostles. They were obedient because they were committed to the God who created them, the God who loved them and redeemed them from their sin. They all understood it is not about "me." It's about God and what He wants to do in order to reconcile people to Himself.

 

I wonder how many people will go to Hell because some Christian somewhere decided it wasn't convenient for them to witness or to serve in some ministry at church. I wonder how many pastors who were burned out or discouraged might have stayed in the ministry if they'd have had a bit of Isaiah's commitment. I wonder what the fabric of our church would look like and how many people we could reach for Jesus if we found some modern day saints who moved their memberships from "me-church" to "He-church".  So next time I'm given an opportunity to serve, minister, or sacrifice something for Jesus, I think I'll remember old Isaiah, walking around naked for three years...   Hmm, maybe what you and I are being asked to do is not that big a commitment after all? Something to think about, from my little corner to yours...  

 Pastor Ralph Green
Senior Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church

Posted via email from Pastor Ralph

My thoughts on the weddings...

I’ve been trying to process all that transpired with the two weddings of our daughters, Rachel and Ginny within two weeks of each other. So many of you have asked about them and have taken an interest in our family in this regard and we are thankful for your thoughts and prayers as we’ve walked through this joyous time of celebration. I suppose since I got to experience two weddings as both the bride’s father and a Pastor officiating these weddings, I have a unique perspective, at least related to these weddings.

First as a father giving his daughter(s) away to the care of another. It is hard to quantify all the emotions you have as you give your daughter away. You are extremely happy for your little girl, you’re in shock that she’s this grown woman decked out in this amazing white dress, you’re having flashbacks to when you held her in your arms for the very first time mere seconds after she was born, fast-forwarding through all your memories of her and there she is standing at the door to the sanctuary with a beautiful smile, gripping your arm, ready to go meet the love of her life and she says “I love you daddy” – how I did not become a total pile of soggy mush is a testimony to the grace of God. For Cheryl and I, it has been an emotional time and now a few weeks afterwards, it has begun to settle in on us that it is always going to be different with our family with the addition of a new son in-law. Now don’t get me wrong, God has blessed us with great son in-laws or more accurately “sons in-love”. These young men love Jesus and it is evident by the fruit in their lives, but it’s kind of strange because we now have his family to consider as we make plans. Welcome to the family Thomas & Stephen; Cheryl and I are blessed to have you and we’re excited for you. We’ve spent a lifetime providing for these young ladies and being their spiritual leaders;  but they are now your responsibility. As you know they are delicate treasures God has entrusted to you so be a good steward of the wife God has blessed you with. The fabric of your lives as God knits you together and as you face the struggles of life will be a beautiful tapestry sewn together by the fiber of God’s love. Your lives will be sweeter because you have each other and as you each grow closer to our Lord Jesus, you’ll grow closer to each other. I’ve told “the kids”, meaning my newly married daughters and my new sons in-law that I’ve never been in this position before so I’ll need their patience as I learn to adjust to this new chapter of life. Knowing what a blessing our marriage has been to Cheryl and I, we are thrilled for you all. As a husband to Cheryl now for 24 years, I can tell you I love her more now than I did on my wedding day because of the “stuff” we’ve been through together. Welcome to the adventure.

Secondly, as the Pastor overseeing these weddings, I thought both of them were marvelous worship services celebrating the God who established and ordained marriage. All of the symbolism, and spiritual impact of these weddings was an incredible thing to witness. To see two couples, both of which had made commitments to sexual purity before their wedding day united in Holy Matrimony was truly special. Both of our daughters had been through “True Love Waits” as teenagers and they kept their vows to purity and I know their husbands had made these commitments also. In the day and age we live in, with sexual promiscuity rampant, temptations galore and the old devil lurking in the shadows to steal their virginity away from them, it was so incredible to know that they had waited. Their weddings were clean and pure, they were Holy which remind me of the Holy God that we love and serve. My how Heaven must have rejoiced on these special days. Thanks kids for being such an incredible example that true love really does wait. Thanks for staying true to your convictions, for enduring ridicule, questions and all the strange looks you got through your teenage years, even from church people who thought what you were doing was weird. It was humbling to me that I got to officiate your special days as a pastor. I’ll never forget them and these weddings will profoundly shape how I help couples plan their weddings in the future. It was unique in Rachel and Thomas’s wedding to work alongside Thomas’s dad who is a pastor also. What a rare privilege to co-officiate a wedding with a wonderful man of God. Thomas had always dreamed of his dad performing his wedding, Rachel had dreamed of her dad performing her wedding, and I know Wayne was as thrilled as I was to perform this ceremony together. It was blessing to work in Ginny’s wedding with my own father, a minister of the gospel, who has taught me more about faithfulness and encouragement than he’ll ever know. It was a blessing to have dad greet us and help me give Ginny to Stephen. Praise be to the Lord who orchestrated our messages and put them together for an amazing message on the sacredness of marriage in each wedding.

Finally, the Gospel message of salvation and redemption was proclaimed to all those present and what was special is that Jesus Christ was glorified and celebrated throughout both of these weddings. Jesus’ atoning death on the cross made it possible to reclaim what was destroyed by the first married couple, Adam & Eve who chose to rebel against God’s will by substituting their own selfish will. For these couples, for me as a Pastor, and I believe for the believers who were present and paying attention, we were all reminded that we’re trophies of God’s grace because the penalty of sin had been paid. To see these young lives united together and begin a new journey with the Lord who bought them back from the scourge of sin just helped me appreciate the grace of God even more. Knowing my personal bent to selfishness, the fact I’m a depraved sinner apart from the grace of God, and to know where I’ve been and to be standing there as a minister of the Gospel, observing God’s plan of redemption played out in a real life practical way; oh how it made me long for the day, the Bride of Christ meets her Savior Jesus Christ face to face. As a great as these weddings were, they are but a frail representation of what Jesus Christ has planned for us who love Him as Savior and Lord. Now that marriage is one you don’t want to miss, Jesus has invited you, the provision has been made, all you must do is accept His proposal to you by faith.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner to yours….

Ralph Green

Senior Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church

www.calvarybelair.com

 

Posted via email from Pastor Ralph

Test number 2

If I figure this out, I’ll be a genius…

Ralph Green

Senior Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church

www.calvarybelair.com

 

 

Posted via email from Pastor Ralph

The Summer Slump...

I've been in church all my life and I've come to observe what is commonly called the summer time slump. I actually happen to enjoy a bit slower pace in summer most of the time but having two daughters to marry off; this summer has been anything but slow for me. What I've observed is attendance in church is generally lower as people travel with their vacations and opportunities to go away for the weekend. Along with that travel, church offerings decline because people don't plan ahead. These times of refreshment are important and a wonderful blessing and I am thankful for my own vacation and time to rest.

Let me encourage you in a couple of ways on this. 1) When you go, have a great time, rest, renew, refresh, recharge. But if you're in town, be faithful in your attendance to church as you need to continue to feed your spirit the preaching of God's word. 2) If you're out of town, find a good Bible preaching church to attend on the Lord's Day. God wants you to put Him first even when you're on vacation so you need to worship on the Lord's day. When you visit a church, take note of how they function, what's their children's department like? How does their choir or music work? Bring me a bulletin and feedback on your experience as a visitor as we might find some nugget of gold out there to help us be more effective in ministry here at Calvary. Sometimes we've been places where that was not an option, so we had church as a family, we sang, shared testimonies, and someone in the family shared a devotional. You can have church where ever you go as a family if there is not a solid place to attend. 3) Even when you're out of town, make provision to support your home church with your tithes and offerings. We're working at making this easier for you at Calvary by exploring how we can offer you the opportunity to give online. Until then, be intentional with your giving. Before I left town on my recent vacation, I left my family's tithe and offering in the church office to ensure it would be included in the offering the Sunday I would be gone. I don't want my church to struggle financially while I'm playing around and I'm not asking you to do something I don't do myself. God's work continues and our church still depends on the tithes and offerings of God's people, even in summer.

When you are reading this in "The Way" newsletter, we'll be almost exactly half-way through summer. We have a wonderful fall of ministry opportunity on the horizon, our new church schedule of committee meetings will begin in August meeting on Sunday evenings, not weeknights, new Wednesday night meal and worship schedule begins in September, AWANA resumes and much more. Would you begin asking the Lord to impress upon you where you are to serve this fall? We'll need several food preparation teams to rotate through to prepare the Wednesday meal. We continue to have needs in our extended session childcare, there are opportunities every where to serve. I need some spirit filled men to serve on our missions committee and help us lead our church in a global Acts 1:8 missions strategy. I want to train Bible Study teachers and strengthen our great Bible Study ministry. I want to disciple you by helping you learn how to be an effective witness for Jesus. I want to disciple you by helping you learn the blessings of service and ministry. A Christian who is not serving is a stagnate Christian. Don't be a sponge, let God wring you out in service so He can fill you continuously. We'll be participating in a significant way with the Bel Air Festival of the Arts that takes place in the park behind us on September 20th. God is bringing people to our back doorstep and we intend to reach them, but I'll need you to help us.

I love you, I'm proud of you my church family and I can't wait to see what the Lord is going to do with us this summer and this fall. Let's beat the summer slump together in our faithfulness.
From my little corner to yours....

Reality... from God's point of view...

So in my "read through the Bible program" I finished Job this week. Reading all the stuff between chapter 2 & 38 reminds me of my college days after working graveyard as a policeman in McAllen Texas. Rolling into criminal justice classes and having to listing to 18 year old kids shift their mouths into gear and talk about the meaning of life and how to do police work without having a clue about reality used to nauseate me. I would sit there and think, "Come deal with some of the characters I had last night and then talk to me about your stupid opinion." Much of what Job's friends had to say and much of what Job himself said were somewhat like this. Beginning in Chapter 38, God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind and for old Job, it was like trying to drink water out of a firehose, all for the purpose of giving Job a dose of reality and helping him see things from God's point of view.

What's interesting to me as I read through this is the arguments God used from the created order of the universe, specifically pointing to the world God made, animals that He made and how they operate to demonstrate to Job God's wisdom for what He does. He blows Job out of the water with an overwhelming dose of reality. He questions Job as to where he was when the foundations of the earth where laid, does Job know the measurements, and how the earth is fastened into position? (38:4-6). He asked Job if he could explain why the ocean is not allowed to overwhelm the seashore (38:8-11). This continues all the way through to 40:2 and Job got in a brief word in 40:3-5 and basically said he could not respond. Job had the sense to realize the Creator was dressing him down and he needed to keep his mouth shut. God continues down to 41:34, referring to some vicious sea creature known as the "Leviathan" that sounds like a fire breathing dragon as God describes it. I love God's comment about this creature in 41:8 "Lay your hand on him, remember the battle, never do it again." Wow - the thought of tangling with that thing is scary enough Job, do want to tangle with the God who made that creature? Uh no.

What was Job's response? The only appropriate response to our Creator God: "I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes (42:6)." Job got it right. Then God turned his attention to Job's knuckle-head friends and just told them they better ask Job to pray for them so God wouldn't deal with them according to their stupidity. Then God doubled what He had taken away from Job - but never told Job what we know from Job 1 as to why all this happened.

Two thoughts to apply:
1) Creation and the order of it is a great tool to use when dealing with educated but stupid people who deny the existence of God. Before you throw stones at me, I didn't say it, God did: Ps.14:1 "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." Ps.19 and Romans 1 make it clear that God has revealed enough of Himself in the created order of the universe to tell us He exists. The watch on my arm is evidence that somewhere, there's a watchmaker, the creation shouts to humans, that there is a Creator. God uses Creation to argue for His existence and you should too. Don't be intimidated by people who cling to evolution - everything they claim is pure folly and full of holes. The world is falling apart around us, evidence of sin's curse, decay and death, not of stuff evolving into more complex and different beings.

2) Why would God "dress down" Job, a righteous man, with that blistering commentary to set him straight, and leave his three stupid and arrogant friends alone? Heb.12:6 provides the answer: "For whom the Lord loves, He corrects and he scourges (whips) every son whom He receives." If God doesn't correct your view of reality, its very likely you do not belong to Him. Hmm. Boy am I thankful God took old Job to the woodshed and I'm thankful He takes me there regularly, I need a dose of reality. Don't you? From my little corner of the world to yours....

So you had a bad day....

We all have them, days that you wish you could forget, that seem like they never end and came straight out of the pits of Hell, at least to you anyway. You wonder if anyone understands how you feel and if there is anyone you could talk to about it who would see what happened your way. A lot of people handle bad days in different ways, some people explode in anger, some people turn to drugs or alcohol, some to sexual immorality, and some just have a generally sour disposition to where if they are miserable, they are bound and determined everyone else will be also. For all of those bad days in our lives, I don't believe anyone's "ultimate bad day" will compare to that of Job recorded in God's Word. Consider what Job lost in one horrifying afternoon:

• All 10 of his children - 7 sons & 3 daughters
• All but a handful of his many servants
• 7000 sheep
• 3000 camels
• 1000 oxen - (500 yoke - a pair)
• 500 donkeys

Job went from being the richest man in the world of his time to being penniless, he lost his place in the community, his family and he lost his health to where he was covered from head to toe in boils that he scraped with a broken piece of pottery. It was so bad that Job's wife told him to curse God and commit suicide because there was nothing left. His friends came to console him but it wasn't long before they began to accuse him of some horrible crime against God. How did Job respond to this calamity? In what has to be three of the most amazing verses in all the Bible, Job 1:20-22 says: "Then Job arose, tore his robe and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said: 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong."

I am stunned when I read that. Speechless is a good way to describe my feelings every time I read that. A knot tightens in the pit of my stomach when I place myself in Job's shoes (or sandles more likely). I don't have much in the realm of possessions, but I do have "stuff" we've accumulated in 24 years of marriage, I have my health, an incredible wife and 5 kids. I shudder to think how I'd respond if I lost all of my kids and stuff in one afternoon. Then I begin to think about all of my so-called "bad days" where I lost my cool because things didn't go as I planned and again I get sick. All of my bad days stacked up together don't even come close to this day in Job's life. It's all a matter of perspective and when you compare to Job's experience, I bet your bad days wouldn't come close either.

The amazing thing about Job also is that Job doesn't know why all this is happening, but we the readers know "the rest of the story" as old Paul Harvey used to say. See God was proving a point to Satan about the rock-solid faith of Job. God's commentary about Job in 1:8 is pretty amazing also: "Then the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?'" Are you kidding me? This was actually God's idea to hold Job up for Satan to look at and torment? That's right, it was God who instigated this examination of Job's faith in God and He permitted Satan to torment Job but restrained Satan from taking Job's life.

While I can't unpack all the lessons we learn from Job here, we have much to learn about faith from the life of this amazing saint of God. While Job didn't understand the whole picture, he did understand God was testing him and he demonstrates his faith that God was going to use this experience in his life to refine him and to make him more pure like the refining process with gold (see Job 23:10). The next time I have a bad day, I want to remember it pales in comparison to old Job. Maybe God is holding me up to some demonic being and saying "Have you considered my servant Ralph...?" Maybe you can insert your name there.

Contrary to much of the "prosperity gospel" many TV preachers advocate, where they basically claim trusting in Jesus means all your problems go away, Christians need to remember God wants to conform us to the image of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God has a right to use whatever means needed to refine us and remove the dross and impurities from our lives to draw us closer to Himself. Pray that God will give you the grace of old Job who said in Job 13:15 "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him..." Start filtering your bad days through the pages of Scripture and get a healthy dose of reality about your "bad day" and watch how your attitude changes. Just a thought from my little corner to yours...