Written by Kyle E. Sims |
Saturday, May 25, 2024
I believe a pastor needs to move on from the local church you served, so staying at our old church was not an option. But I came to realize that going to a variety of churches was not enough. You need to have your own church. You need to be part of a body of believers. The local church is a gift from the Lord and you need to take advantage of this blessing from Him. 

For our whole married life I was employed in a church until May 2023. Thus there was never a discussion about which church we would attend. Only the occasional decision about where to visit while on vacation. This last year has been a challenge transitioning from local ministry to the seminary. Making this change harder is that as the Director of Church Relations I am preaching or attending different churches many Sunday mornings. When taking this job I did not consider the loss of my local church family to be such a big factor in the coming transition.
At first, I enjoyed being in many different churches each week seeing old friends and making new ones, but as we moved into the Fall of the year, I noticed something was missing. My wife and I talked about how we missed the regular flow of church life in a local congregation. But now came the hard part – we needed to agree on a church to attend. We had never had to choose a church home. There were many good options in our area. We never settled on a church that was right for us, partly because they had to have ministry outside of Sunday mornings. This meant an evening service and Wednesday night activities. We entered the new year a bit lost still needing a church home but struggling to find one that met our specific needs.
Then one Friday afternoon in February, I saw a friend of my wife’s at the local Panera Bread, after talking for a little while the subject of church came up. I told her about our struggles in finding a church and she invited us to her church. This was the answer to our need. They had a Sunday night Worship service and Wednesday night programs. What a blessing it has been to reconnect with a local congregation in the last few months.
Why did we realize we needed a church home?
First, we needed to be fed the Word of God.
Read More
Related Posts:

Since Jesus came to restore everything broken by sin, Jesus’ teaching of kingdom life is counter intuitive. It is a picture of the godly attitudes that reflect God’s original intent for human life. These redeemed attitudes grow from recovering biblical perspective, looking at life from God’s point of view. Jesus begins each beatitude with the word, “blessed” which is the Greek word MAKARIOS. The word blessed is a bit misleading. It sounds so holy, as if this is a monk or nun’s religious way of life that pleases God but otherwise leads to human misery. But nothing could be further from the truth. It IS THE WAY OF LIFE THAT PLEASES GOD, but it does not lead to MISERY but to PRESENT FULFILLMENT. 

The parents of a sophomore college coed opened a letter from her that shocked them. It said,
Dear Mom and Dad,
Just thought I’d drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I’ve fallen in love with a man named Jim. He quit high school after grade eleven to get married. About a year ago, he got a divorce. We’ve been “in a relationship” for two months, and plan to get married in the fall. Until then I’ve decided to move into his apartment. (I think I might be pregnant). At any rate, I dropped out of school last week, although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future.
On the next page she continued: “Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. NONE of it is true. But Mom and Dad, it IS true that I got a C- in French and flunked Math…It IS true that I’m going to need some more money.” What a brilliant girl. She made the BAD NEWS that she flunked math, got a C- in French, and was out of money sound like GOOD NEWS—she wasn’t pregnant and dropping out of school. Your perspective determines your attitude. If, as I start to cross a city street, I get shoved to the pavement and fall down tearing my suit pants, my attitude will be fury, until a second later, I see a car fly past who ran the red light in the lane I was stepping into. Then my fury becomes profound gratefulness. My attitude changed because my perspective changed. As we complete this series on developing the tough-minded attitudes that Jesus exhibited throughout his life, we realize that the key to godly attitudes is having the right perspective. The biblical term for this right perspective is wisdom. Wisdom is looking at life from Gods point of view. It is seeing how God designed life to best function. No wonder God says, “Nothing you desire compares with wisdom.”
When we look at what God says to us about the value of wisdom in just Proverbs 3, alone, it is hard to envision any way God could state his case more forcefully: Blessed is a person who finds wisdom, and one who obtains understanding. For her profit is better than the profit of silver and her produce better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire compares with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are those who hold on to her. (vs 13-18).
What could possibly be more valuable than understanding how God designed human life to work? “In fact,” says God, “the same unchangeable principles that shape human relational, emotional, and spiritual life actually existed before God designed the physical world and guided the creative process.” In Proverbs 8, wisdom personified cries out, “The Lord created me at the beginning of His way before His works of old. From eternity I was established from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no ocean depths, I was born, when there were no springs abounding with water.” Surely God’s point is that the wisdom of God for the moral, spiritual, relational world is as unchanging and certain as are the laws of nature. Imagine understanding everything about how relationships work, everything. Or everything about how the conscience works, how guilt destroys, how forgiveness frees, how the conscience suppresses the truth. Imagine knowing everything about the heart, its motivations, emotions, and the thought process. Why do we not devote ourselves to the treasure trove of God’s wisdom? Why do we not listen to the urging of God,
Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you she will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown (Prov 4:5-9).
 We Fail to Grasp How Broken Our Spiritual Vision Is
The starting point for obtaining wisdom is humility. When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but WITH THE HUMBLE IS WISDOM (Prov 11:2). Humility is recognizing my spiritual poverty. It is recognizing that my sin has darkened my understanding (Eph 4) and causes me to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1). It is agreeing with Proverbs 14:2, There is a way THAT SEEMS RIGHT to a man, but its end is the way to death. This truth is so important that God repeats it word for word in Proverbs 16:25.
True humility further leads to the “fear of the Lord.” This biblical concept is not being afraid of God; it is being afraid to break his moral law because we know we will never get away with it. The fear of the Lord is knowing that He is so weighty, so awesome, that no one gets away with sin, ever. God is not such a lightweight that He can be mocked. “Do not be deceived,” Paul wrote to the Galatians, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (6:7-8). It is this certainty that the laws of the moral, spiritual world are fixed which leads to wisdom. The fear of the Lord is instruction in WISDOM, and humility comes before honor. (Prov 15:33). It is the humility that says, “I must adjust to life the way God has designed it to be—which is a reflection of his unchanging moral nature.” The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil (Prov 8:13). The fear of the Lord recognizes that evil destroys. Our darkened understanding takes us down the path of destruction. Wisdom, the only corrective to a darkened understanding cries out,
I have insight; I have strength. By me kings reign and rulers decree what is just; by me princes rule, and nobles, all who govern justly. I love those who love me, and THOSE WHO SEEK ME DILIGENTLY FIND ME. Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold…my yield than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries (Prov 8:14-21).
Jesus’ Wisdom Teaching:  The Beatitudes
Since Jesus came to restore everything broken by sin, Jesus’ teaching of kingdom life is counter intuitive. It is a picture of the godly attitudes that reflect God’s original intent for human life. These redeemed attitudes grow from recovering biblical perspective, looking at life from God’s point of view. Jesus begins each beatitude with the word, “blessed” which is the Greek word MAKARIOS. The word blessed is a bit misleading. It sounds so holy, as if this is a monk or nun’s religious way of life that pleases God but otherwise leads to human misery. But nothing could be further from the truth. It IS THE WAY OF LIFE THAT PLEASES GOD, but it does not lead to MISERY but to PRESENT FULFILLMENT. One NT scholar writes,
The meaning of MAKARIOS can best be seen by one particular usage of it. The Greeks always called Cyprus he makaria (the feminine form of the adjective), which means The Happy Isle.
Read More
Related Posts:

The triune God has graciously revealed himself to us. Historically and on biblical grounds, Christians have held two affirmations about who and what God is—God is one God, and he exists as three persons. This identification of God as triune stands at the heart of the Christian faith, along with the confession that the second person of the Trinity, the Son, took on a human nature without ceasing to be God.

The Way We Talk about God
Imagine that you’re trying to describe what God did on the cross. What do you say? Here’s how we’ve heard it described (including, at times, by ourselves!):

The Father poured out his wrath on the Son.
The Father turned his face away.
The Father abandoned his Son.
The Son felt the pangs of hell because he was separated from the Father on the cross.

Notice that in describing the cross this way, we are saying that there are two primary actors, two distinct individuals, the Father and the Son, the first two persons of the Godhead, and that each is doing something different at the crucifixion. For now, notice also that the third person of God, the Spirit, is never mentioned in these statements.
Let’s use a different example. You’re asked to describe God’s providence. What do you say? Here’s how we’ve heard it described (again, at times, by ourselves!):

The Father chose this path for me because he cares for me.
When we talk about election, we’re talking about the plan of God the Father.
We have a good Father who has planned all things to work together for our good.

Notice that in describing providence this way, we’re attributing God’s “plan” specifically to God the Father, and sometimes it sounds as if it’s only God the Father who plans out providence. One last example will suffice. Imagine that you’re told to describe how a Christian receives and uses spiritual gifts. What do you say?

The Spirit gave me the gift of [X, Y, or Z].
I can [use gift X, Y, or Z] because the Spirit empowers me.
I’m gifted at [X, Y, or Z] because the Spirit chose to make me that way.

Are the Father and the Son involved in the spiritual gifts? Or just the Spirit?
In each of these examples, and even in the way we’ve asked the follow-up questions, what we’re trying to help you see is that we often think about God’s acts as divisible between the persons and distributed according to their roles. So in these scenarios, sometimes the actor is primarily the Father, as in the examples about providence; sometimes the actor is the Son, as in the examples about the crucifixion; and sometimes the actor is the Spirit, as in the examples about the spiritual gifts.
Let’s return to the examples related to the crucifixion. A question we often ask our students when talking about this subject, and after we’ve described the crucifixion in the ways we gave above, is, “What was the Spirit doing while the Father was forsaking the Son?” Was the Spirit just watching from the sidelines? Was he taking a break from his divine duties? Are the Son and the Spirit also wrathful toward sin? Returning next to providence, do the Son and the Spirit sit on the bench while the Father governs his creation? And with respect to the spiritual gifts, do the Father and the Son renounce their authority and hand it over to the Spirit to let him distribute gifts to whom he wills?
These questions, we hope, help us see that the way we talk about God’s acts often divides the persons of God in a way that is contrary to our confession that God is one God in three persons. If only one divine person, or in some cases two of the three, is acting on any given occasion, how is that consistent with the Christian confession of one God, or with its roots in Jewish monotheism? Aren’t there now three Gods, each of whom acts in different ways in different times? Or is there one God who is sometimes Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Spirit?
Read More
Related Posts: