Cowboy Fellowship Blog

Uncommon Weakness

2011-08-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Weakness today is seen as a repulsive quality. No one wants to be perceived as being weak, incapable, frail, or needy. Yet the Apostle Paul himself wrote "I delight in weakness...for when I am weak then I am strong." It seems to me that God not only wants to display His amazing grace in our lives, but He desires to show the world His power through our lives too. This is only possible when we are willing to display our weaknesses to the world. Our culture only feeds what our nature desires to do with our weakness. Friends, family, and even our churches encourage us to conceal, and disguise our weaknesses from others. In doing so we convince ourselves that we are stronger, when in fact we become weaker with each passing moment our weakness is kept from view. It is uncommon to reveal your weaknesses to the world, but it is also the key to becoming stronger in your faith as well. For this reason Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 NIV "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me." We can not expect the power of God to rest on our lives if we are too shallow, self indulgent, and superficial to allow our weaknesses to be exposed so that the power of God might also be visible for all to see as well.

Pass Your Test

2011-06-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

I read this commentary today and it made me think about all of the tests in life. I wish the tests would cease once we graduated school but the truth is we face tests throughout our lives. Many of the most difficult tests have nothing to do with our formal education but rather they deal with our spritual education. God is always trying to teach us new things and many of those lessons come in the form of a spiritual test... Here is what I read this morning about Abraham.

In the “School of Faith” we must have occasional tests or we will never know where we are spiritually. Abraham had his share of tests right from the beginning. First was the “family test,” when he had to leave his loved ones and step out by faith to go to a new land (11:27–12:5). This was followed by the “famine test,” which Abraham failed because he doubted God and went down to Egypt for help (12:10–13:4).
Once back in the land, Abraham passed the “fellowship test” when he gave Lot first choice in using the pastureland (13:5–18). He also passed the “fight test” when he defeated the kings (14:1–16) and the “fortune test” when he said no to Sodom’s wealth (14:17–24). But he failed the “fatherhood test” when Sarah got impatient with God and suggested that Abraham have a child by Hagar (Gen. 16). When the time came to send Ishmael away, Abraham passed the “farewell test” even though it broke his heart (21:14–21).

Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Obedient (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1996), 107.

Covered Facility Ground Breaking

2011-06-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

Several hundred members of the Cowboy Fellowship congregation stepped outside the church to witness a groundbreaking ceremony for a covered rodeo arena estimated to cost $2.2 million and covering 82,364 sq. ft. The arena was just a vision as planning started in 2003. Sr. Pastor Pete Pawelek said “Prayerfully, Phase I will be completed in the late fall.” Plans include Phase I: the metal building with open walls, electrical work and cover. Bleachers, concession area and restrooms will come later. With smiling faces and full shovels, those participating in the ceremony are (l-r) Clifton Shearrer (Lay Pastor), Wilson Winn (Lay Pastor), Scotty Smith (Associate Pastor), Adam Shelburne (Children’s Pastor), Pete Pawelek (Senior Pastor), Tanner Butkay (Youth Pastor), Bob Hogan (Elder) and Mark Weatherston (Elder).
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It started with a vision over 10 years ago of reaching out to men and women with a western heritage and lifestyle. They wanted to reach them for the sake of the Gospel of Christ. He died for the sins of people to set them free from death. With that goal in mind, wanting to reach their friends and family with the great news, with God's help Cowboy Fellowship was started here in Atascosa County.
From that humble begining of 13 men and their families with that vision God has grown Cowboy Fellowship into what it is today. With that being said, Sunday June 19, 2011 God has allowed the people of Cowboy Fellowship to continue the vision of reaching out to their community by prayerfully starting a 3 phase project of building a covered facility.
Cowboy Fellowship is a debt free church. They believe that if God wants them to build it then they would be able to save up for or have the means to accomplish the task that God has laid out before them. They have saved up the money for their first phase of the covered facility, which will be 82,364 square feet. Bleachers, restrooms, and concession area will be added later in the 2nd and 3rd phase of the facility.
At the time of dedication, Roy West, one of the founding team members of the 13 opened in prayer. Followed by a word from Mark Weatherston, and was concluded with Scripture from Pastor Pete Pawelek.

(Pleasanton Express) Scotty Smith

Quito Update #2

2011-06-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

The rest of the team arrived safe and sound tonight about 11pm. Now it's time to get some sleep and get ready for tomorrow. In the morning we will tour the HCJB campus in the morning then take the 20 minute drive out to the center of the world (equator). The team will need a full day to adjust to the 10,500 foot altitude here in Quito then on Sunday it's full steam ahead. Thanks for all of the prayers!

Quito Update #1

2011-06-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today was our first full day in Quito, Ecuador and it was amazing. Our journey yesterday was smooth except for a delay in Houston for just over an hour. So we did not arrive in Quito till midnight and it was about 12:40 am before we got through customs, claimed our luggage, and met up with Amanda. We made it to their house about 1:20 and the kids were both wide awake and ready to play so we did not actually go to sleep till about 2:30am. Today we went out and looked at the church we will be working on and coordinated with a few people about supplies and the scope of the work project. While I worked on that Peter made friends with some of the children who we plan to minister to in the days ahead. The kids were so nice to Peter and despite a huge age gap they invited him to play soccer with them while I worked on getting the project set up. It is so cool the way children can play together and make friends in such a short time. Tonight we ate here with the Castro's and got the kids in bed by 8:30. We followed that up with some great fellowship time with Larry and Amanda. Tomorrow the foundation work starts at the church so the concrete will be set and ready to go when our team arrives Friday. We are also going to get all of the food for the team and organize a few other things. The weather has been AMAZING!!!! At night the temperature settles in the low 50's, and today I think the high was around 75! We have not seen much of the country but the little we have seen is beautiful. Quito is in the Andes and there are mountains all around us and the scenery is wonderful in any direction you look.

Dominica lives above Larry and Amanda and she is going to help us over the next week and a half. Hadley never goes straight to people but she loved Dominica! What a blessing!

Some of the boys from the school taking Peter out on to the soccer field

Peter and Daniel sharing and trying to learn about each other. Daniel speaks no English, Peter speaks no Spanish it was quite a sight to see...

Peter playing soccer with the boys. He has never played but he caught on fast and jumped right in with the big boys.

EM Bounds

2011-06-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

I love to read the words and hear the thoughts of old time preachers like E.M Bounds. The richness of their Spirit encourages, teaches, blesses, and refreshes me as I contemplate the depth of their thoughts. For those who do not know E.M. Bounds was a Methodist Preacher who was born in 1835. He was a Chaplin in the Civil war and was severely wounded in the second battle of Franklin. He is the author of eleven books, nine of which are focused on prayer. All but two of his books were published after his death in 1913.

You may recall that I recently preached a sermon entitled “How To Pray.” I am convinced that prayer should be larger more intense part of my life. Like most I don’t pray enough. This in part is why I love to read the words of E.M. Bounds he inspires me to pray more. I hope that he might do the same for you as well.

8th Anniversary Event May 7, 2011 BULLFIGHTS

2011-05-19T15:21:00.001-07:00

Cowboy Fellowship celebrated it's 8th Anniversary in a bold new way... May 7, 2011 the first bullfight of it's kind in Atascosa County, was held at the Poteet Lion's Club Arena in Poteet. The event featured both a "bloodless" Spanish Bullfight and a competitive American Rodeo Style Bullfight.

Legendary PRCA Rodeo Announcer Hadley Barrett emceed the event. During a break in the activities Hadley gave thanks for the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and told the attentive crowd about the lifetime of God's guidance he has benefited from both personally and professionally.

Rodeo Style Bullfighting was a very familiar, yet exciting event for the Atascosa County crowd.

Missions "What Do You Think"

2011-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Missions “What do you think”

Practical Parables series #4

http://www.pastorpete.org

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INTRO: Well as most of you know tonight we will be showing our mission video, pictures, and sharing our stories with you all. I really hope you will all come out tonight and be apart of that time. I think you will enjoy it, and learn from it, and all together love it.

This morning as we continue our series in Practical Parables I want us to approach the text of MATTHEW 21:28-32 If you have been with us over the past few weeks we have been talking about the prodigal son, his brother, and his father. This parable is similar in the characters. We have 2 sons, and a father to look at. However as I read this practical parable God showed me some practical things about missions. I will warn you the things he showed me may be hard for you to take, I know they were for me. But for those of you who know me, you know I preach the Bible, as strong, pure and true and I know how. And you also know that I preach what God tells me to preach. So if you feel like I am shooting at you this morning, I want to remind you that I am shooting at the Devil, don’t stand so close if you don’t want to get hit.

Before we start we need to see if we can all agree on something about missions, that is we need to agree on what it is. There are many scripture texts we could read that could define missions but for the sake of time lets just turn to the 28^th chapter of Matthew, keep your finger in 21 we will be right back.

Matt 28:19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

Missions is GOING, TEACHING, BAPTIZING, TELLING, AND PROCLAIMING THE GOOD NEWS OF CHRIST.

Facts:

1)It is a command not a choice

2) it is a command for every Christian

3) It is rarely easy

4) it is always demanding

5) And it is being poorly carried out in the world today.

In 2000, nearly 97 percent of the entire income of all Christian organizations was spent on, and primarily benefited, other Christians at home or abroad: $261 billion spent on ministering to Christians, $7.8 billion on already-evangelized non-Christians, and $0.81 billion on unevangelized non-Christians.34 It is no wonder that “one of the reasons churches in North America have trouble guiding people about money is that the church’s economy is built on consumerism. If churches see themselves as suppliers of religious goods and services and their congregants as consumers, then offerings are ‘payment.’ ”29 Meanwhile, many churches say they don’t have enough money to support missionaries.27 http://www.generousgiving.org/page.asp?sec=4&page=504#Q10 Generousgiving.org

So that is 8.61 billion on missions that is still a lot of money right?

Pet spending has more than doubled from $17 billion in 1994 to an estimated $38.4 billion in 2006. In 2006, Americans’ spending on pets is projected to be higher than ever:

$15.2 billion for food

$9.3 billion for supplies and over-the-counter medications

$9.4 billion for veterinarian care

$1.8 billion for live animal purchases

$2.7 billion for other services

http://www.appma.org/press_releasedetail.asp?id=84 APPMA

This is another stat I found on a web site, it really made me think a different way about missions.

97% of the world has heard of coke-a-cola
72% of the world has seen a can of coke-a-cola
51% of the world has tasted a can of coke-a-cola
Coke has only been around 120 years (1886).
If God had given the task of world evangelization to the Coke company it would probably be done by now. Source Unknown.

Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell;

I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

C.T. Studd.

I)Better late then never

A) Matt 21:29 I will not, he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

B) Have you ever been late to something?

1) Have you ever arrived late

(i)Some of you did this morning

2) Have you ever missed an opportunity because you were late?

3) Have you ever been late to a party or celebration?

4) Have you ever been late to a meeting?

5) Have you ever been late?

(i)Let me ask you this, have you ever been so late that you thought about not going, because you were late, but you went anyway?

(a) You were late to a party but you went anyway, and meet an old friend. And then where glad you went.

(b) You were late for a meeting with a client, and almost called to cancel but went and made the big sale.

(c) You were late getting into an investment opportunity, but got in anyway and it turned out great.

(d) You were late for a first date, and a year latter you married that girl?

¨ Often times in life it is better to be late then to never show up at all.

Þ In this case the first son was late, but he showed up for work.

C) Jesus says Matt 21:26 “What do you think?”

1) Was it better to show up late

2) Or not show up at all.

(i)They responded Matt 31 better late then never.

(a) Lets look at another scripture about working the fields

¨ Matt 9:37 The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Þ Last week we had six people get saved right here 7 days ago.

Þ The week before that 3

Þ The week before that 5

Þ The week before that 2

a. 17 people in 4 weeks, but there are only about 3 or 4 people that are willing to help and disciple them.

i. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Þ We average about 800 people on Sunday mornings.

a. Last Sunday we had 3 stay and help, sweep, mop, clean the restrooms, take out the trash, turn off the lights, and lock the doors.

i. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Þ We average about 800 on Sunday Mornings.

a. Two weeks ago we had a work day inside the building and out at the arena.

i. We had about 30 people show up to help

ii. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Þ We have about 60 visitors a month come through our doors.

a. We have about 7 or 8 people who send letters, make phone calls, and do follow up with all the visitors each month.

i. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Þ We have about 120 children up stairs each week

a. Yet the same handful of people are struggling to reach and teach them week in and week out.

i. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

ii. I could go on and on.

3) I really believe that God has gifted you in a way to help build this church.

(i)I really believe that God has a purpose for you

(ii)I really believe that God wants to use you

(iii)I really believe that God has called you

(iv)I really believe that God has a mission for you

(a) I think you are just arriving late.

¨ But better late then never

Þ It is better to tell God no, then show up

Þ It is better to say I can’t, but go later anyway

Þ It is better by far to say not me, the come to the field later in the day.

a. My friend it is not to late.

i. Better late then never

D) Let me ask you the same question Jesus asked them that day.

1) What do you think?

II)Talk is cheap

A) Matt 21:30 Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, I will sir, but he did not go.

1) Two good things my dad taught me. Everyone has been giving me a hard time about running my dad down last week so I thought I should throw in something good about him. But don’t get used to it, because I don’t have a lot to work with.

(i)Two things my dad taught me

(a) Talk is cheap, and lookin is free.

¨ Many talk a good game

¨ Many have all the right word

¨ Many say yes sir I will do it

¨ Many say sure that’s no problem

Þ But never have any intention of doing it.

a. Talk it cheap.

i. Anyone can talk but who can get the job done?

ii. Anyone can talk about it, but who is willing to do it?

iii. Anyone can say yes sir, but who will get dirty, sweaty, and uncomfterbul, to get the job done?

iv. Anyone can talk about pretty much anything, but doing it is something else.

v. Talk is cheap.

vi. Prov. 14:23 (NLT) 23 Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!

B) Do any of you know someone who is a good talker.

1) You know who I am talking about.

(i)Someone when they tell you something, it does not matter what it is,

(a) You trust them about as far as you can throw them

(b) You always have a plan B when this person is involved

(c) You always just plan on doing it yourself when they promise you it will get done

¨ We all know talk is cheap

Þ This second son talked and good game,

a. But he had no intention at all of ever steping out on to the field.

C) Sad thing is I wonder how many of us have done that when it comes to missions.

1) May I read you a very short true story?

2) A one-legged school teacher from Scotland came to J. Hudson Taylor to offer himself for service in China. "With only one leg, why do you think of going as a missionary?" Asked Taylor. Because "I do not see those with two legs going," replied George Scott. He was accepted. Pillar of Fire, January First, 1983.

(i) You wont find this George Scott in any Encyclopedia

(ii)You won’t find his name in the hall of fame

(iii)You won’t find a legacy of money or power associated with George Scott.

(a) But one day we shall all meet the thousands, and indeed the millions that have come to know Christ through the ministry of the one legged missionary to China.

¨ Talk is cheap, but only that which cost your life will bear eternal rewards.

Þ YES SIR I will go we say

Þ YES Sir across the street

Þ YES Sir to my friends house

Þ YES Sir to my co-workers desk

Þ YES Sir to my brother, sister, father, mother, son daughter.

Þ YES Sir, but we never seem to get there,

a. May I be the first to confess my guilt

b. May I be the first to repent

c. I shall be the first this day to admit in shame I have used cheap talk to my God

i. But I pray that I am not the last.

D) 1 Sam 2:3 (ESV) “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

1) Talk is cheap

(i)God has plenty of talkers, but He needs more workers on the mission field.

(ii)Are actions speak louder then our words

2) Let me ask you the same question Jesus asked

(i)What do you think?

E) The third and final thing for today, that God taught me in this practical parable is this.

III)Respect is not a substitute for obedience

A) Matt 21:29-31 I will not, he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, I will sir, but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted? The first, the answered.

B) We have in our text one command Son, go and work today in the vineyard.

1) But we have two boys both with different responses.

(i)I WILL NOT

(ii)I WILL SIR

2) The first response I WILL NOT shows no respect for the fathers authority.

(i)It shows no respect for the fathers simply and reasonable request

(ii)It shows us that this sons heart is not in the right place

(iii)He has no respect for his father.

3) The second I WILL SIR

(i)Shows great respect, not only does he say he will go and fulfill the request, he says SIR.

(ii)Yes SIR I will go

(iii)I respect you enough to go and enough to say SIR.

C) But respect is not a substitute for obedience.

1) The first son I WILL NOT; obeys

2) The second, I WILL SIR; disobeys.

(i)Let me ask you as Jesus did to them What do you think? Who did what was right?

(a) The first, why? Because he obeyed.

D) This is what God told me

1) You may respect God

2) You may respect Jesus

3) You may respect the request

4) You may agree with and respect the mission and the purpose

5) You may respect it all in every way, but respect is no substitute for obedience.

(i)See at the end of the day, respect is good, but without obedience to the call, it is worthless.

(ii)If you respect the master but disobey the command,

(iii)If you respect the master but disobey the order

(iv)if you respect the master but disobey the call

(v)if you respect the master but disobey the Mission you are given

(a) Well then you have failed, because respect is no substitute for obedience.

¨ In the scope of eternity, respect is great, but obedience, is by which we will all be judged.

E) CT Studd once said Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

(i) I think it is safe to say that many respect God, but far fewer are obeying his command to be apart of missions in these last days.

Closing: In closing this morning, let me remind you that I

I) it is never to late.

a. If God has called you to something and you did not do it, get r done.

II) Talk is cheap.

a. Who do you relate with more, the first or the second son?

i. Are you a cheap talker?

ii. Have you said yes sir with no intention of going anywhere?

iii. If so confess that and repent today and go.

III) Respect is no substitute for obedience.

a. You may respect God, but if you don’t obey at then end of the day all the respect in the world is useless.

Prayer of Salvation: Jesus I know that I have sinned, I invite you into my heart to be my Lord and Savior. Forgive me of my sins and give me the gift of eternal life. Thank you for your grace and goodness. Amen

Baby Dedication - May 15, 2011

2011-05-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Baby Dedications are a special time in the life of believers at Cowboy Fellowship. Parents present their children to the congregation, pledging to raise them in the knowledge, love, and instruction of the Lord. The congregation joins the family in prayer, asking our Heavenly Father for the wisdom, skill, and dedication that will be required in the task of guiding these young lives.

People You Should Know #8 "Patrick"

2011-05-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

Patrick
PATRON SAINT OF IRELAND

“Daily I expect murder, fraud or captivity, but I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God almighty who rules everywhere.”

Patrick is remembered today as the saint who drove the snakes out of Ireland (not true), the teacher who used the shamrock to explain the Trinity (doubted), and the namesake of annual parades in New York and Boston. What is less well-known is that Patrick was a humble missionary (this saint regularly referred to himself as “a sinner”) of enormous courage. When he evangelized Ireland, he set in motion a series of events that impacted all of Europe. It all started when he was carried off into slavery by Irish raiders.

Escape from sin and slavery
A 16-year-old Romanized Briton, Patrick was sold to a cruel warrior chief whose opponents’ heads sat atop sharp poles around his palisade in Northern Ireland. While Patrick minded his master’s pigs in the nearby hills, he lived like an animal himself, enduring long bouts of hunger, thirst, and isolation. A nominal Christian to this point, he now turned to the Christian God of his fathers for comfort.
“I would pray constantly during the daylight hours,” he later recalled. “The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more. And faith grew. And the spirit roused so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and at night only slightly less.”
After six years of slavery, a mysterious, supernatural voice spoke to him: “Soon you will return to your homeland.”
So Patrick fled and ran 200 miles to a southeastern harbor. There he boarded a ship of traders bound for Europe.

Return to the homelands
After a few years on the continent, Patrick returned to his family in England—only to be called back to Ireland as an evangelist.
“I seemed to hear the voice of the same men who lived beside the forest of Foclut … and they cried out as with one voice, ‘We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.’ I was deeply moved in heart and I could read no further, so I awoke.”
Whether Patrick was the first missionary to Ireland or not, paganism was still dominant when he arrived. “I dwell among gentiles,” he wrote, “in the midst of pagan barbarians, worshipers of idols, and of unclean things.”
Patrick’s mission faced the most opposition from the druids, who practiced magic, were skilled in secular learning (especially law and history), and advised Irish kings. Biographies of the saint are replete with stories of druids who “wished to kill holy Patrick.”
“Daily I expect murder, fraud or captivity,” Patrick wrote, “but I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God almighty who rules everywhere.”
Patrick was as fully convinced as the Celts that the power of the druids was real, but he brought news of a stronger power. The famous Lorica (or “Patrick’s Breastplate”), a prayer of protection, may not have been written by Patrick (at least in its current form), but it expresses perfectly Patrick’s confidence in God to protect him from “every fierce merciless force that may come upon my body and soul.”
There was probably a confrontation between Patrick and the druids, but scholars doubt it was as dramatic and magical as later stories recounted. One biographer from the late 600s, Muirchú, described Patrick challenging druids to contests at Tara, in which each party tried to outdo the other in working wonders before the audience. Patrick, the legend says, won, as God killed several of the druids and soldiers:
“The king summoned his council and said, ‘It is better for me to believe than to die.’ And he believed as did many others that day.”
Yet to Patrick, the greatest enemy was one he had been intimately familiar with—slavery. He was, in fact, one of the earliest Christians to speak out strongly against the practice. Scholars agree he is the true author of a letter excommunicating a British tyrant, Coroticus, who had carried off some of Patrick’s converts into slavery.
“Ravenous wolves have gulped down the Lord’s own flock which was flourishing in Ireland,” he wrote, “and the whole church cries out and laments for its sons and daughters.” He called Coroticus’s deed “wicked, so horrible, so unutterable,” and told him to repent and to free the converts.
It remains unknown if he was successful in freeing Coroticus’s slaves, but within his lifetime (or shortly thereafter), the entire Irish slave trade had ended.

Self doubt
Despite his success as a missionary, Patrick was self-conscious, especially about his educational background. “I still blush and fear more than anything to have my lack of learning brought out into the open,” he wrote in his Confession. “For I am unable to explain my mind to learned people.”
Nevertheless, he gave thanks to God, “who stirred up me, a fool, from the midst of those who are considered wise and learned in the practice of the law as well as persuasive in their speech and in every other way and ahead of these others, inspired me who is so despised by the world.”
Over and over again, Patrick wrote that he was not worthy to be a bishop. He wasn’t the only one with doubts. At one point, his ecclesiastical elders in Britain sent a deputation to investigate his mission. A number of concerns were brought up, including a rash moment of (unspecified) sin from his youth. His Confession, in fact, was written in response to this investigation.
If Patrick was not confident about his own shortcomings, he held a deep sense of God’s intimate involvement in his life. “I have known God as my authority, for he knows all things even before they are done,” he wrote. “He would frequently forewarn me of many things by his divine response.”

“Flame of a splendid sun”
According to the Irish annals, Patrick died in 493, when he would have been in his seventies. But we do not know for sure when, where, or how he died. Monasteries at Armagh, Downpatrick, and Saul have all claimed his remains. His feast day is recorded as early as March 17, 797, with the annotation; “The flame of a splendid sun, the apostle of virginal Erin [Ireland], may Patrick with many thousands be the shelter of our wickedness.”
It will always be difficult to separate fact from fiction in the stories of Patrick’s biographers. It is historically clear, however, that Patrick was one of the first great missionaries who brought the gospel beyond the boundaries of Roman civilization. According to tradition, only Ireland’s inaccessible south remained untouched by his work by the time he died.
Patrick also became the model for later Celtic Christians. He engaged in continuous prayer. He was enraptured by God and loved sacred Scripture. He also had a rich poetic imagination with the openness to hear God in dreams and visions and a love of nature. Hundreds of Celtic monks, in emulation of Patrick, left their homeland to spread the gospel to Scotland, England, and continental Europe.

Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 229-31.

People You Should Know #7 "John Newton"

2011-04-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

John Newton
REFORMED SLAVE TRADER

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

It is probably the most famous hymn in history:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Though some today wonder if the word wretch is hyperbole or a bit of dramatic license, John Newton, the song’s author, clearly did not.

Slave trader
Newton was nurtured by a Christian mother who taught him the Bible at an early age, but he was raised in his father’s image after she died of tuberculosis when Newton was 7. At age 11, Newton went on his first of six sea-voyages with the merchant navy captain.
Newton lost his first job, in a merchant’s office, because of “unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint”—a pattern that would persist for years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744. Newton rebelled against the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons, and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a slaver ship. Espousing freethinking principles, he remained arrogant and insubordinate, and he lived with moral abandon: “I sinned with a high hand,” he later wrote, “and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others.”
He took up employment with a slave-trader named Clow, who owned a plantation of lemon trees on an island off of west Africa. But he was treated cruelly by Clow and the slaver’s African mistress; soon Newton’s clothes turned to rags, and Newton was forced to beg for food to allay his hunger.
The sluggish sailor was transferred to the service of the captain of the Greyhound, a Liverpool ship, in 1747, and on its homeward journey, the ship was overtaken by an enormous storm. Newton had been reading Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the “uncertain continuance of life.” He also recalled the passage in Proverbs, “Because I have called and ye have refused, … I also will laugh at your calamity.” He converted during the storm, though he admitted later, “I cannot consider myself to have been a believer, in the full sense of the word.”
Newton then served as a mate and then as captain of a number of slave ships, hoping as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, “promoting the life of God in the soul” of both his crew and his African cargo.

Amazing hymnal
After leaving the sea for an office job in 1755, Newton held Bible studies in his Liverpool home. Influenced by both the Wesleys and George Whitefield, he adopted mild Calvinist views and became increasingly disgusted with the slave trade and his role in it. He quit, was ordained into the Anglican ministry, and in 1764 took a parish in Olney in Buckinghamshire.
Three years after Newton arrived, poet William Cowper moved to Olney. Cowper, a skilled poet who experienced bouts of depression, became a lay helper in the small congregation.
In 1769, Newton began a Thursday evening prayer service. For almost every week’s service, he wrote a hymn to be sung to a familiar tune. Newton challenged Cowper also to write hymns for these meetings, which he did until falling seriously ill in 1773. Newton later combined 280 of his own hymns with 68 of Cowper’s in what was to become the popular Olney Hymns. Among the well-known hymns in it are “Amazing Grace,” “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,” “O for a Closer Walk with God,” and “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.”
In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce’s campaign to end the practice—“a business at which my heart now shudders,” he wrote. Recollection of that chapter in his life never left him, and in his old age, when it was suggested that the increasingly feeble Newton retire, he replied, “I cannot stop. What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?”

Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 88-90.

People You Should Know #6 "Richard Baxter"

2011-04-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

Richard Baxter
MODERATE IN AN AGE OF EXTREMES

“I preached … as a dying man to dying men.”

Richard Baxter never received a higher commission than that of parish pastor to loom workers in Kidderminster. Still, he was the most prominent English churchman of the 1600s. He was a peacemaker who sought unity among Protestants, and yet he was a highly independent thinker—and at the center of every major controversy in England during his lifetime.

Nonconformist who sought unity
Born in Rowton to parents who undervalued education, Baxter was largely self-taught. He eventually studied at a free school, then at royal court, where he became disgusted at what he saw as frivolity. He left to study divinity, and at age 23, he was ordained into the Church of England.
Within the Anglican church, Baxter found common ground with the Puritans, a growing faction who opposed the church’s episcopacy—and was itself breaking into factions.
Baxter, for his part, did his best to avoid the disputes between Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other denominations, even convincing local ministers to cooperate in some pastoral matters. “In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity,” he was fond of saying.
The interest in cooperation was not due to a lack of conviction. On the contrary, Baxter was opinionated in his theology, which was not quite Separatist and not quite Conformist. Among his more than 200 works are long, controversial discourses on doctrine. Still, he believed society was a large family under a loving father, and in his theology, he tried to cut between the extremes. He eventually registered himself as “a mere Nonconformist” (“Nonconformist” was a technical term meaning “not Anglican”), breaking with the Church of England mainly because of the lack of power it gave parish clergy.

Persecuted moderate
Baxter also found himself as a peacemaker during the English Civil Wars. He believed in monarchy, but a limited one. He served as a chaplain for the parliamentary army, but then helped to bring about the restoration of the king. Yet as a moderate, Baxter found himself the target of both extremes.
He was still irritated with the episcopacy in 1660, when he was offered the bishopric of Hereford, so he declined it. As a result, he was barred from ecclesiastical office and not permitted to return to Kidderminster, nor was he allowed to preach. Between 1662 and 1688 (when James II was overthrown), he was persecuted and was imprisoned for 18 months, and he was forced to sell two extensive libraries.
Still, he continued to preach: “I preached as never sure to preach again,” he wrote, “and as a dying man to dying men.”
Baxter became even better known for his prolific writing. His devotional classic The Saints’ Everlasting Rest was one of the most widely read books of the century. When asked what deviations should be permitted from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, he created an entirely new one, called Reformed Liturgy, in two weeks. His Christian Directory contains over one million words. His autobiography and his pastoral guide, The Reformed Pastor, are still widely read today.
“The Gospel dieth not when I die: the church dieth not: the praises of God die not: the world dieth not: and perhaps it shall grow better,” he wrote near the end of his life. “It may be that some of the seed that I have sown shall spring up to some benefit of the dark unpeaceable world when I am dead.”

Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 86-87.

People You Should Know #5 "Ambrose of Milan"

2011-04-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ambrose of Milan
MOST TALENTED BISHOP OF THE EARLY CHURCH

“When we are speaking about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking about Christ.”

“When we speak of wisdom, we are speaking about Christ. When we speak about virtue, we are speaking about Christ. When we speak about justice, we are speaking about Christ. When we are speaking about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking about Christ.” So wrote Ambrose, bishop of Milan, biblical exegete, political theorist, master of Latin eloquence, musician, and teacher; in all these roles, he was speaking about Christ.

Arrested career
The first Latin church father from a Christian family, Ambrose was also born into power, part of the Roman family of Aurelius. The pope and church dignitaries visited his parent’s home when he was a child, and he was a governor in Italy’s northern provinces before the age of 30. As he was sent, the prefect gave him a word of prophetic advice: “Go, conduct yourself not as a judge, but as a bishop.”
Indeed, even as governor he had ecclesiastical problems to deal with. Orthodox Christians and Arians were practically at war at the time. Ambrose was no friend of the Arians, but he was so well regarded that both sides supported him. When the bishop of Milan (an Arian) died, Ambrose attended the meeting to elect a replacement, hoping that his presence would preempt violence between the parties. Much to his surprise, both sides shouted their wish for him to be their replacement.
Ambrose really didn’t want to be an ecclesiastical leader; he was doing quite well as a political one. And he hadn’t even been baptized yet! But the people wrote to Emperor Valentian, asking for his seal on their verdict. Ambrose was placed under arrest until he agreed to serve.
If the Arians had hoped to gain favor by supporting Ambrose as bishop, their hopes were soon dashed. The new bishop was as orthodox as could be, and he soon took the Arians to task. He refused to surrender a church for use by Arians, and he wrote several works against them, including On the Faith, The Mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation, and On the Holy Spirit.
Having been trained in rhetoric and law and having studied Greek, Ambrose became known for his knowledge of the latest Greek writings, both Christian and pagan. In addition to Philo, Origen, and Basil of Caesarea, he even quoted Neoplatonist Plotinus in his sermons. He was widely regarded as an excellent preacher.
In many of those sermons, Ambrose expounded upon the virtues of asceticism. He was so persuasive that noble families sometimes forbade their daughters to attend his sermons, fearing they’d trade their marriageable status for a life of austere virginity.
One piece of his pastoral advice is still universally known: “When you are at Rome, live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere.”
Ambrose also introduced congregational singing, and he was accused of “bewitching” Milan by introducing Eastern melodies into the hymns he wrote. Because of his influence, hymn singing became an important part of the Western liturgy.

The emperor repents
Ambrose’s most lasting contribution, though, was in the area of church-state relations. He wrestled with three emperors—and won each time. His relationship with Theodosius, the first emperor to try to make Rome a Christian state, is the most well-known example.
In 390, local authorities imprisoned a charioteer of Thessalonica for homosexuality. Unfortunately, the charioteer was one of the city’s favorites, and riots broke out when the governor refused to release him. The governor and a few others were killed in the melee, and the charioteer was freed.
Fuming, Theodosius exacted revenge. He announced another chariot race, but after the crowds arrived, the gates were locked and the townspeople were massacred by the emperor’s soldiers. Within three hours, 7,000 were dead.
Ambrose was horrified. He wrote an angry letter to Theodosius demanding his repentance. “I exhort, I beg, I entreat, I admonish you, because it is grief to me that the perishing of so many innocent is no grief to you,” he wrote. “And now I call on you to repent.” He forbade the emperor to attend worship until he prostrated himself at the altar.
Theodosius obeyed, marking the first time church triumphed over state.
In that event, Ambrose introduced the medieval concept of a Christian emperor as dutiful “son of the church serving under orders from Christ.” For the next thousand years, secular and religious rulers struggled to determine who was sovereign in various spheres of life.
Though there is some question about the historicity of Theodosius’s famous statement, “I know no bishop worthy of the name, except Ambrose,” the emperor continued to hold the bishop in high regard and died in his arms.
“I confess I loved him, and felt the sorrow of his death in the abyss of my heart,” Ambrose eulogized.
Two years later, Ambrose himself fell gravely ill. The worries of the country were expressed by one writer: “When Ambrose dies, we shall see the ruin of Italy.” On Easter eve, 397, the man who had been bishop of Milan for more than 23 years finally succumbed.
Only one name is more associated with Ambrose than Theodosius’s, and only one student outshined this teacher: Augustine. The skeptical professor of rhetoric had gone to Milan in 384 to hear the bishop’s famous allegorical preaching. By the time he left four years later, he had been baptized by Ambrose and given a philosophical basis he would use to transform Christian theology.

Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 80-83.

2011-04-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

The few people who pass through La Gloria, Texas on Hwy 755, nearly 50 miles South of Hebbronville seeing only the community post office, a closed gas station, several houses, a sign pointing the way to the local church, and the requisite small town sampling of horses, dogs, and roosters probably have no idea of the excitement generated in the Santa Maria Bullring three weekends early each Spring. The small dusty South Texas town hidden away in the mesquite and prickly pear comes alive with shouts of "El Toro!", and "Ole!" when the Matadors come to town!

The bullring sits behind the Post Office and is owned and operated by La Gloria resident Fred Renk. Renk, the father of David "El Texano" Renk, the only American bullfighter to confirm his status as a matador at the Plaza Mexico in Mexico City, raises the fighting bulls and secures some of the most successful and famous matadors from across Mexico to perform at Santa Maria Bullring. The Mexican fighting bulls are selected primarily for strength, vigor, intelligence and their aggressive behavior with little or no provocation. Fighting cattle are recognized for their elegant stature. The Toro has a long curved neck and holds its head very high. The breed it noted for its superb agility, and the long slender legs allow it to generate remarkable speed (faster than a quarter horse at 100 yards). Fully mature bulls weigh about 1100 to 1600 lbs.

Renk has successfully taken this spectacle on the road pitting man against beast in venues such as the Houston Astrodome. Saturday, May 7th, at 6:30PM the contest will be played out at the Poteet Strawberry Festival Arena. Sponsored by Cowboy Fellowship of Atascosa County in celebration of their 8th Anniversary, tickets for the event will be only $5.

Featured matador of the evening will be one of Mexico’s idols of the bullring, Matador Enrique Delgado. Known by aficionados as “El Cicion de Monterrey” or “The Cyclone of Monterrey,” Delgado received his promotion to full matador at the hands of the great Eloy Cavasos and was witnessed by the great Spanish matador Nino de la Capea. Delgado has faced bulls in all of the major plazas in the Republic. On the webpage of Texas Bullfights.LLC, Delgado refers to his style of bullfighting as “the ballet of strength”. He adds, “The power and strength of the toro, and the frailty of the matador standing still and controlling this power with a cloak and stick, this is the art of the spectacle.”

A twist on the standard bullfight is that bullfights in Texas must be "bloodless" meaning that the matador must exhibit the typical bravery, flexibility, cunning and stealthy athleticism of traditional bullfighting. Plus he must show great courage in leading a dangerous, aggressive animal around a bullring to exhibit his skill and capework for several minutes before facing the animal to remove a bouquet of roses from its back that symbolizes the “kill” since bulls may not be slain or even struck in the United States. Spectators at the event can expect to cheer on cue to the rhythm of the Paso Dobles, the bullfight music playing in the background, as they listen intently to the gems of bullfighting knowledge imparted by Fred Renk, and Pro-Rodeo Hall of Fame announcer Hadley Barrett.

Barrett has been awarded PRCA Announcer of the Year numerous times, has worked many National Finals Rodeos, National Finals Steer Roping, and the Canadian National Finals. He had announced more major pro rodeos than even he can remember, including San Antonio and Houston Rodeos. He has been an NFR television announcer since 1980. Barrett's easily recognizable "voice of rodeo" will also guide spectators through the antics and heroics of American Rodeo Style Bullfighters who will be on hand to add their own type of life risking chills and thrills to the event as several American Style Bullfights are to be held throughout the evening. So mark you calendars and plan to attend an event that is yet another FIRST in Atascosa County. Practice up on your calls of "El Toro" and "Ole!" and prepare to throw your loudest gritos!

2010 WORLD CHAMPION FREESTYLE BULL FIGHTER TO COMPETE
2010 World Champion Freestyle Bullfighter to perform May 7 in Poteet
Cowboy Fellowship is hosting one of the most unique sporting events ever to come to Atascosa County. On Saturday, the audience will get to see two premier events. Starting at 6:30 PM , this event promises a night of pure excitement that will keep you on the edge of your seat title at the Poteet Lions Club Arena located at the Strawberry Festival Grounds on Hwy 16 South. A bloodless bullfight with matador Enrique Delgado known as the Cyclone of Monterrey will fight three bulls and between his bullfights, the audience will experience a freestyle bullfighting competition.
Freestyle bullfighting is a style of bullfighting developed in American rodeo. The style was developed by the rodeo clowns who protect bull riders from being trampled or gored by an angry bull. Freestyle bullfighting is a 70-second competition in which the bullfighter avoids the bull by means of dodging, jumping and use of a barrel. One of the American freestyle bullfighters that will compete at the Bullfight event is Evan Allard.
Evan Allard is from Vinita, Oklahoma. He graduated from Oklahoma State University and works as a transmission electrician for Kamo Power Company when he is not fighting bulls. Evan always wanted to be a bullfighter. "Nobody in my family was big into rodeo and it's something I wanted to do. I finally started when I was 16 and my mom sent me to the Sankey Rodeo School. " The Sankey Rodeo School works with young and old cowboys in all aspects of what it takes to be successful in the rodeo business. Each student works with bucking stock to best fit the age, experience, athletic ability and goals of the participant. The only limitation to how many bulls they ride is their physical condition, ability and attitude. The school's motto is -Rodeo is NOT T-Ball!.
In just a few years, Evan has become one of the premier athletes in freestyle bullfighting. He was the 2009 and 2010 Thunder Equigames Champion. Staying mentally prepared is a key to his success. He practices with a fighting dummy, but he watches video tape and goes over each fight in his mind to prepare for each fight. His amazing athletic ability combined with mental alertness ensures that the audience is in for a fantastic show.
To relax, Evan plays a lot of ping pong. His dad plays Olympic level ping pong and there is a group that gets together every week. Competition is in his blood and he loves the thrill of the game whether it is fighting wild bulls or playing ping pong!
Bring your family and friends to see Evan perform at the Bullfight on Saturday in Poteet. Gates will open at 5:30. Seating is first come first serve. Parking is free. Admission is $5 per person aged 10 and up. No alcohol or ice chests will be allowed. Concession stand will be available during the show.

Egg Hunt!!!

2011-04-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Tyanna is looking forward to the Cowboy Fellowship Easter Egg Hunt to be held Friday, April 22nd at the Jourdanton City Park at 6:30 in the evening! Bring your baskets and join the fun! Hunts will be divided by age. It's all FREE and there will be plenty of fun, candy, and eggs for all!!! Please feel free to invite your friends and spread the word.

2011-04-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

BOOST 2011 brought a fun and information filled weekend to Cowboy Fellowship. Participants were treated to the music of 'Branded' and fun times of fellowship accompanied by tasty meals and treats. The event schedule was packed with sessions that delivered on the promise of education, growth, and connection. Classes were led by Bill Claiborne, Bill Bryan, Jimmy Smith, Gene Wilkes, Joe Santee, Scott Willingham, and the members of Branded, as well as our own J.D. Dunson, John Elmore, Adam Shelburne, Scotty Smith, and Pete Pawelek. BOOST originated several years ago as a forum to train, encourage and promote unity in purpose among the leadership of Cowboy Fellowship, and has since grown to include anyone who would like to attend. This year's event drew attendees not only from among the ranks of Cowboy Fellowship, but from other cowboy churches as well.

People You Should Know #4 "Anselm"

2011-03-31T06:30:00.000-07:00

Anselm

Reluctant bishop with a remarkable mind

“No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved.”

In the Middle Ages, it was customary for bishops-elect to make a show of protest to signify their modesty. When Anselm, an Italian monk from Normandy, was chosen to become archbishop of Canterbury, he protested too. The episcopal staff had to be held against his clenched fist. But his refusal was sincere: for Anselm, becoming the archbishop meant less time for his studies. His instincts, in fact, have proved correct: Anselm is remembered today not merely as a great archbishop but as one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages.

Pulled to higher office

The struggle between the scholarly life and that of high office began in Anselm’s earliest years. His father, Gundulf, wanted to see him in politics and forbade him from entering the local abbey. When the abbot refused to accept the 15-year-old without his father’s consent, Anselm prayed to become ill: he reasoned he could enter if he was in danger of death. He actually became seriously ill but was still refused admission.

After wandering Europe for years, looking to stretch his mind, Anselm settled at Bec, Normandy, to study under Lanfranc, a renowned scholar. Anselm felt here he could live the monastic life in obscurity, since the fame of Lanfranc would outshine his possible accomplishments.

But Anselm shined nonetheless. After three years, Lanfranc left the abbey to become archbishop of Canterbury, and Anselm replaced him as prior. He spent his time reading and reflecting on theological mysteries. Under his leadership, the monastery became famous for its scholastic excellence. When administrative duties interfered with his desired calling, he begged the local bishop to relieve him of some of his duties. Instead, the bishop told Anselm to prepare himself for higher office.

A proof of God

At Bec, Anselm made his first great intellectual contribution: he attempted to prove the existence of God. He set out his famous ontological argument in his Proslogion. God is “that which nothing greater can be thought,” he argued. We cannot think of this entity as anything but existing because a god who exists is greater than one who merely is an idea. The argument, though contested almost as soon as it was written, has influenced philosophers even into the twentieth century.

Anselm also thought deeply on the relationship of faith and reason. He concluded that faith is the precondition of knowledge (credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand”). He didn’t despise reason; in fact he employed it in all his writings. He simply believed knowledge cannot lead to faith, and knowledge gained outside of faith is untrustworthy.

Squaring off against the king

In 1066 the Normans invaded England, and William the Conqueror gave the monastery at Bec several tracts of English land. Following the invasion, Anselm was summoned across the channel three times, where he impressed the English clergy. When Lanfranc died in 1089, they pressed William II to appoint Anselm to the archbishopric (formally the prerogative of the pope, but in practice the archbishop of Canterbury was the king’s appointee). Anselm was reluctant, as was William II for political reasons, and the position went unfilled for four years. Then, one day, the king fell seriously ill and, fearing hell, appointed Anselm against his repeated pleas.

Anselm immediately exerted pressure on the king: he refused to do anything priestly for William until the king restored lands to Canterbury, recognized the archbishop as supreme in spiritual matters, and pledged his allegiance to Pope Urban II (who was embroiled in a power struggle with England). The king, also called William Rufus, agreed, but reneged on his promises when he recovered from his illness. In fact, he would not even let Anselm visit Rome. When Rufus denied permission the third time, Anselm blessed him and left England anyway.

Productive in exile

Anselm no doubt felt relieved. He had hated his position at Canterbury. He had avoided getting involved in disputes and often became ill when he was required to arbitrate disagreements. On the other hand, if one of his monks drew him aside and asked a theological question, he at once became enthralled and, as he explained his answer, his spirits rose. So while in exile, he again begged the pope to relieve him, but the pope replied that he needed Anselm’s theological mind.

While in exile, Anselm wrote Why Did God Become Man?, which became the most influential treatise on the atonement in the Middle Ages. He argued for the “satisfaction theory.” Early theologians, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, held to the “ransom theory”: humankind was held captive to sin and death by Satan, at least until Christ paid the ransom through his death, and in the Resurrection, broke the power of Satan’s chains. Anselm argued instead that it wasn’t Satan who was owed something but God. In Adam, all human beings had sinned against divine holiness. Furthermore, being both finite and sinful, people were powerless to make proper restitution. That could only be accomplished by Christ: “No one but one who is God-man can make the satisfaction by which man is saved.”

With the ascension of Henry I in 1100, Anselm was invited back to Canterbury. But when the king demanded homage from the bishops, Anselm refused and would not consecrate bishops who had done so. The controversy raged for six years, but Anselm eventually won.

For his last two years, he was able to study in relative peace. On his deathbed, Palm Sunday, 1107, Anselm told his monks he was ready to die, but before he did, he wanted to settle Augustine’s question of the origin of the soul. “I do not know of anyone who will be able to do the work if I do not,” he told them. But by Tuesday morning of Holy Week, he was dead.^[1]

^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 27-29.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)

People You Should Know #3 "John of Damascus"

2011-03-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

John of Damascus

Image-conscious Arab

“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.”

Visitors to an Orthodox Church are confronted with many unfamiliar elements of worship: for example, the use of incense and Byzantine chant and the custom of standing throughout the service. But perhaps the most perplexing element is the icons, especially when Orthodox worshipers bow before and kiss them. Isn’t this idolatry?

This very question raged through the Christian world in the eighth and ninth centuries, and it occupied the attention of two of the seven ecumenical (worldwide) church councils. The strongest defense of the practice came from a Christian living in the heart of the Islamic empire, John of Damascus.

Responding to the imperial volcano

He was born John Monsur, into a wealthy Arab-Christian family of Damascus. Like his father, he held a position high in the court of the caliph. About 725 he resigned his office and became a monk at Mar Saba near Bethlehem, where he became a priest. In this secluded place at the relatively advanced age of 51, John’s lasting legacy began to unfold. It began when Emperor Leo III, in 726, outlawed the veneration of icons.

The conflict had been brewing for decades. It wasn’t a question of bowing and kissing icons; this was a culturally acceptable way to show respect. The basic question went deeper: are Christians allowed to paint pictures of Jesus, or other biblical figures, at all? As Islam spread through the Mediterranean region, bringing its absolute interdiction of images, Christianity was feeling pressure to rid itself of images.

The main threat to icons came not from the Islamic caliph but from the heart of the Byzantine Empire. A few bishops from Asia Minor (now Turkey) believed the Bible, particularly the second commandment, forbade such images:

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

The bishops’ argument convinced Byzantine Emperor Leo III, who set about to convince his subjects to abandon iconography. But a natural disaster changed his approach. In 726 a violent volcano erupted in the middle of the Aegean Sea and terrorized Constantinople, the capital. Afterward, tidal waves buffeted the shores and volcanic ash extinguished the sunlight. Leo reasoned that God was angry about icons. That’s when he outlawed their use.

In 730 Leo commanded the destruction of all religious likenesses, whether icons, mosaics, or statues, and iconoclasts (“image smashers” in Greek) went on a spree, demolishing nearly all icons in the Empire.

From his distant post in the Holy Land, John challenged this policy in three works. He argued that icons should not be worshiped, but they could be venerated. (The distinction is crucial: a Western parallel might be the way a favorite Bible is read, cherished, and treated with honor—but certainly not worshiped.)

John explained it like this: “Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord’s passion in mind and see the image of Christ’s crucifixion, his saving passion is brought back to remembrance, and we fall down and worship not the material but that which is imaged: just as we do not worship the material of which the Gospels are made, nor the material of the Cross, but that which these typify.”

Second, John drew support from the writings of the early fathers like Basil the Great, who wrote, “The honor paid to an icon is transferred to its prototype.” That is, the actual icon was but a point of departure for the expressed devotion; the recipient was in the unseen world.

Third, John claimed that, with the birth of the Son of God in the flesh, the depiction of Christ in paint and wood demonstrated faith in the Incarnation. Since the unseen God had become visible, there was no blasphemy in painting visible representations of Jesus or other historical figures. To paint an icon of him was, in fact, a profession of faith, deniable only by a heretic!

“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter,” he wrote. “I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.”

Eastern theologian for the whole church

While the controversy continued to rage, John spent his days at Mar Saba monastery in the hills 18 miles southeast of Jerusalem. There he wrote both theological treatises and hymns; he is recognized as one of the principal hymnographers of Eastern Orthodoxy. His most important theological work, The Fount of Wisdom, is a summary of Eastern theology.

Tradition says that his fellow monks grumbled that such elegant writing was a distraction and prideful; so John was sometimes sent to sell baskets humbly in the streets of Damascus, where he had once been among the elite.

After more dissension and bloodshed over icons (the decade after John’s death, over 100,000 Christians were injured or killed), the issue was finally settled, and icons are an integral part of Orthodox worship to this day. His other writings were major influences on Western theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. In 1890 he was named a doctor of the church by the Vatican, and in this century, his writings have become a fresh source of theological insight, especially for Eastern theologians.^[1]

^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 24-26.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)

Japan quake also shook Edwards Aquifer

2011-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

It really is amazing how everything in creation is so connected. As I told you Sunday the Japan earthquake also shook Edwards Aquifer here in south central Texas. Just fifteen minutes after the quake hit our aquifer started fluctuating up and down for hours due to the quake in Japan. There is a spiritual lesson here for us as well. Just as things in our physical world are connected it is the same for us spiritually. Events, circumstances, and situations that seem totally unrelated to our spiritual condition can cause great fluctuations in our spiritual lives. This weekend we focused on the Sabbath and making sure we all take time to rest. Rest may not seem important and is frequently something we put off for another day, but everything is connected. If we refuse to rest, if we resist the Sabbath it won't be long before our disobedience to one of God's greatest commands catches up to us. Take time to rest this week!

People You Should Know #2 "Augustine of Hippo"

2011-03-17T06:24:00.000-07:00

Augustine of Hippo
ARCHITECT OF THE MIDDLE AGES

“Mankind is divided into two sorts: such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities.… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth”

Barbarians surged into the empire, threatening the Roman way of life as never before. The Christian church also faced attack from internal heretics. The potential destruction of culture, civilization, and the church was more than an occasional nightmare—it was perceived as an immediate threat. And Augustine answered with such wisdom, his responses are still considered by some to be the church’s most important writings after the Bible.

Sex and fun
From his birth in a small North African town, Augustine knew the religious differences overwhelming the Roman Empire: his father was a pagan who honored the old Punic gods; his mother was a zealous Christian. But the adolescent Augustine was less interested in religion and learning than in sex and high living—like joining with friends to steal pears from a neighbor’s vineyard “not to eat them ourselves but simply to throw them to the pigs.”
At age 17, Augustine set off to school in Carthage—the country boy in the jewel of North Africa. There the underachiever became enraptured with his studies and started to make a name for himself. He immersed himself in the writings of Cicero and Manichaean philosophers and cast off the vestiges of his mother’s religion.
His studies completed, Augustine returned to his home town of Thagaste to teach rhetoric—and some Manichaeism on the side. (The philosophy, based on the teachings of a Persian named Mani, was a dualist corruption of Christianity. It taught that the world of light and the world of darkness constantly war with each other, catching most of humanity in the struggle.) Augustine tried to hide his views from his mother, Monica, but when she found out, she threw him out of the house.
But Monica, who had dreamt her son would become a Christian, continued to pray and plead for his conversion and followed him to Carthage when he moved there to teach. When Augustine was offered a professorship in Rome, Monica begged him not to go. Augustine told her to go home and sleep comfortably in the knowledge that he would stay in Carthage. When she left, he boarded a ship for Rome.

Darkness vanquished
After a year in Rome, Augustine moved again, to become the professor of rhetoric for the city of Milan. There he began attending the cathedral to hear the impressive oratory of Ambrose the bishop; he kept attending because of Ambrose’s preaching. He soon dropped his Manichaeism in favor of Neoplatonism, the philosophy of both Roman pagans and Milanese Christians.
His mother finally caught up with him and set herself to find her son a proper wife. Augustine had a concubine he deeply loved and who had given him a son, but he would not marry her because it would have ruined him socially and politically.
Added to the emotional strain of forsaking his lover and the shift in philosophies, Augustine was struggling with himself. For years he had sought to overcome his fleshly passions and nothing seemed to help. It seemed to him that even his smallest transgressions were weighted with meaning. Later, writing about the pear stealing of his youth, he reflected, “Our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.”
One afternoon, he wrestled anxiously about such matters while walking in his garden. Suddenly he heard a child’s sing-song voice repeating, “Take up and read.” On a table lay a collection of Paul’s epistles he’d been reading; he picked it up and read the first thing he saw: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites” (Romans 13:13–14).
He later wrote, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

From monk to bishop
Augustine’s conversion sent shockwaves through his life. He resigned his professorship, dashed off a note to Ambrose telling of his conversion, and retreated with his friends and mother to a country villa in Cassiciacum. There he continued discussing philosophy and churning out books in a Neoplatonist vein. After half a year, he returned to Milan to be baptized by Ambrose, then headed back to Thagaste to live as a writer and thinker.
By the time he reached his home town (a journey lengthened by political turmoil), he had lost his mother, his son, and one of his closest friends. These losses propelled Augustine into a deeper, more vigorous commitment: he and friends established a lay ascetic community in Thagaste to spend time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures.
In 391, Augustine traveled to Hippo to see about setting up a monastery in the area. His reputation went before him. The story goes that, seeing the renowned layman in church one Sunday, Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo. The crowd stared at Augustine and then pushed him forward for ordination. Against his will, Augustine was made a priest. The laity, thinking his tears of frustration were due to his wanting to be a bishop rather than priest, tried to assure him that good things come to those who wait.
Valerius, who spoke no Punic (the local language), quickly handed over teaching and preaching duties to his new priest, who did speak the local language. Within five years, after Valerius died, Augustine became bishop of Hippo.

Orthodox champion for a millennium
Guarding the church from internal and external challenges topped the new bishop’s agenda. The church in North Africa was in turmoil. Though Manichaeism was already on its way out, it still had a sizable following. Augustine, who knew its strengths and weaknesses, dealt it a death blow. At the public baths, Augustine debated Fortunatus, a former schoolmate from Carthage and a leading Manichaean. The bishop made quick work of the heretic, and Fortunatus left town in shame.
Less easily handled was Donatism, a schismatic and separatist North African church. They believed the Catholic church had been compromised and that Catholic leaders had betrayed the church during earlier persecutions. Augustine argued that Catholicism was the valid continuation of the apostolic church. He wrote scathingly, “The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak ‘We are the only Christians!’ ”
In 411 the controversy came to a head as the imperial commissioner convened a debate in Carthage to decide the dispute once and for all. Augustine’s rhetoric destroyed the Donatist appeal, and the commissioner pronounced against the group, beginning a campaign against them.
It was not, however, a time of rejoicing for the church. The year before the Carthage conference, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome. Many upper-class Romans fled for their lives to North Africa, one of the few safe havens left in the empire. And now Augustine was left with a new challenge—defending Christianity against claims that it had caused the empire’s downfall by turning eyes away from Roman gods.
Augustine’s response to the widespread criticism came in 22 volumes over 12 years, in The City of God. He argued that Rome was punished for past sins, not new faith. His lifelong obsession with original sin was fleshed out, and his work formed the basis of the medieval mind. “Mankind is divided into two sorts,” he wrote. “Such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities.… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth.”
One other front Augustine had to fight to defend Christianity was Pelagianism. Pelagius, a British monk, gained popularity just as the Donatist controversy ended. Pelagius rejected the idea of original sin, insisting instead that the tendency to sin is humankind’s own free choice. Following this reasoning, there is no need for divine grace; individuals must simply make up their minds to do the will of God. The church excommunicated Pelagius in 417, but his banner was carried on by young Julian of Eclanum. Julian took potshots at Augustine’s character as well as his theology. With Roman snobbery, he argued that Augustine and his other low-class African friends had taken over Roman Christianity. Augustine argued with the former bishop for the last ten years of his life.
In the summer of 429, the Vandals invaded North Africa, meeting almost no resistance along the way. Hippo, one of the few fortified cities, was overwhelmed with refugees. In the third month of the siege, the 76-year-old Augustine died, not from an arrow but from a fever. Miraculously, his writings survived the Vandal takeover, and his theology became one of the main pillars on which the church of the next 1,000 years was built.

Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 20-23.
131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)

Slain pastor laid to rest

2011-03-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months several local churches in our area have been robbed. Thankfully no one was hurt, and the thieves came and went without contact with any church staff or members. But those events serve as a great reminder to all churches. We are not exempt from evil, pain, or hardship, in fact we can be certain that our enemy will inflict it upon us whenever he gets a chance. Why people rob churches is beyond me. Very few churches in the entire world have large amounts of money in savings and even fewer keep more than $50 cash on hand in the offices. Like everyone else these days churches use banks to hold their money, debit cards, and checks are then used to spend money. But still church robbery seems to be a growing trend in our area and around the country as our economy struggles. Churches are not good targets for robbery for the above mentioned reasons, but they are soft targets. It is much easier to rob a church, versus a bank. Cowboy Fellowship has always sought to protect our staff and members. You might not know this but there is live video surveillance inside of all of our buildings and parking lots. We have recently increased our surveillance capabilities with additional cameras as well. Our church also hires uniformed and undercover officers for our events and services. Our church is also equipped with a state of the art alarm system that is monitored 24/7. We have recently initiated a new policy to better protect our staff as well. Our doors are now kept locked during the day and visitors are buzzed in through the office entrance. This ensures that we know who is in our building at all times. I know this has come as an inconvenience for some and a few have expressed disapproval over this decision. I believe with time most will come to see the value of the security measures we have in place at our church. While these measures don't guarantee that we will be able to avoid some tragic incident it will move us from a soft target to a more difficult one. I would ask to to say a prayer for Clint Dobson's family and NorthPointe church. Clint and the church secretary were robbed on March the 3rd. The two alleged robbers killed Clint and left the secretary, who barely survived, for dead. I have included the news article below to help you pray for the family.

ARLINGTON, Texas (ABP) -- Mourners filled First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, March 9 to celebrate the life of a young mission pastor cut short by murder, while more than 500 others watched live on the Internet.
Clint Dobson, 28, was laid to rest six days after his suffocation death during a robbery at NorthPointe Baptist Church, a satellite of First Baptist Church and part of the congregation's expansive mission outreach to the poor.

Clint Dobson

Dennis Wiles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Arlington, reminded worshipers the funeral service fell on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent celebrated for centuries by Christians worldwide to turn from worldly concerns to focus on 40 days leading up to remembrance of Christ's death on the cross.
"This year my journey will be deeper and richer because of Clint Dobson," Wiles said. "My life will be more closely linked with Jesus as I journey to the cross this year, because of the sacrifice of a servant of God."
Friends, family and mentors in ministry remembered Dobson as a fun-loving and gifted young minister devoted to his young wife, Laura.
"I take great hope in the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ," said Robert Creech, Dobson's former pastor for 15 years who now teaches pastoral ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary. "I believe in the resurrection of the dead. I believe in life everlasting. I mean that. But honestly I have to say … we feel robbed, pillaged to have Clint taken out of our world. The church and the world feel poorer for it, and many in our seminary feel the same sense of loss that the people of North Pointe Church surely do and his family most of all."
Dobson graduated from Baylor University in 2004. He enrolled at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, but after Hurricane Katrina temporarily closed the school, he transferred to Baylor's Truett Seminary. Professors there described him as a star pupil not only sharp enough for doctoral studies but also rare in his love for others demonstrated in ministry to the poor.
"Clint Dobson's life was lived well. Whatever he did he gave his all and his best," said Jeff Waldo, associate pastor for discipleship at University Baptist Church in Houston who supervised Dobson as a ministry intern working at a low-income apartment complex in 2005. "In what time he lived he got it right. He loved people and he loved God and he communicated God's love with clarity."
After earning his master's degree from Truett in 2008, Dobson joined the staff of First Baptist Church in Arlington as mission pastor of NorthPointe Baptist Church.
"I remember his excitement about coming to NorthPointe and the excitement that sustained during his time here," Waldo said. "He was very thankful and appreciative for the opportunity that was extended to him."
Others said between his ministry and marriage, the last few years were the happiest of Dobson's life -- a life cut short by a senseless murder allegedly committed during a robbery of items including credit cards later used to buy jewelry at a nearby mall.
"We're not going to talk about why," said Dobson's father in law, Philip Rozeman. "Why is too hard. We really want to talk about the question 'who?,' who Clint is."
"Clint's a man who lived God's word, a man whose life had tremendous impact, even if it was only 28 years," Rozeman testified.
Wiles make a similar point. "Since Thursday afternoon our minds have been filled with questions," he said. "That is true of all of us. We have asked hard questions and they have challenged each one of us. Why? How? How could anything good come from something so evil? Those questions will haunt us for a while. In fact it just may be that they are so deep and profound for us that we might live out our entire lives with those questions unanswered."
Wiles encouraged mourners to move forward living in faith and not by sight.
"This world is fleeting," Wiles said. "Sometime it goes by in only 28 years. God has created us for eternity."
In his closing prayer Wiles thanked God for "a life well lived" and "a gospel that is sturdy enough for days like today."

People You Should Know #1 "Athanasius"

2011-03-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

Athanasius

Five-time exile for fighting “orthodoxy”

“Those who maintain ‘There was a time when the Son was not’ rob God of his Word, like plunderers.”

“Black Dwarf” was the tag his enemies gave him. And the short, dark-skinned Egyptian bishop had plenty of enemies. He was exiled five times by four Roman emperors, spending 17 of the 45 years he served as bishop of Alexandria in exile. Yet in the end, his theological enemies were “exiled” from the church’s teaching, and it is Athanasius’s writings that shaped the future of the church.

Challenging “orthodoxy”

Most often the problem was his stubborn insistence that Arianism, the reigning “orthodoxy” of the day, was in fact a heresy.

The dispute began when Athanasius was the chief deacon assistant to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. While Alexander preached “with perhaps too philosophical minuteness” on the Trinity, Arius, a presbyter (priest) from Libya announced, “If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.” The argument caught on, but Alexander and Athanasius fought against Arius, arguing that it denied the Trinity. Christ is not of a like substance to God, they argued, but the same substance.

To Athanasius this was no splitting of theological hairs. Salvation was at issue: only one who was fully human could atone for human sin; only one who was fully divine could have the power to save us. To Athanasius, the logic of New Testament doctrine of salvation assumed the dual nature of Christ. “Those who maintain ‘There was a time when the Son was not’ rob God of his Word, like plunderers.”

Alexander’s encyclical letter, signed by Athanasius (and possibly written by him), attacked the consequences of the Arians’ heresy: “The Son [then,] is a creature and a work; neither is he like in essence to the Father; neither is he the true and natural Word of the Father; neither is he his true wisdom; but he is one of the things made and created and is called the Word and Wisdom by an abuse of terms.… Wherefore he is by nature subject to change and variation, as are all rational creatures.”

The controversy spread, and all over the empire, Christians could be heard singing a catchy tune that championed the Arian view: “There was a time when the Son was not.” In every city, wrote a historian, “bishop was contending against bishop, and the people were contending against one another, like swarms of gnats fighting in the air.”

Word of the dispute made it to the newly converted Emperor Constantine the Great, who was more concerned with seeing church unity than theological truth. “Division in the church,” he told the bishops, “is worse than war.” To settle the matter, he called a council of bishops.

Of the 1,800 bishops invited to Nicea, about 300 came—and argued, fought, and eventually fleshed out an early version of the Nicene Creed. The council, led by Alexander, condemned Arius as a heretic, exiled him, and made it a capital offense to possess his writings. Constantine was pleased that peace had been restored to the church. Athanasius, whose treatise On the Incarnation laid the foundation for the orthodox party at Nicea, was hailed as “the noble champion of Christ.” The diminutive bishop was simply pleased that Arianism had been defeated.

But it hadn’t.

Bishop in exile

Within a few months, supporters of Arius talked Constantine into ending Arius’s exile. With a few private additions, Arius even signed the Nicene Creed, and the emperor ordered Athanasius, who had recently succeeded Alexander as bishop, to restore the heretic to fellowship.

When Athanasius refused, his enemies spread false charges against him. He was accused of murder, illegal taxation, sorcery, and treason—the last of which led Constantine to exile him to Trier, now a German city near Luxembourg.

Constantine died two years later, and Athanasius returned to Alexandria. But in his absence, Arianism had gained the upper hand. Now church leaders were against him, and they banished him again. Athanasius fled to Pope Julius I in Rome. He returned in 346, but in the mercurial politics of the day, was banished three more times before he came home to stay in 366. By then he was about 70 years old.

While in exile, Athanasius spent most of his time writing, mostly to defend orthodoxy, but he took on pagan and Jewish opposition as well. One of his most lasting contributions is his Life of St. Antony, which helped to shape the Christian ideal of monasticism. The book is filled with fantastic tales of Antony’s encounters with the devil, yet Athanasius wrote, “Do not be incredulous about what you hear of him.… Consider, rather that from them only a few of his feats have been learned.” In fact, the bishop knew the monk personally, and this saint’s biography is one of the most historically reliable. It became an early “best-seller” and made a deep impression on many people, even helping lead pagans to conversion: Augustine is the most famous example.

During Athanasius’s first year permanently back in Alexandria, he sent his annual letter to the churches in his diocese, called a festal letter. Such letters were used to fix the dates of festivals such as Lent and Easter, and to discuss matters of general interest. In this letter, Athanasius listed what he believed were the books that should constitute the New Testament.

“In these [27 writings] alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed,” he wrote. “No one may add to them, and nothing may be taken away from them.”

Though other such lists had been and would still be proposed, it is Athanasius’s list that the church eventually adopted, and it is the one we use to this day.^[1]

^[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 17-19.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Holman Reference)

SOMETHING NEW!

2011-03-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

OK. We promised change and here it is... What we have done is determine a goal to create a sort of cyber scrapbook within the blog . In the early years of our church our friend and fellow member, Brianna, kept an extentive hardcopy scrapbook. It is so much fun to go back and look at the progress the Lord has made with this group! But, over time we all became so busy that we allowed our scrapbook to fall by the wayside and unfortunately we have probably lost memory of a good bit of our history. My name is Phyllis and Pastor Pete has asked me to help him maintain this site. I would like to ask that anyone who has materials or information about goings on within Cowboy Fellowship at anytime to please feel free to let me know. If you would like to put your information in story form, that's great. If you are more comfortable just supplying dates and number of lives touched, and/or photographs that's fine too. We'll take that information and turn it into an entry for our scrapbook. Our objective with this project is not to brag, or just "publish the numbers", but to offer a reminder of what God can and will accomplish through His people. The devil would love nothing more than for us to live with defeat and the idea that we can do little. This scrapbook should be a reminder to us all the we "Can do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens" Philippians 4:13. He is the source of all power and the author of love. It's God's work we want to boast about, remember, and record! So if you are a leader or member of a group, or you just catch someone in the act of glorifying God whether through worship, fellowship, missions work, or whatever... please let us know so we can get the information we need to record this action as a means of encouragement toward future involvement. Please invite others to follow this blog. Our hope is that everyone will see themselves represented in it! You can get in touch with me through this page, or email me at filisw@aol.com, catch me at church on Sunday mornings, or leave things off at the church office. I look forward to hearing from you!

"And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward acts of love and good deeds." Hebrews 10:24

Have Faith in God

2011-03-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

I read this challenging devotion yesterday from Charles Spurgeon and I have been unable to get it out of my mind since. Maybe it will stir your heart in a simular way.

“Have faith in God.”
Mark 11:22

Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments. Love can make the feet move more swiftly; but faith is the foot which carries the soul. Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well; and without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag heavily. With faith I can do all things; without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God. If you would find the men who serve God the best, you must look for the men of the most faith. Little faith will save a man, but little faith cannot do great things for God. Poor Little-faith could not have fought “Apollyon;” it needed “Christian” to do that. Poor Little-faith could not have slain “Giant Despair;” it required “Great-heart's” arm to knock that monster down. Little faith will go to heaven most certainly, but it often has to hide itself in a nut-shell, and it frequently loses all but its jewels. Little-faith says, “It is a rough road, beset with sharp thorns, and full of dangers; I am afraid to go;” but Great-faith remembers the promise, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; as thy days, so shall thy strength be:” and so she boldly ventures. Little-faith stands desponding, mingling her tears with the flood; but Great-faith sings, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:” and she fords the stream at once. Would you be comfortable and happy? Would you enjoy religion? Would you have the religion of cheerfulness and not that of gloom? Then “have faith in God.” If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; but if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, “great faith.”

You Can Count on Satan...

2011-03-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

Did the title of this post catch you eye? It should have, but the fact is you can count on Satan...to make your life miserable! The Bible says he wants to kill, steal, and destroy you, and I promise you can count on that! We have been talking about "How To Waste Your Life" this past month at Cowboy Fellowship. So far we have looked at Worry, Doubt, and Fear. If you have missed any of the messages you can listen or download them by clicking here. Today while I was reading I came across the following commentary and I thought I would post it. I think it will help you understand just how crafty, and dangerous our enemy really is.

Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments
The serpent that appeared to Eve is later revealed to be none other than Satan himself (see Rev. 12:9). Those who seek to “demythologize” the Bible believe that this account of the fall is allegorical and not literal. They cite the talking serpent as proof. Can the story of the serpent’s deceiving Eve be accepted as factual? The Apostle Paul thought so (2 Cor. 11:3). So did the Apostle John (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). Nor is this the only instance of a talking animal in Scripture. God gave a voice to Balaam’s donkey to restrain the madness of the prophet (Num. 22), and the Apostle Peter accepted this as literal (2 Pet. 2:16). These three apostles were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write as they did. Thus to reject the account of the fall as literal is to reject the inspiration of Holy Scripture. There are allegories in the Bible, but this is not one of them.
Notice the steps that plunged the human race into sin. First Satan insinuated doubt about the Word of God: “Has God indeed said?” He misrepresented God as forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of every tree. Next, Eve said that they were not to eat or “touch the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.” But God had said nothing about touching the tree. Then Satan flatly contradicted God about the inevitability of judgment on those who disobeyed, just as his followers still deny the facts of hell and eternal punishment. Satan misrepresented God as seeking to withhold from Adam and Eve something that would have been beneficial to them. Eve yielded to the threefold temptation: the lust of the flesh (good for food), the lust of the eyes (pleasant to the eyes), and the pride of life (a tree desirable to make one wise). In doing so, she acted independently of Adam, her head. She should have consulted him instead of usurping his authority. In the words “she took of its fruit and ate” lie the explanation of all the sickness, sorrow, suffering, fear, guilt, and death that have plagued the human race ever since that time. Someone has said, “The wreckage of earth and a million billion graves attest that God is true and Satan is the liar.” Eve was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), but Adam acted willfully and in deliberate rebellion against God.
Secular humanism perpetuates Satan’s lie, “You will be like God.”
3:7–13 The first result of sin was a sense of shame and fear. The aprons of fig leaves speak of man’s attempt to save himself by a bloodless religion of good works. When called to account by God, sinners excuse themselves. Adam said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me …” as if blaming God (see Prov. 19:3). Eve said, “The serpent …” (v. 13).
In love and mercy God searched after His fallen creatures with the question “Where are you?” This question proved two things—that man was lost and that God had come to seek. It proved man’s sin and God’s grace. God takes the initiative in salvation, demonstrating the very thing Satan got Eve to doubt—His love.
3:14 The Lord God cursed the serpent to degradation, disgrace, and defeat. The fact that the serpent is cursed more than all cattle or any other beast of the field suggests that reptiles are primarily in view here rather than Satan.
3:15 But verse 15 switches to the Devil himself. This verse is known as the protevangelium, meaning “The First Gospel.” It predicts the perpetual hostility between Satan and the woman (representing all mankind), and between Satan’s seed (his agents) and her Seed (the Messiah). The woman’s Seed would crush the Devil’s head, a mortal wound spelling utter defeat. This wound was administered at Calvary when the Savior decisively triumphed over the Devil. Satan, in turn, would bruise the Messiah’s heel. The heel wound here speaks of suffering and even of physical death, but not of ultimate defeat. So Christ suffered on the cross, and even died, but He arose from the dead, victorious over sin, hell, and Satan. The fact that He is called the woman’s Seed may contain a suggestion of His virgin birth. Note the kindness of God in promising the Messiah before pronouncing sentence in the following verses.
3:16–19 Sin has inevitable consequences. The woman was sentenced to suffering in childbirth. She would be subject to her husband. The man was sentenced to earn his livelihood from ground that was cursed with thorns and thistles. It would mean toil and sweat for him. Then at the end of life, he himself would return to dust. It should be noted here that work itself is not a curse; it is more often a blessing. It is the sorrow, toil, frustration, perspiration, and weariness connected with work that are the curse.
3:20, 21 Adam displayed faith in calling his wife’s name Eve … the mother of all living, since no baby had ever been born up to this time. Then tunics of skin were provided by God through the death of an animal. This pictures the robe of righteousness which is provided for guilty sinners through the shed blood of the Lamb of God, made available to us on the basis of faith.
3:22–24 There was a shade of truth in Satan’s lie that Eve would become like God (v. 5). But she and Adam learned by the hard way of experience to discern between good and evil. If they had then eaten of the tree of life, they would have lived forever in bodies subject to sickness, degeneration, and infirmity. Thus it was God’s mercy that prevented them from returning to Eden. Cherubim are celestial creatures whose function is to “vindicate the holiness of God against the presumptuous pride of fallen man.”
Adam and Eve had to decide whether God or Satan was lying. They decided that God was. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Thus their names are missing from the Honor Roll of Faith in Hebrews 11.
The ideal environment of Eden did not prevent the entrance of sin. A favorable environment is not the answer to man’s problems.

William MacDonald and Arthur Farstad, Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), Ge 3:1–24.Believer's Bible Commentary

SOMETHING'S UP!!!

2011-03-06T07:48:00.000-08:00

Change is coming... Watch for updates!!!
(prw)

Facing the Future Fearlessly

2011-03-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

“You have a past. It’s no secret. You may have done things out in the open that people have rightly condemned you for, or you may have tried to bury away deep dark secrets in back of your mind and far down in your heart. But the past is there and it’s not all pretty.

While this is true, it’s important that you don’t let the devil convince you that you are the only person in the world who has problems in your past. It’s just not true. You are not the only person to experience pain, who has gone through a divorce, or who has seen the horrors of war, made a mistake, served time in prison, deeply hurt someone you love, or has fallen short of the mark. Everyone has a past, and everyone’s past is full of problems, mistakes, and heartache. But sometimes we let the devil convince us that we are the only person in the world who has a past. Worse yet, sometimes we think that our past is so hideous that nothing can make us right again. That’s just not true.”

This past weekend Pastor Pete Pawelek told the folks gathered at Cowboy Fellowship that even though we all do have a past filled with sin, we may look at that past in different ways. One may fear that he, and therefore his sin, isn’t important enough to bother with, while another fears theirs is so horrible that they are beyond any hope of forgiveness. Truth be told, both are wrong. Sin is sin, and the wages of any sin is death and eternal damnation. The devil wants you to know only this in order to cause you to fear the past, so he can control you, and manipulate your life. When he does that you will begin to fear your past and He will WIN!

“There is only one way to overcome the fear of your past and know that you have hope for a future. And hope is possible even in a world that appears to be filled with some pretty scary stuff. There are riots and wars going on all over the world today. The price of oil has risen, and the cost of gas has increased greatly in just the last seven days. Unemployment is high, economists are predicting a second recession, or even depression may be in our future. But no one really knows what the future holds except God. God knows our past and holds our future. He has given us a means to leave our past behind and to move without fear into the future. We can live in fear of the possibilities the future holds and waste our lives, or we can trust God, have faith, and be fearless despite the future. Fear of the future can be a powerful force that can keep us on the sidelines and cause us to waste our lives.”

Only God is bigger than our problems, He is stronger than any hold Satan can ever have on our lives. His forgiveness is more solid, sure, and sustainable then any guilt Satan can throw in our paths. God gave His Son, Jesus Christ, for you and for me. His perfect blood was shed in order for us to be blameless before God. To consider your past sin either too insignificant or too horrific, and your future too uncertain to trust with Jesus, is a foolish and costly move. Please don’t let your fear of the past cripple your hope for the future. To learn more about the forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ come to a place where you will be welcomed no matter what your current state or circumstance is. Cowboy Fellowship offers teaching messages Saturday evenings at 7 and Sunday mornings at 10:45 as well as various small group sessions during the week in the big metal building out on FM 3350. You are important enough to Jesus for Him to die for, isn’t he worthy of your trust?

submitted by: P Weatherston

10 Things You May Not Know About Your Pastor

2011-02-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I told you about one of the ten things that Stephen Cavness mentioned in an article entitled "10 Things You May Not Know About Your Pastor." Many of you have asked what the other nine are so I am posting the article below.

10 Things You May Not Know About Your Pastor (reprinted from Homelife Magazine/Jan. 2011)

The following article appeared in the January 2011 edition of Homelife Magazine, distributed by Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. The author, Stephen Cavness, is pastor of Cave City Baptist Church in Cave City, Kentucky. His article sums up the heart of a pastor. Pray for your pastor and church staff!!! :)

Paul's New Testament letters are full of prayers for his fellow believers. Like most pastors, I'm often surprised to find that my church members don't realize that I pray for them regularly--not just when they are sick or experiencing turmoil. Here are 10 things, generally speaking, that may surprise you about your pastor.

1. HE LOVES YOU--and not just because it's part of his job description. As a pastor, God has placed in his heart a love and concern for you that you probably wouldn't believe if he tried to explain it, although, like me, he could try harder. Your words, notes and other forms of encouragement mean so much because they come from people your pastor really cares about.
2. HE GETS FRUSTRATED--because most of his church family thinks he's the first to know everything when he's often the last. Few things are more discouraging than learning there has been heartache, sickness, or turmoil that everyone else has been talking about for a week, wondering why the pastor hasn't called or come by. He could use your help in this area.
3. HE UNDERSTANDS THAT YOU DON'T AGREE--with everything he does. He may even know that your way would be better. But sometimes, he also knows he might have to do things a certain and is way for a while longer (or change something a bit more quickly) for the greater good. He's deeply aware that it may be inconvenient or not as effective, but he's willing for some to be frustrated if it means he can prevent bickering in the church--or to make certain that he's not compromising doctrinally in an area that maybe no one else has noticed.
4. YOU FILL HIM WITH OVERWHELMING JOY--Whether it's your becoming consistent in your attendance, asking him a question that reveals you've been thinking about gospel implications, treating others with grace, smiling while you sing, showing concern when someone is missing from the church, lingering after services because you would rather spend more time together than leave, or many other great things, you make him happy. There are times when he's near tears because he sees God bringing His work to completion in you.
5. HE WANTS YOU TO REALLY KNOW AND LOVE THE GOSPEL--To have genuine love for one another, and to have your life shaped by the grace of God because when the church has this love and is gripped in this way, there is rejoicing both on earth and in heaven!
6. HE DOESN'T EXPECT YOU TO BE PERFECT and is acutely aware that he's not. In fact, a lot of times he's afraid that you may perceive he's not the man of God you thought he was. Not because of some gross sin but because he, too, can be lazy, selfish, tired, frustrated, and distracted in his walk with Christ. Pray that he won't be!
7. FOR EVERY SERMON YOU THINK HE BOMBED, HE THINKS HE BOMBED TWICE AS HARD. But know this: Sometimes, the sermon you love the most leaves him the most frustrated because what you tell him you loved about it misses the point he was trying to make. Other times, he's 100 percent certain that he proclaimed the text exactly as the Lord wanted him to and feels invigorated to have done so--until he realizes everyone hated it or was bored. Knowing that he shouldn't try to be a people pleaser but wanting his church family to be encouraged and engaged is hard to balance. Pray for him.
8. SOMETIMES, HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE'S DOING. It's not that he hasn't been called to the ministry, but seminary or Bible college doesn't train him for every situation. Things often come up and he has no idea what to do. Sometimes, by the grace of God, he gets it right. Sometimes, he swings and misses and it scares him to think he might miss again the next time. Pray that he would be bold in trusting Christ at all times and in all circumstances.
9. IT BOTHERS HIM WHEN HE CAN'T MAKE YOUR SITUATION BETTER. He doesn't care so much about being the hero or the great problem solver, but he's rooting for your marriage to work out. He wants your rebellious child to see the truth. He wants your parent to show you affection. He wants the memories of abuse to be swept away. He wants you to overcome doubts that God is real or that your faith is genuine. He knows that God is in control and that He alone can heal these wounds and perform these miracles. But when the answers to his prayers aren't coming, it breaks his heart for you and he would do almost anything to fix things if he could.
10. HE WANTS, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, for your labor to bring honor and glory to God. He knows he has blown it sometimes, that there have been instances when he simply could have and should have done better. His calling as a pastor often terrifies him because he knows his own inadequacies better than anyone else. He longs for the church family he serves to get it right because he loves God and he loves you. And when God gets the glory and you reap the benefits, your pastor relishes in the joy that is all rooted in Jesus Christ.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

2011-01-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

Man, Cowboy Fellowship, you guys have been busy. I was just looking over the ACTS map in the back of the church and all that you guys have done in just the first 25 days of 2011, it really is AMAZING! Below are just a few of the things that one team in our church has been up to. I would encourage you to "like" the Matthew 25:35 Facebook page if you have not done so already to stay up to date with all they are doing.

HOUSE FIRE - Last week we were able to help a family who had lost everything that they had when their house burned down. Due to your generosity and your allowing God to work through you we were able to provide clothing for the two little boys and the husband who works a full time job but didn't have the means to replace the clothes that they lost. We were able to get all three of them a couple of new changes of clothes and underwear. The family is currently divided between two relatives homes where they are staying until new housing can be obtained for the family of four.
Matthew 25:35 Team Delivering Heaters and Five Blankets to a Freezing Family Near Charlotte. Thank you for your Stuff the Basket Donations in December.
The handicapped ramp and porch for The Refuge Pregnancy Care Center is now 95% complete. Thanks so much for those of you who helped and a special thanks to John Brymer of Community Bible Church who helped us on this project. He and his wife are driven to save the lives of unborn children.

You can find their facebook page by clicking here.

The Church At Work

2011-01-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

We are only six days into the new year and already our Acts map is filling up with dots. Each dot represents a ministry or mission that Cowboy Fellowship is involved with. While our involvement in so many areas is not new, the ability to visualize all the church does, is. I had a minute before coming into the office today to stop by The Refuge, which is a ministry our church has been involved with from its inception years ago. This organization reaches out primarily to teens who are pregnant. They equip them and help build their parenting skills and confidence prior to the birth of their child. Today members of Cowboy Fellowship and Community Bible Chapel are hard at work at the Refuge doing exterior work to their new building. It is a blessing to see churches working together to expand the Kingdom!

John 5:17 NIV Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”

Top 10 Predictions for 2011

2010-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

Every year around this time all kinds of email forwards start floating around the internet. I think I have seen this one for the past several years but can't be certain. However it is true, and good to think about I hope you enjoy. This was sent to me by a church member last week...

Top 10 Predictions for 2011

      1. The Bible will still have all the answers.
      2. Prayer will still be the most powerful thing on Earth..
      3. The Holy Spirit will still move.
      4. God will still honor the praises of His people.
      5. There will still be God-anointed preaching.
      6. There will still be singing of praise to God.
      7. God will still pour out blessings upon His people.
      8. There will still be room at the Cross.
      9. Jesus will still love you.
    10. Jesus will still save the lost when they come to Him.

Look for God's Plan in the New Year Acts 9:10-15

2010-12-29T08:34:00.000-08:00

I try to read different blogs from others each week. One of my seminary professors (Bill Bryan) writes a weekly message for his church and I thought it would be good to share it with you all as well. Bill is going to be one of the speakers at BOOST 2011 as well. Boost will be on April 8-9 2011 so mark your calanders. More Boost news to come soon!

Look for God's Plan in the New Year

Acts 9:10-15

Ananias is an often overlooked and underappreciated character in the Book of Acts. In Acts 9 where he plays an important role in the conversion of Saul. On the Damascus Road Saul had a miraculous encounter with the risen Christ that left him temporarily blind. This is where we pick up Ananias’ story in Acts 9:10-15, “¹⁰ Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and to him the Lord said in a vision, ‘Ananias.’ And he said, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ ¹¹ So the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. ¹² And in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his¹³ Then Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.’ ¹⁵ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. . . .’”

The rest of the story of course is that Ananias went. Paul’s sight was restored; he was filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized. Paul became God’s Apostle to the Gentiles and the most prolific author of the NT. What if Ananias hadn’t done the hard thing God asked of him? Perhaps the Lord would have called on someone else, but Ananias would have missed a great blessing. How often do we feel like Ananias? God speaks to us about doing a hard thing—forgiving one who has hurt us; giving a tithe or offering; taking a place of leadership in our church; sharing our witness. Whatever hard thing God asks of you, respond like Ananias. Share your fears with the Lord, then do the hard thing in God’s power. Although Ananias is never mentioned again in scripture, I believe he received a blessing by doing the hard thing God asked of him. May you be similarly blessed in the coming new year as you look for God's plan even in the hard things he may call you to do with him for his glory.

2010-12-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

I read a news story today about the top ten christian news stories of 2010. I was shocked to see that at least 7 of the 10 were negative stories. A storng case could be made that 8 of the ten are negative. Everything from Episcopal Church ordains first lesbian bishop, Pastor Terry Jones threatens to burn Quran, and Crystal Cathedral files Chapter 11 were in this top ten list. This made me ask 2 questions, what does this say about our world, and what does it say about us?
First what does it say about our world? I believe Christians live in an ever increasing hostile world. The news media craves all kinds of negative news, but negative news about Christians or the church seem to be the crown jewel for many these days. The world at large is not rooting for us but rather against us. for most of history this has been the case, however in the past 200 years Americans in particular have not faced this kind of religious opposition. However with church attendance falling across the board in America and with the rise of post-modern thought, and an ever increasing focus on materialism and ourselves, I expect that this problem will only continue to get worse. The end game for our enemy is to strip God out of all meaningful areas of our lives. This maybe prayer in school, in God we trust in our court rooms and on our money, or your front yard Christmas nativity scene, they want it gone. The world at large is becoming increasingly negative about all things spiritual, in part due to the obsession with negative Christian news.
But the larger question for me is what does this say about us? First is says that we are horrible marketers. We are allowing the world to define who we are as Christians. We must become more proactive in stating our case, and marketing the great things that the church does, and stands for, so that the world at large might better understand us. This also shows that individual believers and churches both need to really step it up when it comes to telling the world about Christ. Christ is preached from hundreds of thousands of pulpits each weekend, however the gospel is rarely mentioned throughout the week by individual believers. We need a revival of individual evangelism in America today. This will no doubt lead to many coming to know Christ, but it will also lead to a more positive view of the Christian faith. Churches need to become more proactive in their local media markets, to promote the positive things they do. Many newspapers will run small public service articles for free. There are millions of blogs churches can post their positive stories on. Many small towns have local radio stations that will allow Pastors and other church leaders live air-time during the morning news. We should not only advertise "come and see us this Sunday", but also "see what we did for you last week." Churches should put forth extra effort to promote the positive things Christ does through them.
I hope that by the end of 2011 we will find that the top 10 Christian news stories include more positive things and fewer negative.

The Nobodies of Christmas

2010-12-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

The Nobodies of Christmas
by: Ray Hollenbach

When important people come to town, everyone one knows it. NBA stadiums sell out months before LaBron or Kobe show up for game time. When Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson do a personal appearance, hundreds of screaming fans will show up hours ahead of time. When the President visits your city, you can be sure the mayor will meet him at the airport, and schoolchildren will be there to give the First Lady flowers.

The Christmas story shows us that God does things differently. You might even call His way sneaky. The most important person in the history of the world snuck into town late one night and definitely did not stay in a five-star hotel. Actually, Jesus was smuggled into Bethlehem through the womb of a teenage girl, who gave birth in a barn. That’s different.

We all know the story of Christmas: the baby, the barn, the shepherds, and magi. Hidden inside that familiar story is the surprising revelation that God’s way is to ignore the bigshots and use nobodies instead. Just count the nobodies:

Mary was a teenage girl from a small town. In Bible times, women were not important people, and teenagers were even lower on the scale. Mix in her pre-martial pregnancy, and you’ve got a real nobody on your hands. Mary was God’s choice. She conceived the baby Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. God considered her somebody important and gave her a pretty tough assignment!

Joseph was a nobody, too. He was just a working man. He was faced with a choice between trusting God or protecting his small-town reputation. But reputations belong to important people, and most of the important people were in Jerusalem. Joseph said yes to shame, yes to love, and yes to God, so God chose Joseph to act as a foster-father to the Savior of the world.

Shepherds are not important people, just the opposite: second-shift schmucks who work outdoors. Back in that day, watching sheep was not exactly a rock-star kind of gig. Yet they were the first guests invited to the celebration; they saw the skies ripped open and heard the song of heaven. In just one winter night, these social misfits witnessed more of God's glory than all the priests in Jerusalem.

The Magi: They were nothing more than rich pagan astrologers. It didn’t matter if they had money; they were foreigners. Foreigners have the wrong religion, the wrong clothes, and the wrong sacred books--yet the Father invited these rich pagan astrologers, strangers in Israel, to celebrate the birth of the King.

Elizabeth & Zechariah were a kindly old couple engaged in harmless religious activity. They are the kind of people society ignores--unless they are driving too slow on the highway. This childless couple found themselves unexpectedly drafted to care for and raise the greatest prophet of the Old Testament tradition--and the forerunner to the Messiah.

Anna & Simeon: Alone and elderly, they were two people almost completely invisible in Jerusalem. Invisible to everyone except the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God had been whispering to them for decades that they would witness the most important event in human history. Even after they held the baby Jesus that day in the Temple, the world would have considered them people at the margins of society, yet Simeon and Anna were in on God's secret plan decades before the rest of the world knew what was going on.

The secret message inside the Christmas story? God invites the nobodies. And when God invites you to the table, He provides everything you need. The powerful people, the beautiful people, and the cool kids might not make it to the celebration. They’re welcome, but they might be too busy building their own kingdoms. Meanwhile, God’s kingdom is filling up with the people no one notices.

This season, if you are a nobody—rejoice! You are not far from the Kingdom of God.

Reaching Out to Unbelievers at Christmas

2010-12-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

Reaching Out to Unbelievers at Christmas
By: Dr. R. Larry Moyer

Many times as I travel this time of year, people ask the question, “How can I use Christmas to reach out to unbelievers?” The answer I give them is simpler than they are probably expecting. I believe the answer is in two words—think non-Christians. In other words, it doesn’t begin with what you do, but it begins with the way you think. We have an expression today that goes, “Out of sight—out of mind.” I think it’s also possible to say, “Out of mind—out of sight.” If you do not have them on your mind, you won’t have them within view over the holidays. Regardless of what you do and what you participate in, think non-Christians. Once you do that, you’ll be surprised how many ideas come to your mind.
For example, cards are often sent to family and friends, most of whom are believers because of relationships at church, etc. But why not think of five to ten non-Christians you may not be that close to but who would appreciate a card from you? If appropriate, you can include a tract, but I believe there are also times when it’s not appropriate. A warm personal handwritten greeting simply lets them know you care. That warm greeting may open up a door for the gospel later. In each situation, you have to ascertain what’s best. A tract may be enclosed in one card where it may not be in another.
If you’re going to the mall, why not take an unbeliever with you and even offer to buy their lunch? That kind of giving spirit over the holidays is different than just getting a package from beneath the tree and has such a tangible way of saying, “I value your friendship.”
If you’re thinking of a loved one who is a believer who lost a member of their family this year, your concern and attention as you go through the first holiday season would mean a lot. But who do you know that’s an unbeliever who suffered a similar kind of loss? Why not reach out to them as well? The holiday may be even harder for them than it is for a believing family because they do not have the hope in Christ that you have.
I trust you see what I mean. By simply “thinking non-Christians,” you’ll be surprised by all the ideas that come to your mind whereby you can reach out to unbelievers. As you go forth, ask God for wisdom, direction, and boldness. He’ll give you all three.

John 1:14

2010-12-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

John 1:14 ESV And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

This is indeed an incredible biblical text, it's one of the most concise descriptions of Christ's incarnation that we find in Scripture. I love how it begins “and the Word became flesh” how incredible that God himself would come and join humanity as a person? The verse doesn't end there. Instead it says “he dwelt among us.” For 33 years he walked with humanity on planet Earth. Jesus Christ really did dwell among us. He was God in the flesh, yet he chose to walk a mile in our shoes. The author of the text goes on to express that he was an eyewitness when he says “we have seen his glory.” And even though we have not seen his glory in the same way that the author of this text has, we do continue to see miracles each day of our life. We see his glory and the moon and the stars, and the blue sky, green grass, the birth of a child, or the salvation of one lost soul. His glory still surrounds us to this very day and we have seen it with our own eyes. The author says he is "the ONLY SON FROM THE FATHER” And he is full of grace and truth. This is indeed an incredible passage of Scripture to reflect upon during the Christmas season. This morning as I read this passage from The Living Lamp devotional I could not help but take time to pray and thank God that he became flesh among us, has allowed me to see his glory, and thank him for being full of grace and truth and for being the one and only son of God who saved me from my sins.

Lucy—The Runaway Dog

2010-12-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that we have a dog in our family named Lucy. She is a miniature white poodle who at times can be a handful but is generally a great dog. Yesterday afternoon at some point she slipped out the front door without anyone noticing and disappeared. Several hours later I received a text from my wife, who had been frantically calling, whistling, and looking for Lucy. It was almost dark and the temperature was dropping and we both knew it was going to be a long cold night for Lucy if she was still on the street. After I got home I spent some time walking through the neighborhood and later driving around the neighborhood continuing the search for our runaway dog. It had become apparent that she was gone and Abby and I both came to grips with the fact that we may never see Lucy again.

This morning we woke up and decided to call the local pound to see if anyone had brought Lucy in. Abby was unable to locate a number so she called the police department and they informed us that they would have to get back to us later. About an hour passed before we received a call from the Pleasanton Police Department and discovered that LUCY HAD BEEN FOUND! It turns out she was right down the street just around the corner at an extremely nice gentleman’s house. Phil had seen Lucy the previous evening chasing a cat near his home. Phil had lovingly taken Lucy into his home for the night. But he did more than just take her into his home he had put a new collar on her, he’d given her a new doggie toy, and he even let her sleep in his bed for the night. Phil had no idea who’s dog it was but he assumed that it belonged to one of his neighbors and he decided to take it in.

This morning as we sat down to eat breakfast (before we found Lucy) we opened up The Living Lamp and the promise and the challenge both spoke to our hearts. The promise for today came from Matthew 6:27-30 which basically says who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life. God asks why do you worry it does no good at all, instead he encourages us to have faith. The promise is that if we have faith, God will come through. Then the challenge for today came from the book of John chapter 15 verse 17 it read “love each other. This is what I am commanding you to do.” Don’t you find it amazing how God’s word speaks to you each and every day you decide to read it? Not only did the promise for today bring encouragement to our hearts and remind us not to worry about things we had no control over, but we also saw the challenge come to life as well. Everyone knows that the golden rule is to love your neighbor as yourself and God’s Word clearly commands us time and time again to love each other. I’m so glad that we have a neighbor like Phil who, despite not knowing whose dog it was, decided to go out of his way at his own expense to care for Lucy the runaway dog. What are you worried about today? Why are you worried about it? Who can you love, what can you do to bless someone today?

The Christmas Story

2010-12-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

What do you know about the Christmas story? Not the story you heard from your grandmother or your grandfather. Not the story you were told in school, or even the story you heard in Sunday school. What do you know about the Christmas story in the Bible? When was the last time you read it?

Personally I'm very familiar with the Christmas story. I've read it often over the years from the pages of God's word. But this year as I dove into the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke I decided that I was going to take my time and focus on some of the aspects of the Christmas story that I had perhaps overlooked in years past. This Sunday I'll be sharing a message about the stable that Jesus was born in. As I thought about that stable I was confronted with several different things that I personally have in common with that stable. If you can make it to church this weekend I think this interesting take on the Christmas story will both encourage and inspire you.

I want to encourage you to read the Christmas story in the coming days, focus on it, meditate, think about it, let yourself become immersed in the drama that surrounds the birth of our Savior. Take a fresh look, don't just glance at it and think that you already know the story, instead pretend that you've never heard it before and examine it closely from beginning to end. Don't just do this once, take time to read it every day and focus on it every day. I promise you will be blessed!

Pastor Pete

Word From The Pastor

2010-12-15T08:30:00.000-08:00

It seems like it was just yesterday when I stared up into the bright blue sky to catch a glimpse of an airplane passing overhead. As I took my eyes off the plane which was quickly moving out of sight, a bright green bud on the ash tree in front of my house caught my eye. Upon closer inspection there were many more brand new spring leaves being born before my very eyes. Winter was over, spring had arrived and with it new life. As I continued to work in my yard that afternoon I pondered some of the amazing aspects of life.

Today as I worked in my yard, rushing to finish several tasks before the sun set and darkness impeded my ability to work, I caught a glimpse of something else out of the corner of my eye. Naturally I turned my head to find a single leaf falling to the ground. It was not violent, brutal, or unnatural at all. Instead that leaf fell to the ground as if it was performing the last graceful dance of its short life. It was just a few months ago that its bright green glow burst forth from the bark of that ash tree. Now it lies in my yard waiting to decay and return to the earth from which it came. Two verses immediately came to mind as I pondered the significance of this natural cycle nature produces.

1Peter 1:24–25 NIV For, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.

James 4:13–15 NIV Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

As I thought about the many truths contained in those verses, my heart was reminded to pray for many people I know who, like that leaf, find themselves in the last stages of their own lives and only barely attached to the tree as their season of life comes to an end. One of my closest friends and most faithful partners in the ministry God has blessed me with, currently lies in a hospital bed needing constant care to survive. My grandmother is strong, faithful, and a powerful prayer warrior, but like the leaves on a tree, we all bloom but for a season then we are afforded the privilege of returning to the place of our origin. Not to mother earth, but instead into our Father’s hands, who has loved us from the beginning of time, who knit us together in our mothers wombs, and who has already prepared a place for us in His eternal Kingdom.

My thoughts then quickly turned to family, friends, church members, and myself, who find ourselves still firmly attached to the tree. We are green and functioning just like we are supposed to. Many of us are in the prime of our lives yet what we fail to realize is that one day we too will fade and fall. I fear that we are wasting much of our limited time on this planet. This is not to say that we are totally unproductive and inefficient. But certainly we could all pray, read our Bible, witness, worship, and obey His commands just a little more. I certainly know I could. One of my greatest fears is that I will one day arrive in heaven and realize how much of my life was wasted on myself, and the temporary things of this world. Only the eternal investments I make will last forever, everything else will fade and be unable to withstand the test of time.

When its time for me to take my last great journey I pray that I will be like the leaf I witnessed today. I pray that I might be able to peacefully let go knowing that my season has passed, my work has been completed, my race finished, and that in some small way my short life was effective and helped the tree grow. Then without regret, hesitation, or fear, I might peacefully float away to my Father’s loving arms in heaven. I pray that we might all be able to approach our final days in such a way.

What will you do with your life in 2011? What will you do with your life this Christmas season? What will you do with your life next week? What will you do with your life tomorrow? Do you have a plan? Have you afforded God the opportunity to guide you in the direction of His own purpose for your life? Time is the greatest gift we have been given and no one knows how much of it they will have. May we all live well!

Pastor Pete

Life is a path trodden by all men, and but once.

John Gill^{^[1]}

It is not how long but how well we live that matters.

Anon.¹

Life is not measured by length but by depth. Birthdays tell us how long we have been on the road,
not how far we have travelled.

Vance Havner¹

The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.

William James¹

Make sure the thing you are living for is worth dying for.

Charles Mayes¹

Life is worth living better than most men live it.

Anon.¹

Live so as to be missed.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne¹

Let God have your life; he can do more with it than you can.

D. L. Moody¹

Let us live as people who are prepared to die, and die as people who are prepared to live.

James S. Stewart¹

^{^[1]}Blanchard, John, eds. The Complete Gathered Gold: a Treasury of Quotations for Christians. Accordance electronic ed. New York: Evangelical Press, 2006.

Be Like Jesus Today

2010-12-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

This morning I was thinking about one of my memory verses 1 John 2:5–6 NIV But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. What an incredible statement, if we claim to live in him we must walk as Jesus did. I thought about some areas in my life that still need much refining so that I might be a better reflection of Christ. There are still things in my walk which are lacking to be sure. It is my goal today to be more like him, it will be my goal tomorrow, and the next, and the next, until God is finished with me. I pray that we might all make this our goal and greatest ambition in life, that we would be like Jesus. Below are some quotes you might consider reading as you think about what it means to be like Christ.

If you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, then the world should see nothing else.
    Anon.

From morning to night keep Jesus in your heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing, but to have all that is within you changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.
    William Law

If you try to imitate Christ, the world will praise you; if you become like Christ, the world will hate you!
    D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

When no mark of the cross appears in our discipleship, we may doubt the ownership. We should be branded for Christ.
    Mary S. Wood

To be much like Christ, be much with Christ.
    Anon.

Christmas--Did You Know?

2010-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

I was reading in the Holman Bible Dictionary today and I found this article about Christmas. It contained some interesting things that I had never known or thought of. I thought I would share it with you all as well. By the way this is a great Bible Dictionary.

CHRISTMAS Of the major Christian festivals, Christmas is the most recent in origin. The name, a contraction of the term “Christ’s mass,” did not come into use until the Middle Ages. In the early centuries Christians were much more likely to celebrate the day of a person’s death than the person’s birthday. Very early in its history the church had an annual observance of the death of Christ and also honored many of the early martyrs on the day of their death. Before the fourth century, churches in the East—Egypt, Asia Minor, and Antioch—observed Epiphany, the manifestation of God to the world, celebrating Christ’s baptism, His birth, and the visit of the magi.
    In the early part of the fourth century, Christians in Rome began to celebrate the birth of Christ. The practice spread widely and rapidly, so that most parts of the Christian world observed the new festival by the end of the century. In the fourth century the controversy over the nature of Christ, whether He was truly God or a created being, led to an increased emphasis on the doctrine of the incarnation, the affirmation that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14 HCSB). It is likely that the urgency to proclaim the incarnation was an important factor in the spread of the celebration of Christmas.
    No evidence remains about the exact date of the birth of Christ. The December 25 date was chosen as much for practical reasons as for theological ones. Throughout the Roman Empire, various festivals were held in conjunction with the winter solstice. In Rome, the Feast of the Unconquerable Sun celebrated the beginning of the return of the sun. When Christianity became the religion of the Empire, the church either had to suppress the festivals or transform them. The winter solstice seemed an appropriate time to celebrate Christ’s birth. Thus, the festival of the sun became a festival of the Son, the Light of the world. See Church Year.
    Fred A. Grissom

God Ain’t Big Enough (Yeah Right!)

2010-12-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

Some people say that God is simply not big enough to accomplish the things that need to be done in the modern era. While few say it with their lips most say it with their actions. We just don’t trust God or believe in his power anymore. Whether its finances, family, work, health, safety, or church, few really trust God completely anymore. While our prayers cry out for help, our actions often scream we don’t think you can do it! We forsake faith and embrace self-reliance, after all, we gave God all of ten seconds and He did not respond.
I just read an article from USA Today entitled “Universe holds billions more stars than previously thought.” Last week astrologists announced that they now believe the universe holds at least three times as many stars as they previously estimated. So what is the new number? They now say there are at least 300 sextillion stars (that's 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). So Is God BIG and able enough to handle whatever you may be facing? Consider the following scripture and you decide.

Genesis 1:16 NIV God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

Psalms 8:3–4 NIV When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

Psalms 147:4 NIV He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.

God is Moving

2010-12-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I told a group of servant leaders at our church a little bit about the great work that God is doing in Asia right now, specifically in India. I have been keeping a close eye on this movement of God over the past 6 months and have been amazed to see the kind of passion that exists in the lives of Christians overseas. Today as I was reading some news from that part of the world I came across this article. It caught my eye because this is the organization I encouraged our church to consider partnering with next year to be a part of the great work that God is doing in that part of the world. Pray for these people!

Missionary Attacked on The Way to Church

   Gospel for Asia-supported missionary Jethu Monin was attacked by anti-Christian extremists while he was walking to church on Sunday. They badly injured Jethu, and he is now recovering.
Jethu serves in an area dominated by people who worship the gods and goddesses of their traditional religions. Many of the devotees of these religions are fearful as they see the once-faithful choose to give their hearts to Christ.
   The attackers left Jethu badly beaten and they had one message for him:
"You should not conduct Christian prayer meetings in this area," the attackers told him.
They also demanded that he leave or face more extreme consequences. This was not the first time that the 25-year-old missionary had faced persecution. When he and his family chose to follow Christ their own village expelled them. But Jethu has compassion for the men who beat him. He understands their point of view because he used to be one of them. Jethu and his family were staunch believers and followers of this same traditional religion. Then Jethu heard about the love of Jesus from a Bible college student. By this time, he had already grown discouraged because of many problems in his life, which his gods and goddesses didn't seem to care about.
   Jethu's parents were shocked to see their son's transformation into a joyful person. They soon followed in the footsteps of Christ, too. This caused quite an uproar in their village.
"They tried to convert us back into the former religion. As they could not change our decision to follow Jesus, they threatened us and expelled us from the village," Jethu explained. "At this time of turmoil, God became our strength and courage who kept us safe in His hands."
The family has followed Christ wholeheartedly ever since. They are now praying for the men who attacked Jethu, that they will come to know Christ.
Jethu's church also asks for prayer for his complete healing and that this incident will not cause him any discouragement.

Save the Date (LOL)

2010-12-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

I read an article a moment ago on the Internet that said in part:

According to 20 billboards to appear Monday across metro Detroit, Jesus is returning on May 21, 2011. And if you aren't saved, it isn't going to be easy, says the Christian Web site behind the billboards, which are to read "He Is Coming Again!" Read full article (If you want to waste some time.)

I guess the people behind this have never read the scriptures like:

Matthew 24:36 NIV “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Mark 13:32 NIV “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

1Corinthians 2:11 NIV For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

1Thessalonians 5:2 NIV for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

Could May 21, 2011 be the big day? Sure, but today could be as well, or tomorrow, or May 20th for that matter. Those who waste their time, energy, and effort trying to nail down the date of Christ's return would be better off spending that time spreading the love of Jesus Christ through the Gospel. I will be ready if today is the day, or tomorrow, or May 21, will you? Will those you love? No one knows how many days are left but He is coming soon.

Revelation 22:12 NIV “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.

Iran: Pastor Charged—Apostasy

2010-11-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

This very day there will be men and women around the world who will die because they loved others enough to tell them about Jesus. May we all remember Pastor Youcef and the thousands of others we will never know by name on this side of heaven.

Iran: Pastor Charged—Apostasy

The Assize Court of the province of Gilan, in Iran, has officially charged Pastor Youcef Nardarkhani with denying that Mohammed was a prophet. The court stated that this resulted in apostasy because Nardarkhani believes in Jesus and has shared his faith with others, according to The Voice of the Martyrs.
The indictment, which was issued by a public prosecutor in the presence of a jury, stated, “He has frequently denied the prophet hood of the great prophet of Islam and the rule of the sacred religion of Islam. ... He has proven his apostasy by organizing evangelistic meetings and inviting others to Christianity, establishing a house church, baptizing people, expressing his faith to others and denying Islamic values.”
According to court documents, when Pastor Youcef was asked about his faith, he told authorities, “Since I was born in a Muslim family, I was Muslim until I converted to Christianity at the age of 19.” He openly acknowledged accepting Jesus Christ.
The court also stated that the apostasy charge was determined a crime according to Islamic theologians.
Pastor Youcef’s defense attorneys have entered a not guilty plea to the charges, arguing that “since there is no punishment specified in the Islamic judicial system of Iran and other penal laws [on apostasy] ... their client has not committed a crime to deserve a punishment.”
The indictment, however, stated that as an apostate, Pastor Youcef will be executed. His lawyers have 20 days to appeal the indictment. The Voice of the Martyrs encourages you to continue praying for Pastor Youcef and his family. Pray that his appeal will be successful and that he will be released.
To learn more about Pastor Youcef, visit www.prisoneralert.com.

Bridgetown Church of Christ helps Black Friday shoppers

2010-11-26T14:50:00.000-08:00

Instead of shopping or sleeping in this Black Friday at least one church had the great idea to use it for ministry purposes. With reports of thousands standing in lines both inside and outside of stores in our local area it made me think about what Cowboy Fellowship might be able to do next year. Read a portion of the article below, or the full article by clicking here.

Bridgetown Church of Christ helps Black Friday shoppers

Are you planning to get a great deal the day after Thanksgiving?

Black Friday is always about bargains, but this year Bridgetown Church of Christ is making it about values. Instead of focusing on the deals and bargains, the members of the church are taking the opportunity to serve food and drinks to the shoppers lined up at Best Buy in Western Hills early Friday morning, November 26th.

Along with a cup of hot chocolate the church will be offering invitations to it's Christmas services and events. It's their way to love the community and invite them into a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

Difficult Days

2010-11-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

Many of us have faced some sort of difficulty over the past few months. A friend of mine recently wrote about some of the struggles he was facing and how he worked through them. Maybe this will help you, or encourage you in someway as well.

Accept His Ways

Isaiah 55:8 was the verse that really stuck out to me today, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” I’d have to say out of everything in Christianity this has to be one of the hardest aspects for me, and that would be trying to accept and find joy in God’s ways because at times I just do not understand them. I have to admit sometimes I just get so frustrated in trying to accept the things God gives me in life.

The perfect picture of my struggle, I have had some fairly lousy jobs over the last three years, at least according to my standards, and the funny thing is the more I complained it seemed like the worse they got. I actually was just able to transition from the last one and have started a job that as of yet seems to be far better than everything I’ve done since my relocation to Florida, and the catch to it all was I was contacted by this company who found my resume. It was just at the moment I really started to just say, why am I complaining, I have it so much better than so many others. in an economy that is struggling, where unemployment is high, and no matter how difficult it was juggling two part time jobs and keeping everything straight I was so blessed to have a job at all, to be healthy, to have just closed on my first house when so many are homeless, I had to ask God for forgiveness for my discontent. After all this was where God had me and he works all things out for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) again this was where my faith was tested, I either had to believe this was where God wanted me and just accept it and in that moment of contentment, not that it happened RIGHT away, but after I found contentment with my situation that is when He decided he would move me.

What did I have to be upset about, God’s promise is to supply all our needs (Philippians 4:19) he tells us to find joy in our circumstances and in my act of selfishness God sought to teach me to be content. I wish it didn’t take me so long to learn it, but I have been accused of being hard headed. Paul summed it up perfectly, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” (Philippians 4:11) Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians in a Roman Prison, and yet somehow throughout everything we know he endured he learned to find contentment. It is something every Christian must learn, so often we get caught up in our own desires, in our selfish ambitions, in what we think will bring us joy, and we forget who is in control and who knows what is best. We serve a sovereign God and when we struggle we make our petitions known to Him (Phil. 4:6), but in the end trust Him in all things and be content no matter what His answer is, in the end “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6)

Next Generation Disciples

it makes a differance

2010-09-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone I have not posted in a while.
I found a something of value to share today. It is a testimony about of a survivor of Abortion. You may ask how can that be, and i would say click and see!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=158348990848143

This is also a reminder to you during this time of the year. Your vote makes a difference.

The person you are voting for have your same values.
I encourage you don't just trust the good guy/girl will win. You need to get out and vote it truly makes a difference in what our future can be.

Scotty

What a weekend...

2010-09-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

WOW, this past weekend at Cowboy Fellowship was something else! God is really moving in our church and great things are happening. I believe that many more great things are in store for us as we finish out 2010 as well. I have been overwhelmed and somewhat surprised at the response from this weekend's sermon. I talk about this topic some in the discipleship work book I wrote called The Absolute Basics of Christianity. The lessons in the workbook on heaven and hell always generate a great deal of discussion. But this week's sermon focused specifically on what happens when we die and it really spoke to many people. After church on Sunday I went to San Antonio to celebrate my grandmother's birthday and when I returned home my email box was already filled with messages about the sermon. I posted it online, and within an hour emails from around the world started to come in as well, from people who subscribe to the podcast or download the messages. Everyone wants to know what happens when you die, and it seems this message really helped people better understand that process. If you missed it and you would like to listen to the sermon you can download it for free here.
I have also posted the transcripts from the first twelve messages from this series on the letter that was written to the Thessalonian church. These transcripts are not really "publish ready" but I feel I should post them in case you want to go back and read the messages again or look at the scriptures one more time. I hope to have the rest of the messages up within a week. For now they are only located on my personal website www.pastorpete.org under the media section with the sermons. I will try to find time to post them on www.cowboyfellowship.org in the coming weeks. If you would like to read the transcripts or listen to the sermons you can click here. Below are just a few of the comments I have received about this week's message entitled "The Dead, The Christ, and The Living Pt. 1." I think next week's message will be just as enlightening as this one, if not more...

WOW was all I could say after today's sermon. You and God... what a team! Okay, here's the deal... as I think you probably know, my dad is and has been very sick for some time. He has cancer and is in the last stages and was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and is now at home and we are doing the best we can to care for him with the help of a Hospice team... Anyway, as you might imagine, your topic for a sermon today was very timely. My dad had asked me last week what happens when you die...(She had a long conversation with her father then...) I asked him if he was going to go to heaven and he said he was.

---Texas

Pastor Pete, as you know my family and I walk into our village each week to listen to you message and teachings. This weeks message was exactly what we needed to hear. Two weeks ago an elder in our church passed away and a great dispute has broken out here in our church over the issue you preached about today. Your sermon answered the question in such a clear way, I would like to share this message with my church this Sunday, would you be so kind as to send me your sermon notes to reference as i preach next Sunday? Thank you for helping me I hope to meet you someday.

---Niger Africa

My wife died in Christ 96 days ago. Last night was the first time in 96 days that I did not cry myself to sleep. Peace has come upon me through your message. (They were married for 55+ years)

--- Church Deacon, Lousiana

Best sermon I have heard in my 83 years...

---Kansas

...Peace, hope, joy, and comfort I have them all because of what I just heard...

---London

I have waited 25 years to hear that message...now I am going to go listen to it again...

---Florida

You did a great job... what a strong message and good lesson!!!!!

---Texas

The Absolute Basics of Christianity

2010-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone I wanted to let you know that the first volume of my discipleship book The Absolute Basics of Christianity is now available for purchase. You can use the link below, or find it at amazon or barnesandnoble.com. In the coming weeks it will slowly make its way onto other sites and into some stores. Volume two will be out in 2-3 weeks sometime around the first of October. A few weeks after that both volumes will be released in one super volume as well. So feel free to purchase a copy of volume one (13 Lessons), or you can wait till the book with both volumes and all 26 lessons comes out in a few weeks. If you enjoy the study please tell others about it and help me spread the word.

Pete

PS. we will have some copies for sale at the church but we will not have very many until the end of October due to the large size of our 101 class this fall.

Top 10 Reasons To Be INVOLVED In Church

2010-09-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Reasons To Be INVOLVED In Church
Pastor Pete

Real Connection-The friendships and fellowship at a Christ centered church can't be found any other place in the world.
Renewal-Being in God's house with God's people will renew you and help you prepare for another week.
Equipping-A biblically centered church will help train and equip you to fulfill your God given purpose.
Accountability-Its a good thing I promise!
Perspective-Your earthly and eternal perspective is positively impacted when you are involved in your church.
Worship-There is just something special about singing and learning with other believers. It can't be replicated any other way other than being in church.
Significance-Your life makes a greater impact when you share your talents and gifts with the church. We accomplish more together.
Strength-The devil prowls around looking for someone to devour. When you join other belivers you become a much harder target to destroy.
Encouragement-Life will naturally bring difficult seasons to everyone. When you are a part of the body of Christ having other believers help you through those rough times is priceless.
Stability-Church involvement has been proven to decrease stress, worry, and fear. In general those who are active in church tend to live more stable lives.

Sex Education

2010-09-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

As promised we wanted to give all of the parents in our congregation some tools to help you deal with your children regarding the issue of sex. The staff at Cowboy Fellowship realizes that this is a difficult subject for both parents and children to discuss. However, this is one of the most important topics for families today. With the endless temptations and sexual myths that have invaded our society, we desperately need to help protect our children. It is tempting to lock them in their rooms and seclude them from the world for 20-30 years (LOL) but of course that is not practical. So instead the best way to protect them is to educate them on all the important issues of life including sex. This blog contains some helpful information, but don't forget that we (the staff) are always available and willing to help in any way we can. Call on us if you need us.
My children are currently ages 2 years, and 6 weeks. So needless to say we have not had to talk about sex much. However, my two year old has started asking questions about his body parts, and why "daddy kisses momma" etc. Research is showing that sex education needs to begin sooner, rather than later. So here are some helpful hints that can be used at all ages with both boys and girls.

Use the Bible- The Bible speaks God's truth into our lives on all subject matters including sex. Talk about sex with your children in the context of what God's word says on the subject, not what mom or dad say. There are both positive and negative sexual examples in God's word and many teachable moments in common Biblical stories. So mom and dad this means that you need to read your Bible, so that when the time comes, you are able to incorporate God's word into your sex education program with your children.
Be honest- Of course judgment needs to be used when dealing with children of different ages. But don't lie to your kids or make things up. If you don't think your child needs to know that specific answer, just be honest and tell them that for now they don't need to know that but when the time comes you will help inform them.
Be available- make sure your children understand that talking to you about sex is always ok. Never make them feel like you are uninterested or unwilling to approach the subject. If you do they will learn from their friends and their peers who they date. No parent wants that.
Be proactive- Don't wait for your children to bring the subject up, you are the parent and God has given you the responsibility to educate your kids. Of course, younger children like my 2 year old, naturally ask many questions on all subjects. But as kids grow older they will be less willing to approach difficult subjects such as sex with their parents.
Be positive- Make sure that your children understand that God's moral standard of abstinence is a blessing not a curse. Help them to see all of the benefits to following God's laws in all areas of their lives including sex.
Be a role model- We must set a good example for our children to follow. If we disobey God in this or any other area we should not be surprised when our children do as well. If you have previously messed up confess your sins to God and your children (if it is appropriate at their age) and receive God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Move on and set an example from then on that your children can follow.

If you want even more information about this subject I would recommend that you visit the area of Focus on the Family's website which deals with this specific issue. I would also recommend that all parents read Bringing Up Boys, and Bringing Up Girls by Dr. James Dobson. He has many other resources and books available regarding children as well. If you want to view all of them you can click on his name above.
Once again please know that we are praying for you and we desire to help you in this and all areas concerning your family. If there is anything we can do please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sex in the church...

2010-09-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

From the beginning of the Christian faith, sex has been a major issue in the church. Many either fail to, or refuse to, recognize that this uncomfortable subject has great consequences when it comes to our faith and our effectiveness with the gospel. In the history of the church there have been several major world wide church councils. The council of Jerusalem which met around 50 AD was forced to deal with the issue of sex because sexual immorality had become an issue for the believers of the early church. While this was not the main focus of the council of Jerusalem they did say the following.

Acts 15:20 NIV Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

Sexual immorality like it or not has been a part of the church since it's origin. This constant battle rages in the flesh of both men and women who must "learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable" (1 Thessalonians 4:4 NIV). When we pretend that sexual sins are not a temptation that the devil uses against Christians, we open ourselves and our churches to an even grater extent and become more vulnerable to such attacks. However, when we deal with the issue openly, biblically, and honestly, we find freedom, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope of a better future in the arms of our loving savior. May God give each believer and each church the boldness necessary to confront the sexual sins of our day as the Apostles did in theirs. Below are some verses that show not only how prevalent sexual immorality was in the early church, but also how boldly the Apostles confronted such sin.

Some people like to squelch the debate by saying "all the church does is judge me! :-(" Rest assured this debate has never been about personal judgment against individuals. Instead it is about the judgment that comes with all sin. We must speak the truth in love, in our efforts to help one another become all that God has created us to be. While sexual sin is listed in all of the scriptures below, note that many other sins are as well. Furthermore, all sins carry the same punishment of death according to God's word (Romans 6:23). Sexual sins are not any worse than any other. The problem is many today preach against deceit, hatred, idolatry, rage, drunkenness, and greed. Far fewer however are willing to stand against sexual immorality. While this is an uncomfortable subject it is necessary that we stand together and defeat this evil once and for all. If you struggle with this issue and would like to receive accountability and help to defeat this issue in your life please email us. Of course your confidentiality will be respected.

Ephesians 5:3–20 NIV But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7 Therefore do not be partners with them. 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” 15 Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Galatians 5:19–26 NIV the acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

1 Corinthians 5:1–5 NIV It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3 Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 6:9–20 NIV Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 12 “Everything is permissible for me” — but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me” — but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” — but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Sex, Sanctification, & Salvation…1 Thessalonians 4:3–8

2010-09-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in church we discussed 1 Thess. 4:3-8 which deals with the moral standards that God sets forth for His people regarding sex. As promised I wanted to give you a little more background on the sexual climate that the people of Thessalonica found themselves in as they read this letter from Paul. We did not have time yesterday to discuss the context of these words as much as I would have preferred so below I have included an excerpt from John MacArthur's commentary on the subject. I would also encourage you to read the sermon transcripts from two messages he preached on this same passage if you have the time. They are entitled Abstaining from Sexual Sin--Part 1 and Part 2. In the coming days additional information will be posted to this blog on how to talk to your children about sex.

The following observations come from The MacArthur New Testament Commentary

Since the 1960s, when the modern sexual revolution really accelerated, Western society has had fewer and fewer rules governing sexual attitudes and behaviors. Freedom of sexual expression has in many ways become the cultural god that rules over all the other idolatrous gods of postmodern culture. People want the right, for themselves and others, to express their sexual desires at any cost, even if that means aborting the unwanted child resulting from a sexual union or risking a sexually transmitted disease.

Several obvious tenets constitute the world’s immoral, unscriptural outlook regarding sex. First, people are basically good and all but the most heinous activities should be tolerated. Therefore, virtually any kind of consensual sexual activity is good (except for child molestation), especially if one views sex as merely a way to personal gratification. Second, since sexual activity is only a biological function (cf. 1 Cor. 6:13), it is normal and necessary to engage in it without placing on it any moral restrictions. Third, since “casual” sex is just another form of fun and pleasure, it is permissible to enjoy sexual activity recreationally any time with any consenting partner. Fourth, fulfilling one’s sexual desire is a major goal in life, more important than developing meaningful personal relationships. Fifth, instant gratification is more important than delayed satisfaction. Therefore, having premarital sex is legitimate and preferable to waiting until marriage to have sex. Sixth, enjoyable sexual intercourse is the most important factor in establishing a good marital relationship. Therefore, the early stage of every romantic relationship should include sex. The couple should live together to determine sexual compatibility and fulfillment before they marry.

Christians understand that those are the dogmas of society’s permissive sexual outlook. The apostle Paul could have recognized the same tendencies in his day because, if anything, the utterly pagan Greco-Roman culture he ministered in was more sexually perverse and debauched than contemporary Western culture, which for centuries has had the beneficial influence of Christianity on its institutions. Thessalonica was part of that debased Greco-Roman culture. The city was rife with such sinful practices as fornication, adultery, homosexuality (including pedophilia), transvestism (men dressing like women), and a wide variety of pornographic and erotic perversions, all done with a seared conscience and society’s acceptance, hence with little or no accompanying shame or guilt. Unlike people in Western nations today, the Thessalonians grew up with no Christian tradition to support laws and standards that forbid the grosser manifestations of immorality. Pagan Greek society apparently did not have civil laws to prohibit immoral behavior.

Further contributing to the sexually permissive environment in Thessalonica was the influence of the mystery religions that advocated ritual prostitution. They taught that if a follower engaged with a temple prostitute, he would be communing transcendentally with the deity the prostitute represented. For example, the Temple of Aphrodite on the Corinthian acropolis employed one thousand priestesses who were essentially religious prostitutes. Thus people did not consider fornication and adultery illegal or immoral; the idolatrous religions actually condoned them.

For the Thessalonians, then, sexual sin was more customary and more tolerated than it is even by today’s standards. That reality provides a clearer perspective of Paul’s ministry at Thessalonica. When he, Silas, and Timothy planted the church there, they rescued people out of that pornographic society. Many of those new converts, who had lived in immorality, no doubt had mistresses, and many of the women likely engaged in harlotry. Their rather sudden entrance into the kingdom of God required the Thessalonians to break with their pagan background. That requirement presented them with strong challenges—old habits and the pressures from a wicked culture would seek to draw them away from their new life and back to the old. Paul, as their pastor, was concerned enough to begin the exhortation portion of this epistle with commands regarding immoral conduct.

Though the surrounding culture continually lowered its moral standards, the Thessalonians could not lower theirs. Paul’s requirement that the Thessalonian believers abstain from sexual sin did not involve a relative morality; it encompassed an absolute standard. Such an unambiguous command, however, did not single out—the way Paul would with the Corinthians—specific groups or individuals within the church who were committing certain sins (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1–13). But that lack of specificity in no way mitigated Paul’s concern for the Thessalonians’ purity. That this general, preventive exhortation to sexual morality began his list of practical instructions in the final two chapters of 1 Thessalonians highlights Paul’s major concern for sexual fidelity in Thessalonica. With this background in mind, one can examine this passage by asking three questions: What kind of sexual conduct does God require? How can a believer be sexually moral? Why should a believer be sexually moral?^[1]

^[1]John MacArthur, 1–2 Thessalonians, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Chicago: Moody Press, 2002), 101.

So you want to grow...

2010-09-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

Several people have recently asked me to recommend websites and other free resources that can assist them in growing and going deeper in God's word. Like most ministers, I use Bible software for my personal study. However, such software can be very expensive, and while a great investment for full time ministers who use it for hours each day, it is really not practical or needed for most Christians. With that said, here are some resources that you might find useful.

Paid Software:

Bible Navigator- For under $20 you get a very good Bible software program. The problem is that you will have to buy many of the translations, commentaries, and other resources that you want. Basically they sell you the program and then you get to build your own personal library by purchasing books and Bible translations. This is great because you don't have to pay for a bunch of stuff you won't use, and you can buy additional resources over time. Before I started using MAC's this was the program I had on my windows computer. This program will only work on the window's platform.
Accordance- If you own a MAC this is for you. Personally this is the program I am currently using. They have many different pricing levels ranging from $99 to $600 for your primary package. Of course the more you pay the more you get in the way of commentaries, Bible translations, and other resources. Like most other software programs you can add additional resources to build your custom library over time. They also have a FREE trial version, if you would like to test drive it before you buy.
Logos- Logos has primarily been for windows users although they are currently developing a version for MAC as well. Personally I have never used Logos as my primary study platform because the MAC version that I tried was not that good. However, for windows users this seems to be the preferred software. It starts at around $149 and goes up to $4,200 depending on how much you want in your package. There are many great features about this product, however it is one of the most expensive programs of it's kind on the market today.
There are several other programs like Bible Works, Esword, and Quick Verse that are reportedly very good programs as well, however I have not personally used them enough to recommend them.

This is the bottom line, if you are going to purchase one of these programs, do your research, and make sure you are getting something that you need, and can use. Look at each product realistically and evaluate it based on your needs. If possible test drive the software or find someone who owns it already and see if they will sit down with you and show you how it works.
The better option might be to use online resources that are FREE. Below is a list of available FREE resources that you can find on the web. These sites will do most of what the programs mentioned above will, the downside is you may have to visit multiple sites to find what you are looking for. With the programs above all the info is at the tips of your fingers.

FREE Resources:

Biblestudytools.com- This is probably as close to an all in one FREE Bible study resource that will be very similar to what you can get with a paid program. This site makes money with the advertisements that you have to look at while you are doing your research. But this is a very complete resource, you can view many translations of the Bible, see cross references, make personal notes, highlight, print, email, even post stuff on Facebook or twitter. The downside is they use older commentaries that are public domain, and of course you can only choose from the 7-10 choices they give you. However for the price of FREE you can't complain to much. I have used this site some and enjoy it, but for someone who spends hours each day researching scriptures it is just to slow and bulky for me personally. However for the lay member who desires to double check something the pastor said, or prepare a bit extra for next weeks Bible study, or make personal notes they can use in the future about different scriptures this site is really good.
Biblegateway.com- This is a free service for reading and researching Scripture online--all in the language or translation of your choice! They provide advanced tools you can use to search the Bible by keywords or verse, as well as other tools to enhance your study of the Bible.
Biblos.com- This site has so much information on it. The downside is you can easily be overwhelmed when visiting the site. Once you learn how to navigate through it to find the information you are looking for this site will become an amazing resource. You will find, time lines, commentaries, outlines, interlinear translations, pictures, and much more on this site.
Blueletterbible.org- Here is how they describe themselves. "Our mission is to facilitate in-depth study of God's Word through an on-line interactive reference library continuously updated from the teachings and commentaries of selected pastors and teachers who hold to the conservative, historical Christian faith." What I like most about this site is it's simplicity. When you search a scripture for example, these six little buttons come up next to the scripture you searched. From there you can easily access commentaries, and much more about the passage.
Bible.com- is a site that encompasses various translations, languages, scriptures, studies, and dynamic Biblical based content. Our online Christian Community offers visitors a place to gather, learn, interact, and share the Bible’s teachings. Website users can access a host of tools, news, articles, and products pertaining to the Bible - presented in an interesting, captivating and engaging way. Our Site covers such areas as kids, family, culture, and more based upon Biblical principles.

These websites can also be found on www.cowboyfellowship.org, and www.pastorpete.org in the additional links section. If you have questions please let myself or any of our staff know and we will be glad to help you find the best solution for you to be able to mature, and grow as you study God's word.

Zanzibar Muslims Stop Church Building, Erect Mosque

2010-08-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

There has been a great deal of controversy about the Islamic Mosque that is planned to be built near ground zero in New York City. As I have listened to the debate I have wondered how the Islamic community might respond if Christians attempted to build a church under similar circumstances. The article below was published on Friday Aug. 6, 1010. The Muslim community has opposed the erection of this church for no reason other than the fact that they oppose Christianity. I pray that Americans will one day wake up, and stand up, for the things we believe as well. Otherwise we better prepare to shut up, because we will soon have no voice at all.

Zanzibar Muslims Stop Church Building, Erect Mosque
NAIROBI, Kenya (Compass Direct News) – On an island off the coast of East Africa where the local government limits the ability of Christians to obtain land, officials in one town have colluded with area Muslims to erect a mosque in place of a planned church building.
On the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, Pastor Paulo Kamole Masegi of the Evangelistic Assemblies of God had purchased land in April 2007 for a church building in Mwanyanya-Mtoni, and by November of that year he had built a house that served as a temporary worship center, he said.
Masegi intended for the house to serve eventually as his family’s home within the church compound, but on Nov. 11, 2007, his congregation began to worship there.
Soon area Muslim residents objected, saying they didn’t like seeing the church in the area, said Pastor Lucian Mgaywa of the Church of God in Tanzania.
“This was the beginning of the church’s tribulations,” Pastor Mgaywa said.
In August 2009, local Muslims began to build a mosque just three feet away from the church plot, Pastor Mgaywa said. In November 2009, Pastor Masegi began building a permanent church structure. Angry Muslims invaded the compound and destroyed the structure’s foundation, the pastors said.
Church leaders reported the destruction to police, who took no action – and also refused to release the crime report for court purposes, Pastor Masegi said. When he would inquire about the case, he said, the station head would inform him that the district police chief had the crime report and therefore it was not available.
“So it’s not possible to take the file to the court, because doing so would amount to defending Christianity,” the station police chief told him, according to Pastor Masegi.
With the district police chief sealing off any possibility of a court hearing, the church was unable to proceed with plans for building a permanent structure. In the meantime, construction of a mosque was well underway. It was completed by the end of December 2009.
The planned church building’s fate appeared to have been sealed earlier this year when Western District Commissioner Ali Mohammed Ali notified Pastor Masegi that he had no right to hold worship in a “residential house.” The Feb. 16 letter from the commissioner to Pastor Masegi forbidding him to convert his house into a worship center confirmed the decision by the district chief of Bububu police station not to prosecute those who destroyed the foundation of the planned church building, he said.
“Now the Christian faithful are feeling targeted even by the government officials,” said Pastor Masegi. “The region is predominantly Muslim, and attempts at evangelizing are always met with brutal resistance.”
Since the prohibition to conduct worship services in his home, both police and area Muslims monitor Pastor Masegi’s movements, he said, and the congregation has no place to worship.
In predominately Sunni Muslim Zanzibar, churches face other hurdles. There are restrictions on getting land to build churches, open preaching is outlawed and there is limited time on national television to air Christian programs. In government schools, religion classes are limited to Islam.
Zanzibar is the informal designation for the island of Unguja in the Indian Ocean. The Zanzibar archipelago united with Tanganyika to form the present day Tanzania in 1964.
Muslim traders from the Persian Gulf had settled in the region early in the 10th century after monsoon winds propelled them through the Gulf of Aden. The 1964 merger left island Muslims uneasy about Christianity, seeing it as a means by which mainland Tanzania might dominate them, and tensions have persisted.

Muslim Protesters Surround Worshippers in Indonesia

2010-08-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

Christians we need to remember to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who deal with this kind of stuff everyday. Read the article below.

Muslim Protesters Surround Worshippers in Indonesia
DUBLIN (Compass Direct News) – Around 300 Muslim protesters and 300 police officers surrounded members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan or HKBP) on Sunday as they worshiped in an open field in Ciketing, Bekasi, local sources said.
“There were many police on guard, but the attackers were able to get very close to the congregation,” Theophilus Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, said in a statement to international government and advocacy groups. “We are afraid that they will attack the church again next Sunday.”
He added that a protester hit the Rev. Luspida Simanjuntak on the cheek.
Police held back the shouting protesters while the church worshiped, but at one point they allowed Murhali Barda, leader of the Front Pembela Islam (FPI or Islamic Defenders Front) in Bekasi, through the cordon for an angry confrontation with church leaders, Voice of America (VOA) reported.
Bekasi police commander Imam Sugianto told VOA that his forces were there to protect “both sides.”
The New York Times quoted Sugianto as saying that, “If the local people don’t give their permission, they can’t worship here,” but Pastor Simanjuntak said the Bekasi administration had approved the church’s decision to meet in the field, according to The Jakarta Globe.
“We demand the Bekasi administration to let the public know that they gave us the green light to conduct our prayers here,” Pastor Simanjuntak reportedly said.
The 1,500-strong congregation, established some 15 years ago, initially met in each other’s homes before purchasing a residential property in the Pondok Timur housing complex in Bekasi for use as a worship building. The group then met in the building while they waited for local officials to respond to a building permit application filed in 2006.
When Muslim neighbors in December objected to the meetings in the housing complex on the grounds that the church had no permit, officials banned church members from meeting there. As the local government had delayed the processing of its application for a building permit, the church ignored the ban, leading officials to seal the building on June 20.
Bekasi Mayor Mochtar Mohammad on July 9 said he would allow the congregation to meet in public areas or at the city hall, according to the Globe. Pastor Simanjuntak chose to move to the proposed building site, and Sunday meetings at the field in Ciketing were soon greeted by crowds of protesters.
The FPI’s Barda said the church’s insistence on worshipping at the site was a provocation, according to VOA. He also accused Christians in Bekasi of attempting to convert Muslims away from their religion, citing a recent Internet report claiming that the Mahanaim Foundation, a local Christian charity, had carried out a mass baptism of new converts.
Foundation spokeswoman Marya Irawan, however, told The Jakarta Post that the crowds were not baptized but only invited to Mahanaim leader Henry Sutanto’s home as part of an effort to reach out to the poor.
Pastor Simanjuntak’s church has now filed a case against the Bekasi administration.
“I fully support any efforts to take this to the courts,” a local Christian leader who preferred to remain unnamed told Compass. “We need to respond through legal channels and let the government know that these attacks are a gross human rights violation.”
Hard-line Islamic groups held a congress in Bekasi on June 20, and on June 27 announced their united intent to combat the “Christianization” of the region.
Bonar Tigor Naipospos, spokesman for Indonesia’s Institute for Peace and Democracy (Setara), told VOA that unsubstantiated rumors about Christians using deceptive practices to convert Muslims have fueled the anger in Bekasi. He reportedly said that Muslims believe that Christians badger people to convert and entice them with money, food or other incentives.
Pastor Simanjuntak has said that she and her church will continue meeting in the field, as they have nowhere else to go.

Matthew 25:35

2010-08-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks for allowing God to work through you, these kidss have a great start to a new school year becuse of the work you have allowed him to do.
Cowboy Fellowship

From Uganda

2010-08-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ejok! (greetings) to our friends at Cowboy Fellowship from Karamoja, Uganda. It is hard to believe it has been 3 months since I (Kenneth) stood before you and received your prayers before we left for the mission field. For my family and I, we can definitely say that we’ve seen God’s hand of provision over us the whole way. He has provided in abundance during our transition and he is sustaining us now as we make a new life in a strange country. I would love to have you all keep us with what is going on and you can do so best through our blog http://www.williamsinthewilderness.com
My wife, Kristi, and our children are all doing well. Kristi, gave birth to our 5th baby on August 8th. Her name is Selah Naomi Williams and she was 8 lbs 8 oz. She was born in our home and they are both doing well. It is something else to have a child in a place with no electricity and running water so we were praying some specific prayer requests like “please let it be in the day so we can see” , “please let it not be so hot”, etc. God answered all of our little prayers. She came at 8am in the morning after a night of rain so that it was nice and cool and there was daylight so that we didn’t have to use the lanterns. We have been blessed through it all.

As far as the work goes… Our main focus now is learning the language (Ngakarimojong) and will be for the next year. We have also gotten some money from a donor to proceed with the orphanage so we will try to complete it so we can get the kids in soon. My hope is that they will be back with us by Christmas. I don’t know if that is realistic or not but I’m praying and would love it if you would pray with me. We will make sure to keep you updated as it progresses. We would also love to hear from you and pray with you in whatever needs Cowboy Fellowship has. God bless and thank you for your support.
Co-laborers in Christ,

Kenneth and Kristi Williams
www.williamsinthewilderness.com

Pain from the Past 1 Thessalonians 2:

2010-08-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

1 Thessalonians 2:2 NIV We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.

Many cite their past as their reason for not sharing the gospel. They had a bad experience, or they suffered some kind of humiliation, or the sense of failure is simply to much for them to overcome. As a result they decide to not share the gospel with those they love. Paul speaks directly to this point in the text above.

Even if they couldn't see the bruises, the scars, the blood they would have received from that beating in Philippi, certainly this was so fresh on Paul and Silas' mind, they told the Thessalonians about it. Certainly, as the opposition arose in Thessalonica, Paul would have warned the people of Thessalonica and would have said, "Things like this may happen to you as well" pointing to his past suffering.

But yet, it says, "He dared to preach the gospel in Thessalonica." He dared, after all of that in Philippi, he dared to walk down the road and show up at the next town because God had called him to go and tell somebody else. The two words…suffered and insulted… in our text are important. They're two different words in the Greek, and they mean two different things.

The word suffered refers to physical abuse. It refers to a beating, a severe beating. It refers to being pummeled, getting the snot beaten out of you. The word insulted refers to public humiliation. It refers to being treated badly. It refers to being made a public spectacle. It refers to being humiliated in front of your peers, or being humiliated in front of other people, being treated like an animal, being degraded and brought down, being shamefully treated. Paul says, "We weren't just physically battered, but we were shamefully treated us as well. They humiliated us in public. They stripped us down naked when they beat us. They put us in stocks in the inner cell. We weren't just beaten, but we were insulted. We were humiliated in front of everybody while we were there."(See Acts 16:19-40)

Despite the physical abuse, despite the public humiliation, despite the insults, despite all they endured in Philippi, they still decided to show up in Thessalonica and they still dare to tell them about the good news of Jesus, despite knowing the persecution could very easily happen again in that city. Despite their past, they continued to tell people about the good news.

I wonder how many times we don't share because of our past. We've tried it. We did it once. But we didn't have a good experience. They laughed at us. They told us it was a waste of time. They told us, "Aw, that's just for wimps. I don't need that." They told us they didn't care.

Whatever your past is, it's not nearly as colorful or nearly as painful as the things these men suffered in their past, yet they still dare to go to tell them the gospel. The people who opposed Paul and the gospel he proclaimed didn't just laugh at them. They didn't point fingers and call them names. They didn't refuse to sit with them at the dinner table. No, they severely beat them as they were chained up like animals, naked in front of everybody, then put them in the inner cell, and chained them up once again like dogs, yet they dared to tell the people of Thessalonica the gospel.

He points to the past, and he says, "It didn't stop us." And whatever your past maybe I pray it does not stop you from daring to tell someone about the Gospel as well.

2010-08-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE!

by Rick Warren

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Romans 12:18 (NIV)

"Even God can't please everybody. Only a fool would try to do what even God can't do."

Have you realized that there are some people you can't please? No matter what you do or what you try or how nice you are to them. You just can't please everybody.

But the Bible tells says you don't need to please everybody. "It is dangerous to be concerned with what others think of you." (Proverbs 29:25 LB) It's an emotional trap when you start worrying about what other people think. We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't even like -- all because we think we must be liked by everyone in order to be happy. That's foolish!

Jesus said, "I only seek to please Him who sent me." (John 5:30 LB) Even Jesus didn't try to please everybody. One person wants it to rain; another doesn't want it to rain. I was one in Texas talking to oil people. They want oil prices to go up; the rest of us are hoping they'll go down. Even God can't please everybody. Only a fool would try to do what even God can't do.

In Luke 6:26 Jesus said, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you." (NIV) That's probably because the only time everybody's going to speak well of you is at your funeral!

I meet Christians all the time who must live with someone who makes life crazy. Every day they face someone who is an EGR (extra grace required). They say, "I try and try to make peace with this person, but I fail and I feel so guilty." The fact is, it may not be your fault. It may be the person you're trying to make peace with is just flat out difficult.

Give that person to God and focus on pleasing Him.

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Zanzibar Muslims Stop Church Building, Erect Mosque

Muslim Protesters Surround Worshippers in Indonesia

Matthew 25:35

From Uganda

Pain from the Past 1 Thessalonians 2:

The Nobodies of Christmas
by: Ray Hollenbach

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By: Dr. R. Larry Moyer