Slain pastor laid to rest

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"

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!

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

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...

 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!!!

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

Facing the Future Fearlessly

“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