What do you want to be when you grow up?
The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, while I was in Susa the capital, one of my brothers, Hanani, came with certain men from Judah; and I asked them about the Jews that survived, those who had escaped the captivity, and about Jerusalem. They replied, “The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire.”
When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned. We have offended you deeply, failing to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place at which I have chosen to establish my name.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great power and your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man!”
At the time, I was cupbearer to the king.
-Nehemiah 1:1-11, NRSV
The Power of Vision
That question probably prompted our first encounter with vision. Our answers ranged from doctor, firefighter, pilot or whatever happened to be our current fascination at the time. For many, those first answers changed and morphed from time to time, but then something stuck and for some it started a lifelong pursuit.
Vision has been defined as a picture of a preferred future. Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, says that vision is, “a picture of the future that produces passion.”
Can Vision Be Part of our Christian Life?
Vision is usually relegated to the sphere of businesses and organizations, but what does it mean for individual followers of Christ? Can vision have the same effect on individuals as it does for organizations?
Yes, it can! Think of an athlete striving to break a world record or will an Olympic medal. Think of a person who longs to become a physician or an attorney. That person would have to go through many years of education and training before realizing the dream. Finally, think of a sculptor working to create a beautiful figure from a large hunk of marble. All of these start with a vision of a preferred future, and that vision fills them with a passion that fuels them through the long process of realizing what was only in their mind for many years.
Every organization that does good in this world started with the vision of a single person who was willing to endure hardship and setbacks to see their vision realized.
Starts with a Need or Problem
Vision starts with a person seeing a need or a problem that will not let them go. It weighs on their hearts and minds, and they cannot get rid of it until something is done. Others are attracted to their vision because of the passion they see and the tireless work of the original person. They, too, have been captured by a burden and cannot rest until it is solved.
Sunday we will explore the power of vision in more detail with the single aim of allowing God to capture our hearts with a vison to address a need that at present maybe only we can see.
You may think, “Who am I to do anything significant for God?” You are a person filled with the Spirit of God! As far as being significant, even small things can be important for one person.
My prayer is that you will come to worship with an expectation of God giving you a vision to make a difference in the world; even if it is one person’s world.
Blessings!
-Alan
CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK'S FAITH NOTES.
Alan Cassady serves as Senior Pastor at Navarre UMC, and has been at the church since 2011. When he's not preaching and teaching, he enjoys sci-fi movies and FSU Football. Read more about Alan here.
Everyday Habits for Married Couples
“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’” And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
Matthew 19:4-6 (NLT)
Priorities
The other day, I read an article in RELEVANT Magazine called 5 Things Married Couples Should Do Every Day. God created us to live in relationship with other people, but there is one relationship that is above all others, our marriage. God calls us to put God first, our spouse second, then our relationships with our children, friends, etc. third, fourth, and fifth. (Don't put your spouse above your safety. If you are living in an abusive relationship, seek assistance now!)
I was reading another article this week in Mothering Magazine from a mom talking about how her sexual life with her husband has changed after having children. One thing stood out to me in the article. She said, “our bed is no longer just ‘ours.’” This phrase got me thinking about how many of us put our children above our marriage. Here are some ways that you can put your spouse above your other relationships.
What to Do
RELEVANT lists 5 things that every couple must do:
Connect Spiritually: This could be praying together daily, talking about what you've read in your quiet time, attending a Growth Group together, or studying the Bible together.
Communicate Meaningfully: Take time every day to talk about things that truly matter. RELEVANT suggests these questions: "What was the best part of your day today?" or "What's something I can do to help you out this week?" A friend of mine uses these questions with her husband: "What are you laughing about? What are you crying about? What are you dreaming about?"
Touch Often: Make time every day to have physical touch, whether it's cuddling on the couch watching TV or while reading or even setting up a date night and time for intimacy.
Confess and Forgive: Have a safe space to share things that need confessing and forgive often. When you start keeping up with "he did this" and "she did that" you will quickly damage your relationship.
Get Away: Make time to spend just the two of you. It could be a home date after the kids go to bed, planning a date night, or taking a weekend getaway. Make your marriage a priority.
We'd like to help you make your marriage a priority. There is a powerful marriage retreat coming up in November in Destin called A Weekend to Remember. Get away and come together. Early bird registration ends October 3rd. My husband and I have been and can personally attest to how wonderful the weekend is.
Challenge today: Find a new way to show your spouse that you love them and are thinking about them.
Blessings!
-Faith
Faith Parry serves as our Associate Pastor, and has been at the church since 2015. When she's not preaching and teaching, she enjoys documentaries and TV. Read more about Faith here.
The Workers are Few
Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”
Matthew 9:35-38, NLT
Reaping and Sowing
It's all good and well to say that we need to help harvest the fields of the unsaved, but how do we actually do that? For many of us, we hate to think of ourselves as evangelists, so I propose that we think of ourselves as missionaries in our own country. Today, we have people from different countries all around us and different religions. People who's lives are drastically different from our own, so if we apply missional principles to how we "harvest" then we will be much more effective.
Don Richardson, a Canadian missionary, traveled to a remote people group called the Sawi in Western New Guinea with his wife Carol and children. The Sawi were cannibalistic headhunters with no contact with the modern world or medical treatment.
Don and Carol learned the language and customs and Carol started to treat their medical issues. They were afraid they could never break through the culture with the Good News of Jesus, but one day they did. You can watch the full story here, but here is a short video about when their son later went back to the tribe.
Don and Carol's discovery transformed missions forever. What's important to note here is that they first had to get to know the tribe, be accepted by them, and love them. I imagine it wasn't easy. They watched them kill their own and eat them for ceremony's sake. They watched them be in constant war with the neighboring tribes. But they continued to love them and follow God's guidance.
Make a Friend, Be a Friend, Bring a Friend to Christ
Eventually, God gave them a way into the culture, and they were able to transform and entire people group. 50 years later and it still affects them. In our own community, we must make a point to become friends with those who God directs us to, loving them only because God loves them.
If that person is a different culture of religion from you, learn about him or her. Be a student of the person and don't spend every moment looking for ways to "correct" them, just love them.
This week, find someone to love as God loves in a missional way. Learn about his or her life, struggles, background, and journey. Ask God how you can be and hands and feet of Jesus to this person through the relationship. Eventually, God will give you a "peace child" moment where you can speak.
Blessings!
-Faith
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Faith Parry serves as our Associate Pastor, and has been at the church since 2015. When she's not preaching and teaching, she enjoys documentaries and TV. Read more about Faith here.
The Struggle is Real
Life is Nuts
One thing that is almost guaranteed to come up in any discussion on youth ministry is the crazy schedules that teenagers have now. And to be honest, up until this year I’ve dismissed a lot of those claims and have thought that if you think you’re too busy you should stop doing so much.
Most of that comes from what many would call my poor school habits (I prefer to call it my super human ability to avoid homework). For the most part I didn’t have homework in high school or I at least managed to get it done in class. My absolute busiest year of high school I woke up at 7, and between football and work I didn’t get home until around 11:00pm most nights. I loved it. It kept me busy of course, but it didn’t affect my grades which were still mostly A’s and B’s, and it didn’t let it get in the way of church. I still would hang out with friends on the weekends after work and made sure I got off work for any major activities that happened.
It was easy for me. And I don’t mean that to come across as bragging or conceited, because the fact is I haven’t experienced the kind of stress that most of my teens are facing now. Teenagers lives are ridiculously busy. If you look at the statistics, they are getting less than the nine and a half hours of sleep that they should, they are getting way more homework than they should. 10 minutes per day per grade level is the standard set by the National Education Association, which means your senior is supposed to have two hours of homework a night. Then there’s the added pressure of trying to create a high school resume that will look good on college applications. Maybe they have a legitimate chance of getting a college scholarship to play soccer and the way to stay on the team is to go to practice on Wednesday nights. I used to get so mad at people who would rather go to a sports practice than church. Nothing was so important to me that if it came time to drop it I would be devastated. Until I became a parent of a kindergartener.
The Struggle is Real
You see, for the first time I’ve come face to face with the struggles of too much going on and not enough time in the day. My kid has to be on the bus by 6:20am, which means he’s being dragged out of bed by 6:00am. Early mornings are killing him so we we’ve bumped his bedtime up to 7pm just so that he’s not a complete zombie in the morning. This past Wednesday we didn’t quite make his normal bedtime. In fact, because of the responsibilities we have on Wednesday nights he didn’t make it home until after 8. The next morning was awful trying to get him ready and he ended up making himself sick at school (his own nasty little super power) which then turned into him actually becoming sick later that night.
While your five year old kid is bent over a trash can emptying his stomach in front of hundreds of people at a high school football game, you start to rethink the decisions that led you to that point. And for the first time I had to ask myself, “Would I willingly bring my kid to church on Wednesday nights knowing it was going to cause him to get sick every Thursday if it wasn’t expected as part of my job?” Ten years ago I probably would have told a parent to make sure their priorities are straight and that they need to get to church no matter what. But faced with this new situation I’m not sure what I would say now. I know the new plan for our family is we’ll drive him to school on Thursdays to let him get an extra 15-30 minutes of sleep, and hopefully that will be enough.
But what if it’s not?
What if even after doing everything we can possibly do to try to make Wednesday nights work for our family we still have a kid who isn’t getting enough sleep? This is something I never would have thought I’d have to think about. For so long it was always clear cut for me, church over everything else. Now it’s not so clear.
What to Do?
Now before you go around spreading rumors that the Youth Director is telling you not to go to church, follow me for just a bit longer. There might be real, unavoidable reasons that you miss church. But there are hundreds of excuses that have simple solutions that might be revealing a bigger issue. My favorite one to pick on is the homework excuse. Saying you can’t come on a Sunday night because you have homework only makes sense if you’ve also been doing homework Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. Procrastination is a lame excuse (even though I procrastinate with the best of them). If, after going through every other possibility, you still struggle to make church happen on a regular basis, talk to one of us on staff. Seriously, I know it seems a bit like going to the principle’s/boss’ office but we know that not everyone can make our set times work. We’d much rather help you figure out other ways of discipling your family outside of church than you to not have anything at all.
Most things that eat up our time aren’t bad, but if we put them before God they become our idols. Protect the time with your family, protect time for church, but most importantly, think about what your schedule teaches your children about how important God is to you.
-Nathan
Nathan Persell serves as our Youth Director. When he's not leading devotions and playing basketball with teenagers, he enjoys disc golf and bike riding. Learn more about Nathan here.
Friend of God
"It was Moses’ practice to take the Tent of Meeting and set it up some distance from the camp. Everyone who wanted to make a request of the Lord would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.
Whenever Moses went out to the Tent of Meeting, all the people would get up and stand in the entrances of their own tents. They would all watch Moses until he disappeared inside. As he went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and hover at its entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses. When the people saw the cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, they would stand and bow down in front of their own tents. Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Afterward Moses would return to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua son of Nun, would remain behind in the Tent of Meeting."
-Exodus 33:7-11 (NLT)
We were created for intimacy
As humans, we crave companionship with others. God created us for community. We crave it so much that we will endure unhealthy or abusive people just so we can connect with another human being. The best illustration of this comes from the movie Castaway where Tom Hanks, alone on a deserted island, befriends a volleyball he named Wilson.
We were created for intimacy primarily so we could have a relationship with God. Often when we think about this kind of relationship we think of monks in a monastery or people who are so other-worldly as to seem pretty weird. Who wants to be like that, right?
But that is not what intimacy with God looks like. Intimacy with God looks like any other close, healthy relationship we might have. It involves knowing each other, spending time together, being open and vulnerable, and a desire to know and be known.
Challenges to Intimacy
Admittedly having a relationship with God does have challenges. With a human friend, we can see their facial expressions, hear their laughter or see their tears. But God is different. God is a person and desires a relationship with us, but we have to go about it a little bit different way.
For example, for most of us, most of the time, we do not carry on a conversation with God is the same way we do with a friend. God speaks to us in unique ways: through Scripture, through worship or observations in the world or a teacher’s words. We may not have immediate dialogue, but we can go to God in prayer and talk about things we have experienced or read and expect God to help us understand.
Advantages to Intimacy
Intimacy with God, however, has some advantages too. As close as we may be with a friend, there are some things they will never know about us if we do not choose to share them. God, however, knows everything that can be known about us. Our friends can’t read our minds, but God knows our thoughts, fears, pains, hopes, and dreams as deeply as we do.
There may be some things we do not share with a friend out of fear that they would stop being our friend. God, however, knows everything and still longs to our friend.
This week in worship we will talk about the things that get in the way of this kind or intimacy with God and what we can do to develop this relationship to a greater degree. So, join us this Sunday as we explore the most important core value of our Christian life: Intimacy with God.
Blessings!
-Alan
Click here for this week's Faith Notes.
Alan Cassady serves as Senior Pastor at Navarre UMC, and has been at the church since 2011. When he's not preaching and teaching, he enjoys sci-fi movies and FSU Football. Read more about Alan here.