Psalm 111

This morning, I came across a psalm I am not so familiar with. Buried in between a few of the classic psalms of 103 and 119, this reflection of David caught me off guard over my morning coffee. It starts with a familiar verse that Jesus quotes in Luke 20. "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool". But Psalm 111 ends with an unexpected twist, and it made me stop and think, "Wow, will God actually do that?". Take a look for yourself.

The Lord is at your right hand;
he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgement among the nations,
filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs*
over the earth.
He will drink from the brook by the way
therefore he will lift up his head.


*or "the head"

Psalm 11:5-7

He will judge the nations filling them with corpses? He will shatter kings? Yes. Yes He will. How can a God of love and mercy do this you might ask? After all, our culture loves to emphasize how good God is, how much He loves us, and how He wants to bless us if we follow Him. These things are all true, yet I was reminded this morning that our God is not just a being who exists to give love and blessings, but the King of all Kings who hates wickedness and will destroy it. It is difficult to picture the nations filled with corpses. But as or world continues to choose to live in and worship sin, they leave God no choice. I think we think that because of the cross, God will never act like He did in the Old Testament again. Oh, how wrong we are and how misguided our view of God is if that is how we see Him. A God bound by the cross to never pour out wrath again? No, a God who gave His life on the cross so He wouldn't have to pour out His wrath on everyone, but only those that reject Him.

I am reminded by this psalms of how I want to be on God's side. I want to live my life in a way where I hate sin as much as He does yet choose to love my enemies, even if it's at the expense of my life. God is throned high above all kings and principalities and has the power to destroy them with a thought. Yet He chooses to to give us grace after grace, in hope that we might turn form our sin to Him. His grace will not last forever. I pray that we are not one of those corpses in the street the nations, but a son or daughter in the presence of the King reigning in His kingdom forever.

Day 1

We haven't done this for a while, as you may have noticed from the date of the last post. Hopefully my lack of discipline in blogging and writing doesn't show in this blog. Though I think it might.

Its one of those dreary, gray, rainy mornings. My wife is asleep, as is our baby girl. I am left to a quiet living room, the rain, and my thoughts.

Yesterday marked a monumental day in the history of the United States. June 26th, 2015 will be remembered as a step toward world peace and equality for millions of Americans. It will also be remembered as the day our government took another step towards validating sin and fell further from God for millions of others. So, this morning is the first morning that millions of LBGT American's can wake up being confident of their country's support and legal backing of their sexual choices.

There have been a lot of opinions going around social media in the last 24 hours. Outspoken Christian leaders have called the Church to stand for biblical marriage, and they should. People are upset, appalled, and humiliated that our country has strayed so far from the biblical values that had such an influential impact on its founding, and they should be.

However, in light of what has happened, I actually see this as a good thing for the Church in America. For 250 years, the Church in this nation has had religious freedom and a government that has been an advocate for its citizens to value Christian morals. Only in the last 50 years have the tides began to turn. We have had so much freedom for so long, with no external pressure to stand for what we believe in. Now we have a little pressure. And that's a good thing. Our faith was founded on the blood of martyrs, who had to stand for Christ in an immoral society that was so bad we shouldn't even compare our America to it. The Roman Empire wasn't even in the same league as our nation. Emperor Nero would burn Christians alive at the stake outside of his palace just to light up the royal grounds at night. How is that for immoral?

Yet I don't want to minimize the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday. It is now "wrong" to disagree with the homosexual or transgender lifestyle. Soon it will become a hate crime. So there lies many questions as to what this all means for churches and christian organizations. Will we lose our tax-exempt status? Will the government shut our doors if we refuse to marry LBGT couples? If we publicly disagree with the LBGT lifestyle do will we risk being fined or worse? We will find out many of these answers in the coming years, probably sooner. But whatever happens in the realm of legality for the Church, we still have a choice. Will we stand for Jesus when it is not popular to? Will we advocate for biblical marriage to our coworkers, neighbors, and friends when it isn't an accepted way of thinking anymore? To stand for biblical marriage is to stand for the gospel. Now we have such an opportunity to share why we value marriage between a man and woman. We value this institution because we love Jesus.

Now is the time to stand. Will we have social pressure to compromise our faith? Yes. Should we be surprised? No. 2 Timothy 3:12 tells us to expect persecution. Our governments full support of Christian values is now over. We disagree on a few critical biblical issues. History has showed us that when the Church is persecuted, in grows exponentially. Let that be our prayer as an American Church, that the Lord would use any persecution to grow us to love Him and be more obedient to the gospel than we have ever been before.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

Philippians 2:27-30

New Year, New Transitions

Personal Update

For us, this new year will bring a few big transitions. They will bring some change to our lives, but for the better. This month we will be moving into our first home and welcoming our baby daughter into our family. We have been renting an apartment downtown since we have been married, but with the upcoming addition to the family, we needed a little more space. Our new home will be located in New Philadelphia, about a block a way from one of the girls discipleship houses. Whitney is really excited to be in walking distance to the girls house, making it easier to spend time with them. Whitney is due on February 6th, and we are planning to move in to our house by mid January. So, not much time in between, but just enough.

I have spent the last year interning at my church with our pastoral staff. Our church is about 25 minutes away from our town, out in the country. It has been growing over the past few years and this fall reached a point where we are maxing out space on Sunday mornings. Our staff really believes in developing leaders from within the church, which is why they asked me to do an internship with the pastoral staff. So, the opportunity arose for the church to branch out to a new location. Conveniently enough, there are quite a few people that commute from New Philadelphia to Countryside Chapel. So the staff decided to locate the branch in New Philly. Our church model is a little different from the typical church plant. Think of it this way. Instead of going to 2 services in one building on a Sunday morning, we are adding a second service, but it will be in a different location. Same leadership. Same Elders. Same pastors. Same church.

But 2 locations. My role at the New Philly location will be the branch pastor and administrator. The rest of the staff will rotate in between the two locations for preaching and shepherding. I feel so grateful to be apart of a team that's committed to the discipleship of the congregation. We are starting the branch in a movie theater down town. We are excited about the location and hope to see lost people encounter Jesus for the first time.



Ministry Updates
As Off The Wall grows, so will our roles. During our staff retreat we talked a lot about how we disciple and how we teach classes. We will be changing to a different model in the fall. We are finding that this younger generation likes much more mobile environments. Shorter time periods, different faces, less duration. So instead of having all classes every week for 9 months, we will have a variety of topics that are taught for weeks at a time by different members of the staff, with a few foundational classes that go throughout the year. Whitney and I will add a few more responsibilities to our roles later this year, helping Don recruit and fundraise for the ministry.

We are really looking forward to these new transitions. Being a pastor at the church will add more to my week, but I have been spending a lot of that time training and learning from the pastoral staff already. It is a privilege to work for the Lord and we are grateful to be able to be used by Him. God has blessed us greatly with a home, a baby, and a community that wants to follow Christ and we are thankful for His goodness in our lives.