What Have You Been Assigned To Do?
Acts 22.10 “‘What shall I do, LORD?’ I asked.
“ ‘Get up,’ the LORD said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’
School Assignments
Assignment Pad
Military Assignments
Work Assignments
Workout Assignments on Track and Cross Country
assigned= appointed
Station
Ordain
To put in a certain order
1. We are all ordained to bear fruit. John 15.16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit--fruit that will last--and so that whatever you ask in My Name the Father will give you.
I have appeared to you for this purpose… —Acts 26:16
The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was not a passing emotional experience, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him. And Paul stated, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19). Our Lord said to Paul, in effect, “Your whole life is to be overpowered or subdued by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine.” And the Lord also says to us, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go…” (John 15:16). Oswald Chambers
2. We are all stationed here.
On Long Island
In Metro NY
Revelation 2.13 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives.
Wherever you are on the journey.
Paul’s training and upbringing and citizenship was all part of what he was to do.
3. What Design Does God Have in Mind For You?
Ephesians 2. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Psalm 139.16 6
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
He has wonder filled plans.
He is wonderful.
His Name is Wonderful
Joseph, even when it seemed too late, God...
4. He Leads Us Step By Step
“ ‘Get up,’ the LORD said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’
Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim. He was brought into a vivid, personal, overpowering relationship with Jesus Christ. Acts 26:16 is tremendously compelling “…to make you a minister and a witness….” There would be nothing there without a personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person, not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s. He saw nothing else and he lived for nothing else. “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”
(1 Corinthians 2:2). Oswald Chambers
5. It is A Wonder Filled Journey!
Edie, can you come up, Albert escort her. Edie’s granddaughter, Alyssa, asking me to offciate her wedding in the fall.
The Credit Union on Thursday. The money for the roof going down
The work in Haiti Burl Ives and the Korean Orphan Choir, Bob Pirece, Korean War, Orphans, Samaritan’s Purse... To Haiti With Love... grew up listening to that choir.
Children who grew up here part of the church.
Psalm 16.6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance.
Those moments when God pulls back the curtain, peels back the sky.
Precious Memories my Dad’s records and mine! The Victrola... not just the sounds but the stories behind them... sharing one with Verlene this past Sunday! We were in a service at the Brentwood Church back in 1970, together. I was 13. Little did we know that 45 years later I would be her pastor... down in Fort Jacques, Stephanie Bauer, Ed’s wife has family! 15 minutes away from Bellevue! We will meet them. Whi knows what God is doing in your life?! If He told you you wouldn’t t believe it! The wisest th8ng you can do today is to trust Him
It is a great journey! The best is yet to come! You say I am old, a few years left... yes! The best is yet to come. My friend Patty, who has been a nurse on our trips to Haiti, Ernie, her husband went to be with the LORD yesterday morning.. He is there, the best... but it is yet to come! Reunion!
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Christian Grief
Christian Grief
Acts 20.36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
*We grieve.
Grieved= to cause intense pain
to be in anguish
be tormented
to distress one's self
A consuming grief
There is no other human emotion like grief. Because we were created for eternal life, because God has placed eternity in the hearts of men, death is unnatural to our make up. We embrace life. We love life. When we grieve we feel out of it. We feel like there is this cloud over us. We are quiet inwardly as we try and wrap our minds around what is happening. We do all we can to keep the person’s memory alive. We sleep because we are both exhausted and it is an escape. We wake up and hope we were dreaming. Then we realize we were not. There is a restlessness as well. Our hearts hurt. Our minds reel. We feel down. This is not what we were created for.
Sin brought death. When we receive Christ Jesus we enter into eternal life. Paul describes death as our last enemy. We long to be set free from it and one day we will.
Revelation 21.4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Christians grieve.
*Not like the rest of men who have hope.
There is great difference, vastly difference.
We get down and feel painful emotion.
We cry.
Wept= to mourn, weep, lament, weeping as the sign of pain and grief, to mourn for the dead
Sometimes Christians get depressed.
Some Christians can even get overcome by grief.
We have hope.
I Thessalonians 4.13
expectation of good
in the Christian sense: joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation
This is a message of hope! We are people of hope! Christ’s Return is refered to as Our Blessed Hope.
Our grief may last our whole life but it is only for this life. In the life to come eternal life with no death. No cemeteries in that city!
1. Loss is a part of life, even the Christian Life.
*It is a fact.
We must face it.
This sounds harsh but it laid out here by Paul, the apostle.
He was the same one who, carried along by the Holy Spirit wrote:
I Thessalonians 4.13-18
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.
*It is within the will of God.
Jesus went through it.
Jesus rose from the dead.
We will go through it.
Believers in Jesus will rise again.
*It is not forever... in eternity.
Vinnie Scardingo’s funeral on Friday Evening. Seeing lots of my friends. He is in heaven. His family misses him.
Art said the last thing he said to him was, “See you later.”... then he said, “And I will.”
It will be swallowed up.
II Corinthians 5.4
While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it's not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.
2. Grief is due to loss.
Grief
deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.
mental suffering and distress caused by losing someone we love.
Grief is a deep emotional response to a great loss.
It feels like a heavy weight in our heart.
Saying our goodbyes.
Praying Our Goodbyes
By Joyce Rupp
3. It is hard to be real.
Grief makes us real.
Pain and sorrow and suffering bring reality to the soul.
Interesting, is it not, what suffering begets?
Love someone and your heart will be broken. Wrap your heart around a puppy or a bird or any pet and eventually your heart will be broken. That is the price of love. It is worth the price. C.S. Lewis
The Velvateen Rabbit.
HERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.
There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.
Christmas Morning
For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
The Skin Horse Tells His Story
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
That cannot happen without those uncomfortable things happening.
Grief and the pain that accompanies it makes us real.
Our pain is our greatest assett. Just look at the stories behind the hymns.
This is why Paul wrote that he wanted to know the fellowship of sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
It hurts.
It cleanses us.
It is a fellowship.
The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms.
Our grief and pain makes us humble, meek and lowly. It makes us like Jesus. He showed His Disciples His scars.
It fits us for heaven. It equips us to help others in their journey, Blessed Hope Journey Grief Group. We open our hearts.
Bible Study, Discipleship Group... open our hearts... in those groups we can be honest and transparent. We all need that!
4. Heaven Will Be The Ultimate Reality.
All things will be revealed... the mysteries of life which we can at best guess about now.
We will know even as we are fully known.
Sin and all its consequences and effects will be done away with.
I long for that day.
I have longed for that Day.
Revelation 21.1-4
Christians grieve but not like the rest of men who have no hope. We have a Blessed Hope. One day... and Oh what a day that will be.
Acts 20.36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
*We grieve.
Grieved= to cause intense pain
to be in anguish
be tormented
to distress one's self
A consuming grief
There is no other human emotion like grief. Because we were created for eternal life, because God has placed eternity in the hearts of men, death is unnatural to our make up. We embrace life. We love life. When we grieve we feel out of it. We feel like there is this cloud over us. We are quiet inwardly as we try and wrap our minds around what is happening. We do all we can to keep the person’s memory alive. We sleep because we are both exhausted and it is an escape. We wake up and hope we were dreaming. Then we realize we were not. There is a restlessness as well. Our hearts hurt. Our minds reel. We feel down. This is not what we were created for.
Sin brought death. When we receive Christ Jesus we enter into eternal life. Paul describes death as our last enemy. We long to be set free from it and one day we will.
Revelation 21.4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Christians grieve.
*Not like the rest of men who have hope.
There is great difference, vastly difference.
We get down and feel painful emotion.
We cry.
Wept= to mourn, weep, lament, weeping as the sign of pain and grief, to mourn for the dead
Sometimes Christians get depressed.
Some Christians can even get overcome by grief.
We have hope.
I Thessalonians 4.13
expectation of good
in the Christian sense: joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation
This is a message of hope! We are people of hope! Christ’s Return is refered to as Our Blessed Hope.
Our grief may last our whole life but it is only for this life. In the life to come eternal life with no death. No cemeteries in that city!
1. Loss is a part of life, even the Christian Life.
*It is a fact.
We must face it.
This sounds harsh but it laid out here by Paul, the apostle.
He was the same one who, carried along by the Holy Spirit wrote:
I Thessalonians 4.13-18
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.
*It is within the will of God.
Jesus went through it.
Jesus rose from the dead.
We will go through it.
Believers in Jesus will rise again.
*It is not forever... in eternity.
Vinnie Scardingo’s funeral on Friday Evening. Seeing lots of my friends. He is in heaven. His family misses him.
Art said the last thing he said to him was, “See you later.”... then he said, “And I will.”
It will be swallowed up.
II Corinthians 5.4
While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it's not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.
2. Grief is due to loss.
Grief
deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.
mental suffering and distress caused by losing someone we love.
Grief is a deep emotional response to a great loss.
It feels like a heavy weight in our heart.
Saying our goodbyes.
Praying Our Goodbyes
By Joyce Rupp
3. It is hard to be real.
Grief makes us real.
Pain and sorrow and suffering bring reality to the soul.
Interesting, is it not, what suffering begets?
Love someone and your heart will be broken. Wrap your heart around a puppy or a bird or any pet and eventually your heart will be broken. That is the price of love. It is worth the price. C.S. Lewis
The Velvateen Rabbit.
HERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.
There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.
Christmas Morning
For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
The Skin Horse Tells His Story
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
That cannot happen without those uncomfortable things happening.
Grief and the pain that accompanies it makes us real.
Our pain is our greatest assett. Just look at the stories behind the hymns.
This is why Paul wrote that he wanted to know the fellowship of sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
It hurts.
It cleanses us.
It is a fellowship.
The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms.
Our grief and pain makes us humble, meek and lowly. It makes us like Jesus. He showed His Disciples His scars.
It fits us for heaven. It equips us to help others in their journey, Blessed Hope Journey Grief Group. We open our hearts.
Bible Study, Discipleship Group... open our hearts... in those groups we can be honest and transparent. We all need that!
4. Heaven Will Be The Ultimate Reality.
All things will be revealed... the mysteries of life which we can at best guess about now.
We will know even as we are fully known.
Sin and all its consequences and effects will be done away with.
I long for that day.
I have longed for that Day.
Revelation 21.1-4
Christians grieve but not like the rest of men who have no hope. We have a Blessed Hope. One day... and Oh what a day that will be.
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