Firstly, we see the mindset and character of the people was that they, “Did what was right in their own eyes”. Even today, such is still the case. We live in a society filled with moral relativity, where most people do whatever they feel is right, even if it is in complete opposition to the Creator.

Secondly, we find a truth in an a very unassuming statement in verse 1, “And a certain man of Bethelehem, Judah…”. It would be easy to pass over this text without a second thought, but upon consideration, there is much being said here. Even in the midst of famine in the entire land, the Lord was at work on an individual basis. Many times we assume that God is too busy with everyone else and everything else to bother with us individually. What we fail to remember is that God is not hindered by things great or small. He sees the big and the little picture, to degree that we could never even comprehend, and all at one time.

Finally, we see the Lord at work within the worst of circumstances, even in the midst of disobedience and the lack of belief in the promises of God. Elimelech chose to take his family out of the promised land, and into Moab, a pagan nation. His sons take Moabite wives, and eventually die in Moab, along with their father. Strangely, it doesn’t seem that Moab was a great place to flee the famine in Israel. After all of this, we find Elimelech’s wife and daughter-in-law, Ruth, getting word that the Lord has visited his people in Israel by giving them bread. Had Elimelech believed the promises of God, that God would provide for His people, all they needed was to obey Him, then perhaps he and his sons would have lived. However, the Lord is still able to take these bad circumstances and set into motion a plan for redemption. Not only the redemption of Naomi and Ruth, but even more so, the spiritual redemption of mankind.

Truly, God’s plans are far greater than our plans!

Stay tuned for more on our four part series through the book of Ruth.

Then I begin to wonder - Was Sonfest a success this year? Should we have spent the money? Was the effort worth while?

As I ask myself these questions, I start thinking about how many people from our Church pitched in and helped out. Pulling off an event like Sonfest requires more than the efforts of a few people, it takes a group effort for this kind of an event. I was amazed at the numerous people who put in a ton of time and effort to make Sonfest happen. As hot as it was (108 degrees!) everyone worked their shifts and just seemed happy that they were serving the Lord while reaching out to our Community.

I’m thinking about the teenagers who were invited to Youth Group and the adults who were invited to Church. These were people who we may never have had the chance to speak with outside of this setting. I don’t know how many of these people, if any, will take us up on our invitations but I’m confident that the Lord planted seeds in the lives of many this past weekend.

I’m thinking about the young man who gave his life to Christ on Sunday Morning. WOW! This is what Sonfest is all about - reaching the lost with the Love of Jesus. In addition, there were many young children, a teenager and a few adults Baptized. I’m excited to see what the Lord does in the lives of these individuals in the months to come.

Every year we find ways to improve upon Sonfest for the next year, and this year will be no different. Next year things will run a little better and more un-expected things will arise, as they always do. It would be great if things always went as planned but we know that doesn’t always happen. Maybe there were a few minor things that didn’t go quite as we had planned them but as I come full circle in my thought process I realize that the Lord didn’t care about how hot it was. The fact that attendance was down didn’t stop the Lord from working in many lives. The power problems didn’t stop the the Gospel from from being preached. The event didn’t end because Everyday Sunday was late. I don’t think anyone decided not to get saved and/or baptized because of these things. I’m pretty sure that not one person felt like God didn’t love them because of these things. And this might be going out on a limb, but, I don’t think anyone accused us of being hypocrites because of these things either.

So, again, I ask myself the question “Was Sonfest a success?”  I have to answer this question by saying “absolutely!” The love of Jesus was evident in a tangible way all weekend as we served our Community with gladness. As I mentioned, we will find ways to make Sonfest better and better each year but, perhaps, the most important thing we can do is to simply serve Jesus with all we have. If God is glorified in what we do the rest doesn’t seem to matter quite as much.

I would also like to say thanks to all of you who pitched in to make Sonfest happen. Aside from these few minor things, I don’t think things could have ran smoother than they did. Everyone did a great job and everyone played a part in what happened at Sonfest. It was great to see so much involvement from our Fellowship!

Chad

Anyway, Sonfest is just around the corner! As we spend this week in preparation for this outreach please remember to be in Prayer for the events of this weekend. Sonfest draws alot of people from our Community and it seems like each year more and more are in attendance. Sonfest also presents us an amazing opportunity to share the Love of Jesus, in a way that is tangible, to our Community. Our goal is not necessarily to create an environment for other Christians to come and have a good time. Although, this does happen and it’s not a bad thing, the bigger picture is that the lost would be reached with the Love of Jesus. Having great bands, good food, fun for the Children, and a ton of people is all well and good but let’s make sure that we are focused on the right thing.

As  you go thru the week think about how you can impact someones life for the Kingdom during Sonfest. Maybe the Lord will give you an opportunity to share the Gospel or to pray with someone. Let’s be prepared when those opportunities arise so we aren’t caught off guard when they do happen.

Lastly, don’t forget about Prayer and Fasting all day on Friday, 8/15/08, and the group Prayer at 7pm in Pioneer Park. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Chad

For the next 7 weeks on Wednesday evenings I am teaching a series we’re calling “Burning Questions”

Over the last several months we’ve compiled questions from people in the church and now I’m going to answer those questions to the best of my ability. The questions will range from topics such as Eschatology, Angels, Creation, Prayer, and Heaven. We begin with a few songs of worship, I then introduce the question and “attempt” to answer it

after that I open it up for discussion,  and then we close with worship because even in our best effort to answer these tough questions we must concede that God’s ways are beyond our ways and His thoughts are much higher than our thoughts so we are left to simply worship Him.

Last night I began the series by answering the question…

“Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us.”

Here are my notes…

Question - “Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us?”

-      First we must understand the source of evil and illness…Sin

We live in a fallen world that has yet to be redeemed (transformed) by God. Therefore we are subject to the repercussions of living in a sinful environment. Diseases, illnesses, sufferings, difficulties in this life are simply the result man’s rebellion toward God and a by-product of this evil world we live in.

-      Second we must concede that we don’t understand everything…we aren’t all knowing and therefore our perspective is limited.

Just because we cannot fathom any good reason for suffering doesn’t mean there aren’t any…

Tim Keller put it like this in His book The Reason for God

“If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because He hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know.”

Often after a tragedy like the recent earthquake in Burma, 9-11, the ‘ 04 tsunami in Asia, or Hurricane Katrina people will ask questions like…

Where was God?

Skeptics will assert that, “if God is God, He’s not good. If God is good, He’s not God.” For in their minds you can’t have it both ways. If God is powerful and can stop this stuff and He doesn’t then He’s not good. Or if He’s good but He’s not powerful enough to stop it then He’s not God.

As Christians…people whose theology comes from the Bible. We know that God is both powerful and loving and that He is far beyond our ability to comprehend. Therefore it is futile for us to attempt to reconcile His omnipotence with His love.

But if God truly loves us and He’s powerful enough to intervene…why doesn’t He do something about suffering and evil?

The answer to that question is, He did and He does -

I want to look at 4 reasons why our suffering does not in any way diminish the love of God toward us…

1.   He proved His love at the cross (Rom. 5:8, 8:32)

2.   He loves us too much to leave us the way we are…suffering is the tool God uses to bring maturity into our lives (James 1:2-5)

3.   He loves others and desires to bring comfort to them through us…God allows us to suffer so that we can comfort those who are suffering (2 Cor. 1:3-7)

4.   He has eternity in mind…His love for us is eternal therefore He allows us to suffer temporally to teach us eternal lessons (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

Our suffering must drive us to Jesus… “Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment.” (Tim Keller, The Reason for God)

We do not serve a God who stands impervious to our suffering and difficulty. He is intimately acquainted with our grief as He has experienced everything we are going through.

Our suffering must drive us to the cross…for it was there that God proved that He can bring goodness out of the most terrible events.

Jesus, the God of the Universe, was subjected to horrendous physical suffering but more than that God turned His back on Him as He poured out His wrath against sin upon His beloved Son.

On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced rejection and pain that exceeds anything we’ve ever gone through. Maybe you’ve experienced the rejection of a friend, a spouse, or a parent but none of us can fathom what it would be like to lose not just spousal love or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” This is a deeply relational statement that reveals the utter abandonment and rejection He was experiencing.

Yet even in this He did not question God’s love, for He uses the intimate term “My God” knowing that even in this God’s love was being powerfully demonstrated.

So when we look at the question, “Why does the Lord allow us to suffer through so many trials and illnesses if He truly loves us?”

And we look at the cross of Jesus, we aren’t given specific answers for our personal suffering, but we do know that the answer cannot be that He doesn’t love us. It can’t be that He doesn’t care or that He is removed from our condition. God takes our hurt and suffering so seriously that He was willing to take it on Himself.

Therefore if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that He suffered and died upon a cross, then we have comfort and strength to endure the most brutal realities of life here on earth. We can be assured that He is truly, Immanuel - God with us - even in our worst sufferings.

Sunday -

Current-July - Series in Colossians

August - Series in Ruth

Beginning in September - Series in Luke

Wednesday -

Current-July 2nd - Judges Series

July 9th-August - Questions Series (We will answer 7 of the most asked questions)

Beginning in September - Series in 1 Samuel

At the end of March, during Spring Break, we took the Youth Group on a retreat to Yachats, Oregon. We had an absolute blast while there. The retreat was fun and some great relationships were formed during our 4 days on the coast. All the teens that went were great and all the leaders did an incredible job of balancing having fun and ministering to the kids.

The theme for the retreat was “Reality”. This is the name of our group and we thought it would be cool if students knew the meaning behind the name. We had three teaching times that were about the “Reality of our Sin”, the “Reality of our Savior”, and the “Reality of Serving Jesus” taken from First John Chapters 1-3. These moments were used by God to touch the lives of teenagers who realized, for the first time, that they needed Him. Three gave thier lives to Christ and seven were baptized in the ocean, affirming/re-affirming their committment to Christ! God did an amazing thing in the lives of these teenagers. Not one of them made their decision with out putting alot of thought behind it. Mark Halvorson wrote a more detailed post on his blog about the retreat that you can read here.

Immediately following the retreat we started our way thru the book of First Samuel. I’m really excited about going thru this book as we see how God can use young people to accomplish great things for His Kingdom. Since then we have continued to see many new faces on Tuesday nights. Students have been inviting friends and those friends invite more people. Also, we have had some adults in our body step up and get involved with helping out as Youth Leaders. The Lord never ceases to amaze me with what he does.

Lastly, in the past several weeks we have had five teenagers express interest in going to AViD. If you have not heard about AViD, click on the link to read more about it. The cost per person is $800 plus airfare to San Diego, which will likley be another $450. We will have several fundraisers in the weeks to come. If you need any work done around your house or are in need of babysitting, please let me know as these students are available as a way to raise funds for the trip.

Please pray that God continues to bring teens in the door and that his word would come alive to those in attendance.

Reality is every Tuesday @ 6:30 at the Church and is open to Junior High & High School Students.

 …the reality is Christ,

Chad

summation of Christianity. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “I decided

one who was crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2 NLT)

1. The Sin of Man – The biggest problem that you and I have is that we

2. The Holiness of God – God is perfect. He doesn’t make mistakes. He

to His holiness. There was a price that had to be paid, “the wages ofsin is death…” (Romans 6:23) therefore Jesus took sin and death upon

3. The Love of God – It was the love of God that motivated Him to

4. The Relationship – Our perfectly holy loving God longed to have a

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant,and coming in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:5-6)*