Thanksgiving in Perspective

Tomorrow our church will hold a Thanksgiving service at 10:00 AM.  My sermon text will be Proverbs 15:13-17.  In preparation I came across a helpful article by R.C. Sproul Jr.  Here are his concluding paragraphs:

Gratitude, however, isn’t the fruit of happiness, but its root. When we give thanks, when we look at the world and our place in it realistically, remembering what we are due in ourselves, what we have, and all that we have been promised in Christ, we are astonished, overwhelmed. And therefore overjoyed.

I have with me four daughters who love me, and their Lord. I have three sons who love me, and their Lord. I have friends who love me, and their Lord. I have work that I love, that serves the Lord. I have a church where our Lord and His Word are preached. Most important of all, I am beloved of the Father. How could I ever even begin to think “It isn’t enough”? And, when I fail, my Father forgives me, His Spirit works in me, and I get better. Saint, thanksgiving isn’t a holiday to be observed, but a lifestyle to be practiced. Give thanks. And when you are done, do it again.

To put it all in perspective you should know that this comes from a man who lost his wife to cancer last December and a teen-aged daughter just a few weeks ago.

Proverbs 15:15 "All the days of the afflicted are evil, but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast."

Watching God “Roll the Stone Away” in Haiti

Steve Igo is an Orthodox Presbyterian Minister, from Hudsonville, Michigan. He was in Haiti serving on a short term mission trip when the earthquake struck. He has been heavily involved in the rescue efforts. Read his firsthand account here of helping rescue ten school girls trapped in the ruins of their school:

Watching God "Roll the Stone Away"

It goes without saying that we need to continue to pray.

Coincidence or Providence?

John Piper has written a thoughtful piece about the tornado that struck downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday. At that time and in that place, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) was meeting to deliberate whether to approve homosexuals to serve as ministers in their denomination.

I'll not steal Dr. Piper's thunder as to his interpretation of the event (pun intended). Click on the link the below.

The Tornado, the Lutherans, and Homosexuality


HT. BaylyBlog

Gambling

Here in Michigan we have several casinos on Indian reservations. I've often thought of the many reasons why this is bad and wasn't able to condense them as ably as what follows. I found this on a friend's blog and decided to post it here:

John H. Leith, 2001, Pilgrimage of a Presbyterian: Collected Shorter Writings , ed Charles E. Raynal, Louisville: Geneva Press. On pages 208-13, there's a short article he wrote in 1956 titled, "Gambling--What's Wrong with It?." Here's a summary:

1. "Gambling encourages the belief that a man can enjoy the advantages of a prosperous society without making a significant contribution to that society."

2. "Gambling arouses false hopes and gives little in return."

3. "Gambling is parasitic by nature. It creates no new wealth and performs no useful service. At best, it merely redistributes wealth from ... the many ... to the few."

4. Gambling is an attempt "to escape responsible work..."

5. Gambling contributes to the breakdown of society. Gambling is associated with political corruption, bribery, violence and murder. "Gambling contributes to dishonesty." Many companies blame gambling for staggering percentages of losses of the company. It leads to "unpaid debts," and it has "corrupted sports."

6. Gambling may become an addiction and has done so to many people to the ruin of their lives.

7. Gambling is poor stewardship of the resources God has entrusted to you.

8. Community life is possible only when each person attempts to make a contribution to the general welfare. Gambling is an attempt "to take from the community while refusing to give anything in return."

9. We are our brother's keeper. Since gambling causes some to fall, we may not engage in it.

10. "Gambling does not help men become more Christlike. It aggravates human weakness. It stimulates greed and breeds covetousness."

An unknown early Christian wrote: "Do not be a dice-thrower but a Christian: cast your money on the table of the Lord at which Christ presides and the spectators are angels and the martyrs are present; and the patrimony which you are about to squander with that ruinous passion divide instead among the poor: lose your wealth to Christ."

A few years ago a friend tried to argue that gambling was no different than investing money in the stock market. I countered saying that investors don't buy stocks without doing some research. They are primarily interested in a good return and don't want to lose their principal. So, they invest with their eyes wide open to the risks.

On the other hand, those who gamble ought to know that the odds are stacked against them from the beginning. The reason that casinos can offer all sorts of perks is that they are making a profit by stacking the odds in their favor. Sure the casino pays out money but the operators know that they cannot be too generous otherwise they will go out of business.

I once heard someone define gambling as "legalized theft." That's what I told my friend and eventually they had a change of heart.

Pastor Dan Cummings, Health Update

Dan Cummings, Pastor of 5 Points Community Church in Auburn Hills, has posted an update on his battle with cancer on his blog The Shadowlands. Here are a couple of excerpts:

"Chapter Two of this present pilgrimage seems to be unfolding now. This past week I had a post-surgery PETscan to determine if cancer was presenting itself anywhere in my body. We had been praying that there would be a reprieve, if not a cure from God’s hand, however, our heavenly Father has ordained that the cancer will remain at some level. The scan indicated that the cancer is active in my lymph system but not any organs. That’s relatively good news..."

"The reality of stage 4 comes and goes, always with the hope that God would see fit to defy the medical diagnosis and bring about healing this side of heaven. But with yesterday’s news after the long first chapter of this pilgrimage, I’m struggling with being hopeful and joyful and submissive and faith-filled and Christ-centered. One thought plagues me: I don’t want to die in the next 2-4 years, the average life expectancy for me. I’m growing weary of being sick and not being able to remember what it feels like to be well. And my energy for this next phase of treatment is low…kind of like a football team that’s down by 6 touchdowns at halftime: made to go back out to play the second half but knowing there’s no real hope to win the game. So, I pray for grace and lean hard into 2 Corinthians 12 and Psalm 42 and Hebrews 4 and Romans 8 … and plead that my heavenly Father will answer my next round of pleas for help and healing …"

Please continue to pray for him, his family and his church.

How Great The Father's Love

'As a dying man to dying men,' Pastor Dan Cummings, of 5 Points Community Church in Auburn Hills, Michigan exhorts his congregation to understand how great God's love is towards His children. Weaving several passages of Scripture together along with quotations from John Owen, C.H. Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and others, Pastor Cummings, paints a compelling picture of God's love to those who have turned to him for the forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ.

As noted on this blog Pastor Cummings is battling stage 4 cancer. He has just finished chemotherapy and will be undergoing surgery in the next few days. Please keep him, his family and his church in your prayers.

To hear the sermon click here: http://68.250.205.21:9085/mp3/2008/5-25-2008am.mp3

To get updates on his condition click here: http://www.5pointscc.org/dan/

RIP Christ Presbyterian Church of Midland

Seven years ago today I presided over a funeral. It wasn't the funeral of a friend or relative, nor was it a funeral for a member of our church. It was the final service of a church that God was clearly not sustaining.

I had moved to Midland nearly three years earlier with the hopes of a fruitful ministry. Even before arriving in town things took an ominous turn when a key family took a corporate transfer out of state. After arriving I began to call on families that had stopped attending and it took no time to learn that they wouldn't be back. When an officer abruptly resigned and left the church (leaving his keys in my office with no explanation) I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Yet I forged ahead and poured myself into the work doing all that I could to bring change.

I cannot and will not go into detail to explain the years leading up to the decision to close the church. Suffice it to say I came into a divided congregation: elders out of step with the laity, those who understood reformed theology vs. those who didn't, etc. Worse than that was a pattern in this church of chewing up people and spitting them out (this doesn't describe everyone but a number of people some of whom were leaders). This pattern came to light when a family with a PCA background joined the church and became a lightning rod for criticism. When they decided to leave the church I knew that the hand-writing was on the wall.

Though I stayed another year in hindsight I can see that the church was on life-support and beyond recovery. The only decision was pull the plug and move on.

Upon announcing that the church would be closing the previous minister came forward with information that he had withheld from me when I contacted him during the interview process. Had he shared that information with me three years earlier I would've never taken this church. I also learned about some backroom denominational politics that had taken place when he left the church and that only set us (my wife and I) up for failure.

The following months and years were filled with much heartache and difficulty: we blamed ourselves for not being smarter, we were upset that information had been withheld from us, the denominational politics outraged us. Added to that was the difficulty of finding a new church -- no one would touch me with a ten-foot pole after being involved with closing a church. It was a recipe for deep depression.

Yet God remained faithful during those dark days. While I sent out resumes galore planning for an eventual move God had other plans. He kept us here by closing all doors of opportunity. As my severance pay neared its end I took a contract job at Dow Chemical just to put food on the table. My initial assignment was to last 3 months but it actually turned into a five year employment stint as both a contractor and a Dow Chemical employee.

During those years, with no other ministry options available to me, I began to think and pray about starting another church. After all, the Tri-cities (Midland, Bay City and Saginaw) is not known as a hotbed of reformed theology. With the help of a couple of friends and no financial backing we decided to launch a Bible study to see if there would be interest in starting a new church. Over the course of the summer of 2003 God brought together several families. Throughout the fall and winter we continued to meet. And in March 2004 we held our first worship service.

Today I am privileged to serve a really great group of people ranging in age from a few months old to a few years beyond eighty (www.midlandpca.org. Please be patient -- our website is under construction). Less than 10% of our people had any connection to the previous church. When we started we had no financial backing and little moral support -- against those odds God has raised up a vital church upon the ashes of another. Only He could've done it!

Many things sustained us during those days. Let me mention two:

1) Godly advice from an experienced pastor. Before moving to Midland I had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with some godly pastors in western Pennsylvania. One of them, Dr. Gordon Keddie, made a comment to me at breakfast that was quite prescient. As we were sharing prayer requests it came to light that I was having some difficulty with my church and the problems seemed insurmountable. His words to me were, "Sometimes the good Lord sends a young pastor to a church where he will not do any harm." Those words fit my situation in western Pennsylvania but they also became a comfort as I reflected on my years in Midland -- God had brought me to a difficult situation to test and to refine me and to prepare me for something else.

2) Ephesians 2:10 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." This truth struck home with great force as I reflected on the death of Dr. James Montgomery Boice in June 2000 after his battle with cancer. At our last service we sang a hymn he wrote shortly before his death entitled, "Alive in Christ." It is based on the text of Ephesians 2:1-10 but I will only quote the last stanza which summarizes verse 10:

Yet now I am living with work to be done
For I am God's workmanship too,
Created in Christ with a race to be run,
Which God has ordained me to do.

I thought about Dr. Boice dying of cancer as he penned those words -- his race would not be done until his heart stopped beating. He continued to walk with God and work with all of his might in spite of his difficult circumstances (his final service as a minister of the Gospel was penning several hymns). As I reflected on my own difficult circumstances I realized that I had a race to run too. I took heart in the fact that I was God's workmanship and that He was fashioning me for additional labor in His kingdom. The hardships I faced in ministry were His means of pruning me (John 15) for greater fruitfulness. These assurances helped me press on.

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" Romans 11:33

Christ Presbyterian Church of Midland
1994 - 2001
RIP

God's Mysterious Ways

I found this gem at Dr. John Currid's blog, True North.

Mysterious Providence III

Daniel Webster Whittle was a major in the Union army during the American Civil War during the 1860’s. He later became a well known preacher of the gospel, and he often related how he became a Christian during the bloody conflict between the States.

He said, ‘When the Civil War broke out, I left my home in New England and came to Virginia as lieutenant of a company in a Massachusetts regiment. My dear mother was a devout Christian, and parted from me with many a tear, and followed me with many a prayer. She had placed a New Testament in a pocket of the haversack that she arranged for me. We had many engagements, and I saw many sad sights, and in one of the battles I was knocked out, and that night my arm was amputated above the elbow. As I grew better, having a desire for something to read, I felt my haversack, which I had been allowed to keep, and found the little Testament my mother had placed there. I read right through the book – Matthew, Mark, Luke, to Revelation. Every part was interesting to me; and I found to my surprise that I could understand it in a way that I never had before. When I had finished Revelation, I began at Matthew, and read it through again. And so for days I continued reading, and with continued interest; and still with no thought of becoming a Christian, I saw clearly from what I read the way of salvation through Christ.’

And then a most amazing event happened in this prison hospital...

Click here to read the rest: Ballantyne Presbyterian Church

Life In the Cancer Ward - Pastor Dan Cummings

Pastor Dan Cummings of 5 Points Community Church in Auburn Hills is chronicling his cancer treatments on his blog, The Shadowlands. I'm not sure how I would be doing if I were in his shoes. Here is an excerpt from his latest post...

A Shadowlands Dispatch

Everyone on 5 North is very sick…over every room is a shadow of death…some longer, some shorter, some hardly a shadow at all. There’s a lot of pain and every imaginable adaptation to the plague of cancer. N. is out in the hall doing laps…I think it’s a 20 minute pace with complaints of a boring course. E. is having surgery to buy a few more weeks of “quality” life. B. doesn’t move. Everyone’s case is complicated by the reality of unknowns. There’s a kind of seriousness on 5 North that everyone knows but no one talks about.

5 North is unusually quiet for a hospital floor…carpeted hallways, large & accommodating rooms, quiet & calm efficiency. The nurses are ladies of grace, sometimes hovering like that favorite grandma who keeps asking you if you want anything…just hoping you’ll say yes so they can make your day. None of them have come up with double fudge brownies with melted marshmallows and frosting, though.

5 North will be “home” when the unknown surfaces and causes trouble. And the unpredictable is normal. There’s nothing predictable about cancer. Statitistics and all information and doctor’s answers be damned! No one knows! That’s why doctors have become masters of “non-answers” and vaguery. For all of their priestly position in our culture, their art is one of educated guessing and hoping and experimenting based on the best wisdom of almost blind men. Don’t misunderstand. Modern medicine is a great evidence of common grace. If nothing else, I have imagined the hard and horrible, Brainerd-esque death I would be dying if some relief was not available. So, I bless our heavenly Father for such gifts and love these men who care for me with such passion and compassion that shames most parish priests. Yet, they have no idea how utterly dependent they are on a sovereign God…everything they do with such hope and confidence for their patients is subject to the ordaining council of our all-wise and all-good and all-glorifying God. So, it is strangely easy to take all the twists and turns if you immediately trace them back to God and the joyful trust that He is in control of the unknown and unpredictable and sometimes scary. It’s surreal getting used to this new “home.”

Read the rest by clicking here http://5pointscc.org/dan/?p=27

Also note that his blog has a couple of audio links for announcements he made to his congregation about his illness. Please keep him, his family and his church in your prayers.

Behind a Frowning Providence

I just learned that Pastor Dan Cummings of Five Points Church in Auburn Hills, Michigan has been diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer (ie. terminal). He is an outstanding voice for reformed theology in our area.

Please pray for him, his family and his church during this difficult time. Also pray that the Lord will be glorified.

You can get an update on his condition by visiting his blog listed below. About halfway down on the right you will find a brief audio file explaining his diagnosis (under the heading Morning Sermons). Apparently it was given at the beginning of a worship service and I bet there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The Shadowlands