Finding God

Finders, Seekers

Posted on by Betsy

Do you remember a time when you couldn’t pick up your phone to access a global source of information in a matter of seconds? We are so accustomed to having a map, dictionary, encyclopedia, calculator, instant news, weather, etc. at our finger tips, it’s no wonder we freak out when we lose our smart phones or worse, drop them in the toilet.

Yes, I’ve done that.

Twice.

I haven’t the foggiest notion of how Google works, but I do know that you have to frame your search inquiry correctly to get the results you want. As search engines evolve and algorithms track your previous searches, it gets easier to find things out. For example, I do so many searches for Scriptures that Scripture references now pop up whenever I type in a few words. Alexa listens to our conversations and then an ad for that very thing magically pops up on our FaceBook feed. We are living in a time when artificial intelligence not only responds to our inquires, but actually directs our behavior. Big Brother is not just watching us, he has moved into the guest room and has commandeered the best fluffy comforter and the biggest bathroom in the house.

But none of this happens until you initiate a request for a response. You start the process by seeking something: a product, an answer, a direction … you seek, and Google finds.

I wonder if the Wisemen would have found Jesus faster if they had Google Maps and a Star Finder app.

Last Christmas someone sent me a card that read, “Wise people still seek him.” I love that. Whenever we stretch out an arm to shade our eyes and cast our vision outward, we can easily find God. He is never far away from our presence, and longs to be found.

He can be found in the eyes of a homeless man looking for help. He can be heard in the cries of a child separated from her family at our nation’s border. He can be felt in the palm of a dying grandmother, longing for one last hand-holding with her grandson. He can be seen in the Sunday morning choir as they stand to bring their harmony into worship. God can be found in God’s people everywhere: all we have to do is look.

In seminary, a professor taught me that the Bible is God’s love letter to his people. In Scripture, we find not just the answers to the complexity of the world and beyond, but the Answer to everything in Christ Jesus.

The Old Testament is the search. The New Testament brings the answer.

Hebrews 11 The Message (MSG)

11 1-2 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.

3 By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.

6 And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.

Anyone who wants to approach God must believe that God cares enough to respond to those who SEEK him. Ask, knock, and seek, and you will find.

Psalm 105 English Standard Version (ESV)

1 Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;

    make known his deeds among the peoples!

2  Sing to him, sing praises to him;

    tell of all his wondrous works!

3  Glory in his holy name;

    let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!

4 Seek the Lord and his strength;

    seek his presence continually!

Got questions? Need answers? Feeling empty and long to be made full?

Seek God today. He will be found.

Sunrise Reflections by Michelle Robertson

The Heart of Worship

Posted on by Betsy

What is at the heart of worship for you? Is it the beautiful stained glass windows, the prayers, the music, the message … where in worship do you connect with God? Sadly, a lot of folks walk through church doors without any expectation of meeting God there. Church can become a duty, a ”check in the box,” or worse, a see-and-be-seen social event, indicating that our hearts for true worship have grow cold.

Matt Redman’s song “I’m Coming Back to the Heart of Worship” serves as our text today. It dates back to the late 1990s, born from a period of apathy within Matt’s home church, Soul Survivor, in Watford, England. Despite the country’s overall contribution to the current worship revival, Redman’s congregation was struggling to find meaning in its musical outpouring at the time.

“There was a dynamic missing, so the pastor did a pretty brave thing,” he recalls. “He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away.”

Reminding his church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, asked, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?” Read more here.

King of endless worth
No one could express
How much you deserve
Though I’m weak and poor
All I have is yours
Every single breath
I’ll bring you more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what you have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart

And I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about you
It’s all about you, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about you
It’s all about you, Jesus.

At the heart of Christian worship are awe, praise, reverence, yielding, and adoration. Worship ignites the human spirit as the spark of God touches our souls. In Exodus 25:22 God says, “And I will meet with you there and talk to you….” And so we should strive to commit to a return to pure and true worship this Advent, where we communicate heart-to-heart with our Holy God. 

Commu­nity worship experiences bring the corporate body into concentrat­ing on God. The same principle holds true in individual worship, as our center of attention is focused on the living God. Did you make it to church last Sunday? Check in the box! But what is your plan for the rest of the week? 

Worship is an attitude of putting God on his throne every day as you acknowledge his reign in your heart. And may we offer God our finest first fruits, the best of our resources, and the full tithe of our harvests. Then we will truly be worshipping God as he deserves.

The Heart of Worship by Michelle Robertson

Pandemic Dreams

Posted on by Betsy

My pandemic dreams are getting wilder and louder. Some mornings I wake up exhausted by my dream-saturated sleep. Even in my tiredness, I am grateful for the silence that wakefulness brings. My deep consciousness is flooded with turbulence. I have read that others are experiencing this as well. How about you?

We understand that dreams are the mind’s way of unburdening itself of the daily pressures and disturbances that get shoved away throughout the day so that we can focus on what is at hand. Some posit that dreams are a form of memory processing, or are a type of protective act, i.e. a way to prepare the brain for danger and challenges. In any case, it stands to reason that the current pandemic would result in people having vivid dreams all night long.

In 1 Peter, we read a beautiful picture of life being ”a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.” That image is profound for us pandemic people. Oh, how we long to replace our deep consciousness of despair with the deep consciousness of God’s peace!

And I like that it reminds us that this is a journey, which implies that there is a destination. I am ready, as I’m sure you are, for us to ARRIVE at the end. Let me off this bus!!

Even better, we find God on this journey:

1 Peter 1 (The Message)

17 You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living.

18-21 Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought.

YOU are not an afterthought to God. You call out to him for help, and he responds like the good, responsible father that he is. He has removed us from our sloppy, dead-end, empty-headed way of life.

Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

Don’t miss that…we have a future in God. This is comforting news in the midst of recent information that we might see a spike in COVID cases in the fall. A second wave may be imminent, and we are so weary of the first. But hang on. We have a future in God.

22-25 Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word.

What must change immediately is that we must “love one another as if our lives depend on it.” We are utterly failing at this. The vitriol, anger, and downright hatred that we see every day on our streets, on the news, and especially on social media must stop. We condemn ourselves with every post.

Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said,

The old life is a grass life,
    its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers;
Grass dries up, flowers droop,
    God’s Word goes on and on forever.

This is the Word that conceived the new life in you.

Today is a day to seek the deep consciousness of God. Today is an opportunity to allow God’s Word of hope, salvation, and unconditional love to bring forth a new life in us.

THIS is what I dream of: a world-wide community unified as one body, loving each other through this pandemic, and offering only words of comfort and peace to each other until this is over.

What do you dream of? Are you experiencing disturbing dreams right now? Do you wake up tired? Do you long for peace?

Listen. Stay in the Word, and get out of the world. Find ways, especially at bedtime, to turn everything off and go deep into the consciousness of God. Pray like you’ve never prayed before.

God will deliver us, of that I am sure. The Word will bring new life in us.

Sweet Dreams by Becca Ziegler

Ordinary Life

Posted on by Betsy

Within a very brief period of time, things around the world have gone upside down. Australia is on fire, 180 people were shot down from the sky during a missile strike by Iran on Iraq, my own denomination is moving forward toward an historic and inevitable split, Puerto Rico suffered damaging earthquakes, and our government is in turmoil. We can hardly wake up in the morning without yet another unthinkable world situation coming out that seems to blow up the last one that we haven’t had time to assimilate. I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep up. I am beginning to think that Chicken Little was right; the sky indeed, is falling.

I hope that you all know that when such widespread disaster strikes, we can read scripture, pray, find opportunities to actively respond in tangible ways, and be obedient to the place God is calling us into in the midst of the storm. Without a doubt, one place we are NOT called to be is on the negative side of all these issues as explored through social media. Nothing EVER gets worked out there. No good comes from pot-stirring, endless speculation, name-calling, and spreading misinformation. There are so many better ways to respond. Here is just one:

Romans 12 The Message (MSG)

Place Your Life Before God

12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.

What would happen if we all took our ordinary lives and placed them before God as an offering? What would it look like if we eschewed the social media culture that we fit into without thinking, and instead fixed our attention on God? Are we too well-adjusted to this culture of hate-spewing and fact-mangling that we don’t even seek the truth?

If we took our everyday life and laid it before God each morning, do you think God would say, “Thanks for that! Now feel free to spend two and a half hours today (the current average daily social media use) of this precious time bashing one another on social media.” I don’t think so. I think he would encourage us to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, comfort the lonely, bring water to the thirsty, and walk the shelter dogs. OK, I added that last part, but you get the gist.

In the midst of all of this recent, tremendously disconcerting strife, choose a better path. Lay your life before God and do something CONSTRUCTIVE and positive, and embrace what God is doing for you.

He is ready to change you from the inside out, and he wants something from you. Can you respond to him?

When we bring all that we are and all that we have and give it to God, we embrace all that he has given us and live our lives in the manner he desires from us. It is then that we are walking in the will and the way of the Lord.

So here’s a thought. Stay off social media for 24 hours. Take that two and a half hours and do something positive with it. Then see how you feel about the world around you.

Time spent in the silence of God’s presence is always time well spent. May you find peace, hope, and contentment there.

Finding God in the Quiet by Becca Ziegler