BURDENED

Burdened 



I am a pastor and have been my entire married life in one role or another. 

I started in 1989 and now it is 2013. I started as a youth pastor in FL and now 

I am a senior Pastor in Florida. Things have changed. When
I started Christians attended church services and functions as their regular routine
to be with other believers, now if it fits into their agenda they will try to
make it. When I started if there was a missionary, special guest or revival services
people showed up excited, expecting , now you have to convince people why they
should change their schedule for something beyond the regular services. When I
started people wanted to pray and enjoyed praying; now very few will pray with
others and hardly any tears are ever shed. 

   When I started drug addicts were those who purchased them illegally from the drug dealers, now drug addicts are those hooked from their doctor’s prescriptions. When I started teenagers played outside, liked to go do stuff with the youth group and now if they have nothing better to do they might attend a youth function. When I started out

children and teens came with their parents, now grandparents try to bring their
grandchildren if their parents will let them. When I started destroying your secular
rock and roll records and cassettes was a sign of coming out of the world, not following
the latest secular groups is considered the cool thing to do in the world. 



      When I started people brought their bibles to church, now they leave them home. 

When I started people enjoyed small groups, now many avoid them. When I started 

accountability meant letting someone know why you would not be at church, now accountabilty is none of your business. When I started sex outside of marriage was sin, now living with anyone is acceptable. When I started homosexuality was a shameful way to live, not it’s just another way to live. The culture has shifted, the church in American has 

declined but the Hope of Good News remains the same, but I am burdened.




I hope you identify more with how it was then how it is. If so, Praise the Lord, if not, then I'm burdened for you. I am burdened for our country, our culture and our churches.

I am burdened for our children, young parents and our communities. We need each
other, we need to pray, we need we to repent and we need revival.
"if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will healtheir land." 2 Chronicles 7:14 

A True Biblical Evangelist In Modern America

I was reading in my devotions one morning  when I came across this passage in  Luke 10:2-4 NIV. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.  Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.  Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

    A few weeks ago I meet brother Lawrence. I will spare you the details on how we meet, but we did and I have since  spent some time with him in the neighborhoods.  Money never come into play at all. Brother Lawrence calls himself a street preacher. I've yet to see him preach on the streets, but I've heard about it and I am amazed. He has told me many stories of him and Jesus in the streets as well. The actual preaching on the street aspect however is not the part that I see as the worker working in the harvest, but rather everything leading up to it.

      The first thing is that nobody is a stranger and he knows how to engage people quickly and as well seems to determine even faster if they are ripe for the harvest or not. He invites, inquires, challenges and connects. He is always looking for a person of peace that will welcome him and guide him to the local harvest field. He greets people for who he sees they will be in Christ and not how they are without Him.

    The second thing is that brother Lawrence knows where to find the harvest in a community or how to inquire where to find the harvest in a community. He does not look for the wealthy or the well to do, yet God can easily put them in his path as well. Brother Lawrence looks for the least of these in the area.

This evangelist has wisdom and is Spirit Led. Where he goes,  he is led by the  Lord as the Spirit works before him. After 20 plus years of ministry I've seen my fill of the typical self made evangelist who comes to preach to the church crowd , gets paid and moves on to the next church crowd. This evangelist is different and he actually  works in the fields with the church pastor or people and He trust His Father above to meet his needs as he travels along . Now  I know what a true biblical evangelist looks  like. He has no demands or expectations and is targeting lost people in a community verses those already professing Christ ( as weak as they might be).  I discovered  how few biblical evangelist there actual are out there in the highways and bushes of our communities.


       I see now that a traveling evangelist and a traveling revivalist are two completely different calls. What we really see today if at all are revivalist who travel to preach to the saints with occasional conversions of those who are mixed in with the saints.

   Lord grant us more brother Lawrence's in our days who go into the areas of our communities where most people have abandoned. Evangelist who preach the truth without a pulpit or microphone.

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Thanks be to God for the biblical evangelist.

THE JOY OF THE LORD IN THE UNEXPECTED!

The Joy of Lord is my Strength.

    It's been a good while since my entire family ( all 7 of us) went on a family vacation away.  Just a little over a month ago we took a week off to go to our oldest daughters college graduation and to move her home, but that did not have the feeling of a vacation even though it took a week off to go and return.  But this week is different.  It's been a plan in the making for many months to celebrate my moms 94th birthday off the coast of Maine. Had it not been for being an elected delegate for our General Church we would have been able to stay even longer in Maine then the 5 days planned before we need to leave to General Assembly.

 

         So here i am in a hotel room at 5 a.m. not able to sleep reflecting on family life vacations as a pastor while the rest of my family sleeps all around me. When we first did these kinds of trips they were all little ones, but now 4 of them are adult size with one of them flying home early to go back to work.  The days, months and years certainly do whisk by fast. Im so grateful we have unity and joy in our family. We have already laughed a lot on this trip and had one stop along the way of this 3500 hundred plus mile adventure. 

  

       In order to get away this time we had to have someone cover preaching in two different churches for me and for someone to do a funeral on my behalf in a few days while we are still in Maine. It takes a lot of preparation for us to leave town for this long and the Joy of serving The Lord helps us do that.

      Every time we prepare to leave we have to prepare the house and arrange for the feeding, caring of loving of 4 pets. This time it was 3 pets as our sons turtle winkie died the day before we left. We had to have a funeral in the back yard before we could leave. The Joy of The Lord helped us through those moments. 

      Before we could leave ALL the laundry has to be washed and dried before we can pack and go and like most trips the drier could not keep up and Becky asked me to take a few loads downtown to dry so we could leave on time. So at 6:30 am I am driving around looking for a Laundromat that is open. Again the Joy of The Lord is my strength. 

  Early that morning just two mornings ago I was sitting in the truck waiting on the laundry while preparing to read a devotional when a young girl at about 6:45 am rides up on a bicycle to ask me to borrow my phone to call her dad. A little hesitant to do such, but i agree and listen to the voice message left of a daughter asking her dad for help with money for her and her mom.   

        After she shared a little of her story she rides away on her bike and crosses the road when The Lord said help her.  So I yell the girls name from across the street just before she goes out of sight down the road. She returns and I offer her a job watching and doing my laundry while i take off for a few minutes.  When I return with a spiritual booklet and some money for her she helps me fold laundry as we talk about her life and challenges. I sense her need for a Savior and share the Gospel with her. By the time I need to leave she had prayed with me to trust In Jesus as her savior and was handed info on where she  could go to follow up with her new found faith along with some cash for her short seasoned job of laundry girl. The Joy of The Lord is my strength and as well this now this 21 year old young women has the Joy of the Lord  as she was looking for answers in a broken world of circumstances.  

       Vacations for me/us are never void of opportunity and challenges. But in the midst of it is all from the untimely death of a young turtle to the demands of the life and season of a local congregation and preparing to leave town,  the Joy of The Lord is our strength. 

I am blessed to have a great and fun family to love and do life with as we trust The Lord in the great adventure of the unexpected along the vacation journey to Maine and back. 

Be A Dream Trader!

           People nearing mid-life often crash into some startling and unexpected observations. For instance, we all dreamed big dreams when we were younger. I did and I trust you did as well if you are over 50 and reading this. But as we move at a break-neck pace through our twenties, thirties, and forties, we eventually slam head on into the realization that “some” of our dreams will never be realized. 

     Eight years ago I dreamed of having our own home in hills of Virginia where we pastored. After many years of not being able to realize that dream I can see that God knew better than what I was dreaming. In was soon before we moved to Deland that the real estate industry crashed and we moved to Florida. Had we owned the “dream” then we might have regretted it around 2008-9.  God always knows best and has our best interests in mind even above our grand dreams.

However, not realizing our dreams throws some people into a mid-life crisis.  Some don’t make it that far with their aspirations, having already given them up somewhere along the way or not being able to accomplish them in there time.  Some run into conflict that makes them weary and they settle for less.  Still others make bold decisions to trade one dream in for another. 

That’s what Joseph did.  Talk about dreams!  He had some big ones.  At seventeen he dreamed his ten older brothers would bow down to him.  It’s enough he dreamed that dream.  What makes it worse is that he told his brothers about it.

The older brothers already had issues with the younger son.  Their father favored Joseph.  He had even given him a valuable, multi-colored coat.  That’s the modern-day equivalent of a parent of four teenagers giving one an iPhone and the other three a stack of quarters each for a pay phone (assuming they could find one on their travels).  The brothers banded together and tossed the dreamer in a ditch, eventually selling him into slavery at the first opportunity.   The next thing Joseph knew he was waking up in Egypt.

From there his life was a rollercoaster thrill ride.  One minute a slave.  The next in charge of an Egyptian official’s house.  The next in prison.  The next in charge of the prison.  Then he found himself in front of Pharaoh, called upon to interpret the leader’s dreams.  With God’s help he was able to warn Pharaoh he would have seven years of abundant crops that he should be put in storehouses in anticipation of seven years of famine.  Recognizing his wisdom, Pharaoh put Joseph second in command of all of Egypt.

And because of God’s personal involvement in his life, he was was able to save his family.  The same family that God was building into a nation.  Joseph was in position to bring his family to Egypt and give them the most fertile land to work.  And it was definitely fertile.  In the time they were there they were “fruitful and increased greatly” (Exodus 1:7).

Joseph could have lost his life getting caught up in the details of his life, chasing his dreams and desires like anyone of us could do.  Instead, he chose a better story.  God’s story!   

You can do the same.  If your life’s dream has stalled, look to God. If your dream now realized is not all you thought it would be, look to God. He can give you another dream.  A better one, not according to the world’s standard but God’s criteria.  Just like Joseph’s.  Then you’ll have a story to tell. Join us tomorrow at 10:30 at Delandnaz as we explore the life of Joseph from broken dreams to God’s best dreams. www.delandnaz,tv