Preview

What does your life look like if you love God?

With Valentine’s Day approaching I know what my life looks like if I love my wife!

I know the 5 unavoidable changes that marriage brings:

#1.  Dinner.  I can take Cindy out to dinner on Valentine’s Day or what she would prefer is that I cook all of it.

#2.  Flowers.  Nothing expensive, it’s a waste of money but a small bouquet is definitely the answer.

#3.  Card.  I can go buy a card with a gushy message and then enhance it or what she would prefer is that I make it myself.

#4.  Kids.  I need to talk about what a great mom she was and how she sacrificed and loved her kids.

#5.  Me.  I need to make sure I’m appreciative for all that she does for me.

But how do you show love for God? 

This week at GateWay we’ll be looking at Luke 19 and the story he tells us about a man named Zacchaeus.  Read Luke 19 and join us at one of our 3 services.

Preview

356 people voted “yes” on the budget so we have a new 2013 budget (we did have 1 no vote) , all the new Leadership Team members (deacons) were approved by an unbelievably overwhelming margin!  What a great day of envisioning a Biblical, Radical and Viral 2013! 

I hope you’re excited about our, “GateWay Country” service!  The first preview service is Feb. 10^th so hand out all those invite cards…we have more when you need them.

This Sunday we’ll be continuing our 4^th and Goal series by examining the words of Jesus to a young man who needed to confront his own need to be grateful.

We live in a world that is constantly encouraging us to compare what we have with what someone else has. 

In a recent series of humorous TV commercials for AT&T an adult man sits at a classroom desk with 2^nd graders and asks the question, “Which is better, bigger or smaller?”  “Bigger!” comes the reply.  He then asks, “Which would you rather have a big tree house or a small tree house?” “BIG!”  “Why would you not want a small tree house?”  “Because you won’t be able to fit a flat screen TV in it.”

Surprised?  Not at all.  That’s the world we live in.  Constant comparison and bigger is better philosophy.

Let’s think about that this Sunday and ask Jesus opinion about what “gratefulness” really means.

Preview

If you’re going to be on a team you have to know the goals of the team, the passion of the leaders, the challenges that lay ahead and the Mission on which God has sent us. 

This weekend we’re having our “GateWay on Mission” business meeting.  I promise it will be the most compelling business meeting you’ve ever been in!

We’re going to be:

            Singing the same great worship music,

            Examining Acts 19 and how the early church was

                        Biblical, Radical and Viral,

            Introducing who are the staff and leadership team,

            Reliving what the results were of our church in 2012,

            Commiting to where God is leading us in 2013!

Come be a part of the GateWay on Mission team because

                        WE’RE BETTER TOGETHER!

God bless,

Pastor Ed

Preview

Every generation gets a new label.  The label today is Millennials.  These are people who are born between the early 80’s and 2000.  They love technology, communication and media.  They tend to be politically liberal depending on the area in which they grow up.  There are 79 million of them!!!

Some are called, “Exiles.” Exiles are 18-29 year olds whose religious frustration has created disappointment, disillusionment, and a drifting away from the church.  All generations have done that to a certain degree but this generation suffers more acutely because they feel the church has not equipped them to think intellectually about the challenges they face in the religious multiplex called the internet.

The problem is the overwhelming amount of information causes them to reach the conclusion that everyone must be correct religiously because there’s just too much to process.

My commitment as the Teaching Pastor at GateWay is to teach us all how to think Biblically.  There are a lot of Bible preachers that do a great job of communicating information, and there’s a need for that. 

My goal is to teach people how to think.  I want all generations to be able to walk through the Bible and not see it as something long ago and far away but as relevant and useable to life today. 

The only way to do that is teach what I’m teaching this Sunday!  Curious?  I hope so because Sunday will help you move one step closer to interpreting scripture for yourself and not just reading or memorizing it.

If you know any Exiles please invite them.

God bless,

Ed

Preview

I circled, highlighted, underlined and put in quotes this little statement in John Ortberg’s latest book, Faith and Doubt.  He writes,

“I do not know why tragedy,

which destroys faith in some people,

gives birth to it in others.”

I like that statement because it’s the essence of our struggle.

This year some of us will face tragedy. 

It may come in the form of sickness.  We will have some type of cancer that no one can pronounce. Or some other malady that can’t wait to get it’s sick little hands on our immune system.

It may come in the form of loss.  Someone we love who is near and dear to us will depart this earth.

It may come in the form of difficulty in finances, parenting, work, relationship or school. 

We don’t get a crystal ball to see ahead in anticipation and preparation for the challenge.  We only get God and His Word.

Paul said, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:38-39

Whatever the challenge the new year brings allow, “…the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” to give birth to faith in your life.

God bless and Happy New Year!

Pastor Ed and the GateWay Staff

I feel very self-conscious and inadequate writing today but I’m compelled to address the Newtown Connecticut tragedy.  I hope this is accepted as I intend it.

In the 1980’s Karen Burton Mains toured the refuge camps of the world.  Camps where adults and children were held for political crimes or famine related issues.  The camps were excruciatingly inhumane and ultimately chaotic. From her experiences she wrote a book that is incredibly meaningful to me entitled, “The Fragile Curtain.”  She chose that title because she came to realize that in the U.S.A. she was living behind a black curtain that kept her blind from the traumas the people in the rest of the world encountered.  There was a phrase she used toward the end of the book to describe the horrific conditions she experienced.  She wrote this, “My fragile curtain has been torn.”  That is how I feel today. 

Without the hope of eternal life in Christ, where there is no more crying or mourning or pain, where there is no more death, my hope in comfort and consolation would be shredded.  There is an insidious evil in our world, even in the supposedly safe areas of America, which defies rational explanation or logical understanding.  Evil has seeped into the lives of the naïve and innocent with a raw intensity that will defy psychiatry and counseling for years.  It will lift its horrendously ugly head in dreams and feelings in those who have endured their horribly traumatic day and they will never fully heal.  PTSD and other syndromes will be discussed and encountered for lifetimes.  There will be no opportunity for denial.  There is no reason “why” that will open the door of insight and personal healing.  Irrationality has no definition and this kind of childhood violence has no justification, therefore finding a satisfying explanation is impossible.  Healing the brokenhearted and binding their wounds will be slow.

The only option for us is love.  To love those who have lost someone they love. To love them so that possibly one day they might be able to encounter a day that has some normality to it with no high definition memories.  Every Christmas will force the facing of a holy day milieu that will be oppressive and dark.  

We desperately need to feel the grief of fellow humans who are just trying to take their next breath.  Who will get to that point of exhaustion and hope for some brief period of sleep so the hurt can be held at bay for an hour or two.  If I sound morbid and defeatist it’s because I, in a very very minor partial way, realize how long and painful will be the healing from emotional grief for a 5 year old child.

My fragile curtain has been torn.  I thank God my children are alive and enjoying life. And yet I fret.  I worry selfishly because I don’t want to be a grieving parent.  I don’t want to be the one who loses someone they love.

Praying for the community of people in Newtown with tangible expressions of love is our only option.  It won’t allow anyone to escape the psychological damage, and the process of grief that these poor people will have to endure.  But we can at least expend sympathy and some small acts of love.

If you have the gift of mercy or compassion why not write down the name of a parent who has lost a child today and send a card every month for a few years.  See if God can use your concern and love to, in some small way, help someone to heal.  

One other thing, hug, forgive, call, love your kids, parents, family, and thank God for the privilege of having them in your life.

So, for your Pastor, tonight, if you have young kids, do what was my favorite part of being a dad of young kids.  Give them a bath and afterward pull their little wet, warm, naked bodies wrapped in terry cloth close and inhale the sweet scent of shampoo and soap.  Then throw them down on the carpet and put your mouth on their bellies and blow out as hard as you can, making what Bill Cosby used to call "zerbets!"  Which are really just giant fart noises made with your mouth on their belly!  And while their laughing hysterically and asking you why you're crying just say, "God has filled me so full of love for you it just leaks out."

God bless,

Pastor Ed

Preview

As a young girl Agnes had great trust in God.  Her heart was on fire with God’s love for her and she responded to Him like a daughter would a doting father.  She described her relationship with God as, “rapture!” 

Agnes thought the way to respond to God was through service to Him.  So she became a Bible student and ultimately a missionary.

But then everything changed, she felt her trust in God, and even God Himself had somehow left her.  The spiritual, psychological, emotional ecstasy she had felt through her connection with Him disappeared.

“What has happened to my trust?  There is nothing but emptiness and darkness in my soul.” she thought. 

Agnes began to write letters to a confidante and pour out her fear and darkness.  She asked that the letters be destroyed so that no one would know of her struggle with her trust in God.

But the letters weren’t destroyed and have become a monument to a woman who served God for over fifty years in spite of her struggle.  She continued on because she knew GOD was there but she lost HER sense of connection.  Agnes intellectually knew one day she would meet Him and at that moment all her emotional agony would vaporize.

A wise spiritual counselor told her that her struggle in feeling God as absent was a sign that she was becoming more like Jesus when he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

Even someone like Agnes or as we commonly know her, Mother Teresa, could struggle with trust in God just as we do?  Mary, the mother of God, struggled with trust as well.  But she responded, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

This week at GateWay we celebrate one of the Miracles of Christmas Mary’s miraculous trust in God.  Join us Thurs. at 6:45p or Sunday for Traditional worship at 8:45a or Contemporary worship at 10:30.