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Serving God in Every Hour

I read something today about John and Charles Wesley’s group at Oxford, “Holy Club.” 

John and Charles Wesley started a group at Oxford called the Holy Club. This club of men sought to serve God every hour of the day. They set aside time for praying, examining their spiritual lives, studying the Bible, and meeting together. In addition, they took food to poor families, visited lonely people in prison, and taught orphans how to read.

 

Immediately I felt like these people were nuts. How sad is that? If you know about the Holy Club you know that they had accountability questions that they would ask each other. There were 22 questions that they would ask each other to keep each other accountable and number 1 and number 22 are especially informing to me. 

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

22. Is Christ real to me?

From the beginning you have already failed. Seriously, all of us have utterly failed that first question, and that’s the first one of twenty-two questions. John Wesley was known very well as someone that had his “methods” and he was constantly criticized for having such ridiculous methods, but aren’t we all a little ridiculous? 

The existence of faith is ridiculous. Believing in someone that is not visibly seen, but believing anyway. 

One thought occurred to me as I read over this today. Do I aspire to serve God in every hour of my day? My immediate and impulsive answer was “I wish, but I really don’t.” So the next question for is then, “Is Christ real to me?” 

If Christ is real to me shouldn’t I aspire to serve God in every hour of my day? 

But how can we do that? 

That’s impossible! 

Father God, I pray that we all would acknowledge the realness of you in our lives and let that reality fuel us to serve you in all we do, even though we fall short Father help us to be more and more like you! 

Amen.

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Grace and Peace

This past Christmas Amy was given a present from my parents, the Gungor live album called “Creation Liturgy.” This album has quickly become one of my favorite albums to listen and it is largely how it finishes. The last song is titled, “The Doxology.” For those of you that are not familiar with the lyrics I have provided them below: 

Praise God from whom all blessings
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above the Heavenly host
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

 

Gungor leads a congregation in singing this song a cappella and it is a beautiful thing to hear.  At the end of the song Michael Gungor says something. 

“Grace and Peace be with you.” 

If you are a part of a church this phrase probably doesn’t shock you or even sound weird to you, but I pray that we truly recognize what this means. We live in a world that is down right obsessed with ourselves, i mean narcissistic doesn’t even begin to cover how obsessed we can be, especially in our part of the world, the United States of America. 

We have many things, so much so that we are obsessed with things. 

What this means is that saying Grace and Peace be with you is a completely subversive countercultural thing. I think we as the Church can get to the point that we say things some many times that it starts to just repeat in our minds and yet sometimes I feel that we really don’t hear it. 

We listen to it, but we don’t hear it. 

So, I pray that as we live our lives that the words we say would be honoring God and worshipping God at all times. So, I’ll finish with this: 

Grace and Peace be WITH YOU. 

 

 

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Constant Renewal

Paul urges those who read and hear his letter to respond to the good news by offering their bodies — eyes, ears, mouths, hands, feet — to God as a “living sacrifice.” Paul knows well enough that sacrifice of Jesus changes everything. His resurrection steals life from death and makes it possible for those who trust in Him to become a sacrifice and yet live. But how do we live? We do not live as before, wrapping ourselves in the world and its bankrupt values. We live in constant renewal and transformation of our minds.

I recently bought a copy of the Voice Study Bible, to use as a resource for the student ministry at St. Philip’s UMC, also known as Pulse Student Ministries. By far my favorite thing about this particular study bible is the text that is in the margins. The quote above is the reference to Romans 12:1.

I wanted to focus on one part of it though.

But how do we live? We do not live as before, wrapping ourselves in the world and its bankrupt values. We live in constant renewal and transformation of our minds.

I love the part of that phrase that says: Constant Renewal

Lately God has been showing me how much we forget about His love and put more trust in possessions. Things that we can have. In this season of Advent God calls us to embrace Him and wait for celebration of the birth of His son. I am reminded of all the people that God used to come to this world and that they were not the people that we would have chosen to be the people that would be present at His birth. I don’t think we would have chosen an unwed teenage girl and a humble carpenter for Jesus’ parents.

I suppose that is difference between our perspective and God’s.

God has no concern for the external, but on what is going on in the heart; on the internal. He sees us for who we really are and tells us that we are called to serve Him and to live our lives as an act of worship. We are no longer living the bankrupt values of this world, but the surpassing values of the Kingdom of God.

May God bless the hearers of His word to love as He loves, encourage as He encourages and to be as He is.

Amen.

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Genealogy

“This long genealogy is given for a good reason: to show how this Jesus fulfills the prophecies that tell us the Anointed One will be a descendant of Abraham and David. Some of the women in Jesus’ line are given to show how God is gracious to everyone, even to prostitutes and adulterers. Because some of the women listed weren’t Israelites, but were strangers and foreigners, they foreshadow all the foreigners God will adopt into His church through Jesus. Some of the children in God’s family are conceived under strange circumstances (like Tamar’s twins being conceived as she played the harlot, and like King Solomon being born to adulterous parents). Now that it has been established this is an unusual family, what happens next shouldn’t be a surprise – the conception of a baby under very strange circumstances.” (The Voice New Testament) 

Last night at Pulse Wednesday Night we started a new focus that I am really excited about, what makes it so awesome in fact that it is so simple. Sometimes in youth ministry we can invest so much time in looking for the best curriculum ever and we trust someone from another state in completely different church to give us the curriculum that we need, but the bad thing about this is that the writers don’t know the students at St. Philip’s, and really if I am honest I don’t know a lot either.

I know who does though.

God knows my students better than I ever could.

So, thanks to my genius intern, Marianne we decided to read the entire gospels with our students on Wednesday Nights. By reading a chapter a week we can slowly let the great story ever told sink into the hearts and minds of Pulse Students.

Like I said I am very excited.

Last night we talked about our preconceptions about people.

Sometimes as humans we have the habit of thinking we know more about people than we really do and I think that through Matthew 1, God tells us what He thinks about people. Throughout the genealogy we find plenty of people that really have no place in the family the comes before Christ. Tamar, seduces her father-in-law to keep the family line alive, Rahab is a canaanite prostitute who helps foreigners sneak into a foreign land, and lets not forget the whole David-Bathsheba thing. 🙂

Point is God truly saw these people for who they really were.

He knew their story intimately.

After all He created them and His own image.

Let this be an encouragement as you live your life know that there is no limit to God’s love and grace. The family that God has chosen to associate with is most definitely unusual, but isn’t interesting how unusually amazing and brilliant God is.

His grace is for all people.

Amen.

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Love in the Midst of a Whirlwind.

The last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Nov. 10 – Got married to my best friend, Amy Forsythe Alexander
Nov. 11 – Left for cruise
Nov. 18 – Back in Texas from Cruise
Nov. 19-20 – Couple of days in the Office
Nov. 21-23 – Thanksgiving at Harris and Alexanders
Nov. 23 – Thanksgiving with Howell and Forsythe’s

Like I said the last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Today I would like to share a moment that was so powerful.

Over thanksgiving I had the opportunity to introduce Amy to my cousin Lauren and my Paw Paw Jack Alexander. The implications of this need some explaining.

My cousin Lauren who passed away 7 years ago of spina bifida was always someone that seemed to me to be a conduit of God’s love and grace. She taught me so much about how God’s love is not determined by limitations but that God’s love cast limitations away and that there was no limits to God’s love and grace, and my Paw-Paw like Lauren taught me how to be a man of God.

My wife Amy reminds me a lot of Lauren. They both have such a heart for God and both to me are conduits of God’s love and grace. They have such a heart for the least and the lost, the small and marginalized, the people that are so easily ignored. I am constantly reminded by that through my time with Lauren and now my time with Amy.

Consider how powerful it is for Amy to embrace these people from my family. Two of the people that helped me in my journey to now.

This was a very powerful and God moment in the midst of a whirlwind, and a good reminder that no matter what is going on in our lives that the whirlwinds, or storms do not cast out God’s love and grace, but that God’s love and grace cast out everything that gets in the way. Nothing can limit this. Nothing can stop this. In fact as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that God’s love never ends.

So as you live your life and experience the storms and whirlwinds of life remember that God’s love and grace is always with you.

Thank you God for your love.

Amen.