Post Easter 04/28/19

Byrd’s Branch Campground, Elkin, North Carolina

Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  ~ Matthew 4:4

Worship today was in the rec hall of the Elkin Valley Baptist Church.  It’s their temporary sanctuary because it seems they’re trying to raise a million dollars to renovate/rebuild/restore? their originally sanctuary.  We saw the building with the tall steeple and stained glass windows, and it looks fine from the outside, but something’s going on, we just don’t know what.  But they’re well on their way to whatever it is, as they’ve collected almost $700,000.

Once again, we were met with friendly, welcoming people.  It’s sooo good to worship with caring people, the way God intended!  And the music was an excellent inducement to join in worshipping our Father.

The Pastor opened his message with a question.  How long are famous people remembered after they die?  According to something he read, it’s generally 5-30 years.  Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part, fame is a flash in the pan.

It’s now been over 2,000 years and people still remember Jesus.  Why?  Well, the most important reason is because He’s not dead.  But it’s also because He tasked His followers to proclaim Him.

In general, this was a typical “post-Easter” message, because it follows Jesus’ resurrection.  His final words were to “…be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”  ~ Acts 1:8. 

Those of us who are believers, also know this as a verse that’s used to encourage missions and missionaries.  But today it’s a reminder to us who consider ourselves followers of Jesus.  A reminder that He doesn’t want us to hoard our faith.  That we’re to share it freely with others.

Our natural tendency is to chase personal comfort, especially in these days.  We don’t want anything to do with anything that brings a smidgen of feeling bad.  This is why all the kids get trophies, whether they earned them or not.  Why marriages break up so easily over no reason.  Why people job hop.  Why people are angry all the time.  Why there’s a tendency by many to take what they want rather than work to achieve what they want.  Why it’s so easy to lie to others.  It’s in our human nature.  But living the way Jesus taught, changes us.  It pushes us to abandon our sinful human nature.  It pushes us to rely on God, because if everything is easy, then we have no reason to rely on God.  We have no reason to trust Him.

Jesus ascension should lead us to pursue obedience.  Our natural tendency is to hoard our treasures – whatever they may be.  And as believers, one of our greatest treasures is the Gospel.  The Good News that Jesus came to earth, died and rose from the dead for us.  That because of His great sacrifice, we now have the opportunity to join Him in Heaven one day.  That we can live lives free of the ultimate punishment for sin – eternal death – and now, by faith, we gain eternal life.  But we’re tempted to keep this treasure (even if unintentionally), to ourselves or only between fellow believers.  Jesus pushes us to deep generosity.  Jesus never put limits on obedience.  He calls for our time, talents and treasures, but nowhere does He put a limit on how much.  The New Testament doesn’t mention an amount for giving money to God, what it says is that God loves a cheerful giver.  No where does it say who’s to receive the message of the Gospel, because He wants everyone to have it.

And then there’s the anticipation of our future with Him.  Our natural tendency is to live and focus on the present, but Jesus pushes us to have an eternal mindset.  To remember that no matter what happens, Jesus is still on His throne. 

He’s promised to return one day.  And only the Father knows when.  And so we are to live with a sense of urgency.  Not the kind of urgency we have here in the present where we rush around and around, making life difficult, but the urgency of motivation.  Our natural tendency is to delay difficult tasks, but Jesus pushes us to take action.  What is the source of our urgency?  Jesus is coming back!  And while that fills believers with jubilation (or it certainly should!), we have a tendency to want to live with our minds so heavenly focused, that we are of no earthly good.  For most of us, it’s hard to witness to others.  Living in the world makes it difficult because we don’t know what kind of reaction we’ll get.  But it shouldn’t matter. 

So the ending question?  Will we let Easter stay in the past, or will we move forward?

After church, Blaine wanted to share his trail from yesterday.  It was a nice hike, just like he informed me yesterday.  And nice for you because there aren’t many pictures.  😊

That’s it for today.  We need to rest up for tomorrow!

Ooops!  I forgot to mention our traumatizing event from the 25^th.  So traumatizing, we forgot to mention it.  The main reason we forgot?  I didn’t have a picture . . .

But I do now.  So now I’ve remembered to put it in the blog.

There are a lot of narrow, winding roads around here with speed limits waaay higher than we think they should be.  We were on our way to town, traveling at only about 25mph, enjoying the view.  Simultaneously, Blaine heard a woman call out, and I saw the dog.  He looked right at us a fraction of a second before we hit him.  I yelled, Blaine braked as he saw the large gray dog roll out from behind us, jump up and run.  We went right over him after he hit our front bumper.  Blaine turned us around and we returned to the home.  The woman was very gracious, “It’s okay.  Accidents happen.  Don’t worry about it.”  And the dog appeared to be fine, though nervously looking around with his head held high as he lay on his lawn.  Thank You, Father!  We drove down that road a few more times this week, but never saw him, though we always looked around, hoping to see him  running around.

He broke the hook up for the lights when we hook the Jeep to the coach (but Blaine’s fixed it good enough for now), and left an awful smell on our exhaust for a couple of hours, but other than that, no damage to our Jeep.  It’s good he was such a sturdy dog – some kind of a pit bull mix.