ATTENTION MEN: we are starting a new season trying to help us connect, every 3rd Saturday of the month. Next Saturday, February 17 at 8a for some food + spiritual conversation.
Working on our church building to follow.
the lord will provide.
too often we talk about our faith in generic terms,
‘God will come through’
‘Just Trust God’
‘the Lord will provide’
this is truthful, but because we don’t always use practical stories to illustrate it, people struggle to connect their experiences to real life. theoretical faith is often fragile faith.
so with two stories i want to proclaim to you in this space Jehovah Jireh, יְהוָה יִרְאֶה
LORD WILL PROVIDE
i was with my uncle david for breakfast this week, it reminded me of how the lord provides. when kristen + i were young and broke, 2008-09 range, i got a call. a friend of my uncle’s was pioneering a business that sent text message reminders from doctors and dentist office appointments. because of the volume of business they had in the United States, for this Canadian company it would be cheaper to put the literal phones somewhere over the border, which ended up being in our closet in Rolling Meadows, and they paid us $400 a month, for our internet hookup and space for a few phones on the floor.
we REALLY needed this money when Carter was a baby and for the couple years we had it, it was a tremendous blessing to us. my uncle connected the dots, but it was God showing us we could trust him with the little things as we did our best to serve him.
The Lord Will PROVIDE.
this week, i jumped a flight to Florida to watch my friend Mike speak to 5000+ financial advisors. he was chosen because of his tremendous business success + beautiful story of resilience with his special son Levi. he exemplified faith in the public square as he spoke of Jesus confidently + graciously in a manner that couldn’t be ignored.
Mike (and his lovely wife Alisha) have decided not to become victims of their challenge: they are determined to leverage it for good. Mike shared so beautifully, as they began to open themselves up to what life could look like with Levi, they began to see how much joy he brought to others. As Mike tried to be present at home, his business has grown and been blessed.
the lord will provide
this is the best song I have heard in a minute (the fact my son reid + i were there as guests of our friend Heath didn’t hurt either) .. it echoes this truth. don’t just say it, remind each other of your experience with it, THE LORD WILL PROVIDE.
We want God to be generous to us but when it comes to others we are quick question the same God’s generosity.
In the gospels Jesus tells some parables to describe the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew 20 He likens it to a group of vineyard workers who were hired to work the land and when the day was over they would receive their wages. There were workers who worked the whole day, even in ‘the burning heat’ and there were some who showed up later and received the same pay even though they had arrived for the last hour. Pause… even as I read this part I could feel in my spirit this injustice rising up. Thinking, they worked 7 or so hours longer than the others and they deserve so much more…
But, I kept reading and Jesus telling the parable asks the question - “but didn’t you agree to a denarius for your pay?” Insinuating that the workers were just fine with one denarius for their wage until they found out that someone gets something that they felt like was unfair.
Then the clincher that really got me is in v. 14-16, “Take what’s yours and go. I want to give this last man the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what is mine? Are you jealous because I’m generous? So the last will be first, and the first last.”
Are you jealous because I’m generous? ←—--- I can’t shake this statement. First of all because often our jealousy gets in the way of the great gifts that God has given to us. It’s cheesy but this saying is true: ‘Remember the days you prayed for the things you have now.’ Jealousy usually has a tinge of entitlement to it.
Generosity is who God is. He is generous in spite of our depravity, be it love he shows us, prayers he answers, patience toward us, mercy shown, the price he willingly paid for our sin even while we were still sinners… the list goes on.
In the last week at our house, there’s been a lot of celebrating because our oldest and youngest sons have birthdays six days apart. When they were a little younger, our middle son, whose birthday is in November, would have a really hard time with watching them open all of these gifts when he knew he had to wait another several months to be celebrated. There was one particular year that Luke bribed him into having a good attitude so that he didn’t completely ruin the other brothers’ celebrations.
But, how often do we do the same thing? Be it our judgements from social media or our inner battles with our own frustrations of how things are going in our own life. We spend so much effort in asking ‘why,’ rather than thanking God for his lavish generosity toward us. I don’t think we are going to get to heaven and think God owes us a better room in the mansion, I think we are going to be blown away by the fact that we even get to enter the doorway.
I’m preaching to the choir every week, but I think asking yourself this question is helpful to right-size the kindness God has shown each and every one of us. Are you jealous because (I, God) am generous?
Last Sunday’s Sermon
how do biblical descriptions of being bothered by an evil spirit contribute to our understanding of mental health struggles in the 2020s? that was last weeks message, I got a lot of feedback, hope it was helpful to you.
Soak Worship March - the songs we will be singing this month in a format designed to be calming + encouraging.
something worth reading
if you are interested in the intersection of antagonism towards Christians in society + the way both right + left hammer steady christians in the 2020’s, this story was instructive to me.
SUPER CHRISTIAN GUY
this is good news,
luke + kristen