Also consider how you might get involved with the church’s orphans and adoption ministry, Reflection Ministries.

1. Pray! Connecting with the power of God’s Holy Spirit through prayer for lost friends and family members is an absolutely essential starting point to Communicating Christ any time of the year. Prayer will also change your own heart to be able to truly love those with whom you are sharing Christ. No one wants to be your pet project, even at Christmastime! Pray that God will give you a heart that loves others purely and unconditionally as you consider how to communicate Christ this Christmas.

2. Encourage friends who came to the Blue Ridge Christmas play to attend the follow-up Bible study. Better yet, come to the Bible study with them! If you have a friend who attended the play and is interested in learning more about Christ, this four-week study beginning this Wednesday, December 15, is a great way to help them learn more. Mark and Patrice Smith will be running this study at the church. Contact them for more details.

3. Get involved with Project Angel Tree. Our church is hosting an old-fashioned Christmas party for the families that are receiving presents from Project Angel Tree. Project Angel Tree connects parents in prison with their children by giving children Christmas presents in the name of their incarcerated parent. You can come to this party and have the opportunity to touch the lives of these families directly on December 19th from 2 – 4:30 p.m. at the church. The presentation of the gospel to these families is an integral part of this ministry. For more information, contact Kim Chambers.

4. Give a gift that shows you care. You might consider making cookies for your neighbors and including a card with your address and phone number in case they have needs such as dog sitting, watching their house if they are out of town, picking up their mail for them, or helping with yard or house work. A simple act of thoughtfulness is a great way of opening up the door to a better relationship.

5. Talk to them about their Christmas traditions. You might then have an opportunity to share some of your favorite Christ-centered traditions such as reading the Christmas story or receiving the best Gift ever. Consider how Jesus spoke to the woman at the well about living water (John 4) as an example of how to turn a casual conversation to matters of eternity. You might not get to share the entire gospel, but by at least broaching the subject, you can let friends know that you are open to discussing spiritual matters.

6. Invite them to the Blue Ridge Christmas Eve service. Why not ask a neighbor family to come with you to enjoy a traditional Christmas Eve service? Families are often willing to come to church at Christmastime when they wouldn’t otherwise. This service will feature traditional carols, the children’s choir, and the lighting of the candles of advent. There are postcards designed to hand out to family and friends to promote this service. They will be available for you to pick up at church beginning this Sunday, December 12.

7. Donate a gift to a Christian charity in the name of a loved one. Can’t find a gift for that hard-to-please person? Know someone who has it all? Consider donating a charitable gift in their name from a ministry like Samaritan’s Purse or Romania Reborn. Not only will you be helping the physically needy but you may also have a chance to bring up deeper matters with a loved one who is spiritually needy.

Update: I’m reposting this article I wrote a couple of years ago about Josh Hamilton because the Rangers just made it to the American League Championship Series in Major League Baseball. Last year he publicly fell again, not as far as he had in the past, but it just showed how powerful the flesh can be and how it is an ongoing battle for him… and for all of us. Plus I’ve included a new video testimony at the bottom.

Josh Hamilton, a professional baseball player for the Texas Rangers, is an amazing testimony of God’s power to redeem and change a life. You might have heard about Josh Hamilton recently because he put on an impressive show last week at the Home Run Derby, breaking the record by hitting 28 home runs in one round. You can watch all the impressive home runs by Josh Hamilton at MLB’s website here. He even hit three more than 500 feet! In addition to the Derby performance, Hamilton currently leads the Majors in RBIs.

Hamilton’s amazing performance is made all the more impressive when you find out that not too long ago, he was deep within the dark pit of drug addiction. He says that his last drug use was October 6, 2005.

Hamilton has a great testimony of how God brought him out of the mire of his sin. ESPN.com published part of his story and it made a deep impression on me. You see, Hamilton became a Christian when he was 18. Not long after that, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays drafted him number one overall and gave him a huge signing bonus. With all of this new-found personal glory, Hamilton began to idolize baseball and his own desires instead of worshiping Christ alone.

Everyone expected Hamilton to take off, and he did not disappoint. But not long after his career got going, he was in an auto accident that sidelined him for an extended period. Without his daily routine of going to the ball park, he now had a lot of time on his hands and plenty of money to spend. His idol was removed from his life, and he filled that void by becoming addicted to drugs. He would go on multi-week binges and was in and out of rehab programs with no lasting success.

God finally took him to the bottom where Hamilton could no longer depend on himself and had no choice but to turn back to God. Once he reached that point, God started working. Hamilton is where he is today totally because of God’s work in his life. God worked a miracle–a “God thing” as Hamilton describes it. Just ask Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry how incredible this is.

What most impresses me about Hamilton’s story isn’t as much where he’s been but where he is at right now spiritually. Hamilton doesn’t refer to himself as a drug addict in the past tense but in the current tense. He is completely capable of falling back into sin and the moment he stops denying himself will probably be the beginning of his downfall. Hamilton acknowledges this openly and admits to his weaknesses. He remains broken and fully dependent on Christ.

Christ made it clear that all of his followers must adopt the same attitude of brokenness. Mark 8:34 says:

Then Jesus called the crowd, along with his disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

Hamilton’s story makes me ask myself, “Am I really denying myself or am I living for myself?” “Do I take up my cross with Christ to go die to self or am I living for myself?” “Am I following Christ or am I living for myself?”

The Mark 8:34 life is a moment-by-moment denial of self and acceptance of Christ and the life he has for you. It is living in the truth of the Gospel. Colosians 2:6 says, “Therefore just as you first received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” But what exactly does that mean? It means that we continue to believe the truth of the Gospel by living it out. But what does it mean to live out the Gospel?

Here are some points on what it is not:

• Making something other than Christ the lord of your life.
• Thinking that your sin isn’t really that bad. “I certainly have never done anything as bad as Josh Hamilton!”
• Thinking that when you sin you can just work your way through it yourself. This means you figure out how you can manage it or you’ll just work harder next time.
• Thinking that you are pretty good on your own and don’t need cleaning or much cleaning.
• Thinking that you can depend on your own strengths, intellect, knowledge, talent, money, etc.

And here is what it means to “continue to live our lives in him”:

• Christ is the Lord of my whole life.
• I acknowledge that I cannot make myself good or on my own bring value to God.
• I acknowledge the truth of what sin is and that I cannot clean myself of it.
• I trust God to clean me of sin through Christ’s work alone on the cross.

When you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ you are living as you first believed. Where I so frequently mess up is by not going to Christ for forgiveness but rather just resolving to work harder. Instead, I should simply go to him and say, “Lord, forgive me for that sin. You died for that sin and thank you for forgiving me. I need your strength to overcome.” If I don’t do that immediately, then later my prayer has to also include asking forgiveness for relying on my own strength rather than on Him.

Josh Hamilton’s story is an example to all of us of what happens when you make something else the lord of your life or think you can deal with sin on your own. Hamilton was not rescued until he “continued to live” his life in Christ.  Neither will we experience victory over sin in our own lives until we continue to daily take up our cross and humbly follow after Christ.

Part of the doctrinal Sunday School series.

Is there any greater question in the universe then, “What must I do to be saved?” Come join us as we walk through the doctrine of salvation in all its aspects. Using the doctrinal statement of the church as our reference we will discuss the agreed upon and controversial aspects of this most important doctrine. In addition, we will seek to find out how this is more than knowledge for us, but how these great truths show themselves in our daily lives.

View the handouts and ppt files online below:

Week 1 - Intro and Order of Salvation (view ppt online)

Week 2 – Predestination/Election (view ppt online)
- Notes (view online)
- Dispensational and Covenant Theology Notes (view online)

Week 3 – Atonement

Week 4 – Atonement

Week 5 – Easter: No Sunday School

Week 6 – Election and Calling (view ppt online)

Week 7 – Calling and Regeneration (view ppt online)

Week 8 – Justification

Week 9 – Sanctification

Week 10 – Glorification

Week 11 – What happens when you die?

Week 12 – Eternal Security/Glorification (view ppt online)

Week 13 – Eternal Security/Glorification (view ppt online)

Michelangelo's Jonah

The book of Jonah isn’t about a man getting swallowed by a whale for going the wrong way. If it were we would only have chapters one and two. It also isn’t about Ninevah hearing the truth and repenting. If it were we would only have chapter three of the book.

If it is just a whale story and the repentance of Nineveh then what do we do with that pesky chapter four? Chapter four and the book end with this question from God asked to Jonah: “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

How do we answer that question? Do we care more about ourselves than the people in our community? Do we pursue self-preservation or self-sacrifice?

I enjoyed Tullian Tchividjian first book Unfashionable last summer. Trevin Wax provided an excerpt from his blog to Tchividjian’s latest book that really challenged me and I thought I would pass along. I encourage you to read the below excerpt from Tchividjian’s book, Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels:

We can’t escape a stark contrast in this story—the tribal mindset of Jonah versus the missional mindset of God.

These two mindsets involve fundamentally different values. The highest value of a community with a tribal mindset is self-preservation. A tribal community exists solely for itself, and those within it keep asking, “How can we protect ourselves from those who are different from us?”

A tribal mindset is marked by an unbalanced patriotism. It typically elevates personal and cultural preferences to absolute principles: If everybody were more like us, this world would be a better place.

But in a missional minded community, the highest value isn’t self-preservation but self-sacrifice. A missional community exists not primarily for itself but for others. It’s a community that’s willing to be inconvenienced and discomforted, willing to expend itself for others on God’s behalf.

A tribal mindset is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel demands that we be missional, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for his enemies.

Both these approaches are robustly present in Jonah’s story. Jonah represents the best of a tribal mindset, the absolute best. He’s like the trophy for the tribal person. And God—ever-gracious, ever-pursuing, ever-compassionate—serves as the trophy for the mission-minded.

Jonah runs from his enemies; God runs toward his enemies.

Jonah serves himself; God serves the world.

Tim Challies has an interesting article on the subject of what people search for on the Internet. He highlights a time where a major search engine released searches being done by individuals. They thought the information was released in such a way that the searchers would remain anonymous but it turns out that wasn’t the case. People were able to string together the searches of individuals over time that showed not only their actual searches but also gave a glimpse into what was going on in their life. Some of the searches reveal somewhat comical life circumstances, others deep sadness and hurt.

When looking at just the searches of an individual over time it makes me think about the people I see in everyday life when I’m out and about. We all see lots of put together people that seem to not have any serious problems. But what if you could see everything they searched for on the Internet over time? Wouldn’t that give a peek into their heart and mind? You’d get a glimpse past the facade and into the real person. How would that change your dealings with them?

Keep this in mind, every person has pain and hurt and need that is all caused by sin and this world which is cursed by sin. Look at Isaiah 53:4-6 which contains the truth of EVERY person’s condition along with the glorious truth of the gospel:

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

No matter how good someone looks on the outside they have griefs and sorrows. That isn’t debatable and does not depend on the person or the situation. The question is whether they are carrying them or is Christ?

Below is an excerpt from Challies’s article:

While the search engines may never forget, I am grateful that God does forget. He forgets the sins of those who turn to him and confess those sins. Psalm 103 promises that “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” In Hebrews 8:12 God promises “I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” There is virtue in forgetting.

Praise God that he does “remember our sins no more” if we have have turned to Jesus Christ and confessed our sins. Follow the link and read the whole article.

But it isn’t just Mormons… read on.

This past summer the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released the results of a large survey nationally on religion. Among the other details the Washington Post wrote:

A belief in God or a higher spirit is pervasive. Even Americans who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic have a robust sense of a higher power: Twenty-one percent of those who describe themselves as atheists expressed a belief in God or a universal spirit, and more than half of those who call themselves agnostic expressed a similar conviction.

So more than a fifth of atheists and agnostics believe in the existence of a “higher power.” How does that make sense? The simple answer is that it doesn’t make sense.

So why is that? Why do people believe such weird things? How is it possible to deny the existence of God yet believe in a higher power? How is it possible to buy into Joseph Smith’s teachings? This way of thinking (or not thinking) isn’t limited to just Mormons and the atheists of this study, it is throughout the world.

So why are they so blind? And what should our response be? Scripture answers both of these questions in 2 Corinthians 4:1-6:

Therefore, since we have this ministry, just as God has shown us mercy, we do not become discouraged. But we have rejected shameful hidden deeds, not behaving with deceptiveness or distorting the word of God, but by open proclamation of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience before God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing, among whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of those who do not believe so they would not see the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said “Let light shine out of darkness,” is the one who shined in our hearts to give us the light of the glorious knowledge of God in the face of Christ.

So why are they so blind? Their minds have been blinded by the “god of this age,” Satan.

And what is our response? To openly proclaim the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Are you proclaiming him as Lord through your actions and words? Our lives should be a reflection of his Lordship.

Last summer I wrote about Josh Hamilton. He’s got a video on IamSecond.com too.

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.