From Your Pastor’s Heart

From Your Pastor’s Heart

Sitting across from my wife, Celina, on Valentine Day over a black tablecloth with pink napkins and roses, gentle music playing softly in the background; we affirmed our love for each other. We were reminded of the past, but spent most of our time looking forward to many more Valentine days together, remarking how exciting that was, because it seems our love for each other is only growing deeper. There are not many other things like that. Take a look at some recent headlines and you can see how depraved this world is becoming:

• 50 Shades of Grey headlines Valentine weekend movie schedules with its amoral depiction of an exploitive, abusive, and misogynistic portrayal of sexual relationships.
• Terrorist’s violent acts stretch across the globe from France, to Denmark, Northern Africa and the Middle East.
• Government leaders hyper-parsing terms for fear of offending with the truth.
• Last week at the Grammy’s, a gathering of some the most influential people in our culture, the throng of self-worshipping music moguls donned devil horns and sang along with AC/DC while they played their “classic”, “Highway to Hell”. These people, making millions of dollars off of our teenagers, are the epitome of the biblical description of hypocrisy, “They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13; Matthew 15:8)

From the ongoing battle over abortion rights to racism to same sex marriage, this world is not getting better at caring for God’s highest creation, humanity.

Where does our (the Church) help come from? The psalmist’s answer is, “Our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1)

What then is the church to do? In a world of ever increasing vitriol towards faith and the practice of faith, whose pseudo intellectuals cry out for the separation of church and state, and decry faithful Christians’ efforts to protect the institution of the family, the sanctity of life, and promote ministry to the poor and the end of slavery. In a world like this what could possibly make a difference? What could have an impact in this world spiraling away from its Creator?

There is hope in God’s Word. We are reminded that though we have trouble in this life there is One who came before us, who paved the way of the mocked and the ridiculed, living his life in faithful obedience to His Father in heaven. Changing lives one at a time. This is how we do it! We live in the school of Christ; living our lives as He lived His: daily, faithfully, obediently, graciously, lovingly, in kindness and in compassion to those whom the world marginalizes. We live to impact one life at a time through our lives changed by the gospel.

We have these instructions in scripture, these timeless encouragements, for dangerous times like these:

I (Paul) therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,  Ephesians 4:1(ESV)

Bro. David