Christmas Program 2011

Posted on December 17, 2011 by PanamaInternationalChurch

We want to thank you all, for your sup­port! Bless­ings! Enjoy our Christ­mas Pro­gram video. Quer­e­mos agrade­cer­los a todos por su apoyo. Ben­di­ciones! Dis­fruten el video de nue­stro Pro­grama de Navi­dad.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

F-I-G-H-T! (NIV Devotions)

Posted on October 4, 2011 by PanamaInternationalChurch

F-I-G-H-T! That’s the bat­tle cry of kids in so many fam­i­lies today. Before we reach the car door, brother and sis­ter are close to blows over who gets to sit in the front. “He pinched me!” “She pulled my hair!” And so it goes.

Sib­lings have often been rivals. Even back in Bible times. Think about Cain and Abel and Joseph and his eleven broth­ers. As in these very seri­ous sit­u­a­tions, some sib­ling squab­bles can have dis­as­trous results.

Is there a way to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive aspects of sib­ling fights? When care­fully mon­i­tored by par­ents, can they actu­ally fos­ter growth? Experts list three ben­e­fits to in-house fighting:

1. Inter­per­sonal empa­thy. Fights offer chil­dren the oppor­tu­nity to learn sen­si­tiv­ity to the feel­ings of others.

2. Emo­tional pro­cess­ing. Fights give chil­dren a chance to express and process emotions.

3. Res­o­lu­tion skills. Fights give chil­dren expe­ri­ence in estab­lish­ing non­vi­o­lent solu­tions like com­pro­mise and cooperation.

While God can and does bring good out of even the worst of sit­u­a­tions, we can help our chil­dren grow well by teach­ing them how to “fight” well.


Posted in Devotions | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Hope & Bombers

Posted on May 24, 2011 by pastorchad

From The Grand Essen­tials by Ben Patterson

Hope deliv­ers us from the despair that noth­ing we do mat­ters, and enables us to tackle even the most menial job with vigor.  Elmer Bendiner tells the remark­able story of a B-17 bomber that flew a bomb­ing mis­sion over Ger­many in the lat­ter days of World War 2. The plane was hit sev­eral times by shells and flak, with some of the hits directly in the fuel tank. Mirac­u­lously, the bomber did not explode.  When it landed, eleven unex­ploded twenty-millimeter shells were taken out of the fuel tank!  The shells were dis­man­tled, and to the amaze­ment of every­one, all were empty of explo­sives. Inside of one shell was a note writ­ten in Czech. Trans­lated, it read, “This is all we can do for you now.” A mem­ber of the Czech under­ground, work­ing in a Ger­man muni­tions fac­tory, had omit­ted the explo­sives in at least eleven of the twenty-millimeter shells on his assem­bly line.

Boe­ing B-17 bomber, also know as the “fly­ing fortress”

That worker must have won­dered often if the quiet work he was doing to sub­vert the Nazi war effort was going to make any dif­fer­ence what­so­ever to the out com of the war.

There is always hope! Here are some scrip­tures from last week’s mes­sage that I didn’t use: Hebrews 6:18–19, Titus 1:1–2, Titus 2:11–14, 1 John 3:1–3.

 

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Will the real Jesus please step forward.

Posted on April 22, 2011 by pastorchad

Last week, on Palm Sun­day, we looked at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Dur­ing my stud­ies I came across an inter­est­ing thought about the crowds who were fol­low­ing him and bring­ing him into the city. We know that the crowds were fickle and eas­ily swayed because within just a few days they went from shout­ing “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” to “cru­cify him!” But why? How could they have a change of heart so easily?

Matthew seems to answer that ques­tion. When they waved their palm branches and shouted “Hosanna” they were claim­ing him to be the Mes­siah — God’s sav­ior for his peo­ple. But imme­di­ately after, Matthew makes an impor­tant obser­va­tion. He writes, “When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’ The crowds answered, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee’” Was Jesus the Mes­siah or was he sim­ply a prophet? The crowds response to Jesus is a con­fus­ing because they are con­fused. They don’t really know Jesus.

As you cel­e­brate Good Fri­day and Easter Sun­day make sure you know Jesus. Unfor­tu­nately it is easy for us respond to the work of God just like that crowd. We get caught up in the good feel­ings we get from going to church, from tra­di­tion, from the joy of oth­ers around us, and while none of these things are bad, we must make sure we know who Jesus claimed to be. Crowds, friends, fam­ily, and even churches say many dif­fer­ent things about Jesus but we must be sure that we have an accu­rate under­stand­ing of him. Instead of look­ing to the crowds go directly to the source. What did Jesus say about him­self? What did God say about him? What do the four gospel writ­ers say about him? What does the Bible say about him? Happy Easter!

Matthew 21:1–11, Matthew 16:13–16, Matthew 17:1–5

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Schedule Update for April 3rd

Posted on April 1, 2011 by pastorchad

Hi team, it is late Fri­day night and I’m work­ing on the sched­ule for the next three months for our min­istry vol­un­teers. I hope to get it up tomor­row on the cal­en­dars, but just in case I don’t here is this week’s schedule:

Nurs­ery — Julie Bell, Hos­pi­tal­ity — Edi­son & Kelly, Media — Ger­ritt, Trans­la­tion — Vicky, Children’s — Amber/Gracie 3&4’s, Chil­dren — Aida 5–10’s (Jes­sica training)

Posted in News | Leave a comment

building together

Posted on March 15, 2011 by pastorchad

From March 2009, both the boys & our lego col­lec­tion have grown.

My kids love play­ing with Legos. We have Lego pirates, space­ships, mon­sters, race cars, planes, forts, star wars, etc. Usu­ally on the din­ing room table one kid (right now it is usu­ally Asher) will dump a bag of legos out and start to play until another one joins in and even­tu­ally sev­eral sets of hands are each try­ing to make the strongest “super bat­man king” lego man or the fastest “rocket space alien destroyer” car. If I’m in the mix I’m con­stantly mak­ing some­thing until one of the kids takes notice and asks to have it. I then give my lit­tle project to them and start some­thing new. If dad isn’t around the shar­ing doesn’t go so smoothly. One of the prob­lems with legos is that it is some­times very hard for the kids to work together. They are so con­cen­trated on build­ing their own thing that shar­ing and fam­ily quickly get thrown out like an old set of instruc­tions. Even­tu­ally their per­sonal focus breaks down into WW3 if they begin fight­ing over a spare piece or become jeal­ous over what some­one else has.

Unfor­tu­nately the church some­times resem­bles my chil­dren. But God hasn’t designed it to work that way, he is a much bet­ter cre­ator than Lego Group. Besides instruct­ing us to have the char­ac­ter­is­tics such as love, prayer, fel­low­ship, ser­vice, giv­ing, and encour­age­ment, God has given us two prin­ci­ples that should actu­ally help us in build­ing together. First, we are build­ing HIS King­dom. As my con­cen­tra­tion shifts from build­ing my own work to build­ing his work then it becomes much eas­ier to be a builder that is pleas­ing to Him. Sec­ondly, it is hard to fight over legos when we are the legos. You and I are the build­ing blocks (or as the Bible says, “liv­ing stones”) of His King­dom. When we work for God we aren’t build­ing some­thing for our­selves rather God is build­ing His spir­i­tual house out of us!

Last week I preached on 1 Peter 2:4–5. Here are a few other verses that I men­tioned but didn’t have time to read: 1 Corinthi­ans 3:9–17, 2 Corinthi­ans 6:16, Eph­esians 2:19–22

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

internal/external

Posted on February 26, 2011 by pastorchad

Pranav Mis­try is a genius. He is a Ph.D. can­di­date at MIT and has been called one of the 10 best inven­tors in the world today. I am amazed at how his curios­ity led him to dis­cov­ery.  His inter­est in how our use of objects and ges­tures in com­mu­ni­ca­tion has led him to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties for inte­grat­ing them into tech­nol­ogy. Pranav’s inven­tions are fas­ci­nat­ing because they directly relate to who we are as humans.

Last week in ser­vice we took a long look at Jere­miah 31:29–34. We learned along with Jere­miah, that in the future age of the Mes­siah (Jesus) there would be an amaz­ing “upgrade” to know­ing God — that our knowl­edge of him would become pri­mar­ily inter­nal with his law (the law of the Spirit of Life, Romans 8:1–4) being writ­ten on our hearts. God calls this upgrade the “new covenant,” and later Jesus would apply this pas­sage to him­self when shar­ing com­mu­nion with his dis­ci­ples say­ing that the cup was the new covenant of his blood.

There seemed to be a bit of irony at what Jesus was doing. At the same time he was ref­er­enc­ing Jeremiah’s inter­nal focus he was using exter­nal objects. He was giv­ing the dis­ci­ples an exter­nal sym­bol (the bread & wine) of an inter­nal real­ity (the new covenant).

God doesn’t have any curiosi­ties about human nature, God already under­stands us com­pletely! While his work in the new covenant is pri­mar­ily inter­nal, he knows we oper­ate and respond to our exter­nal world. The scrip­tures are full of exter­nal objects, events, ges­tures, and moments, that sym­bol­i­cally point us to God, the work of Christ, and his work in us. Jesus’ actions to break bread and share the wine were far more than irony, they were genius con­nec­tions of our phys­i­cal world to our spir­i­tual world so that we might know God as fully as possible.

some other exter­nal actions that rep­re­sent the inter­nal: water bap­tism, lay­ing hands on some­one for prayer, singing songs to the Lord…   can you think of any others?

 

 

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Heart X-ray

Posted on February 16, 2011 by pastorchad

Have you ever know some­one who won’t go to the doc­tor, not because of they are afraid of what they might learn, but because they already have a sense that some­thing is wrong — they just don’t want it con­firmed. From time to time we all need a spir­i­tual x-ray. Both for stay­ing in good spir­i­tual health and for diag­nos­ing spir­i­tual dis­ease. When we come to God he already knows our spir­i­tual, emo­tional, men­tal, and phys­i­cal con­di­tion. He is the Great Physi­cian, but as patients we must be will­ing to sub­mit to his search­ing, cut­ting, clean­ing, plan for recov­ery, and guides for healthy liv­ing. Though it may be uncom­fort­able, if we hum­ble our­selves, he is both will­ing and able to work in our lives (see Peter’s dis­cus­sion with Jesus, John 13:6–10). Here are a few more scrip­tures for your con­sid­er­a­tion: Psalm 139, Jere­miah 17:10, Romans 8:26–27, & 2 Tim­o­thy 3:14–16.

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

peace treaty

Posted on February 8, 2011 by pastorchad

Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin in Wash­ing­ton D.C., 1979

A peace treaty between two coun­tries is a big deal! The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty (1979) came not long after Israel had twice been under attack from Egypt (1967 & 1973). The treaty helped the Egypt­ian pres­i­dent to win the Nobel Peace Prize. With the news com­ing out of Egypt recently and the pos­si­bil­ity of a com­pletely new Egypt­ian Gov­ern­ment, there has been con­cern about what would hap­pen to the treaty also know as the “Camp David Accords.” Will Egypt main­tain and renew its treaty with Israel in the years to come?

Recent demon­stra­tions in Egypt.

We have a peace treaty with God through the work of Jesus Christ. The Bible uses the word “covenant” to describe our treaty with God and says that the work of Jesus Christ is “once and for all”. In other words, there is no peace­ful rela­tion­ship with God except through the work, the accom­plish­ment, the role, and the medi­a­tion of his Son. There never has been and never will be a bet­ter agree­ment. The terms are clear: faith/trust in the work of Jesus and a life com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing him. It is impor­tant for us to main­tain and renew our covenant rela­tion­ship with Him.

We recently heard a mes­sage at PaIntChurch about the impor­tance of renew­ing our faith and com­mit­ment to fol­low Jesus in every sea­son of life. We looked at some prin­ci­ples from the Old Tes­ta­ment (Joshua 24:14–15) when Joshua set out to renew God’s covenant with the peo­ple of Israel. Here are few extra thoughts and scrip­tures con­cern­ing “renew­ing your faith” that might encour­age you this week:

1. Being a “fol­lower of Jesus Christ” is both a deci­sion and a process. We decide to trust in him for our sal­va­tion and with our lives and then we con­tinue in that deci­sion daily, weekly, monthly… for a life­time. Philip­pi­ans 2:12–13, Luke 9:23, 1 Corinthi­ans 9:24–27, Colos­sians 1:21–23, Hebrews 10:19–25

2. While we looked at Israel’s covenant renewal with God (Joshua 24) as an exam­ple of how we should be sure to con­sis­tently renew and main­tain our faith, it is impor­tant to note that our rela­tion­ship with Jesus is an alto­gether new rela­tion­ship agree­ment with God. Com­mu­nion is a con­sis­tant reminder (to help us renew) of the new covenant with God we have in Jesus Christ and an encour­age­ment to us to exam­ine our hearts and rela­tion­ship with Him. 1 Corinthi­ans 11:23–26, Hebrews 8:6–13

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Favorite Prayer

Posted on January 17, 2011 by pastorchad

One of my favorite prayers to pray is “Lord please help me with…” and you could fill in the blank with hun­dreds of con­cerns over the years. And even though I pray those words often, it is not a prayer that lacks sin­cer­ity. It is short reminder that I am com­pletely depen­dent on God for his pro­vi­sions of abil­ity, wis­dom, and resources. It also rec­og­nizes that I am actively involved in the sit­u­a­tion and that God chooses to use me for his glory.

Last week dur­ing our Sun­day night ser­vice we heard a ser­mon on the the help that God pro­vides to us. Our guest speaker, Sven Bengts­son, reminded us from sev­eral key pas­sages that God is our most impor­tant source of help. Here are a few more scrip­tures to remind you of the Lord’s help this week:

Psalm 46, Mark 9:24, Romans 8:26

Posted in Pastor's Notes | Leave a comment