Este Domingo, 5 de Febrero, tendremos nuestra fiesta del Super tazon en la casa de Gerrit y Tara despues del servicio. El SERVICIO INICIARA A LAS 5:00 PM

Next Wednesday, Feb 8th we’ll be celebrating  a Baby Shower for  Lindsay!!!

Place: Brittany DeVries house.

Time: 7:00 pm

Hope to see you there, Ladies!!!

Ecclesiastes 7:13–18

Additional Scripture Readings: Psalm 42:5; Isaiah 61:1–3

Whether experienced as “Monday morning blues,” “rainy day feelings,” “winter blahs,” or just “down days,” folks struggle with bouts of depression.

Depression is generally defined as discouragement resulting from the experience of loss or internalized anger. We who walk through its valley of shadows tend to consider ourselves abnormal and even condemn our pessimistic periods, seeing them as detours from faith.

Many Christian psychologists and theologians are attempting to change this negative view. The truth is that life is tough. Adjusting to it is hard. While we are immeasurably strengthened through our relationship with Christ, we will still face difficult adjustments in life. In some cases, we may need the help of a trained professional to successfully travel through deep valleys.

But on other days, we do well to remind ourselves of the truth of Ecclesiastes 7:14 : “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other.” There are fifty-two Monday mornings each year. On your next blue Monday, take the advice of the writer of Ecclesiastes: stop and “consider.”

NIV Devotions

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.

]]> http://www.paintchurch.com/devotions/f-i-g-h-t-niv-devotions/feed 0 http://www.paintchurch.com/pastors-notes/hope-bombers http://www.paintchurch.com/pastors-notes/hope-bombers#comments Tue, 24 May 2011 20:05:25 +0000 pastorchad http://www.paintchurch.com/?p=376 Continue reading →]]> 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.

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

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

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

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?