Reasons to Rejoice

In this Recharge Video you will be reminded to go on a search to find reasons to rejoice

Complain to God?

In this Recharge video we discover what God thinks about complaining (the right way) as we look at Psalm 142:2  Please feel free to share or make comments.

Taste and See

A restaurant, a three year old, and some mac and cheese remind us of the need to taste and see that God is good in this Recharge video.  Feel free to pass on or comments.

New teaching series - When Jesus Said No

Here is a brief video intro to our new Sunday Night series that begins this Sunday (Oct. 20) at 6 pm. at Mt. Calvary Baptist (www.CalvaryWV.com). You will see Jesus in a whole new light

I recognize that voice

Can you recognize a friend from just their voice?  How well do you do at recognizing God's voice.  This Recharge video will help you think a little deeper about listening.

Turn on the lights

This REcharge video will you remind you to use the light God gives to guide and guard you in life.

Get growing

This recharge video will remind you that when times are good that is time to grow. You might also call this episode "groundhog day"

 

Looking for an expert?

It seems like there is an expert for every situation and we often feel we would benefit from using professional advice.  In today's REcharge video I want to share with you that you already have access to all the expertise that you need.  Blessings...

You are a singing star!

In this REcharge video you will find that while you may never be on The Voice or American Idol you indeed are a singing star.

How loved are you?

This REcharge video will show you the extent of God's love for you.  Be encouraged!



For more visit:   http://www.waggonermedia.com

Images of the Holy Spirit

Dear Friend:

I hope as the days of Summer draw to a close you are experiencing the blessings of God.  I want to invite you to get in on the beginning of our next Biblical study and I trust it will open up a rich flow of blessing in your life.  This new adventure begins this Sunday at 9 and 11 am.  We will look at a number of biblical images of the Holy Spirit to broaden our understanding of the Spirit and sharpen our biblical focus. We are interested in more than just the powerful language of the Bible- we will focus on the relationship to the reality behind the image. For example: we might enjoy the idea that the Spirit flows like life-giving water but the water does no good unless we take a drink. I hope you will join us in this life-changing study.

Click here to watch a video introduction to this series.

Blessings,
Jesse

Recharge with some encouragement for your spirit

Do you ever need some spiritual encouragement throughout the week? I am pleased to invite you to enjoy a spiritual recharge as he shares brief Bible teaching videos over the internet.  These two minute videos will give you a boost to your spirit and direct your mind back to God’s truth.

There are several ways you can receive your recharge:

1. Visit www.recharge.waggonermedia.com  where you can view the most recent teaching video or access the archive of previous ones.   There is also a link to this site on the church website at www.calvarywv.com.

While there you can use the “subscribe” link to subscribe to these videos via iTunes and have all the new episodes delivered to your computer or mobile device.

Or you can add your e-mail to our mailing list and every time a new episode is available you will receive a notice- simply open your e-mail and click the link.

2. If you use facebook, visit www.facebook.com/rechargevideo and make sure you “like“ the page.  The new content should show up in your newsfeed.  Please share and “like” individual videos to help spread the word.

3. You can follow Recharge video on Twitter at www.twitter.com/rechargevideo and be notified of new video content.  Please “retweet” to let others know of this ministry.

Thanks as always for you prayers and support.

When will you bloom?

Here are two minutes of encouragement presented in video - be blessed (click picture below to visit video site)

For more visit  REcharge Video

The Widow

A few years ago, I had the privilege of teaching a weekly Bible study at a housing facility for the elderly.  We would meet in the community room and spend some time in the Word and conclude with a time of prayer.  One particular Wednesday afternoon, a guest joined us to bring us a special blessing.

I was expecting a smaller than usual group for my weekly Bible study since it was stormy day.  We had just begun when she came following her walker up the wheelchair ramp.  She had a rain cap on and her Bible wrapped up to protect it from the steady rain.  No one said anything but we were all silently impressed with her determination and effort to come even in the rain.

    The Bible study through one of the Psalms was enjoyable not extraordinary.  Things changed during our prayer time.  The lady with the walker told us she would be 95 if she lived until her next birthday.  She continued to talk and we all listened in rapt attention as she told us the story of her life.   She was born in Eastern Europe and grew up in relative wealth.  She fell in love with a young man that had survived World War I and spent years in a POW camp.  She told us his release and his buying passage through China and Japan by using a few gold coins his mother had secretly sown in the seams of his uniform.

You could see the love in her eyes as she described the dashing young love of her youth.  They were married but after a few brief years of marriage he died suddenly of a heart attack and she had now been a widow for 62 years. 

    The story continued as she described the horror of most of her family being killed in World War II and the lone brother who survived and later came to the United States.  It was this brother that paid her way to the United States just before the Iron Curtain would prevent any more of her countrymen from leaving for many years to come.

     Now she was alone except for a niece and nephew who lived in another state.  Through it all, she did express her love for God in spite of a crisis of faith after the death of her husband.

    After the story had been told she said with a sigh that God was not doing her any favors by letting her remain alive.  She felt as though she really had no one and no reason left to live.   After a brief but potent silence, someone in the group offered the reason for her to remain.  Just by walking through the rain on an ordinary Wednesday morning she had encouraged all of us that we can overcome; that we can with God’s help endure all that life throws at us and survive. Her example was what we all needed that day.  

    David said that he had “…been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."  Psalm 37:25.   In the span of a lift time, he had seen the faithfulness of God.   That day we were seeing His faithfulness in the lifetime of one who had lived longer than most of us are likely.  He remains faithful and He always gives us opportunities to serve.   Even if that service is as simple as walking in the rain to unknowingly encourage someone like me.

( I recently ran onto the above - I wrote this about a dozen years ago, and updated it slightly for my blog - a great memory)

Jesse

Believe it or Not

His name became synonymous with the bizarre.  Robert Ripley began publishing his cartoon panel entitled “Believe it or Not” in October of 1919 and for the next 30 years of his life he brought the stories of the strange but true to an estimated 80 million newspaper readers around the world and created a media company that continues until today, more than 60 years after his death, and includes a chain of museums know as “odditoriums” as well as a string of books, games, radio and TV programs.  When an injury ended a budding career in baseball, young Robert turned to cartooning first in San Francisco and then in New York, but it was his expounding the weird and strange that led to riches and fame.  Detailing such notable finds as the man with the world’s longest fingernails, the two-headed calf and shrunken heads, Ripley tapped into something that we often don’t like to admit – the bizarre side of life grabs our attention.  Even if we don’t want to look we can’t help but crane our necks to see a weird sight along the way.  Admit it, we are consumers of the weird.

 The title of his long-running cartoon page catalog of the weird contained a challenge.  After one look at the sampling for the day, one must decide to either believe it or not.  Ripley and his talented researchers strived hard to document every item published.  As you might expect, among the mountain of fan mail would come those who challenged a particular claim.   The response was always the same:  an envelope would be sent to the inquirer that contained a card with the phrase “believe it or not” printed on it.  

If one moves beyond the standard told-in-Sunday-school stories from the Bible, the all time best seller does have a number of oddities of its own.  Even the standards are a bit wild if you think about it: a man getting swallowed by a fish and living to tell about it, men being unharmed by a fiery furnace, God commanding Abraham to kill his son, and David bringing down a giant with one shot.  Beyond these lie many sensibility-shaking stories that have been tucked into the sacred text since pen was first put to parchment.

 For many, the unusual claims of the Bible are used as ammunition to challenge the credibility of its content: why would God speak through a donkey?  How could God use a man who had hundreds of wives? Surly the skeptic would conclude the Bible is of little value to us- that it is simply a collection of out-dated oral history that has somehow survived over a long period of time.

 But there is another way to look at the even mind-boggling portions of Scripture.  These stories do have a reason for being that goes beyond appeal of a carnival side-show.  They are to provide a means of God getting messages through to us of vital importance. Perhaps it takes a dose of the strange to get our attention.  Perhaps God knew we needed to have our pre-conceived notions confronted with out-of-the-ordinary events so we would not be able to let the information pass us by.  We would be forced to make a decision to “believe it or not.”

It may take some work, and we may have to get over some shock and work around some head-shaking but if you are ready to take a walk on the wild-side through its pages, you may see the Bible like never before.

For more from Mt. Calvary go here

http://www.CalvaryWV.com

If you want to view the online content from the series "Strange and Bizarre Stories from the Bible" go here:

http://www.calvarywv.com/series/strange/index.html

Samples of things to come

Lately my office has been overrun with samples.  For the past three months our church has been undergoing major renovations to our 50+ year old sanctuary.   As committees have met and decisions have been made, a large hoard of samples has found its way into my work space.   The collection has included, at one time or another,  such items as:  carpet samples,  window trim samples,  window treatment samples,  floor tile samples,  wall tile samples,  stone samples,  brick samples,  upholstery samples,  chair samples,  lettering samples,  architectural diagrams,  seating charts,  cardboard templates for an oak cross and a new pulpit, acoustical fabric samples, countertop samples, lettering samples, computer-generated graphics of window designs, decor and wood trim, samples of stair rails, newel posts and spindles, paint samples, and lighting schematics.   Each one of these miniature versions of the real thing were presented to allow us to envision what our finished product would look like.   It helped move our imagination along toward a most robust picture of what would be.

Our congregation was eager for the transformation to take place; they had prayed, dreamed and generously given, saved  to pay for all that would come and approved the plan.    But intentions, samples and dreams can only take you so far; for the vision to turn into reality it took a talented team of architects, craftsmen, carpenters, salesmen, stonemasons, painters, carpet installers,  electricians,  consultants, designers, laborers, organ installers,  piano tuners, manufacturers, fabricators, sign-makers, tile layers, cabinetmakers, plumbers, CAD operators and audio and video technicians 

. 

Looking back and sorting through the now obsolete samples, I am reminded that God sprinkles some samples of things to come into our lives.   Since our faith rests on faith, much of what we anticipate in the future of our lives and in eternity is not seen- it awaits the final unveiling.  We need something to examine in advance to hold in our hands and imagine what lies beyond.   These samples don’t come in display binders or attached to display boards.  They come in the love and kindness shown to a loved one or a stranger.  They arrive as a needed dose of sunshine or a splash of color.  They pop up as an unexpected blessing or the reception of a kind word.   They are messages of God’s love and care for us that are sprinkled across the pages of the Bible.  They are the promises of redemption as seen in a cross or an empty tomb.   They are the words of hope spoken at a funeral and they are the words of commitment spoken by a bride and groom in a place of worship.

 

As I spend this day dealing with the clutter of samples from a project completed, I want to redouble my efforts to not miss the samples of God’s presence that He has hidden in the confines of this day-samples that should and do reassure me that what God is building in my life and for me in eternity are indeed real.   Why don’t you look for some samples in your life, too?

Five lessons to learn from the Petraeus mess

1.       You cannot hide your actions or character forever:

Someone will see, someone will notice someone will tell – live like everything is public and there will be no shock when the private is revealed. (Take a look at Number 32:23)

2.       Don’t be too close to someone other than your spouse:
“embedded”  “access” “confidant”  and “mentor” can be danger signs in a cross-gender relationship.

3.       Betrayal of trust will always hurts the innocent

Spouse, children, parents, co-workers, friends…

4.       There is no place to go to get your reputation back

What is done can be forgiven but what is done is done.

5.       Temptation always pays with counterfeit dollars

No matter how right it seems, the results of wrong are always greater.

Thanksgiving - bonus ideas

Five added blessings of practicing thanksgiving

1. Thanksgiving will keep you from becoming overly negative
2. Thanksgiving makes you aware of God’s presence
3. Thanksgiving creates a sense of adventure in life
4. Thanksgiving blocks a critical spirit
5. Thanksgiving makes you a lot easier to be around

Three Levels of Thanksgiving

1. Level #1 - Being thankful for the good
2. Level #2 – Being thankful that it wasn't worse
3. Level #3 – Being thankful for God’s use of the bad

Eight ways to act like Jesus reigns

Eight Ways to ACT like Jesus Reigns

1. Don’t view apparent set-backs as permanent

2. Avoid using the word “never”

3. Be patient with other believers – God is not finished changing them

4. Don’t fret over evil doers – God will set all things right

5. Don’t worry about your possessions – they won’t last

6. Give Him credit for everything

7. Freely confess your faults

8. Remember to say “Thank You”

I shared this as part of my teaching on Sunday Nov. 4, 2012, to access material in this series go here http://www.calvarywv.com/series/approved/

Waiting Rooms

As I write this I am sitting in a waiting room. I am not fond of waiting rooms. It is a nice waiting room; a flat panel TV tuned to the Weather Channel just told me it is raining in Milwaukee. The magazine selection is ok, except the titles seem a little tilted towards women; I can't seem to find a Road and Track or Popular Mechanics in the stack. The medical personnel at this facility are friendly and efficient and the furniture is modern and comfortable. Free wifi would be nice but writing on my iPad lets me do something productive while I wait. But to be honest, I would rather be somewhere else. I guess the real reason I am not a fan of waiting rooms is I am trapped here. I am captive to a schedule other than my own. I have no control over when I can be set free from this antiseptic closet. I do like being in control. I like to control my schedule, my environment, my to-do list and a hundred other things.

As I sit here and reflect on waiting, I recall that God uses "waiting rooms" - Joseph spent years in slavery and jail before he became an official in Egypt. Moses waited 80 years before starting his mission of deliverance. David waited years from his anointing until he assumed the throne. Before He began His public ministry, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness; Paul spent 3 years in Arabia and considerable time in prison. There must be some virtue in waiting.

Maybe the "waiting room" experiences of life are meant to help us break the addiction of control. Our God wants us to know that we need to recognize and allow His control in our lives. Our waiting is to be more than marking time- it should be a time to renew our confidence in God's ability and involvement in our lives. If we do, our expectations, frustrations and evaluations of life will slide into a more comfortable place. We can spend more time praising and less time complaining. More joy, less stress. More peace, less conflict.

As I close, I am still in the waiting room and don't know how long I will be here, but the above thoughts give me a little more perspective and peace and I like that. Being a little less in control is genuinely good for me. But I am going to find something on TV besides the Weather Channel.

Blessings,
Jesse Waggoner
www.CalvaryWV.com