Bethlehem Baptist Church of Ruff Creek - Pastor David's Blog

A thought for the day

9/10/2019

Judas had:
The best Pastor
The best Leader
The best Advisor
The best Counselor

Yet he failed

The problem is not the leadership of the church you go to.
If your attitude or character doesn’t change
or your heart doesn’t transform,
you will always be the same.

A Poem about our source of strength

9/12/2016

I came across the following poem in a book by Robert J. Morgan entitled, The Strength You Need.
The author of the poem, Annie Johnson Flint, suffered from debilitating arthritis at an early age. She wrote:

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit; His grace has no measure.
Hos power has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

True Prayer

12/28/2015

I have neglected to keep up with this blog but here is the next nugget that I would like to share with you.

True prayer is measured by weight, not by length.
A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it
than a fine oration of great length.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I have become quite a fan of Spurgeon recently. I am reading a compilation of his messages on prayer entitled: The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life.

I will get quite personal now and ask that you pray for my son, Elijah. He will be having major hip surgery on December 30th. He is to be in the hospital for three or four days afterward. With a four to six month recovery to follow.

Prayer

10/26/2015

It has been quite a while since my last post. Sorry for that.
I have never been good a journaling and writing a blog seems quite similar.
What I will try to do with this space in the future is post good quotes that I come across. I hope that they will bless and encourage you. The first several will come from an update that I receive from the American Baptist Churches of PA & DE.
With the update there is almost always a new quote about prayer. Here is the first that I will share with you:

We think of prayer as a preparation for work,
or a calm after having done work,
whereas prayer is the essential work.
It is the supreme activity of everything that is noblest in our personality.

Oswald Chambers

Our Motivation

9/2/2015

Almost everyone’s pace quickens when school starts back up and there are many things tugging at you for attention. It is not our desire to add more things to that list. But we have a lot to offer you and your family this fall at BBC. Our motivation for what we do as a church is found in the Word of God,

“to prepare God’s people for works of service,
so that the body of Christ may be built up
until we all reach unity in the faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God
and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:12-13

Do those words inspire you as they inspire me? There are numerous opportunities this fall for Fellowship, Bible Study and Service at BBC. It is our desire to see the goals of Ephesians 4 realized in each of us. Please join us.

Raspberries

7/29/2015

Earlier this summer I went raspberry picking with my boys. Our family loves berry picking and this summer was the largest and best crop of raspberries that I have ever seen. As I was picking I got to thinking about how what I was doing was analogous to making disciples. Consider...
When picking raspberries:

You have to wade into uncomfortable places. Thorns are everywhere. You can get hurt.
You cannot pick berries without getting your hands dirty.
So many of the best berries are just out of reach because of a wall of vegetation/thorns.
It takes time. As I was picking...it was a slow process. I kept thinking, "There are so many ripe berries that I am not going to get to. I wish I could do this faster and get more berries before they go to waste. (I know, the birds need to eat too and the lost berries mean new plants for next year.)

When making disciples:

You may have to go to uncomfortable places to find the people who need Jesus. Our Lord often waded into places we might feel uncomfortable go to to connect with the lost.
If you are going to make an effort to make disciples. You will have to get your hands dirty. What I mean by this is that you will need to get involved in peoples lives. Show that you care when someone is suffering. You cannot make disciples from your easy chair (safe place) at least not usually.
There are some people who YOU will not be able to reach. Perhaps they have built up a wall around themselves and you will not be able to break through. This does not mean that God cannot send someone else to reach them.
Making disciples takes time. Even if someone accepts Christ as there Savior right before your eyes. The journey of discipleship is just beginning. They will need someone to invest time in them to help them grow and produce fruit.

Lord, help us to remain faithful to your call to make disciples. Give us patience, endurance, creativity and opportunities. Amen

The Altar of Good Works and Busyness

7/6/2015

I am not familiar with the author of the following quote but I came across the quote in a book on spiritual disciplines. I share this quote with you because it hit too close for me personally and thought it might speak to you as well.

"The pace of life and our preoccupation with unimportant things take so much of our attention. The significant things, like taking time to develop friendship, to read and pray,...to listen to God--these all get sacrificed on the altar of good works and Christian busyness." Luci Shaw

Lord God, help me to see where in my life I am placing far too much emphasis on the unimportant at the expense of things that really matter. I Jesus Name, AMEN.

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

6/15/2015

I read the following in a Moody Publishing e-newsletter:

A. W Tozer Wrote:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 5:3

Before the Lord God made man upon the earth, He first prepared for him a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are simply "things". They were made for man's use, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.

But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul. Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and things were allowed to enter. Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk, stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.

This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets things with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development, never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples,

"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 16:24-25

A Prayer by Tozer

Father, I want to know Thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival.

Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious.

Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.

In Jesus' name.
Amen.

Poverty Alleviation

5/13/2015

I read the following definition of Poverty Alleviation in the book "When Helping Hurts" by Steven Corbett and Brian Fikkert:

"Poverty alleviation is the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation."

The authors were making that point that there is far more to helping the poor than giving them material possessions. They went on to say:

"The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world into middle-to upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness."

This was a stunningly profound truth to read. What are we, 'the church' doing? What is it going to take to wake us up?

Lord help us. Help us to see clearly what we need to change within ourselves. Bring about renewal in the hearts of each of us. That we may become agents of transformation in our homes and communities. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Hearing God's Voice

5/6/2015

I am sorry that it has been a while since I posted something. If you read this blog please let me know by sending and email to [email protected]

I few weeks ago I attended a Minister's Conference where I heard two excellent speakers: John Piippo and Clayton Ford.

The theme of the Conference was "Discipleship and the Holy Spirit". My next few posts will be things that I heard there that were meaningful to me.

The first is about hearing God. The question is asked: How do you know if it is God's voice that you think you are hearing?

Three part answer:
1. Spend much time with God
2. Saturate in Scripture
3. Hang around with people who to #1 and #2

Sounds obvious. But are we doing these things?