Praise God, from whom all blessings flow! He is our God, and He is worthy of all praise. I am reminded today, of all days, that our God is faithful to each and every one of us, and His love is present for all to receive, just as, well, a present. His love is seen in Christ, and that makes Christ the greatest Present of all, over all, above all.
I say this today, considering that Christ is the greatest present we can give to anyone and everyone. The rest of the world would use religion among other devices to have us prove our ‘worthiness’ which comes in one and many forms – worthiness by way of acceptance by the masses, or by those already esteemed by the populace, worthiness by way of worth or in possession of high amounts of physical, social, and/or mental capital. We’d use political and educational systems to determine people of high value, or to justify our calling certain people worthy, or worthless.
The primary point is, God loves us, regardless of what worth we muster for ourselves according to the mindsets we pick up from the world, or what worthlessness weighs us down over failures seen and unseen, or blunders done to us or by us. We know this only through Jesus Christ.
And sure, even if we’ve heard it a million times, we’d still find value from this Gospel for ourselves, each and every time. But today, well, again – I am reminded that the Lord does show how faithful He is to us – by showing how He is faithful to those we detest.
I mean, if I’m being honest, I may be a Pastor and that entails all sorts of implications – such as, well, the expectation that I should be nice to everyone. And there are times that I find a loophole to that, by way of insisting that I’m actually a whole lot nicer to people, or I’m really nicer to some particular people by being real to them, instead of wearing a mask and being all fake pleasant. The fact of the matter is, I… well, I can’t be nice to everyone. There are particular people that immediately leave a dirty taste in my mouth as soon as I remember them, and there are still those who sort of make me twitch whenever I sense their presence.
Pastor indeed, right? Well, I’m just reminded of how I still have much to learn, and more importantly, I am reminded of how much more I need Christ. It’s Christ who wouldn’t hesitate to love these people. Christ left His glory and was born within finite Creation to be with them, just as He did all that to be with me. Christ died for them just as much as He died for me. Christ rose from the dead for them just as much as He rose from the dead for me. And I could imagine, Christ was just as excited in His ascension, to have accomplished reconciliation in the hopes that I would believe… and in the hopes that those we detest would believe as well.
See here, I was going to start really writing about the theme for this coming July 23, but after what’s been going on real-time, I’ve had to remind myself of God’s love for me.
Thank you for your patience so far.
Update: To clarify, I prepared the words here in preparation for my message this coming July 23. I thought I’d be concise about it, but here we are, at three thousand words in this article. Not so short-form. But as you’ll see, we’ve uncovered something else in the process. Read on if you dare, and again, thank you for your patience.
The First Essential: Christ, God’s Perfect Will
It seems like a dream, how I once stood at the podium, oh, a month or two ago, apologizing to the congregation, because I wasn’t actually prepared for all the movement I proclaimed would happen, especially this year.
Now, it seems like work done by no less than the Holy Spirit that has not only given us material for today, but for the upcoming months; And not only have we been so blessed with insights that would come from me, but – I’m saying this now – we’re also gearing up to listen to other folks from our congregation to give their own perspectives, that we would all grow together. AND not only have we been given duly scheduled material (i.e. Essential Christ series material, and Domestic/Foreign series material), but we’ve also been blessed with sudden, urgent messages as well.
On the last Sunday of June we started off with how Christ is literally God’s Perfect Will. We’ve seen how it was part of God’s will for us to know the Truth, that we would come to repentance, so that we would not perish, but be saved. We’ve proclaimed that Christ is God’s PERFECT Will, because He did what God willed, perfectly – that is, He BECAME sin, so when He died, He took ALL of death. And He rose again, to prove that death could not hold Him down, but more importantly, to make it known that have been saved by way of His righteousness becoming our righteousness, that we would not perish, but have everlasting Life.
What does this mean, on a practical note? Well, it still stands – in order for us to know God’s will for us in the greatest decisions, and in the smallest details, we can rejoice – why? Because the Truth is not too far from us – Christ is the Truth, just as Christ is God’s Will. We can consult Christ as our Truth in any circumstance, and we can move, knowing that just as Christ is always with us, so we are always in God’s Will, no matter what.
I had the people repeat after me:
We are always in God’s Will
We are always in God’s Love
Because Christ is always with us.
Christ is God’s Perfect Will.
At this point I think it’s necessary to mention that ‘God’s Perfect Will’ wasn’t a theme I thought of on my own. It was a theme that was mentioned to me by our good friends who serve in our Compassion Ministry, when they asked me to share a message with them during their Yearly Recognition Program.
And I’ll admit, I was pretty much out of ideas at this point, and I thought I’d take that theme and transform it for our use in the Sunday services. And it’s from this that I came up with the idea of sharing how Christ is our Essential, no matter what movement happens to us, or no matter what moves we make, so far in this Year of Movement. We were supposed to talk about these Essentials for the rest of the month of July.
A Segue – The Aces’ Creed, version 1
I thought things were going to be straightforward from that last Sunday of June, when we first talked about God’s Perfect Will… until we all went down, team, congregation and all, to the beach. What I thought would be a relaxing time for the entire congregation turned out to be revelatory – both for me, personally, and for our service.
See, some of the folks who would be joining us wanted to, in their words, re-dedicate themselves to the Lord, or get a second Baptism. It was a wake-up call for me because I thought I was pretty set on what I would say and do, based on the last time we all went out to do baptism; but since these folk wanted to re-dedicate, that is, considering that they’ve already been baptised under another Minister in the past, they still wanted to get baptised by me – well, that was both a call to focus and humility for me.
In honor of these folk, I decided to really sit down and establish what I wanted to share to them before they headed to the water, what to ask them before I baptize them, and what to say as they are submerged and as they emerge. The resultant verbiage was so good that I didn’t want to keep it to myself, and to those who helped me in the water, and to those who submitted themselves for baptism – it turned out to be the makings of a Creed. Imagine, our own Creed:
We believe in God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.
We believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.
We believe in His birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
We believe that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried. We have died to sin and flesh, and our old life has been cut off and buried.
We believe that Christ rose again on the third day. You also rose, righteous unto eternal life. We are new creations in Christ.
We believe Christ ascended to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. We have the Holy Spirit, and we have the mind of Christ.
A Reminder from Didier & Helen
Now here I was thinking that I would be okay with saying all of that, and then go back to our regular programming. But then our good family from Burkina Faso had some choice words to share to us! Brother Didier, with the assistance of his wife, our missionary, Sister Helen – well, they brought the house down. All this time I’ve been focused on getting my congregation up to speed with regards to their own voices in speaking out, when we’ve all been given a reminder of just how urgent it is the spread the Gospel as much as we can, to whomever we can.
I think I have at least 3 points to share coming from their message.
First, indeed, there is wisdom from Christ’s words in Matthew 9:38, where He reminds the disciples to pray ‘to the Lord of the Harvest’ for workers – especially considering that ‘The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few’. I say that in our praying to the Lord for workers, let us not be surprised if (1) we are led to be workers, (2) we assist any workers (or, missionaries, as we’re brought to believe) by way of resources, power, encouragement, and/or prayers.
Actually, now that I write it, our brothers and sisters who have gone ahead of us seem to have understood ‘workers’ in this regard as people within the body of Christ with a more resolute will to participate in the said harvest – And most of the time we see these folk with the said motivation, as Missionaries. Evangelists. Now I’m not about to fully disagree with this idea of who those laborers could be, but I will instead give us a point to consider – that is, that we are all, in some way or form, workers or laborers involved in the harvest. In as much as we at least know someone else in this world who hears us or listens to us, that to me is considered part of the harvest.
And that’s what comes second, I suppose. Another implication of the salvation we received through Christ, as Christ Himself is our Salvation – First was that our existence in this reality already makes us part of the harvest. But a related second is that we are living, breathing testimonies of the Gospel. Didier and Helen mentioned that the preaching of the Gospel in this day and age is urgent… and I agree with that. But I think that as Christ is alive in us, His moving in all of our being not only enables us to be part of the harvest, but also projects and proclaims the Gospel in all that happens to us, and in all that we make happen.
Finally, we were reminded of how it’s fine and dandy for us to preach the Gospel to those within our spheres of influence, and those that are more or less close to our age group, let us not neglect the children – our children need the Gospel more than ever. The world and all its factions want our children, and we shouldn’t sit idly by as they run their parades and their own indoctrinations and groomings. The Gospel is the best thing we ever received, and it’s the best thing we could ever give to them. As a response I’ve had to come up with a schedule of Scripture and messages to be shared this July and August, just so my team would be able to work on good lessons for the kids – both the younger kids and the ones turning to teens.
The Second Essential: Christ, our Firm Foundation
Now from there, if everything goes according to plan, we go back to our Essential Christ series, and talk about how Christ is our Firm Foundation. Quite frankly, it’s a lot that we’ve been taking in.
God was many things to the people of Israel. By looking at how He interacted with them, even as far back as the days of Moses, we could see that He was their Power, by way of the plagues – A good number of us are aware of how He performed those plagues in particular to exercise His infinite authority and superiority over the gods of Egypt. He was their Guidance, being a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.
But we see later on, in one and more instances, God was their Foundation.
In Psalm 62:1-4 we read how the Psalmist proclaimed how God was his Rock and Fortress, and that he ‘shall not be greatly shaken’. It’s necessary for us to see that he did not say they shall not be shaken; No, they knew that they would still be rocked to the core, but they wouldn’t be shaken for too long, or shaken too greatly. God stabilizes them that way.
We also read in Exodus 14:13-14, and in 2 Chronicles 20:17, the accounts of Moses and King Jehoshaphat, two accounts spanning generations, where God told them both to ‘stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord.’
Through these Scriptures we could say that God was a Foundation to the people of Israel, by way of (1) ensuring that they would not be greatly shaken, and (2) reminding them to stand firm.
Now, this was for the people of Israel. Could it apply to us? For sure! In fact, we have an even greater blessing, in the form of Christ! Christ was also many things to us. To the leper, He was a healer. To the woman at the well, He was her water-bearer. To the Pharisee, He was a rebuke. To John, He openly loved him. To Peter, He was also a rebuke when we was saying things out of nowhere.
In fact, it was this same Peter who, after Christ’s ascension, proclaimed something else Christ was for us: In Acts 4:8-12 we read that Peter revealed Christ’s fulfillment of prophecy: Christ was the stone that the builders rejected, the same one that became the chief Cornerstone.
And see here: In any building it is the cornerstone that sets the measurements for the rest of the foundation, and therefore, for the rest of the building! Therefore if God was a Foundation for the Israelites, Christ was our Cornerstone – The Foundation of Foundations!
We can therefore say with confidence that we will also not be greatly shaken, and we are able to stand firm. In fact, the Israelites were told to ‘stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord’; In our case, Christ, our Salvation, has come to us, and we therefore stand firm!
So again, we CAN stand firm, and we will NOT be greatly shaken, because we have the Cornerstone – Christ, our Firm Foundation!
And with that said, we can say the following:
We will not be greatly shaken.
We stand firm.
Christ is our Cornerstone.
Christ is our Firm Foundation.
With everything that is happening in and around the world, we couldn’t say that things aren’t moving. I may or may not proclaim that this year is a year of movement, but see, halfway through the year, we’ve seen so much moving. And I feel as if, through all I’ve wanted to discuss versus all that’s been actually discussed, we’re in need of those Essentials, and things to hang on to regardless of what happens to us.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Because we came to believe in Jesus Christ and His finished work, it doesn’t mean that we will have better circumstances in this reality – But see here, the salvation we have in Christ has us celebrating freedom in spite of the many things in this reality that would try to bind us or confine us… just as it has us in peace beyond understanding – true peace of mind, that holds us together even when the most trying of situations would try to tear us apart.
I think it’s no accident that messages were shared the way they were, to this time – because we now have a creed from the beach, and through all this that we’ve discussed, it appears we have the makings of a Statement of Faith. I’ve needed to consult ChatGPT about this but long story short, a creed is more fundamental and portable, while the statement of faith is longer, but built off of the creed.
With that said, here’s what we have so far:
We believe in God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.
We believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.
We believe in His birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
We believe that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried. We have died to sin and flesh, and our old life has been cut off and buried.
We believe that Christ rose again on the third day. You also rose, righteous unto eternal life. We are new creations in Christ.
We believe Christ ascended to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. We have the Holy Spirit, and we have the mind of Christ.
Christ is always with us.
Christ is God’s Perfect Will.
We are always in God’s Will.
We are always in God’s Love.
Christ is our Cornerstone.
Christ is our Firm Foundation.
We will not be greatly shaken.
We stand firm.
We believe we have a heart for the harvest.
We believe in the urgency of sharing the Gospel to all, young and old.
That last part was based on Didier & Helen’s word. Not sure it’s in the right place but I’m pretty sure this is gonna get bigger, and it’ll be clarified and refined the more we read it and the more we get feedback. Again, I was supposed to keep this short and sweet, but well, this looks like the start of the actual article where I write about what I’m supposed to talk about this coming July 23.
And thinking long term, this looks like a lead in; or, rather, the milk before we possibly discuss the ‘meat’ – and in so doing, have others talk and not just me – in the fourth and final quarter of this year.
Okay, this has been too long. Until the next post, God bless you.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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