Live on Jesus

“And if practically and experimentally we lean on the arm of Christ, it shall be yet seen in these last days how happy the disciples of the Lord Jesus may be, though everything may be dark and gloomy, though they are in the midst of difficulties and trial. Not only this—we may even be strong in the Lord; and whilst we cannot be apostles, we may aim after the grace of apostles. Though we never attain to it, it would be a holy aim, and God would be pleased with it. In ourselves we are perfect weakness; yet the Holy Ghost is in the Church, and dwells in every individual believer, and we have the written word, and Jesus our bosom Friend; and therefore if we pour out our hearts before God, in the midst of all our difficulties and trials, what strength may we not get to our souls? Let us live on Jesus, beloved in Christ.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/134274 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Happy Birthday Andrew and Michael

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6 Ways to Worship God Outside of Church

I found this article by Dominic Sickich posted on April 15, 2014 at vyrso.com.

God is worthy of worship through the duration of our days. Oftentimes it’s difficult to unravel how this works outside of our church attendance on Sundays. However, God has crafted our souls, designed our world, and granted us every tool necessary to worship him whenever, wherever, and basically, however.

Here are six ways you can worship God outside of church at any given moment:

1.   Accept the fact that you’re accepted

Genuinely accepting the fact that we’re loved, welcomed, and fully accepted by God outweighs any other style of worship. The truth is there’s nothing about you that needs to improve, develop, or change in order for you to be more loved by God. You’re already loved in full regardless of how you look, act, or feel.

God is most highly worshipped when we are most satisfied in his love. We are most satisfied in his love when we accept that it’s free. We must accept the fact that we’re accepted.

2.   Read the Word

We must guard our time in God’s Word. Consistently reading and dwelling in our Bibles is a sure way to expand our worship. Scripture is a primary tool God has entrusted us with for the purpose of worshiping him through knowing him.

3.   Pray

Jesus came to claim us and connect us as children of God. Just like children have open access with their dads to voice their concerns, express their feelings, and ask silly questions, we have open access as God’s children to do the same through prayer. Here’s what’s stunning: we don’t burden him with our puny voices and requests. He is passionate about us. He longs to hear from us and respond to us in love.

We worship God by communicating with God. We can pray often and expectantly, that when we knock, our loving God will open the door.

4.   Serve & love people

God lives in us—through the Holy Spirit—to be known through us. By simply spending time in community with the people God has placed in your life, you get to know God more as he has the potential to interact with you through their words and love.

Here’s the beauty: this goes both ways. God has purposefully placed you in the lives of others for them to know him better through your words and love. Whether you’re aware of it or not, God lives in you to be known through you.

When we encourage, serve, and love people, God is worshipped as he interacts with the people around us, through us.

5.   Rest

Slowing down can seem impossible as our lives become crowded with never-ending plans and to-do lists. We can worship God by loosening our grip on our “have to” tasks, allowing God to destruct our plans and tear apart our to-do lists in the name of rest and refreshment.

A beautiful way to do this (and a strategy used by Jesus) is to go to a quiet place in the wilderness. Today, our wilderness may simply be a place distant from the distractions of our everyday lives—our phones, jobs, etc. Drop them off and rest. Stare at God’s creation in wonder of its beauty, and rest. This is worshipful to God.

6.   Do what you love

Here’s the catchall: we can worship God by simply doing the things we love. God has given our hearts enjoyment, and our enjoyment pleases God. These enjoyments vary on an individual basis. Do you love to paint? Paint. Do you love to read? Read. Do you love to be with your family? Be with your family.

We can worship God by doing the very things he has made us love.

We are all debtors to the grace of God

“The strong are to bear the infirmities of the weak, and if I am unable to do that, it is a plain proof that I am a weak one myself, and have no ground to complain of the weaknesses of my brethren. All, to a greater or less degree, are weak as yet, uninstructed as yet; none have room for boasting. We are all debtors to the grace of God, and should, therefore, praise more abundantly, and walk more humbly, and seek more fully to bear one another’s burdens.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/50554 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Work It Out

“I remember a godly brother said to me, forty-two years ago,—“Get nourishment for your soul from God’s word, and then work it out.” This is deeply important. We should seek to read the word of God to be nourished and strengthened for our service.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/158962 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Believe what God says regarding His children

“We ought to go so far as to believe what God says regarding His children; and this is a universal promise regarding all the children of God.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/172643 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Who is John Wycliffe?

 

WYCLIFFE, JOHN (c. 1329–1384)
English reformer; Bible translator

A native of Yorkshire, Wycliffe attended Oxford University, where he received a doctorate of theology in 1372. Wycliffe, the most eminent Oxford theologian of his day, and his associates, were the first to translate the entire Bible from Latin into English.
Wycliffe has been called the “Morning Star of the Reformation” because he boldly questioned papal authority, criticized the sale of indulgences (which were supposed to release a person from punishment in purgatory), denied the reality of transubstantiation (the doctrine that the bread and wine are changed into Jesus Christ’s actual body and blood during Communion), and spoke out against church hierarchies. The pope reproved Wycliffe for his heretical teachings and asked that Oxford University dismiss him. But Oxford and many government leaders stood with Wycliffe, so he was able to survive the pope’s assaults.
Wycliffe believed that the way to prevail in his struggle with the church’s abusive authority was to make the Bible available to the people in their own language. Then they could read for themselves how each one of them could have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ—apart from any ecclesiastical authority. Wycliffe, with his associates, completed the New Testament around 1380 and the Old Testament in 1382. Wycliffe concentrated his labors on the New Testament, while an associate, Nicholas of Hereford, did a major part of the Old Testament. Wycliffe and his coworkers, unfamiliar with the original Hebrew and Greek, translated the Latin text into English.
After Wycliffe finished the translation work, he organized a group of poor parishioners, known as Lollards, to go throughout England preaching Christian truths and reading the Scriptures in their mother tongue to all who would hear God’s word. As a result the Word of God, through Wycliffe’s translation, became available to many Englishmen.
Wycliffe was loved and yet hated. His ecclesiastical enemies did not forget his opposition to their power or his successful efforts in making the Scriptures available to all. Several decades after he died. they condemned him for heresy, dug up his body, burned it, and threw his ashes into the Swift River.
One of Wycliffe’s close associates, John Purvey (c. 1353–1428), continued Wycliffe’s work by producing a revision of his translation in 1388. Purvey was an excellent scholar; his work was very well received by his generation and following generations. Within less than a century, Purvey’s revision had replaced the original Wycliffe Bible.

P. M. BECHTEL & P. W. COMFORT

P.M. Bechtel and P.W. Comfort, “Wycliffe, John,” ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 735.

Photos

As I Go About My Day

Kept fromHigh-mindedness

“Pray to be kept from a spirit of high-mindedness. What you have and are, you have and are by the grace of God, and that should lead you to deal tenderly with your fellow disciples.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/40770 via the Logos Bible Android app.

What Am I Living For?

“Ask yourselves, What am I living for? Am I living for the Lord? Is my one great business of life to be a fruit-bearer, to live to the praise of Him who purchased us with His precious blood?”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/151661 via the Logos Bible Android app.

The Gospel As “White Noise”

I came across this quote today and found it very helpful. I thought the author’s illustration of “white noise” was all to true. Below the quote is a more technical note about the passage. I have placed it at the bottom so it would not distract from the thrust of this quote.

So here is a passage (Eph 5:1) that probably many of you are already familiar with. The passage is: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Now, when you read that passage, Eph 5:1, what do you see there? Many of us when we read that passage, we think, “Alright, all that passage is saying is that somehow I am supposed to imitate God,” which of course ought to be a daunting task no matter what. But we frequently miss much of what is there. So what does it mean to imitate God, and how would you implement this command? Perhaps you might read Eph 5:1 and say, “Alright, there is a command from Paul, the Holy Spirit. I am supposed to imitate God. So let me think about the different characteristics of God, and then every month perhaps I’m going to look at one of those characteristics and try to imitate God.” And while there is nothing wrong with doing that, I think we are missing a lot of what is there in that command.

A number of years ago I used to live next to the I-15 in California, which is one of the most traveled freeways in the world. We lived within about a quarter of a mile of that freeway, and after we had lived there for a while, I didn’t hear it anymore. That noise from the I-15 became white noise, and I was actually glad for that because I didn’t want to listen to it. But on the other hand, it got me to thinking about what other things in my life were white noise. What I want to say to you today and what I hope you understand is that a lot of times when we read Scripture, much of the things that are in Scripture become white noise to us. We think we understand them, we think we know about them. I think when we think about the gospel in particular, the gospel becomes white noise to us. And so what we’re going to do over the next few moments is just think about how to change that thought of the gospel of being sort of peripheral—something we think we already know, we don’t need to go back there—and instead bring it forward in our consciousness.^[1]

Technical note:

The translation that the author is using is the ESV. Where Ephesians 5:1 in the ESV reads, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” The KJV reads, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;” The word “imitators” stuck me funny so I did some digging into the Greek.

What I found was that the Greek word is μιμηταὶ (μιμητής) is the word from which we get our English word mimic. The word is used 7 times and means to imitate^[2] The Greek word normally used for follower is ἀκολουθέω and it is used 86 times in the New Testament. Paul and Peters use of μιμητής is clearly unique and deserves some special thought.

 

1 Co 4:16	Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
1 Co 11:1	Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
Eph 5:1	Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
1 Th 1:6	And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost:
1 Th 2:14	For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:
Heb 6:12	That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
1 Pe 3:13	And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?

---

^[1] Elyse Fitzpatrick, CO111 Gospel-Centered Counseling, Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

^[2] William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 652.

Seek God’s Will For Each Undertaking

It’s important that we seek God’s will for each undertaking so that we don’t depend on past victories as we plan for the future. The World War II song “We did it before/And we can do it again!” doesn’t always apply to the work of the Lord. How easy is it for Christian ministries to dig their way into administrative ruts that eventually become graves, simply because the leadership fails to discern whether God wants to do something new for them. The American business leader Bruce Barton (1886–1967) said, “When you’re through changing, you’re through.”

Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Strong, “Be” Commentary Series (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 97.

Mortgage Burning Just Around the Corner

Mortgage Burning

What is it?

We are celebrating the paying off of our building and would like you to join in our celebration. From the feedback we have already received we are anticipating a very large crowd and would be thrilled if you could join us. This flyer contains some important information that you should find helpful if you are planning on joining our service.

When is it?

Service May 4, 2014- 5:00pm
Fellowship at Church - 6:30pm

What do I bring?

• Lawn Chair or Blanket (For service at park)

 

Offering

We will be taking a special offering that will be used to help other church planters. Please ask the Lord what you should give.

 

 

Where is it?

5:00 pm Service at…

Gordon Davis Park
Hwy 26 & S. Dakota Ave.
Guernsey, Wy 82214

 

6:30 pm Fellowship at…

Oregon Trail Baptist Church
310 S. Dakota Ave.
Guernsey, Wy 82214

Hope to see you there!

To join the event on Facebook click here.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

It’s hard to believe that Elizabeth has already turned 4 years old. She had a wonderful little birthday party with her brothers and the Crossman children.

The Habitual Presence Of God

“The presence of God, the habitual presence of God, because we believe that He sees us and hears us continually, has to regulate our life. We have to live in this world as those would who exercise faith in the truth that their heavenly Father is continually their Provider, their Protector, their Helper, their Friend; that He is ever nigh to them, that He is a wall of fire round about them continually. If the child of God thus treated God, exercised faith in Him, looked upon Him practically as the living God ever near to him, how peacefully and happily would he walk through the world!”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/60183 via the Logos Bible Android app.

January - March 2014 Ministry Update

 

Beginning the year off strong

After returning from visiting our extended family in the Midwest for Christmas we returned to a box full of mail that needed to be sorted and read. As we opened the various bills, flyers, and cards we were pleasantly surprised to get a few checks that were enough to pay off our mortgage. We had planned to pay off our mortgage on May 4^th, but paying it off sooner was great. We are still planning on having our mortgage burning service on May 4^th.

 

 

Prayer Advance

Pastor David Shaner at New Life in Christ Baptist Church in Lusk, WY invited me to join him and a group of men who were flying out to Goshen, Virginia for the Men’s Prayer Advance sponsored by Christ Life Ministries. My time with Pastor Shaner and the men from his church was very encouraging and God used the prayer advance to convict me and draw me closer to him.

 

 

Home Missions Conference

In March we went to the Home Missions Conference at First Baptist Church of Englewood. We enjoyed the preaching, but we also really enjoyed fellowshipping with the family who graciously housed us. Before we left they gave us many boxes of food from a food pantry that they are connected with. We were able to get several special items for other people with health needs as well as we have been able to give a lot of food away to families in our church who are going through some hard times.

Spring Cleaning at Church

We had a great turn out from our people to help do some spring cleaning around the church. We got a lot done and everything looks much better. The old saying is true, “many hands make light work.” Everyone also enjoyed a good time of fellowship as we worked alongside one another.

 

 

Other Happenings

Outside of the events already mentioned we have taken a part of many other ministry activities in the last three months. I was asked to officiate a funeral in Fort Laramie and Becca was invited to speak for a baby shower at Pioneer Baptist Church.

 

 

Please Pray

Everything written in this letter as well as what is on our blog is fairly generic. If you would like more details so you can pray more accurately please contact me. I don’t like personal details about other people being posted on the internet.

For a more detailed updates please visit our www.OTBChuto rch.com and click on “Pastor’s Page”

or visit www.jasonandbeccamiller.blogspot.com.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support,

Jason, Becca, Elizabeth, Andrew, & John Miller

 

For older updates please visit

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzTKeQwG4r_2UklBR05paUh1YVk&usp=sharing