A Brick in the Valley

Sunday (D.V.) I will remind our people that time in Romans should motivate us to be missional: to always be living to further the cause of Christ.  We are all about spreading the Gospel for God’s glory and our joy.

Missions was a major part of why Paul wrote Romans .  He wanted to establish a base in Rome, so that he could eventually make his way to Spain.  Once he reached Spain, Paul would have planted churches like a belt across the breadth of the Roman Empire.  With this accomplished, the Gospel would spread like a fire north into Europe and south to North Africa.  Whether or not Paul made it to Spain, we know this is what happened.

Here, John MacArthur illustrates how pastors and theologians should remember the mission.  MacArthur is best known as a preacher and student of the Bible, but this is an amazing account of how he shared his faith over a 50 year time period.

HT: Unashamed Workman

1.2 billion people and according to Operation World, “India has more (and larger) people groups with no Christians, churches or workers than any other part of the world.”

The Big Picture takes us to India:

January 26th, 2010 marked the 60th anniversary of India’s adoption of the Constitution of India, and the 80th anniversary of its original 1930 Declaration of Independence from British rule. The annual holiday is celebrated as Republic Day, with a grand parade held in the capital, New Delhi, and many other celebrations across the diverse nation. Collected here are a number of photographs from the Republic Day celebrations and many more colorful glimpses of daily life from all around India.

More here.

One of my concerns for the church in North America today is that local churches are too disconnected from one another. While there are several highly visible churches, many of the people in our local churches have relatively little awareness of what is going on in modest congregations like the Red Brick Church in Stillman Valley, IL.

In the coming weeks, I have asked several pastors to introduce us to their churches.

This week is one of my favorite pastors and church in my favorite place on planet earth (in the GSOI).  This is the church my mother attends and Mike Mosier is one of the pastors I most look up to and aspire to be like.  He is a faithful servant.

Make no mistake: faithful churches like this one are the backbone of our country.

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Tell us where your church is at geographically and give us your web site.

Zion Bible Church is located on Highway 16, about two miles northeast of Douds (a village of approximately 250 residents), Iowa.  Our entire county (Van Buren) is very rural, very agrarian, and has a total population of around 7,500 people.  We are situated in the extreme northwest corner of the county.  What is a web site?  (I intended that question to be funny–we don’t have a web site.)

How long have you been the pastor there?

This October I will celebrate my twentieth year as pastor of Zion Bible Church.

Tell us about your family.

In 1970, while serving in the military with the USAF, I received a duty assignment to Taiwan.  That’s where I met my wife to be.  We were married in 1971.  We have a son who is thirty-four and married with two children, and a daughter who is thirty-seven and married with no children.  My wife and I will celebrate our 39th year of marriage in March.  Zion Bible Church has been a blessing to us.  We love our church family and we both thank God for His work in our lives and marriage.  In all honesty, we love each other, and we enjoy our life together.

What is the theological or denominational heritage of your church? Has that identity changed?

Originally, our church was a Lutheran Church.  In 1963, the congregation decided that they wanted the authority to call their own pastors.  Action was taken to sever ties with the Lutheran denomination, and they became a Bible Church.

There is no other pastoral staff.

Briefly, what is your approach to preaching? Do you topical series? Book by book?

I have done both topical and “through the book” preaching.  Currently, I am preaching a series based on Galatians 5:22-26 I’m simply calling “The Fruit of the Spirit.”

What style of music do you use as a part of your worship service?

We take a blended approach to our music ministry.  I usually play my guitar and lead the first song, selecting a fairly contemporary song.  Our song leader then takes over and leads the congregation in a couple of hymns selected from our hymnal.

Why should someone who lives in your area and is looking for a church home think about visiting your church?

A person in our area should visit our church because we want to love them through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit of God.   We want to speak the truth to them in love so that they can know the wonder of deliverance from the bondage of sin and the joy of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Our mission statement is to love God, love others, and serve the world, and we welcome others to join us.  The bottom line is this: we believe the Bible, and we want to live the Bible.   Through God’s work in our lives, we want to show others who God is.  We pray and believe that if a person visits Zion Bible Church, he or she will come into contact with God’s truth and God’s love.

Tell us about one memory or incident from your church in which you believe God was glorified and you and your flock experienced joy.

In regard to an incident when our congregation experienced joy, there are so many!  One of our favorite memories is this: Lehr and Lola Nedrow, dedicated and delightful followers of Jesus and members of Zion Bible Church had two daughters.  The older married and had a son and a daughter, and the younger daughter married and had a son and a daughter.   The family was very close and gathered at their grandparents’ home quite frequently.

As the two sons grew into their teen years, they both made horrible choices.  The son of the younger daughter gained a reputation for rampant rebellion–drinking, partying, speeding, womanizing, and all the rest–and was in trouble with the authorities frequently.  The son of the older daughter following graduation moved to Florida, at least in part to put some distance between himself and those that he had so deeply disappointed.

The younger son continued in his immoral lifestyle…until the premature death of his father.  That got him to thinking about the example of his grandfather and grandmother and what he had been taught in Sunday School as a little boy.  Our church reached out to him and this young man repented of his sin and placed his faith in Jesus Christ.  We immediately began to see the kind of change that one would expect to see in a true conversion experience.

Our congregation rejoiced–and we continue to rejoice.  By the way, you might be wondering about the son of the older daughter.  He turned to Jesus, too.  Lehr and Lola Nedrow are now with the Lord, but during the time of their grandchildren’s rebellion, they prayed like crazy.  Our congregation prayed like crazy (well, that might be a bit of an over-statement, but we prayed).  All four of this dear couple’s grandchildren are now walking closely with the Lord.  Praise God!  Our Lord was glorified and we experienced great joy!  And it continues.

God bless you and your flock at Stillman Valley!

Michael Mosier/Zion Bible Church

Abraham Piper shares why it is important for parents to be dull.  This is critical and points to one of the dangers of our age.

Can you imagine, realizing on judgment day, that you were mistaken about your salvation and now all that waits is eternal torment without a second chance (Matthew 7:21-23)?  I’ve talked more than once to our people about what scares me most as a pastor.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (on Romans, vol 2, page 98) makes a similar point:

“. . . There is nothing, surely, which is more dangerous to the soul than what we may call a glib believism. 

And you see how this affects all our ideas of evangelism.  If we are so anxious to get people ‘through’, as we say, instead of leaving the Holy Spirit to do His own work, we tend to say, ‘But look here, it is simple – - here, you see, the Scripture says if you believe you are saved.  Do you believe?  Yes.  Very well, you are saved, it is all right’.  But it may be all wrong!  It may be terribly all wrong!  And it can be an exceedingly dangerous thing to say that to a soul, and to give people the impression that because they have said they believe and accept, all is well.  There is a sense in which we have got to say that to them, but we must not stop at that.  We must go on – - we must say, ‘All your good living and all your works can never save you.  You have got to see that, and you have got to admit that to yourself and to God.  You have got to see that you can only be saved by the Lord Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will act upon you.  He will bring into birth a new man within you; He will implant a new principle of life in you, and that will begin to manifest itself’.  In other words, we must never stop at just believing – - we must always emphasize regeneration – - the re-birth – the new man.  Otherwise it seems to me we are leaving souls in a very dangerous position.

2 Corinthians 13:5

If you have questions about your salvation, then you really need to talk to your pastor or another mature Christ SOON.  If you don’t have a pastor, then find a Bible believing, Christ-centered church.

In a Washington Post article:

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow’s pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We’re always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Read the whole article here.

No deep spiritual lessons in this post; but a keen observation never the less.

Click here to see more material from a blog that doesn’t dodge the tough issues.

Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow:

But of course the story of my life is not finished yet.  I will not live to tell the end of it.

My life, though, has been something (as only now at last I am able to see), but it is something that it has made of itself, not something that I have made of it.

I am often blessed by Patricia Hunter’s blog.  And, her painted bunting pictures are my favorite – - though the first pictures on this post are also a blessing.

How could you look at these and not believe in a Creator?

Is your local church observing the Lord’s Supper this Sunday?

There is an analogy to be made between a wedding (the outward celebration of the marriage covenant) and the ordinances or sacraments.

I have two beautiful daughters (one with blue eyes and one with brown) and there exists the possibility that one day some guy is going to come and sit in my study and expect me to listen while he tries to convince me that he should be allowed to marry my daughter.  (For more here, see, I’m giving away two books and two daughters).

Let’s assume, and this is hypothetical, that after he has answered somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 questions, submitted his financial records to a thorough audit, and let me check the history of his hard drive for unsuitable material – suppose that I were to grant said candidate permission to marry my daughter (We’ll call him “Cecil”)– After all, my girls’ mother wants grandchildren. Son in laws are a necessary part of the equation.

But, picture that, a few days after I hypothetically gave Cecil permission to marry my daughter, he and the daughter in view showed up to share with Jamie and me that they were engaged. Now, after decades of marriage to my wife, I can predict that she would say with excited eyes, “Okay, let me see your ring.”

Can you imagine if at that point Cecil said, “Oh, I didn’t get her a ring.”

I would scowl, but Jamie would try and put a nice spin on things: “Well, this way, you can go and look for a ring together.”

But, Cecil responds, “Oh, there won’t be any rings. I’ve always found them a bit ostentatious and since a marriage is really about a covenant before God, we don’t find an outward sign really that important.”

I would enter the discussion at this point, if not before. “So, you’re not planning a ring ceremony in the wedding.”

Cecil, “Well, actually, we’re not planning a wedding. Again, we believe that a marriage is an invisible commitment between a husband and wife and as such does not need to be celebrated visibly.

At which point, Jamie would cry. The daughter concerned would know enough to cry. And, I would outline a future course of action.

There would be no recovery for Cecil at this point. But, for the benefit of my daughter and wife, and as evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in my life, I might respond with a little teaching at the point. I would say, “Well, Cecil, while it is true that these are outward signs, the point is that they point to a spiritual and mystical reality. Indeed, that the tangible nature of a wedding and rings and it is a tremendously helpful and concrete way to teach frail human beings about the permanence of marriage.”

Of course, all the more so with the sacraments. Indeed, you could make a far stronger case for the sacraments than for the modern version of a wedding. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are explicitly prescribed in the New Testament whereas wedding have developed culturally for the most part –though the traditions rest on a strong biblical foundation.

My future son-in-laws better plan on attending a wedding and wearing a ring, and Christians should plan on identifying with Christ in baptism and observing the Lord’s Supper.

For more on the sacraments, see Questions and Answers about the Sacraments, Is Your Church Observing the Lord’s Supper Tomorrow and Avoiding Over-reacting to Catholicism.