August 2021 Chips, Cedar Chips

The Invitation

The Invitation

Something my husband and I are adamant about is fostering faith at home.  Not the usual morality-based do-this-and-do-that-because-God-says-so law-based faith, but a deep and life-changing faith based on how much God loves them, desires them, and is calling them to use their unique gifts even now to do miraculous things for His kingdom. We teach that we are not able to do good except for the good Jesus has already done for us.  We are not able to love God except that through Jesus, God made His love known and made a way for us to love Him back.  Our worship, our devotion, our love—all because of Jesus FIRST.

Jesus’ interactions with children in the Bible were also not morality based. “Come here, children, and sit on my lap because you do all the good things,” was not the invite.  “Come here, because I am done with my workday and have finished all my other tasks and finally have time for you,” also was not the invite.

The invite is this, “Children, I am pausing my work among these adults, in the middle of this giant crowd who thinks you have less worth as human beings and asking you to just come and enjoy my presence while sitting on my lap without having to prove you are good-enough first to earn it.” That was and is the invitation.

I haven’t always understood children.  I spent most of my adult life as a single or married-but-childless person. Our growing family came late in life, so I had a lot to learn about kids once we started our family.  But my heart is growing and my understanding of their role in the Kingdom is growing.  They are fertile ground for Kingdom principles.  Their clay is shapeable.  It’s not hard and resistant like the rest of us.  And they ask the best questions that I hadn’t even considered!

God’s invite to our children to come and be in His presence is the same He extends to us.  They are not an afterthought. They are not forgotten.  If anything, Jesus lets us know that their unique child-like brains can grasp the kingdom of God better than us.  We can learn from them, their deep trust and simple devotion to a God who calls them not as an afterthought, but as a treasured child of God.

Leah Carolan
Director of Worship & Media

 

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    July 2021

    Sock Dilemmas (Again)

    Sock Dilemmas (Again)

    I don’t know why socks are such a big thing at our house. They are literally EVERYWHERE like… all the time. I think my family walks in and slowly sheds a sock as they pass through the door, through the kitchen, down a hallway and into the living room. The simple trek is lined with dirty socks. Socks that have gotten wet, socks that stink, socks that have gotten dragged through the yard, socks that made someone’s feet too hot in the heat. I think they get shed for all sorts of reasons.

    And their match is always missing. Does your household have a place for socks that have lost their match? I have a small bin on the folding table in my laundry area where socks go to hopefully one day be reunited with their match. Some socks have been in this bin for *shudder* years. But I leave them in there with the high hopes that some day, some how their match might appear. (Of course, as soon as I throw one away, the match always does appear!)

    But oh that day! Oh that celebration! Oh that moment when a long-lost sockie appears and finds its match! It melts my heart in a deep move of satisfaction and enjoyment. I smile, I jump for joy, and happily fold the two socks together and return them to their rightful owner. Safe, secure, and happy.

    If I can find such silly but real enjoyment in a lost sock restored to its partner, imagine the even greater joy, the unsurpassed life-changed-forever-and-eternal joy that God feels when one of his lost children finds HIM and is restored to HIM.

    His pursuit of us has always been about a restored relationship that we were MADE for. We weren’t created to be separate from Him, but were created for eternal fellowship with a real God, a real Abba Father—a relationship unlike any other. Without Him, we are just a lost sock in a bin, completely missing our true and created purpose.

    And the beautiful thing? It is He who is searching out us, waiting and anticipating that beautiful moment of restored joy.

    Leah Carolan
    Director of Worship & Media

     

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      July 2021

      The Return of the Visitors

      The Return  of the Visitors

      In the fall of 2019 a new couple walked through the church doors. They had kids about the same age as mine and I invited them to the Parenting Together class. It felt like a connection had been made. They seemed to recognize that connection was important to one’s faith. They never came to class but they did come back for a few weeks. Then, we never saw them again.

      Situations like these make me wonder if there was something we could have done differently as a church body. My article from last month’s newsletter on shouldering ministry failures flows from these types of encounters.

      Fast forward to earlier this year. This family walked through the door, again. Again, several people invited them to Parenting Together and they started coming and chose to dive into relationship with those in class. I was blown away by this change in behavior.

      Currently, they are in the Saturate Leadership class where

      they are doing life together with others in our church body. This Saturate class teaches how to live out life (eating, celebrating, resting, and blessing) with others while doing ministry all along.

      My husband and I have the privilege of getting to know this couple. And our kids are thrilled to have new friends to play with. We are continuing on our sanctification journey alongside this family, as we try to live out our faith in this world.

      God knows the big picture and He is restoring all things.

      Lindsey Ungs
      Connection & Communication Architect

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        July 2021

        Celebrate Beauty

        Celebrate Beauty

        Last week Mary showed me a video of the singer Nightbirde. The singer told about her recent struggles with cancer and then she shared an original song, “It’s Okay,” about her experience. As I watched her sing, tears welled up in me. Her beautiful voice and authentic performance struck a chord. It was beautiful.

        This is not the first time I’ve cried while enjoying a performance, or reading a book, or watching a movie. (Or a commercial.) I used to think that my tears were in response to sadness. But I’m starting to wonder if they are more likely tears of joy and hope.

        The writer Alain de Botton noted, “The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.” Alain is on to something.

        We are the kind of people who believe that God fixes broken things. When God sets right what is wrong we call that restoration. We believe in restoration. We pray for restoration. We fight for restoration. We celebrate restoration.

        Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “God makes all things beautiful in his time.” When I see something ugly or painful or damaged become more beautiful than I expected – it makes me cry. Tears of joy and hope.

        The theologian Cornelius Plantinga wrote a book about sin entitled Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. The world is not supposed to be ugly or painful or damaged – it is supposed to be beautiful. We are the kind of people who celebrate every time God makes the world a better place.

        Here is the video of Nightbirde if you want to celebrate with me!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZJvBfoHDk0

        Celebrating the beauty of restoration,

        Kent Landhuis
        Pastor of Teaching & Leadership

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          Cedar Chips, June 2021

          Forgiveness

          Forgiveness

          We must never give up on each other or on the supernatural potential of Christian community. Jesus has brought “incompatibles” together. No wonder we often fight! We must strive to hold ourselves accountable to practice forgiveness and reconciliation. Our mutual love for one another is how the world will see who Jesus is. (Timothy Keller)

           This is the conclusion to Timothy Keller’s article: The Fading of Forgiveness: Tracing the disappearance of the thing we need most. In this article Pastor/Author Timothy Keller makes a case for how the practice and principle of forgiveness is fading from our Western society.  The roots come from our culture becoming increasingly post-truth and post-Christian. The removal of absolute truth and morality founded by God and Jesus’ teachings removes the underlying reasons to value forgiveness. People are left asking the question, “Why should I forgive?” When the only truth is our feelings and our greatest purpose is self-fulfillment, there is no reason to forgive. Forgiveness is a self-sacrificing action, it always feels like we are losing something. To forgive we must let go of our “righteous indignation.” We must surrender our feelings of moral superiority.   Alan Jacobs describes our current Western culture this way:

          When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness. The great moral crisis of our time is not, as many of my fellow Christians believe, sexual licentiousness, but rather vindictiveness. Social media serve as crack for moralists: there’s no high like the high you get from punishing malefactors. But like every addiction, this one suffers from the inexorable law of diminishing returns. The mania for punishment will therefore get worse before it gets better. (Alan Jacobs)

          This is the struggle of our age. We must fight against the bent toward our culture and away from Biblical forgiveness. We must resist our flesh’s call for vindictive vengeance.  Instead, we must reconnect with the heart of Jesus. He prayed for those who crucified Him, “Father forgive them…”  The heart of Christian forgiveness is Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies as well as our neighbors. We have this natural, tribalistic response to those with whom we disagree, we devalue them and their tribe. In our minds and in our hearts we dehumanize them in some way. We elevate ourselves, and our “tribe,” above others. When Jesus calls us to love our enemies he flips the script. The love re-humanizes them. I love how Miroslav Volf describes this Biblical understanding of forgiveness:

          Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion—without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. (Miroslav Volf)

          The imperative for us as Christ-followers to forgive each other, because we have been forgiven. We see this in Paul’s letters:

          Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

          Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Colossians 3:13

          Paul is describing a community that is super natural!  We do the unnatural work of forgiveness and reconciliation because of God’s supernatural mercy and forgiveness of us that reconciled us to Him!  This is why forgiveness is one of the core cultural qualities we believe in here at Cedar Hills Community Church.  We see a great opportunity to shine God’s light into our homes, work places, and neighborhoods by practicing forgiveness. God’s body here on earth must demonstrate that there is a better way to interact with people. This may look like foolishness to some, but a community known for forgiveness and reconciliation will be very attractive to those who recognize their own brokenness and need for forgiveness. Forgiveness is difficult. Forgiveness is messy.  However, forgiveness is worth it!

          Steve Poole
          Director of Youth & Young Adults

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            Cedar Chips, June 2021, Uncategorized

            Lake Failure is Filled By Pride

            Lake Failure is Filled By Pride

            Tim Keller says, “If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.”

            This is where I find myself frequently. With a heart that’s carrying some new failure. The failure might be a conversation turned sour, a connection that didn’t get made, or a message that wasn’t shared clearly.

            After reading Keller’s quote last week, I began to realize just how much I still find my identity in things on this earth. As I reflect on the “failures” or the less than perfect way I carry out my ministry, I find that I let the failures weigh too heavily on my heart.

            Then my heart starts to wonder about what might be a failure versus what might be a sin.

            Separating actual sin from felt failures is a hurdle when I’m carrying burdens instead of letting God handle them.

            So is there a sin somewhere in the mix of my failures? If there is, then I need to deal with that directly by naming the specific sin and asking for forgiveness. As my coworker pointed out after reading this article, the specific sin would be pride.

            The root of me agonizing over the failures is found in my pride. When something goes right, I want to take all the credit. But when something turns out less than perfect, as things tend to do on earth, I feel the weight of that burden heavily. Primarily, because I look to myself instead of Christ.

            When I have my identity rightly placed, both the failures and the successes are in God’s hands. As my coworker suggested, “I can rejoice in both, because they are both from God.”

            My focus then, is to ask forgiveness for my pride.

            As for my carrying around “failures,” this has to be remedied in moving my identity from my work to Christ. This process is going to take a while.

            Lindsey Ungs
            Connection & Communication Architect

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              June 2021

              Forgiveness Is a Practice

              Forgiveness Is a Practice

              “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).

              “Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’”(Matthew 18:21-22).

              There’s one thing you can know for sure, in the course of your life, you’ll be sinned against. You’ll be misunderstood, falsely accused, and unfairly judged. What do you do after you have been offended? Someone has harmed you emotionally, physically, or psychologically. What do you do? Our first response is to retaliate, but we are told to forgive and forget. Wouldn’t it be better to give them a piece of my mind so that they will think twice about offending me? We can’t seem to forget about the offense so forgiveness seems impossible. How do I forgive someone and why should I forgive people for offending me?

              The word forgive means: to give up or release resentment of an offense. The Hebrew word for “forgive” means to pardon or spare. The Greek word for “forgive” means to send forth, lay aside, let go, omit, put (send) away. In general, we can say that to forgive is to release the resentment caused by an offense.

              It is not reasonable to think that you will wake up one morning with the disposition to forgive everyone. The only way that you are going to live a life of forgiveness is to practice forgiveness. Here is a few small steps to practice forgiveness:

              Build a strong fellowship with your heavenly father. This brings faith and confidence that you will need when you are offended. This should be practiced on a regular basis and not when the offense comes.

              Place God’s ability to bless you above the offense. That is, trust God in your life and know that no situation can change what God has for you. This is the attitude that you want to obtain.

              Practice the love of God when dealing with people. If you love people, even your enemies (those who offend you), then it will be easy (or easier) to forgive them. You don’t resent who you love (or you can’t for long).

              It takes time before the principles of forgiveness and the implementation of them become a part of your normal everyday life. Just start where you are. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a seed. The Kingdom of God grows and it spreads. Great things will manifest in our lives just as the seed process produces fruit. The more you practice forgiveness then the more it will become a part of your normal life.

              We live in a broken and fallen world where sinful actions leave consequences – even after forgiveness between people is offered or received. Restitution or reconciliation may not be possible where deep hurt has been caused, but this is not to say that the forgiveness was not genuine. We can genuinely forgive someone and still carry the residue of sin for years to come. Forgiveness does not mean that you forget. Forgiveness means to release resentment.

              A mistake that we make is to look at the greatest obstacle in our lives regarding forgiveness and grieve over the fact that we can’t muster up enough energy to just “let it go.” Just deal with where you are and not where you think you should be.

              Trust God fully! Believe that He is able to keep you and prosper you. Believe that God can move in your life regardless of the situations around you. Know that He is fully able to keep you regardless of your situations. This doesn’t mean that you walk around inviting people to offend you. It simply means that when or if you are offended, you know that God is greater and therefore won’t have to waste a second being upset or resentful about the situation.

              Gary Sager
              Ambassador of Care

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