I just read a great article. It’s an open letter to Woods telling him to fess up.  I encourage you to read it. It has been said that confession is good for the soul. Confession is good…period.  There is no way you can move past an area of sin and struggle until it is confessed.  Confession takes a lot of courage and humility. Confession recognizes: “my life is jacked up and I need God’s help”. This is why we need people in our lives who love us deeply, who facilitate confession and invite us into courage and humility.

A guy like Tiger appears to have his life together. His display of personal discipline is incredible.  He is one of the most successful people I can think of. And yet, perfection eludes all of us, including him.  Confession would do him well. Confession does all of us well.  There are excellent places to find help with our times of reflection and confession before God.

I don’t believe that every detail of every sin in my life should be shouted from the rooftop. There is such a thing as too much information and indulging in overexposure, however it is important to be authentic in our relationships as well. Confession is essential to killing sin in our lives. There is risk and we need wisdom with confession, that is why it requires humility and courage. If we are to move past the sin that so easily entangles us, hiding it, ignoring it, pretending it isn’t there, or some other passive-aggressive action is unhelpful. This only allows our sin to grow and control us.  We must deal with sin directly, and before God.

Remember:

• 1 John 1:9 – If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
• Proverbs 28:13 - He who conceals his sins does not prosper,but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
• James 5:16 – Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Tiger Woods needs to admit his sin and seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  But, so do I, and so do you.

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” – Matthew 5:16

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.” – Dwight L. Moody

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”
Psalm 107:1

There is none like You.
No one else can touch my heart like You do,
I can search for all eternity Lord
And find, there is none like You.

Your mercy flows like a river wide,
And healing comes from Your hand.
Suffering children are safe in Your arms,
There is none like You.

There is none like You,
There is none like You.

I can search for all eternity Lord,
There is none like You.
I can search for all eternity Lord,
There is none,
There is none Lord,
There is none like You.

⁵ The heavens praise your wonders, O LORD,

your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones.

Praise be to the Lord, God of my salvation, author of all creation, source of all that is good and holy, God of the heavens and ruler over all the earth.  Praise be to Your mighty name, and all honor and adoration be bestowed upon You.  Your whisper is a resounding echo throughout the generations, and your slightest caress is a tremendous shaking of all the lands in the world.  Your power is awesome to behold, faithful, enduring, and magnificent are your ways.  Praise be to your majesty, King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Selected Bible Verses to End and Start the Year

Revelation 4:11, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Revelation 5:11-13, “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.  And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”

Isaiah 40:25-31, “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.”
“Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.  He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:  But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Matthew 9:36-38, “But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”

 If racing against mere men makes you tired,
      how will you race against horses?
   If you stumble and fall on open ground,
      what will you do in the thickets near the Jordan?  Jeremiah 12:5

Erin is cornered in the Great White North this year, and is hosting a party to teach the People of Other Lands the true meaning of American Thanksgiving (with Tofurky!).  In honor of her party and the upcoming holiday, I thought a post reminding her of Thanksgiving via the Unnamed Religious Private School would be apropos. 

I’ve had to mull this post over a few times, because this is the first time that I’ll be posting a memory that’s very scattered.  It doesn’t exist in my brain as a narrative, but rather as a bunch of scattered, disparate parts that might actually come from a series of years rather than a single event.  So rather than fudging anything resembling linear narrative, I will provide you with a series of remembered events, which may or may not be connected to one another.

 Erin has already mentioned the Thanksgiving Play, and my memories of this are much the same as hers.  I’m certain that the plot of the play was “Pilgrims set out for America.  Pilgrims land and are extremely righteous, but in order to teach them a lesson God sends them a Very Harsh Winter.  Some people get sick.  Some people even die!  Helpful Indians (played by dark-haired children such as myself) help them grow crops.  Helpful Indians join Pilgrims at First Thanksiving, where the women cook the meal while the men teach the Indians about Jesus.  The Indians readily accept Jesus despite what must have been some really difficult translation barriers.  Everyone is happy, and thus thankful, despite all the bodies still lying around from the Very Harsh Winter.  (I believe that one year we actually did have some kids play sick people, and I think one of them stayed on stage longer than he was supposed to, thus giving the impression that the neglected dead were still lounging about during the festivities.)

 Thanksgiving is always a troublesome holiday at religious schools, because it’s the only holiday (besides Halloween, which is OFF LIMITS) that isn’t specifically referenced in scriptures.  When teachers talked to us about the “true meaning” of Christmas, they inevitably spent several days pouring over the birth of Christ with us.  The meaning of Easter was similarly divined through readings of the Crucifixion.  But the Pilgrims aren’t technically IN the Bible (as much as our teachers might have wanted them to be), and so somehow we escaped with having a fairly secular time at Thanksgiving.  We made the traditional Hand-Turkey crafts and lists of things we were thankful for.  And I can’t imagine that our play was that much more culturally insensitive than anyone else’s.  The myths of Thanksgiving are a pretty ingrained part of American childhoods, public- and private-schooled alike.  (This makes me wonder what kids who grow up on Reservations think of the holiday.)  We also did additional crafts projects to eat up the time that would normally have been dedicated to something less secular, like a scripture reading.  The year we did the play, we created our own set (featuring a giant cave!) out of papier mache. 

A few years later (I think), someone must have made the decision that crafts were not adequate to teach us about the meaning of Thanksgiving.  Because that year, we were sent to the M family’s house to learn about all of the chores and tasks that go into planning a True American Thanksgiving.

Regular readers of this blog are already familiar with the Family M.  They are the family that includes Melissa and her twisted sisters, along with their theatrical mother and the father who donned tiny bathrobes.  Erin has already mentioned that they were the family who attempted to provide our class with “culture”, carting us all to plays and Junior League events.  This year their role as cultural attaches was extended somewhat, as they taught us the proper way to plan a Thanksgiving feast.  One morning the week before Thanksgiving break, we all hopped in cars driven by chaperoning parents and took a field trip to the country club, where Mrs. M greeted us at the door to her stately mansion and informed us we would learn how to be real ladies and gentlemen this Thanksgiving.

Did I mention that we were all wearing Pilgrim and/or Indian outfits?  We were requested to come in costume as members of the first Thanksgiving.  Most of us just used our costumes from the annual play, meaning that I was dressed in my felt Indian vest and headband, complete with feathers and two long pigtail braids.  So a group of mostly Pilgrims and a few select Indians stormed the mansion door, still uncertain what, exactly, we were going to learn.

This is where my memory gets splotchier than I would like.  I am certain that a day at the house of M must have been beyond hilarious, but I can’t get a clear picture of what, exactly, we did once we were there.  I know that a major portion of our “lesson” involved cooking and cleaning.  Mrs. M had arranged for us to prepare specific T-day dishes – potato salad, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green been casserole.  And she also taught us the importance of having a clean house; some of us were assigned to polish various furnishings and mop the hardwood floors in preparation for our feast.  (I feel that I must commend the school here, as this lesson was surprisingly gender neutral.  As far as I can remember, the boys were assigned to cook and clean right alongside the girls.)

What I remember most vividly, though, is the moment when Mrs. M and our teacher gathered us all together and talked about the importance of remembering the first Thanksgiving as we set about preparing our own feasts.  The Pilgrims, they reminded us, had not only to cook and to clean, but also to hunt, fish, and gather.  They lived off the land, and the preparation of any feast involved the hard legwork of the hunter.  (I would swear too that when we cooked the meal, Mrs. M made the preparations as primitive as possible, leaving out the use of electric appliances wherever feasible.  But this might be a misremembrance.)  Thus, on this day we were going to learn how hard it was to hunt a turkey.

I have no idea why someone in the country club had turkeys.  But someone did.  Specifically, he was a grouchy old man who shouted a lot and didn’t seem all that happy about having us on his property.  He had a pretty extensive plot of land that included foul of all kinds, cows, and I think even a pig or two.  Now that I’m older I look back on him and wonder if he was one of those old men who thinks the government is coming for his money one day and keeps a small farm-like plot just in case someone steals all his worldly goods.  But whatever the reason, he had animals, and we needed those animals in order to learn about the First Thanksgiving.

Mrs. M showed us around the “farm,” explaining how each animal would have served the Pilgrims in the creation of their feast.  (Cows?  In early America?  I’m not so sure about that one.  But they probably didn’t eat sweet potato casserole with marshmallows either, so I guess I shouldn’t expect this even to have been historically accurate.)  We learned that any and all food came from plants and animals, not from the grocery store.

But the capper of the event was when the grouchy old man stepped in to tell us how hard it was to catch a turkey.  If we were learning about the hardships of the early days, it was important to understand that nature was difficult to tame, and that most wild animals didn’t just walk right into the path of your rifle.  As he made his point, he walked towards a small fence at he back of the property, threw open a gate, and set free three enormous turkeys to run about the yard.  He claimed that they were “wild turkeys,” although I think that adjective becomes moot once an animal is kept in a pen in your yard.  But either way, the man was taken with the majesty of the turkey (just like Ben Franklin!) and wanted us to understand how hard a bird it was to bag.  “Just try to catch those turkeys,”  he challenged.

And with that, 20 elementary school kids dressed as Pilgrims and Indians took off after 3 big birds, scrambling across the acreage, bumping into unsuspecting cows and pigs in our plight to grab the centerpiece of all Thanksgiving meals.  We got close a couple of times, including one in which I swear the thing turned around and nipped my arm.  But I doubt any of us succeeded.  After much scrambling around, Mrs. M called us back and told us it was time to head back to the house.  Luckily for us, some astute shopper had already provided us with a bird via the grocery store, so our feast would not remain incomplete, despite our failure to bag the turkey.

I don’t know where our teacher was during all of this.  I suspect it was a nice day off for her.  I’m really crossing my fingers this time, hoping that Erin remember SOME of this, because I’m certain there’s more to this story.  Anytime a crazy rich lady teaches a bunch of costumed kids about the “true meaning” of Thanksgiving, there are bound to be some comedic scenes.  But all of them were pushed out of my mind by the crazy old man who got a kick out of watching us chase his turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Luke 17:25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

Apparently, Donny Osmond won “Dancing with the Stars” last night on television. I never watch the show but millions of other people do, so I’m guessing that many of those who voted were lifelong fans of Donny.

I can remember his first single disc “Puppy Love” and how teenage girls all over the world screamed and swooned at the concerts where he was performing. After Elvis and the Beatles, Donny and his brothers were the biggest act in the music world during the 1970’s. His only rival was a young black kid called Michael Jackson. It’s funny how life turned out for both of them.

I admire Donny’s comeback and maybe his win on the show will rekindle his showbiz career. He’s not done a lot of international performing for the past two decades, because most of his fans outgrew his music and rejected his ‘soppy’ love songs. Perhaps a new wave of nostalgia among his original fans will help rebuild his career.

People are fickle, especially those who are obsessed with celebrities. As the years come and go, so does their enthusiasm for performers, artistes, and stars. Even leaders in both the political and religious worlds can be negatively affected by this group mentality. One day the people want to crown you as their king; the next day the mob wants to crucify you to a Cross.

When Jesus was talking to His disciples, He warned them several times about the suffering to come. Most of them were caught up in Christ’s popularity and enjoyed being connected to Him. Jesus frequently reminded them about the fickleness of the crowds. He knew that He was destined to suffer. He fully understood that the people would one day reject Him.

Several generations ago, Christianity was a popular faith. The Church had helped lead our people through two World Wars and the Great Depression. Faith was a key component that enabled our people to endure the worst and hope for better days to come. But then, decades later, the same communities who had embraced and increased the Church began to reject Christ’s teachings.

Sadly, we now live in a time where agnostics and atheists are using their belief system to undermine, diminish, and marginalize our faith in the public arena. However, the Church has faced this before in different places and times. At some point, revival occurs and the Church emerges in a stronger way. We only have to look at the flourishing churches in the former Soviet bloc countries to see that this actually occurs. The world may delightfully tell us that the Christian Church is dying, but it forgets that death only means resurrection for us.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, You have stood the test of time and Your Church has endured persecution, devastation, and destruction throughout the centuries. Your Spirit never fails to inspire people every day to come to You. Thank You for the gift of the Church in the world and for the promises of hope and resurrection in the years to come. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for the things we have, the friends we have and especially for the fellowship we have with our Lord and Savior.  These scriptures remind us to always be thankful for the gift of Christ and the assurance of salvation through Him.

Proclaim Christ

•    Must Receive Christ

 Week 1          John 1:12

Week 2          Revelation 3:20

•    Assurance of Salvation           

Week 3          1 John 5:13

Week 4          John 5:24

Follow up with the previous blog(Our responsibility) I post.

We are imperfect people and we  all have fallen short(Romans 3:23) but that doesn’t give us an excuse to neglect our responsibility and sole purpose. We are to die for ourselves and live for Him(Galatians 2:20). To die is gain and to live is Christ(Philippians 1:21).

Nicole and I go through this cycle all the time and I bet most other Christians. We struggle on our relationship and walk on the Lord because we lack the discipline to build our life around Him. We are trying to build Him around our life when He is supposed to be the center of our very being, our essence.

Nicole texted me this awhile back after not being able to meet for at least 3 weeks: We fail at life

And I responded with: Yes, we are failing so bad

Indeed we are because no amount of success and pleasure can measure to being one  with God.  Being contented in Him. Everything that is good comes from Him. Savoring things without His presence and recognition can only feel good at the surface,it doesn’t last. We can’t experience good without Him because all that is good is created by Him.

Apart from Him we are nothing.

Only a life that is live for Him counts, the rest fades away into comparison.

“We are to live for Christ. We are to pursue Him in every areas of it“. I have to remind myself of that every time.

He should be the end to my every need and desire. He should be enough.

It should be  a complete surrender of my life, take up my Cross and follow Him(Mark 8:34).

We do it all for Him not out of obligation but out of love.We love Him because He first loved us(1 John 4:19).

Where have we been? The last post by me was made last October 12(not counting the worship song I posted yesterday), exactly 43 days where I am incognito and the last post by Nicole was last October 18, exactly 37 days of complete silence. Whatever happened to us writing here every week? We totally let our responsibility slip. Our excuse, you’ve heard this over and over again, “We are so busy we got no time to write something for our Lord and spend some time on our ministry. But guess what? We have time to watch random youtube videos, waste time on FB, study for our tests, hang out with our friends and a lot more. We have a lot of time to spend on other things but we can’t even put aside, even 15 to 30 mins of our time in writing out how our Great God is sustaining us every day.

And consider the following questions and thoughts:

Isn’t it strange how a 100 dollar bill seems like such a large amount when
you donate it to church, but such a small amount when you go shopping?

Isn’t it strange how 2 hours seem so long when you’re at church, and how short they seem when you’re watching a good movie?

Isn’t it strange that you can’t find a word to say when you’re praying, but you have no trouble thinking what to talk about with a friend?

Isn’t it strange how difficult and boring it is to read one chapter of the Bible, but how easy it is to read 100 pages of a popular novel or the TWILIGHT series?

Isn’t it strange how everyone wants front-row-tickets to concerts or games, but they do whatever is possible to sit at the last row in Church?

Isn’t it strange how we need to know about an event for Church 2-3 weeks before the day so we can include it in our agenda, but we can adjust it for other events at the last minute?

Isn’t it strange how difficult it is to learn a fact about God to share it with others, but how easy it is to learn, understand, extend and repeat gossip?

Isn’t it strange how we believe everything that magazines and newspapers say, but we question the words in the Bible?

Isn’t it strange how everyone wants a place in heaven, but they don’t want to believe, do, or say anything to get there?

Isn’t it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.

Isn’t it funny how someone can say “I believe in God” but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also “believes” in God).

Isn’t it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Isn’t it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me.

Why are we so sleepy in church but right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?

Why are the churches getting smaller but yet the bars and dance clubs are getting larger?

We try to keep God in church on Sunday morning, maybe Sunday night and, the unlikely event of a midweek service. We do like to have Him around during sickness and, of course, at funerals.

However, we don’t have time or room for Him during work or play. Because that’s the part of our lives we think we can and should handle on our own.

May God forgive us for ever thinking that there is a time or place where HE is not to be FIRST in our life. We should always have time to remember all HE has done for us.

[Not my own writing, unknown source]

As I reflect upon this, I feel ashamed yet grateful of how God has been very patient and forgiving of my short comings.

Think about it…Look at your life. Who or what is the center of it?

Matthew 7:7
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.