That was then! How much more must we doing something of godly significance today & now!

We can do more together than alone!

There is One Church in DeLand and many Christ exalting congregations!

Let us make it hard to go to hell from our city.

Mike Modica , Pastor

First AssemblyDeLand

Brett's in town from CC Palm Harbor, along with his daughter Cara (I remember when she was 4, she's 16 now…) and Zack C (who was 15 when I met him, and is 30 now, with a beard, a skinnier version of Ryan). 

We were a full crowd again on Saturday night… packed house. Amazing. "Greet someone before you sit down" after worship, could easily turn into a 30 minute mixer…

Brett shared a very timely message. I'm struggling with words to describe it. It was for us as a church, and it was immaculate in it's timing, heart and subject. I was reminded afresh, Jesus is the Head of the church, and it's good to hear a Father's heart. 

Jesse was there. Man, was it good to see him and pray with him. He's not out of the woods yet, but a great step…

I'm always blessed when people bring their parents. Their faces glow. 

I don't know what happened Sunday morning. All I heard is that the powerpoint show didn't work, the lights went off, but there were 2x the amount of people there from last week, people wept through parts of the message, and a bunch stayed for lunch.

Gen and I were at the Life Centre. Gen led worship. I'm so blessed to be married to her. She was shining, glowing, and it was perfect. I'm so proud of her. They asked me to share for 5 minutes about us, Calvary, Ottawa and all that and they prayed for us and gave us a nice donation. You can watch the video until next Sunday here. 

Why is every weekend so BIG? 

Maybe it's because, Jesus never fails. Jesus is a rescuer. It's a Spirit-filled life. Jesus is a romancer. 

One Body because we eat one Bread

The film depicts the king of the United Kingdom in the 1930’s being coached in readiness for a crucial speech as the nation approaches the Second World War. The parallels with today are profound: The United Kingdom is approaching a social, economic and spiritual crisis that is on a par with the challenge of that era. Today the nation is not facing a single opposing national army with bombs, planes and tanks, but an economic collapse, a social catastrophe and loss of identity as well as militant opponents from around the world. There is a King who wants to speak to the nation, but He is not a human king who is incompetent, but a glorious King who, even though God of all, has chosen to speak through His people, the Church. Right now, the Church is being coached by the Holy Spirit to be able to speak to the nation in the crisis. At this moment the Church seems incompetent and unready, but by the grace of God, the spread-out, volunteer army, the people of God, will come together and learn to speak coherently to a nation that desperately needs to hear the authentic words of God. We must pray that this coaching process succeeds as in the movie. Let us pray in agreement for the King’s speech to be heard before it is too late.

    The answer may surprise you. They all are. There is not a single church that does everything right. Where God sees one church, man created denominations. In our search to be right, we forgot LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
    These words were so important to JOHN the apostle, that when they would carry him on a pallet to church, JOHN would tell the people this, 
                             LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
    If we can get away from our religions long enough to LOVE ONE ANOTHER, and get back to the basics and LOVE ONE ANOTHER our churches will be different, our communities will be different, our country will be different, our world will be different.
    This is not about right and wrong. This is not about being comfortable with our traditions (the Sadducees and the Pharisees were comfortable with their traditions)
    How, my brothers and sisters, could we have strayed so far from the truth?
    How do we get back to what the church was designed to be?
                                     LOVE ONE ANOTHER

…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. -John 17:21

We are the church. Not just you for reading this (assuming you are a Christian) or myself, but each and every Christian represents Jesus. We are the church, not our church building, but the people. We are ONE church. This last week at Pacific Pointe Church we had the unique chance to invite over 100 new brothers and sisters to worship and have fellowship together.

Scott Turner started Summit Church about four years ago, roughly the same time that we started Pacific Pointe. After many, many meetings we decided that we could more effectively reach, Every Man, Woman, and Child, if we combined our churches together into one.

Normally from a business standpoint, this would be fairly impossible. Luckily, even though we have differences, we are ONE church, with ONE vision;

We believe our role as the church is to reach every man, woman, and child, within our sphere of influence, with repeated opportunity to either accept or reject the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus put it like this;

“You are the light of the world.”

-Matt 5:14

Remember the Sunday school song you sang, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine?” We are that light. This city is dark, dirty, and lost. We need to shine into every home, every shadow. Alone, that is an overwhelming, impossible task. Together, we have a chance!

We are so excited to have our new family working with us to help spread the Good News through out Orange County.

Although, it does not stop there. If you are reading this, and not a member at Pacific Pointe Church, but you want to make a difference in your city. send me an email john.blue@ocppc.org. I would love to talk with you and help you to figure out how best to serve in your city.

God Bless!

“How do you use people in your life to feed yourself?

This is going to be a difficult one to talk about, but I feel I need to be transparent about this…

Because so many of my issues come from a poor concept of my self-worth, I spent many years of my life feeding on others without regard for their feelings or needs. I was a cannibal of the soul and I was not discriminatory in my choice of victims.

It’s hard to face your own predatory nature… to be honest about how you have manipulated and used those around you to feed your feelings of worth to the extent that you truly victimized them in some way.

We all have a cannibal inside us that feeds on others in some way… If we don’t become aware of it and acknowledge the hunger it feeds, we are destined to remain predators and continue to victimize the very ones who may need our support.”

I won’t get into my own details about this, just as I’m not sharing his, but instead I’m touching on this topic to highlight something. “We all have a cannibal inside us that feeds on others in some way,” this is true, and yet once I became a Christian years ago, somehow I thought “my baggage”, like this, could not be seen anymore, as if the invisible Holy Spirit of God enveloped it during my salvation! You might think that’s naive but for me, I honestly thought that was doubting God, thinking that I had any kind of serious baggage that still needed to be dealt with. Most of you probably understand and can relate…

Once I discovered that my issues were not only quite visible but now even worse, I began to “deal with them”. I put that in quotations because dealing with something just sounds so lame and noncommittal. But that’s what I did for the longest time, “deal” with my issues. The problem with being noncommittal though, of course, is that you pick and choose your issues and deal with it whenever it’s convenient or your back’s up against the wall, right? This is my point: When I started looking beyond the “baggage” to see my core need, my need for a correct self-image that can only come from an intimate relationship with my saving and loving God, only then did I begin to commit to overcoming my issues. Now that my friend has presented this one, I am thankful to say I’m not cringing and hoping I can just “deal” with this too, sometime.

How does this relate to my blog here? It has everything to do with it. I will never forget the words of Pastor Conway Edwards at One Church, “The intimacy you have with God is directly related to the love you have for his Word.” So pick up your Bible, on your phone, in another window, or on your desk and ask yourself, “Do I love God’s Word?”

My friend’s last question was this, “What do you know about the cannibal in you?” And I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to discovering the answer because I know I’m sitting in the lap of my loving, forgiving God who only wants the best for me, which is why it’s important for me “deal with my issues”. It’s just that now I’m committed to them out of a love-turned-committment to his love letter to us, the “God‑breathed” Bible.

So there are two very important questions to ask yourself – you’ve already answered them though, and the real question is, will you be honest with yourself?

Why am I saying all of this? What does this have to do with our discussion of John 2:23-25? Well it’s a stretch but the conversation we just had is what came to mind first – it’s funny too because Jim is himself white, so am I, but we feel the same way about this. You would think we’d be more trusting than less. In our verses today, when we read about Jesus’ trusting of people, you’d think that since he was from the beginning, as we learned in John 1:1, creating people themselves, he’d also be able to find those he could trust!

23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.
25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

Great show... but there's something even greater!

It’s fascinating that “many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name” but did that impress Jesus? Did that change the fact that he did in fact know what was in a man? We may have our reasons for trusting some and not trusting others but even though Jesus created man, he still knows not to entrust himself to any man – we can not be trusted by ourselves and a part from our perfect God! And yet, as we learn in only one chapter later, just how much he still loves us, enough to die for our rotten, untrustworthy selves! It causes me to ask myself, am I just a “white guy” to Jesus, a guy that I myself might be skeptical to trust? Do I see all the miracles Jesus is doing and believe in his name but all the while, I’m just lip service and brown nose?

In asking these questions, I also have to ask why John placed these verses here as well? He had just mentioned the “Jews”, as we discussed yesterday, were the ones he had the initial conflict with at the Temple, not just the religious body like the group sent to question John the Baptist. THE JEWS, his own people. Do you not think that John is taking this gospel straight to the heart of the Jew, which is also for the benefit of all reading or hearing? If Jesus doesn’t even trust those who are well-known for their extreme devotion to the One God, who would he trust, thus setting the stage for tomorrow’s conversation with Nicodemus which leads to our most recognized verse in all of the Bible, John 3:16.

We need to be saved from ourselves. And thank God we have Jesus, our sole Savior, in whom we can trust completely! Do you have a sole Savior? Well get on the Sole Train baby!!!

Here’s a little treat, my friends Gabe and Dameon Aranda… You’ve already heard other artists sing what they’ve written and you WILL hear them personally, sooner or later!! Listen to this cover of “Long Train Runnin’” by The Doobie Brothers… “Without love, where would you be right now?”

PART TWO

ONE BODY IN CHRIST

“For as the body is one, and hath many members,
and all the members of that one body, being many,
are one body: so also is Christ.”
I Corinthians 12:12

Truth by its very nature is simple, but the implications of its simplicity are profound and costly. Truth demands change in order for us to enjoy and walk in the power it brings. Truth is the root from which all the fruit of the Spirit is formed. Without truth all things are a counterfeit and a sham. In the presentation of the Gospel of John we see in the introduction the simple statement, “In the beginning was the Word…” This Word is not a truth written in ink on paper. This is the LIVING SON who alone IS TRUTH. It is therefore vital that in the forming of HIS life in the individual believer there be a ministration of TRUTH to make us TRUE in the core of our lives. Truth only has one purpose, one end; to make the recipient TRUE in character and expression. Truth is not knowledge, it is not opinions, and it is not a supposition. Truth is power, truth is substance and it is nothing less than Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus did not say I give you a truth. He said I AM THE TRUTH! Truth is the WORD becoming flesh. To the extent that we reveal HIM in our daily lives is the revelation of the TRUTH that is in us. In the actual development of TRUTH in our hearts, we must begin to see that there is ONE BODY because “so also is Christ”! (Many members, ONE BODY.)

We look today over the landscape of what men call “Christianity” and wonder how such a thing could ever be. IF HOWEVER, we look into the POWER and LOVE of God through the eyes of faith, we must say, “How can these things NOT BE?” In 1 Corinthians 1:13 Paul asks the most profound question…

“IS CHRIST DIVIDED?”

I Corinthians 1:13

IS HE? The issue is not what we see, but what we know to be truth. FAITH is the doing of that which is the TRUTH in Christ. It is not concerned with what is, for FAITH can only reveal that which is REAL in the Spirit. By faith Peter walked on water; at that moment of time he walked in truth by faith. He saw JESUS walking on the water and his FAITH translated what he saw in JESUS into what he walked on earth. That is the true nature of FAITH. Faith is not statements, teachings or ideas. Faith is substance, revealed by our walk. If I believe there is ONE BODY even as there is ONE CHRIST then my life will reveal it. IF the question Paul presents here “Is Christ divided?” is answered by a resounding NO within our hearts then it is of NECESSITY THAT OUR LIVES REVEAL THIS TRUTH! Our speech, our behaviour and our prayer life must certainly be indicative of our individual abiding in HIM. To have and walk in the LOVE OF CHRIST can only mean that we love what HE loves. This ONE BODY can only be the product of TRUTH. For the corporate expression of the RISEN CHRIST will require HIS LIFE to arise within the life of each individual believer. The difficulty of this is measured only by the condition of our hearts. Peter asked Jesus about John, and Jesus replied “What is that to thee? Follow thou me”. Man always tries to quickly excuse our response by looking at someone else, but the truth lays within our own hearts not someone else’s. This reality can only be known as truth is truth in the individual. For this WILL SURELY COME to pass, but only through the medium of faith will it be so with us. Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, but the efficacy of the blood can only be appropriated by faith within the heart of each individual.

HE IS ABLE!
HE IS COME FOR THIS PURPOSE!

Ω

“I have never yet known the Spirit of God
to work where the Lord’s people were divided”
D.L. MOODY

Brian Troxel

Why, then, are we so divided? Why do we work against each other… our own family? The disciples didn’t get anywhere fighting amongst themselves, no… they worked together. So why do we distance ourselves from each other? Why are we so stubborn?

Why can’t we all see past our differences at the broken and hurt world we have all been commissioned to help, to heal and to restore?

Imagine if all the Christians in the world worked together. Not all the Catholics, not all the Anglicans, not all the Orthodox, not all the Protestants and not all the Pentecostals. All the Christians in the world.

Imagine how much we could achieve. Imagine what a difference we could make. If Jesus allowed his blood to be spilt and his body to be broken for us, then shouldn’t we be able to stop judging and pointing the finger at each other, and instead work together in love?

We need to set aside our differences and work together.

Gloucester Street Pastors work alongside the local authority, police and the bars and nightclubs to keep the city centre a safe place to be for people who are out for the night. As a volunteer myself, I’ve found it fascinating to see how people have reacted to us on the streets.

1. It’s hilarious how many people struggle to read the words ‘Street Pastors’ from your uniform after a few too many beers – Street Pasties, Street Pasta, Street Pastils – I’ve heard them all!

2. Everyone appreciates us being there. The police always stop to say hi, the door staff of the clubs want to know how busy we’ve been and often ask for our support. The managers at the Wetherspoons pub are under orders from their bosses to offer us a cup of tea… Rude to say no of course. And the pubbers and clubbers themselves often express their gratitude as they know we’re there to help them – it’s touching how ten units of booze can provoke such heartwarming comments.

3. People have so many unanswered questions. Last weekend we were approached by so many people – some asking what a Street Pesto was – but others full of questions. They were personal too, not antagonistic or sarcastic, but genuine questions from the heart. They wanted to know what God thought about them, how he saw their lifestyle, sexuality or personal problems. They wanted to know if God really does forgive all.

This made me think… people have so many questions buzzing around their head but they never have anyone to ask them to. Contrary to popular belief most people do believe there is a God – they’ve just lost faith in church or religion. They live life their own way while living it desperate to know if God’s ok with it. I couldn’t answer all their questions but I’m so glad I was there to be able to listen to them. I feel sorry for them because they have nobody else to air these thoughts to. I need to stay available to my friends, be an accessible person that they can express their questions to.

P.S. Totally unrelated: been reading an excellent book called ‘The Volunteer Revolution by Bill Hybels’ as a bit of research for a series we’re running at One Church at the moment. It’s great for finding the eternal difference you make by volunteering or serving in your church.

On Saturday I had the privilege of taking part in the wedding ceremony of a great couple in our church. It was such an amazing day – the sun was out, the church was packed, the bride was beautiful and the groom wore customised Converse trainers. It reminded me a couple of years ago when I got to be the best man for my friend’s wedding.

It was another great day, and so much fun to be a part of everything that was going on, let alone the honour of standing by your best friend as they set launch into a massive new chapter of life. But one thing was really special, and that was the reception venue. Actually it probably wasn’t special for many others as it was my old junior school – William Ford. Having left there in *cough* 1993, I was intrigued to see how it had changed. We headed over there the night before the wedding to sort out the seating arrangements, PA, decorations etc. and this was all in a brand new hall that was built on what used to be the year 3 & 4 playground! I played many games of football on that uneven concrete surface, and collected a range of bruises, scabs and scrapes for the pleasure. What was once a theatre of dreams was now a… well… a theatre.

I couldn’t resist having a wander through the rest of the school though, I just had to see whether things were the same as I remembered. The first thing that struck me was how tiny everything was. I felt like a giant as I passed by the coats hooks that I once needed tip-toes to reach, and the old school hall – where as Ali Baba in my final school play I felt like I was performing in front of the Royal Albert Hall, now I can see just enough space for maybe a hundred seats. To top it off I bumped into my year 6 teacher in the car park -Miss Lloyd. I think she’s a Mrs but everyone was ‘Miss’ back then. Surely she wasn’t always this short!? She must have shrunk three feet in the last 13 years!? Incredibly she remembered me too.

Going back to my old school made me think… Life is generously eventful; full of highs and lows to keep us interested and consistently learning. Sometimes I can face things that seem like a huge task at the time, and occasionally like the coat hooks just out of reach. It’s amazing what a bit of time can do… Obviously the school hasn’t got smaller, just over time I’ve got bigger. A bit of time can help me outgrow any problem.

The four of us with Mum went to One Church where the music was lively and the pastor Simon spoke about the look, the goat and the nail. There was talk of the blood that was spilt in the Old Testament temple system. I think this was a bit of a shock to the system for poor Laura, who’s new to church.

Actually it brought a moment of sobriety to realise how serious a problem sin is in God’s eyes and how terrible the ultimate solution had to be. He became a human and died bloodily to free us of the punishment of that sin –if we choose to accept him.

People were handing out chocolates at church, so with that I broke my Lenten fast from chocolate. It wasn’t a big challenge to give the stuff up, and it wasn’t an ecstatic feeling to eat it again. The significance to me of giving up chocolate for forty odd days was this.

The act of denying myself this small luxury reminded me most days of the approaching Easter-time, and Jesus’ purpose for entering the hornets’ nest.

Back home after church the roast dinner was roasting nicely. Gary had hidden Cadbury’s Creme Eggs around the garden and written a series of riddles to lead to the treasure. Liz and Laura squealed and dashed around trying to locate the chocolate eggs.

After a fab beef lunch we had a fun, relaxing afternoon. Dad and Granny came to take the girls back to Bath in the evening and early the next day they got the coach down to Saloufest in Valencia. Gary and I finished off Easter Sunday with the Malaysian Grand Prix. Wonderful.