May 2022 Update

As I write this, I am now between semesters at college (our Summer 2022 session will begin on May 23rd).  God gave me some great opportunities to work with students during the Spring semester.  I'm looking forward to working with some of them again in the Summer and some of them in the Fall, but others have completed their last mathematics course and some graduated and are moving on to other colleges and universities.  Pray especially for these students whether they are finishing their degree locally or away from home that they will be able to be connected with a church and maybe even campus ministry teams that will be able to assist in teaching them sound doctrine, giving them fellowship with other Christians, giving them opportunities to pray with other Christians, and the opportunity to be benevolent in taking care of the needs of others (as well as the chance to have other looking out for them if they have needs while they are at school, especially if they are away from home).  You may have never thought of this kind of a ministry before, but having a small group of college students that you "parent" while they are away from home can be something wonderful for them and you.  If you live close to a college or university, I encourage you to look into leading a Bible study in your home.  Give the students a home-cooked meal, and let them know they can call you or come over to see you if anything comes up.  Let them see you interacting with your family as it may help some of them realize for the first time what a godly marriage and godly family looks like, and encourage them to use their spiritual gifts to lead and to serve, both in their churches and in their communities.  As always, I'd recommend doing this through your local church and giving others the opportunity to be involved as well.  There is even a great need to reach out to and mentor the leaders of the "Christian" ministry teams that are on campus.  Imagine being in a position where your job was to lead and disciple others, but you had never been discipled yourself.  That is where some if not most of these ministry team leaders find themselves.  As youth, no one discipled them beyond telling them to go to Sunday School or some after school program, or to go to a youth group meeting.  That may be the only pattern they know how to follow, but I doubt any of us would find that to be enough--we need people we can live alongside every day in light of this verse, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

As I look forward to Summer, 2022 there are additional opportunities that present themselves for me to have contact with students who are fresh out of high school and seeking to start college.  Many of them will be eager for community after having lived life through ZOOM for the past couple of years.  We can use this time to help pray for these students who will be coming into our sphere of ministry and ask God how He wants us to minister to them.  Many colleges and universities have a day when registered organizations can come on campus to let students (especially new students) know about who they are and what they do.  The event usually is some form of a "Block Party" or "Fall Kickoff" event or something of the sort.  If your church feels so inclined to participate in such an event, make sure you register with the college or university in advance.  You can also hold off-campus events at your church that would be appealing to these students.  I was part of a church once with a large college ministry where the church had its own tour bus that would be able to sleep everyone and we were able to take trips over the summer when students were out of school to places like Chicago, Niagara Falls, and places that were more local like the beach and local amusement parks.  Getting these young adults in the doors of a church because they want to come is important at this age.  Giving them connections to other friends at school that they know they will see at church and giving them leaders in the church to specifically work with them is one of the best ways to help them feel like they belong.

As for my Discord communities and other Bible studies, the group I meet with on Mondays has decided they want to study the book of Revelation.  I was a little surprised by this request, but it's a book that I have wanted to study with them for a while because it is a message of encouragement for us as we go through challenging and difficult times as a church and we hear directly from the Lord as to what He would say to churches like ours today.  There is an urgency that we face to take the gospel to all nations because we don't have forever, and yet there is a certainty that end will not come until God says it is the right time and that everything is proceeding according to His plan and is totally within His control.  Those of us who are in Christ have nothing to fear because like Noah and his family, we will be safe inside the Ark that is Christ.  We know that persecution and trials will come because the Lord promised them to us, and we can look to the signs that the Lord gives us that the end is near, but we do not need to see these things with the fear and panic that the world does--for they also have a fixation on the end times now.  We'll likely be studying Revelation for the rest of this calendar year--probably a bit loner and we may even take a full year to study it.  I am glad that God has put the same desire in my heart as He has in the heart of those attending the study to read and study this book that comes with a promise to those that read its words.

On Wednesdays we continue to study the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis.  We are making slow progress, but it has led to some good and positive conversations both online and offline about things like the clarity and inerrancy of Scripture, and how that should affect our biblical hermeneutics when it comes to these passages.  What implications are there for saying that these chapters are more mythological or allegorical than saying they are historical?  Do we first presuppose the Bible to be true and interpret all other "facts" and philosophies through the lens of Scripture, or do we let the world tell us their "facts" and philosophies and try to interpret the Bible in light of them?  These first eleven chapters of Genesis tell us the beginning of everything for all of us--all the nations of the world that come from a common ancestor.

Our country is at a point now where everything that is taught in Genesis is questioned and substituted with a counterfeit version.  Creation has been substituted with Darwinian Evolution and the "scientists" are the priests and clerics of this atheistic religious system.  We are at a time when a Supreme Court nominee can no longer define the difference between a man and a woman because she "is not a biologist."  Life which God created and which He commanded that no one has the right to take away, except in the specific cases where God commanded His people to go to war or to use capital punishment or in self-defense under the Law has been made into a the "right" for a woman to abort a baby in the womb and the "right" in many places in the world for a hospital to determine that they will end the life of a patient who is chronically ill, elderly, or who has some kind of deformity or disability because their score for their "quality of life' is too low to justify the cost of keeping them alive.  This goes even further in some areas of the world where in some countries citizens now have the "right" to go to a doctor to get a prescription for a medication that will kill them--all they have to do is to tell the doctor they no longer want to live and the doctor and pharmacist are compelled to go along with the request--sometimes the doctor or hospital even administers the lethal dose of medication.  The world is exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1) and is calling evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).  So what are we to do as Christians?  We are to be salt and light in our communities and to share the gospel with them.  We are to unashamedly proclaim the existence of God and the inspiration, authority, inerrancy and perspicuity of God's Word.  We must not only claim these essential doctrines, but we must live by them so that we our not hypocrites where our mouths say one thing, but our lives say another.  We must desire to see individuals changed from the inside out as they too come out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His marvelous light so that they will no longer walk according to their flesh, but that they will be controlled by the Spirit.  We must proclaim the truth in love and we must make sure that in all things we do it all in a way that brings glory to God and shows people the truth of the gospel that we claim no only to believe with our hearts and minds, but that we claim that has transformed us and made all things new.

In addition to the "culture war" issues that we see, the first eleven chapters of Genesis lay the foundation for the gospel.  God mad us perfectly without sin, but as sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, all creation fell and was broken because of Adam's sin.  We are unable to fix ourselves and we all stand condemned even before our first sin that we commit because we were born as sinners (Original Sin) and as such none of us that are sinners can do anything to fix the problem of sin because sin must be covered by a blood sacrifice of an innocent animal (God set this example for us when He told Adam and Eve that their coverings of fig leaves were unacceptable and God killed an animal and made a clothes to cover their nakedness).  We see that God judges the wicked, yet He is faithful to provide salvation for a remnant and that He does all the work necessary to preserve and protect those He has put into His Ark of Salvation in Genesis 6-9.  I'll probably share a few more details about Genesis 6-11 in the next couple of newsletters/updates as we'll be covering those chapters in the next few weeks.

As I study Revelation on Monday nights we will see many of the same themes from Genesis and Exodus., except we see Jesus as the one who is Redeemer, King, and Creator (He is the one who is making all things new).  We see God saving His remnant, executing justice and pouring out His wrath on the wicked, and we even see a garden city that we live in with the Father and the Son where the Tree of Life will be.  The serpent that we are introduced to in Chapter 3 of the book of Genesis is defeated along with all of the angels that rebelled with him.  What we see that's different is that there is no longer a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in this new garden city.  There is no longer any opportunity for us to sin and we are in a permanent position of being in right relationship with God because we have been made in the image of Christ.

I believe that's it for this update, but, as always, please let me know if you have specific questions or would like updates on any of the prayer requests that I have shared previously.