Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference

Communion WITH God

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

An interesting question was posed to us at the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference last week.

The speaker was talking about a relationship WITH God and asked us: “How would your life be different if you were always aware of God’s presence?”.  He went on to talk about prayer as not just communication but communion WITH God…thus enabling us to “pray without ceasing”.

I was struck by that question. How would my life be different?

How would it affect my daily decisions?
How would I treat those who are difficult to love?
How would I deal with temptation?
How would it affect my T.V. viewing choices?
How would I speak about others?

Does this awareness affect your decisions because of fear of punishment?
Does this affect your decisions because you hope God will do something for you?

Or

Does this awareness affect your choices because of your love for the one who died and rose that you may have life?

I guess it all depends on how you look at the Gospel.  Who is God for you?

For me? 

God is Holy.  God is love.  God is life.  And my hope and prayer is that I respond out of love and worship for God.

What is your communion with God like?

-edh-

Awesome and simple prayer

/ The Pastor

Psalm 25:4-7
“Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths.  Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.  Remember, LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from old.  Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, LORD, are good.”

That Psalm was from my Bible reading a couple days ago but it is still clinging to me so I thought I would jot down a few thoughts for you.

Shortly after I posted these verses to my Facebook page, a friend of mine commented and thanked me for posting this.  She said she printed those words off saying “what an awesome yet simple prayer“.  I was struck by her words for she is right ~ it is an awesome yet simple prayer.

Show me your ways
Teach me your paths
Guide me in your truth
I strive to learn more about God yet I seem to get easily distracted by this world.  There are worries, concerns, to-do lists, full calendars, demands, expectations, etc.  I get distracted and find myself following the ways of this world ~ and when that happens I get overwhelmed.  And that is exactly what happened to me.

But then…

…the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference started.

Now I find myself slowing down as I am taking this week off for continuing education and renewal.  I am enjoying the faithfulness of God as God is showing me his ways and teaching me his path.  God is guiding me in his truth and through it all ~ refreshing my soul.  I am feeling God’s great mercy and love and being reminded of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.  I don’t feel overwhelmed anymore.

Indeed ~ what an awesome yet simple prayer.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that the Book of Psalms was the first worship/prayer book.  There are timeless truths contained in this “little Bible” (as Martin Luther called it).  The psalter spills out in words the emotions that we all go through (even though written in a different place, time and context).  Psalms of praise, confession, lament and many more are waiting for you.  Many times, when I don’t have the words to say to God, I find myself searching the Psalms.  God may know my thoughts but it is comforting to know someone else was feeling something similar to me.

Make it a habit to engage the Psalms often.  Chances are you will find one to help you give words to what you are feeling and experiencing.  And no doubt…you will find an awesome and yet simple prayer.

Praise be to God!

-edh-

Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference

/ The Pastor

I have the privilege of attending the Okoboji Bible and Missionary Conference this year again.  This is a FREE conference that takes place in Arnolds Park, IA every year around this time.  I use this time for continuing education; as it is great to be fed for a while.

(For more about the conference go to their website at: http://www.okobojiconference.org)

The conference brings in great speakers every year.  This year Ruth Graham (daughter of Billy and Ruth Graham) will be speaking on Thursday and Friday night.  I am really looking to that.

But now (8:54am) morning Bible study is about to begin.  It is kind of nice to just sit back and relax…and not be the leader for once.

Feed away…I am hungry and ready.

-edh-

What I have been up to

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

Wow…it has been a while…August 4…What in the world have I been up to?  Where has the time gone?  Am I O.K. (as one person has asked)?  Well…to answer the last question…Yes, I am fine.  Now on to the first two.

The last couple weeks have been pretty busy…much busier than I anticipated.  Aug. 3 – 9 was the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference.  I mentioned this before and said I would write more about this.  Well…with running down to Spirit Lake twice a day (50 miles round trip each time), it took a toll on me.  I found that I had very little free time.  The conference was great though…probably the best one I have been too, but I am sorry that I did not write more about it.

August 10 through today has been one of reading and fall planning.  One of my big accomplishments was that I totally revamped my confirmation program (this WILL be something I will share with you once I polish off some details).  I am really excited about this and looking forward to classes starting on Sept. 23.

I also read another book.  This one is called “God and Cancer” by Tim Chaffey.  GREAT BOOK.  Tim is a college friend of my wife and a cancer survivor.  The first part of his book he talks about his struggle with leukemia…how it hit so fast and so hard.  In the second part of the book Tim talks about the problem of evil.  He talks about how various other religions deal with evil and that Christianity is the only religion that has an answer for evil.  I highly recommend this book.  We have invited Tim to come to Jackson to speak about his book in November.  I can hardly wait.

And tonight I am doing something that will be incredibly fun.  I won’t say much now but what I will say is that it involves me and a race car (mom…I know you probably remember what I am talking about so don’t worry).  Be watching my blog on Monday for highlights about tonight.

So that is where my last two weeks have gone.  Thank you for being patient.  Thank you for stopping by.  Thank you for your individual ministries…all in the name of God our Father through Jesus Christ who is ALWAYS faithful.  Thank you and God bless.

-edh-

Okoboji Conference 2009

/ The Pastor / 4 Comments

This week I am attending the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference .  Traditionally I take the week off for continuing education so I can attend morning Bible studies, classes and evening worship.  I have someone coming in on Aug. 9 to lead worship and preach for me so I can focus this week on being fed.  The conference began on Friday, July 31 but last night (Sunday) was my first night there.  The speaker was Mark Ashton; a pastor in Omaha, NE (formerly a pastor at Willow Creek Church near Chicago).  He gave a sermon about God’s amazing grace.  He speaks tonight again (Monday), but this time on God’s amazing forgiveness.

This morning I attended a Bible study led by Skye Jethani who spoke about the story of Jacob wrestling with God from Genesis.  One phrase that sticks out for me is: “Don’t spend your life wrestling with God because you can’t and won’t win.  Surrender to God.”  I am still pondering this.

Following Bible study, Skye lead a class about how our culture uses fear to control our behaviors.  This is a week long class and I am looking forward to where we will be going.  I will share more insights from this class throughout the week.

I am also using this week to begin preparing for the fall season (i.e. Confirmation, Release Time).  It’s hard to believe we are closing in on the start of school and fall church activities.  Where has the summer gone?

With that…I’ll be back later with more insights from the Bible conference.

God bless!

-edh-

Monday morning (or should I say “afternoon”) check in

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

I am finally back in the office…but a little late on getting to my blog.  If you could have seen the pile of stuff I had to deal with I think you would understand.  I enjoy getting away for awhile; its just the getting caught up that I don’t like.  But I think I am there.

Last night I had an AWESOME night…

…that is Point of Grace and I had third row, center aisle seats for this concert.  AND…it was free.  This was the finale of the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference that I attended this past week…and everything is free…it has been that way for 74 years.  This is an amazing conference and I am always blown away that they can put on such an event based solely on the contributions of generous supporters. 

Each morning started with prayer and then a Bible study.  At 10am we have some fellowship time before we head to the “communities” (small group sessions) at 10:30.  There isn’t anything going on in the afternoon but we reconvene at 7:15pm for the evening worship celebration time with a different (usually a nationally known) speaker (i.e.  Tuesday night was Phil Vischer, the founder of Veggie Tales).  And did I say that all of this is FREE?

The “community” I attended in the mornings was lead by Phil Vischer and his brother Rob (a law professor at St. Thomas Law School in the Twin Cities).  They spoke about Christ and Culture.  I missed the Monday and Tuesday communities but I am glad I made it to Wednesday’s.  Here Rob Vischer spoke about the Christian perspective on family law.  The basic premise was the evolution of the same sex marriage debate.  This is something that has been brewing for quite a few decades.  But what was really scary is where the law is headed in the future.  Basically the family unit is being de-valued and more emphasis is being placed on individual liberty.  Hence…people starting to be allowed to decided who’s in their family.  Rob said that on the horizon the next debate will be polygamy because if two men or two women want to get married, why not expand that definition to include more people.  The direction that family law is headed is very scary.  This was indeed an eye opening “community”.

So much more happened this past week but I am still trying to process everything.  I got a feeling that as other learnings begin to bubble up that they will soon find themselves on the pages of this blog.  But in the mean time I will take my leave of this topic.

In the future
There are some other blog topics that I have started that I haven’t dealt with for a while…and I am going to be returning to these topics shortly:
(1) Evangelism — at the end of July I was invited to participate in a meeting at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago.  My bishop along with a synod minister and our synod V.P. attended this meeting.  We heard a number of presentations and participated in some fruitful brainstorming for the synod.  I also got appointed to the “Serving in God’s World” board (evangelism and outreach) for the SW MN synod.  I am looking forward to writing more about my involvement here.

(2) Business meeting model vs. Ministry meeting model — this was something concerning church councils.  Wrote a while back about my efforts of changing how our church council looks at themselves.  We need to be a group of people focused on advancing the mission of Christ in the world around us.  Someone commented and asked me how I was going to do this and I responded that I was still working on it.  Well…I want to return to this topic in the near future.  I have a council meeting this week and I hope to implement a new “agenda item”.  I will say more about this later.

(3) Learnings from the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference.

Whew…that’s a lot of stuff coming up and I am excited to get started writing.  I guess time off really did me some good.

Anyway…take care and God bless!

-edh-

Sunday morning prayer — unshakable

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

I am on the verge of returning to “normal”. I am still on continuing education so in about an hour Connie and I will be heading down to worship at the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference. So much has happened and I have learned so much that I can’t put everything into one post. But I do want to share one quick thing with you this morning.

Last night our speaker was talking about courage…courage that is not of this world…a courage that only comes through an amazing encounter with God. The theme of the conference is titled “Unshakable”…which has been a great theme for me personally (more on that in a later post). Last night our speaker (whose name I can’t spell off the top of my head, but will get the spelling when I get to my office tomorrow) said something last night that still has me thinking. He said, “To have an unshakable faith we first must be shaken”. And that “shaken-ness” comes from a powerful encounter with God. An encounter like what Peter had with Jesus in Luke 5 or Job had with God. Both were “shaken” to the core and became courageous followers of Jesus/God. Our speaker then said, “When we are shaken by something really big (Jesus) then everything else seems small in comparison.” Wow! Have I truly been shaken by Jesus? Have you? It has really got me thinking.

And with that I will leave you thinking since I need to go and get ready for worship. But I will write more about this later. Let’s pray:
Powerful God, shake us to the core with your love through Jesus Christ our Lord. Transform our view of you from a small God to a powerful God. Transform how we look and treat others. Transform how we share our faith with others. Father God, shake us till we drop to our knees in reverent worship of you. Create in us an unshakable faith…through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray, AMEN!

God bless and have a wonderful day.

-edh-