July 2008 Events
July 27, 2008
July 27th Fellowship Supper 5 PM
Cleaning the Inside
July 27, 2008
Last weekend I was washing my wife’s car with a little assistance from my two year old daughter Anna Ryan. I explained to her how she needed to rinse the car while daddy washed it. She quickly complied and was doing a marvelous job, a little too marvelous. As I was scrubbing the driver’s side I looked through the window and to my horror she was washing the inside for the car. She had opened the passenger’s door and commenced to soaking the seats, radio, floor and everything else that did not need water on it. I became irate and immediately began towel drying the water after I scolded her.
A child will always expose hypocrisy. She was right, the inside of the car needed cleaning but I didn’t want to deal with it. If we commit our ways to the Lord, He will often use our kids to clean up our character. It may go unnoticed until it comes into contact with Christ. Have we allowed sin to be finely ground into the carpet of our lives? If we do not allow Christ to totally cleanse us, there will be a musky smell to our lives that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Like my wife’s car, once the word of God comes in contact with an area of our lives it will create a stink until we allow Christ to have His complete way.
Rather than hate the sin many Christians hate the agent that exposes their sin. Jesus declares with power, “Woe, to you scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also…. Even so you also appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:25-26; 28). Christ continually cleans our inner man. Has God opened the door to your life and exposed anything recently? To refuse Him is to embrace hypocrisy and lawlessness while denying and preventing His power from working in our lives.
New Website Look
July 23, 2008
We have been working on this project for a while and happy to report that the new site is up and functional. We also have reorganized to hopefully bring current information, news and events.
We invite you to join our site, add comments to posts and in general join in. If you have any issues, please contact us. admin@marvinchapelfwb.com
Fellowship Supper
July 23, 2008
The Church that Defines Our Age
July 20, 2008
- Jesus finds our churches nauseating because we glory in everything but Him
- Considering yourself rich on any other basis than Jesus Christ results in spiritual blindness
- Jesus Christ is knocking on our door if we will simply slow down so that we can hear Him
Ledges, Hedges and Wedges
July 20, 2008
Life is full of ledges. They are all around us every day. They usually promise a spectacular view, but we must remember that the wages of sin is death. Sin is a lot like a credit card, you may receive free interest for a while but eventually you have to pay the debt. In life we can’t help but see the ledges, but we don’t have to go play on them. Christians often play on the ledges of debt, pornography, idolatry, alcohol and idleness. When we fall we wonder how this happened. We fail to guard the spiritual aspect of our lives as we should. We seem to think that we can live as we desire and have a sterling walk with God. This is not so. Playing on these five ledges will always prove costly if not deadly.
As believers we can erect hedges around our lives and those of our children. IF you have a problem spending money, cut up the credit cards. To quote the old adage, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Keep yourself busy reading, praying, spending quality time with your family, and get active in church doing the Lord’s work. Beware unmonitored internet access or television. Too many teens have rejected God because they had a television in their bedroom with access to late night channels. Meanwhile dad and mom were asleep in bed comfortable their children were safe while the enemy was attacking their soul. The bottom line is that we must not set ourselves or our families up to fail in a “moment of weakness.” When we erect hedges to protect our lives for God, Christ honors that. God honored Job’s efforts to serve Him by erecting a few hedges of His own. “So Satan answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge around him, and his household, and around all that he has on every side?” We must not lower our hedges. Later God lowered Job’s hedges but not without abundant grace and a greater manifestation of Himself.
If we have no hedge we fall of a ledge and tragically create a wedge between ourselves and God. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). If we don’t erect hedges around our lives and those of our families we create a cycle that ultimately leads to a form of pseudo spirituality that ends in death.
Praise That Must Never Cease
July 13, 2008
America is not the nation it was when I was a boy but I love it nonetheless. Our future as a nation seems dark and time may prove it to be so. Everywhere I go I hear dismal words coming from people’s mouths. Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks. This simply means that people are giving up hope because their hope is misplaced to start with. When the world loses its perspective it is understandable but when the people of God forget God society rots. We are the salt of the earth and salt is a preservative.
In Psalm 137:4 the children of Israel asked from the banks of Babylon, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” it seemed an impossible thing to praise God when so much had gone wrong. Family members were slaughtered, raped, separated, and dispersed to a foreign land as slaves. Hope for the immediate future of their nation was lost, but hope was not. God never withdraws His power to sustain love, joy, nor peace that passes all understanding where a remnant remains loyal to His heart. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. The Holy Spirit is liberating no matter our circumstances.
We often say that we praise and worship God. The irony is that we must first worship God before He will accept our praise. How can we praise God for who He is if we have not been in awe of Him for who He is? Worship that fails to praise is worship that is disobedient to God. If we truly worship and praise Him how can we be without hope Thomas Paine opened the American Crisis with the immortal line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” God showed Himself faithful throughout the American Revolution. As Christians we need to once more learn what it means to cast ourselves upon the mercy of the Lord. It means that God was, is, and always will be faithful to Himself and those faithful to praise Him irregardless.
1776
July 6, 2008
On the courage and conduct of this army.”
General George Washington July 2, 1776
This nation was founded by brilliant men burdened with the knowledge that they controlled the future of unborn generations. They fought, died, sacrificed, and suffered great deprivation for their posterity. Today it seems that we as a nation are unable to see beyond what is expedient to our own lives.
The year 1776 was filled with great disappointment. The British landed on Staten Island on July 2, the same day congress voted for independence. Over the next six months Washington
faced one defeat after the other. With morale at an all time low he slipped across the Delaware River on Christmas night to ambush a group of Hessian troops at Trenton New Jersey. It
would have been easy for those men to give up the fight and go home, but they would have been unable to look their families in the eyes.
Without God there can be no basis for our freedom. It is time for the church to return to Christ with our whole hearts. The Great Awakening was the fire that fueled the American Revolution. Revival is still possible if only we will believe and be willing to pay the price. Without the Spirit of God we are powerless to change anything. Our nations history will attest to the fact that God loves an underdog, especially when He delights himself in the Lord.