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New Members Class May 13, 14 postponed due to Pancake Breakfast
More info below.
Work Day May 15 rescheduled to May 22
More info below.
Opportunities to Serve:
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Loaves and Fishes Serving meal to homeless. 4:45 p.m. - 5:15 p.m. Lower Level of Christ Cathedral on Chestnut Street/Museum Quadrangle
Saturday, May 14, 2011
World's Largest Pancake Breakfast/375th Anniversary Celebration of Springfield. We will have a table with publicity and evangelism materials to pass out to folks.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
We will need to tear down sound equipment following worship service.
Saturday May 22, 2011
Work Day. Indoor and Outdoor Clean-up and Organization
Prayer Request:
Please be in prayer for the Gildersleeve family. Doe's father-in-law (Jenn Duff's grandfather) was placed into comfort care today after several weeks of failing health and complications. Please pray for God's peace and comfort for the Gildersleeve family during this time and that his glory will be demonstrated in all things.
Special Note:
How is it that we become discouraged? Discouragement is a loss of confidence, enthusiasm, and/or hope. Discouragement comes to each of us at times: the child learning to tie her shoe, the boy uncomprehending a new math process, a student trying to make his mouth and tongue and throat cooperate in speaking a new language, a newlywed wondering how in the world to understand his or her new mate. Here discouragement is a kind of frustration in the face of a lack of progress in a desired direction. Weight doesn't fall off, habits aren't broken, people don't respond positively to our overtures of friendship. This kind of discouragement results in anger, surrender, and abandonment. Somehow the task calls for more effort than the benefits of the results. Discouragement comes from looking at my inabilities in the face of the challenge. We even find the man after God's own heart and the great Apostle Paul expressing discouragement. ("Why are you cast down O my soul?" [Palm 42:5], "For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn-fighting without and fear within. But God who comforts the downcast, comforted us..." [II Cor. 7:5,6]
How it that we become discouraged? Another way to look at discouragement is to see the word heart in the middle. The stem of the word, cour, comes to us from the Latin cor by way of the French cœur, which means heart. We recognize the negative prefix dis. The suffix age intensifies the action into a process or condition. This discouragement is the condition that results from a loss of heart-literally, a loss of courage and emotional strength to pursue the task. I'm not sure that any of us would equate our discouragement with a lack of or a loss of bravery, courage. But isn't that what it is? When I am discouraged I have lost the courage to go on. I am afraid to expend the energy or invest the effort that this task calls for, and I either go through the motions half-heartedly (demi-couraged?) or walk away fearing that the goal isn't worth the price.
If we apply this to just one area of our lives, relationships, we see quickly that there is a genuine tragedy in discouragement. The wife who says her marriage isn't worth the effort and walks away from her husband and her vows of faithfulness and fealty destroys generations. The husband who says faithfulness isn't worth the fight and gives in to the temptations of infidelity destroys generations. A pastor who quits believing that it is worth the struggle to bring the truth of the gospel to resistant hearts endangers every one of his parishioners and allies himself to the enemy of our souls in his endeavor to destroy generations. Friends who misunderstand one another or disagree on crucial issues and lack the commitment to their friendship to seek understanding bring the brokenness of their relationship into every other relationship that they have or may try to have in the future. Every time I come to the point where I lose confidence in the benefits of continuing in a relationship and quit working at it, I also deny the commitment that God has made to me, his child in the accomplished work of Christ.
How is it that we become discouraged? Is it that we have depended on the wrong heart? Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke more truthfully than he realized when he wrote: "It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do." What is constitutional to each human being, in other words, the thing that is in every part of our being is that we are made to worship God. When we are free to worship God, and when we freely worship God we will step out of and away from discouragement and defeat into courage and perseverance.
How is it we become discouraged? Simply this: we look at our own abilities in the face of the challenges around us, we draw upon the incredibly limited resources of our strength and "heart," and we all too soon come to the place where courage skulks away and discouragement boldly marches in to take its place.
David speaks to his own discouraged heart, "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." (Psalm 42:5b, 6a) In other words, quit seeking to face this situation, this challenge, this relationship with the insubstantial and deficient resources of your own heart and call upon the infinite reserves of the One who waits to be gracious to you (Isa. 30:17-18) and wait on Him, trust Him, hope in Him. Paul tells us how he escaped crippling discouragement by depending on the power of the resurrected Jesus and the life to come (II Cor. 4:7-18). It is only-only-only in the worship of God, that is trusting him, depending on his great power and purpose, waiting for him to give you what you need in the way you need it at the time you need it, that you will gain real courage. This is because your heart will be functioning in the way it was created to function. Its beating will no longer be the call to retreat but will echo with the rhythms of Christ's victory. The path we are called to walk will not be darkened with the shadows of discouragement when they are lightened by the blaze that shines from the empty tomb.
Be encouraged, re-heartened, with the heart of Christ within you.
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