Presbyterian Devotions: Christian Contenders - Philippians 1 v 27,28

Philippians 1:27b-28a                       I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.

Like most kids, I was bullied at school by several people who loved to intimidate me on a daily basis. They would bump into me on the soccer field and trip me up deliberately, or they would gang up on me in a quiet corner and seek to terrify me.

It got so bad that I didn’t want to go to school. My grades plummeted and instead of being in the top ten group in my class, I sank almost to the bottom. My mom wanted to go and face my daily oppressors, but that would have shamed me even more. She wasn’t mentally fit anyway, so I didn’t think that she could make any difference.

And then one morning during recess, just as the bullies were coming to get their usual sadistic pleasure out of intimating me, my mom appeared out of the blue. She verbally tore into them and publicly humiliated them. As I watched their faces get redder with embarrassment I realized that they were just children like me. My mom gave them a dressing down and the other kids in the school playground cheered her on. I guess that some of the other kids had been bullied by them too.

After that incident, things got better. I wasn’t afraid any more and got back into the top ten students in my class. The bullies’ reign of terror was ended and my mom became the heroine of my heart. Sadly, insanity and schizophrenia would expunge the incident from her mind, but even although it has been more than forty years since the event occurred, I still admire her what she did for me that day.

These days, Christians are contending for the Gospel in the face of persecution and harassment, imprisonment and even death in many lands. Their undaunted faith is a living testimony to the truth of the Gospel and work of Jesus Christ in the world. Society sometimes seeks to diminish Christianity and make it irrelevant. But the more that we are philosophically and socially opposed, the more true Christians appear to contend for the faith of the Gospel and stand up for Christ’s holy words. We will not be bullied, berated, or beaten down.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, faith is a precious gift and one that world desperately needs. All over the earth, Your Church and Your people are being made to feel insignificant and irrelevant. We are told that we are intolerant by intolerant people. We are viewed as being reactionary by those who violently react to Your teaching. We are humiliated and harassed all over the world by brazen bullies and godless governments. Help and empower us to contend for the Gospel, just as our brothers and sisters in our faith did so long ago. In Your Sacred and Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Presbyterian Devotions: A Great Christian - Acts 11 v 26

Acts 11:26b     So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

Barnabas is one of my favorite people in the Bible. He always seemed to do the right thing at the right time. When his Christian community needed money to survive, he sold his property and helped to sustain them. When no one else would trust Saul, Barnabas befriended him and taught with him. Barnabas was a great encourager, so it’s no surprise to me that he happened to be teaching in the very place where followers of Jesus were called Christians for the first time. Barnabas was and still is a great example of what it means to be a Christian.

Encouragement is something that we call can use each day, but it’s also a gift that we in the church could do better at sharing. As a pastor, I have seen people come and go to church as they please and I wish for their sake they could be more regular worshippers. I guess they are just waiting for the right word of invitation and encouragement, acceptance and love.

Perhaps today our mission is to be a Barnabas amongst our families and friends. An encouraging word goes a long way, even amongst Christians.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, help us to reach out to those who find it difficult to be in church on Sunday mornings. Enable us to encourage and embrace them, and not treat them as outsiders or backsliders. Let us see and accept them as God’s children and Your followers. Remind us also that we are far from being perfect ourselves. In Your Holy Name, we sincerely pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Presbyterian Devotions: One of Us - Habakkuk 2 v 13

Habakkuk 2:13 Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?

Our Monday night study group at the church is looking at J B Phillips wonderful book, “Your God is Too Small.” It was written just more than half a century ago, but it is still relevant for Christians today. Phillips discusses the various conceptions that people have about God and how those conceptions are inadequate for modern people. Our group is enjoying the study because we all get to share our individual ideas about God and see how these relate to Phillips’ book.

At one point in the book, Phillips suggests that sometimes people conceive God as a Supreme Distant Being, with no opportunity of establishing a worshipful, prayerful, and personal relationship. Such deists end up feeling spiritually empty, and so they intensely devote themselves to do good deeds and make the world a better place. In the end, their purpose is futile and their mission does not last beyond their years on Earth. In other words, they exhaust themselves for nothing in trying to please the world and a Supreme Being, who is remotely not interested in anything they accomplish.

As Christians, we are thankful for the nearness of God and His intense interest in each of our lives. Jesus came down to be with us, to fully experience human life, to know of its pains and joys, and to recognize our weaknesses and strengths. We live for the Lord and the good that we do is not to bolster ourselves or better the world. We do it to glorify Christ and to continue His mission on Earth, even until the end of time.

Our God in Christ is not too small or remote at all. And our lives are His forever.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, we thank You for becoming one of us and connecting our lives to God’s Kingdom. We praise for truly experiencing the human condition and for granting us the glorious opportunity of restoring us to God forever. Thank You for being one of us and for being with us. In Your Holy Name, we gratefully pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org. He enjoys reading your comments.

Presbyterian Devotions: Picking on Paul

1 Corinthians 15:2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

It’s very theologically fashionable these days to bash Paul and his writings. I come across many people who want to discard any of Paul’s statements and just concentrate on the Gospel. After all, these people insist, “why should I listen to Paul when Jesus can tell me everything I need to know?”

What they really mean is that they want to practice their faith on very loose terms. Their whole theology tends to be summed up in two neat phrases: ‘Jesus loves me this I know’ and ‘I’m OK ,You’re OK.’ It’s a very infantile form of faith and one that has no merit in God’s Kingdom.

You see if our faith was very simple and agreeable to everyone, Christ would never have been crucified and people like Paul would not have been martyred. We need to take seriously what Christ and Paul both have to say, because they’re working off the same page. Christ dies to save the world and then chooses Paul to spread the Gospel. What Paul writes doesn’t come from him alone – it all originates in Christ.

That’s why when we read a statement like ‘by the gospel you are saved’ with the condition ‘if you hold firmly to the word I preached’, we have to take them both together. The Gospel is not just a collected bundle of holy stories about Christ, the Gospel is an invasive forceful word of God that challenges our lifestyles and changes our souls for all of eternity.

Paul also gets it right when he states “otherwise you have believed in vain.” People are constantly diluting the Gospel to suit themselves and end up with no salvation. They believe what they want to accept, and end up with a cozy version of an uncomfortable faith.

So the challenge for us today is this: what Gospel do we believe in? Our own or Paul’s?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we are so fiercely independent these days that we become indignant when Your teaching or Paul’s writings interfere and meddle with our lives. We sometimes resent the constraints that the Gospel places upon us, but instead of accepting Your words, we make up our own ideas and opinions. Forgive us, Lord, for disrespecting and disassociating ourselves with You and Your Chosen Apostle. Help us to honestly reevaluate our commitment to You, Your Church, and Kingdom. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Presbyterian Devotions: Faithful Foundations

Psalm 11:3 When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Our modern Western Church is facing a dilemma and we are at a turning point in our history. For centuries, Western Christianity has been one of the most dominant forces on the planet. Much of history has been shaped by the ideas, beliefs, and teaching of the Western Church, and our modern civilization would not exist today without it.

The crossroads that we have come to has a lot to do with our foundational beliefs. People no longer apply them in their everyday lives. In fact, we have so “dumbed down” the teachings of the Church that many of our own people would find it difficult to recite the Lord’s Prayer, list the Ten Commandments, or even name all the Twelve Disciples of Jesus. It’s almost as if we’ve given the importance of those sort of things over to the church professionals and so long as they don’t meddle with our individual rights, opinions, or beliefs, we can all live in harmony.

Sadly, that was the condition of the Church before the Reformation. People let their priests hold the keys to salvation and biblical knowledge. Church people tolerated ignorance and illiteracy, placing too much authority into the hierarchy of the church, rather than paying attention to the substance and foundations of the Christian faith.

I have been a pastor for almost 25 years and I would love to say that Christians have become more dedicated, influential, and effective. Sadly, the reverse is more often true: people talk the talk, but really don’t care to walk the talk.

If God allows me to pastor for the next 25 years, then I think I’ve got to work on establishing foundations of faith in the lives of the people I serve. It may not be as exciting as being innovative or creative, but it will have a lasting effect. After all, if the foundations of our faith are being so easily destroyed through our desire to be accepted by the world, then what is the point of being a Christian? To make a difference in the world, we’ve got to be different.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to focus on the foundations of our faith. Give us the grit and determination to follow through on applying our beliefs in our everyday encounters and circumstances. Re-teach us the merits of our faith and put us back on the right track. In Your Holy Name, we earnestly pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment about today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.