Highland Lakes church of Christ

Isaiah 6:8-11 “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? “Then, I said, “Here am I, Send me!” He said, “Go and tell this people: keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.”

Motivation is the force that keeps us going in the activities in which we are engaged. Generally, motivation is “up and down” in our lives. As the people of God we need to find a way to stay motivated to always “abound in the work of the Lord” (I Cor. 15:58) I sincerely believe that a study of Isaiah chapter six will help us in that endeavor.

We have all heard that text and sometimes sermons preached on “here am I, send me.” Isaiah found the motivation to be about the business of the Lord. That motivation was rooted in the vision he saw, the impact on his life personally, on that of the nation, and what he feared could have happened to him as a result of the vision—namely his death. God did not destroy him but rather He cleansed his heart and soul with the “fire from off the altar.” It was this cleansing that prompted the response of Isaiah when God questioned who would go to warn Israel of His coming judgment. “HERE AM I SEND ME” he said (verse 8).

When we consider the challenge we have of doing good works for the Lord, individually or as a congregation, it becomes obvious that good works begin with enthusiasm but generally dwindle to the “faithful few.” Why is this so? Is it possible that what really motivates us needs to be contemplated more seriously? To be motivated by the group to be of service will not be long-lasting. To be motivated by one’s personal sense of devotion to the Lord is long-lasting! Isaiah accepted the responsibility to go as a spokesman for God “as long as it took”.

Is it possible for us to be honest with ourselves as to what motivates us in serving the Lord? From Isaiah’s experience it was the ever present God! May the same be said for each of us.

Ed Dyche, Chamberburg, PA via Bulletin Digest

One of the gifts that my wife and I bought for our son on his birthday this week was a trampoline (or—as he says “a jumpoline!”). Now, my father is a very capable custom-build contractor by trade and I’m not completely without the ability to read directions and make sense out of them— together we ought to be able to read directions and put this thing together in short order. At first we began to size up the project and see if we could assemble the frame without reading the directions. We had the general idea, but the details just weren’t coming together. Before long we began to say things like, “Does this whatchyadoodle go on the inside or the outside?” “Is this supposed to be loose?” “What do you think this piece is for?” And so I read the directions. They didn’t make much sense.

As always happens in a small town, friends drive by your place and stop to chat if they see you out in the yard. “Is it supposed to look like that?”, one asked. “I just put one of these together not too long ago—the legs on mine were a whole lot longer.” And, of course, if you’re trampolining, this is an important consideration.

Knowing I missed something in my reading, I went back to the directions and they still weren’t as helpful as I would have liked. So I read them again. And I looked at the frame. And I read. And I looked. And I compared. And we talked. And I read some more. I read the whole booklet, looked at all the pictures, and thought, and thought, and thought…and then it began to make sense.

Life is like… a trampoline frame (what, did you think I was going to say, a box of chocolates”?) We think we can assemble it on our own, but the more we try we realize we’re not as put together as we think we are. And when we reach that point, someone hands us a Bible and says,”Read the direction manual.” And you begin to read. BUT, the more we read, the more we won-der if we’re building the same thing that this book is describing. Frustratingly, the manual doesn’t always seem to be much help!

Sometimes reading is not enough. I read the instructions, but, I needed more than a cursory reading. I actually had to study them. “What’s this little symbol in the diagram?” “Why does it say it this way?” “I know it looks like it goes that way, but the instructions say this…” I actually had to read the whole thing and come to know the whole process; continually compare the parts list, the diagrams, as well as the written instructions to one another and to the frame on the ground be-fore me— then I began to develop a picture in my mind of the finished project and the process that was going to get us there. Study! What do you know! The book had the answers, even if I had to give some effort to understanding them.

I know many of us try to read our Bibles, but are we willing to wrestle with the text—even when it’s not making sense yet—until it begins to be clearer? Are we willing to ask others’ opinions and hear their counsel? Are we willing to not give up just because there’s difficulty in unearthing some of Scripture’s answers? Let’s study our Bible!

Levi Sisemore, Minister 37th Street Church of Christ, Snyder, Texas

Throughout the book of Philippians, Paul speaks to that church as being partners with him in the Gospel. When Dennis and Sharon Welch visited us a few weeks ago from Cambodia, I think we were all reminded of our partnership in that wonderful work. The elders, on behalf of the congregation, approved sending $2,000 to help that work above our monthly commitment. That contribution will help a second evangelism team work with the SNACK program. What follows is an e-mail we received from Dennis this week.

“Greetings from Phnom Penh, Cambodia!

Last evening we had our weekly call with the elder and his wife (Nick & Carol Smith) in Stockton, CA (Central church of Christ) who are our liaisons with the church. This church oversees SNACK. Anyway, like all of us he is excited about the evangelism taking place in the SNACK villages. While in the States we received some new contributions, but it appears there were not enough to cover starting up the third truck again. Please continue praying about that. Nick thought that since we did get some new funding we should direct it toward the evangelism component of SNACK and hire more evangelists from the Bible school (or elsewhere) and operate two teams of evangelists instead of just one. It seems that God had already provided for a second motorbike through Highland Lakes and we didn’t even know it yet.

Therefore, we propose to transition our current team of evangelists to no longer travel with the SNACK trucks, but instead travel by motorbike to a single SNACK village each day, thereby affording them much more time in the homes of the SNACK families to share the good news. After that we will hire a second team to do the same. We are patient on God to bring us the right brothers for this work so we can’t say clearly about the timing. We can say that we are very excited about how the Lord is using SNACK as an access into the hearts and homes of the villagers. Praise His glorious Name!

We hope that you and the brethren at Highland Lakes will pray about this opportunity for bearing fruit for God’s Kingdom in Cambodia. Please see the praise/petition requests below.

Love and blessings, Dennis & Sharon”

PRAYER REQUESTS:

Praise God for the open hearts of the villagers being served by the SNACK program.

Petition God for the resources to begin using the third SNACK truck/route again.

Petition God for zealous, dedicated evangelists for the SNACK program.

Praise God for the ministries we all do as partners in the Gospel in God’s name.

Let us here at Highland Lakes church of Christ, remember that we are partners in the Gospel with the Welchs in Cambodia (as well as partners with the other missionaries we help support) and as partners we need to be devoted to remembering them and their prayer needs in our daily and collective prayers.

– Ken Darnell, on behalf of the elders

Try to imagine what it would be like if your batting average in life was figured out at the end of every day and the next morning it appeared in bold newspaper headlines for everyone to see. Professional baseball players have that every day. How did Jason Heyward do yesterday? What is he hitting now?

How would you like that? “Yesterday, the bating average of Tim Woodward dropped another five points as he went hitless in four times at bat. He struck out on his visit to the hospital, flied out twice in attempting to find volunteers for that job that needs doing, and his sermon was a popup to the infield.”

Try it on yourself. “Yesterday, Jon Doe’s slump continued as he went 0 for 4. He lost a contract before noon, chewed out his secretary immediately afterwards, grounded out with his teenage son’s request for help, and was thrown out of the game for arguing with his wife.”

The fact is that no one keeps up-to-date batting averages on us, and in a way, I suppose that is good. But it also means that we can utterly stop growing without ever knowing it. Nobody is measuring us. Nobody is timing us. Nobody is keeping the averages current. One day life slows down and we look around and suddenly realize that we’ve become stagnant. One man put it this way “Growth is the only evidence of life; whoever is not busy growing is busy dying.”

Scripture backs that up. We are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.” We are told to add the Christian graces to our lives. Paul puts it this way, “I do not count myself to have attained. But forgetting those things which are behind and pressing forward to those things ahead, I push towards the goal…” (Phi. 3:13)

Every one of us should be able to say with the old cowboy, “I ain’t what I ought to be, I ain’t what I’m gonna be, but thank God, I ain’t what I used to be !”

Tim Woodward, Smithville church of Christ, Smithville, TN – Via the Bulletin Digest

She was as cute as a button (I don’t know how that saying came about, but I have heard it all my life). She couldn’t have been more than three years old as she stood in front on me ignoring the basketball game behind her and eating her candy. I was immediately drawn to her because I have a little great-granddaughter about the same age and size. But the thing that brought a smile to my face was the T-shirt she was wearing. It said, “I will trade my brother for a cupcake.”

Contemplating such a trade in a small child brings only humor and laughter, but adults find serious consequences in some of the trades they make. The writer of the book of Hebrews calls Esau ‘immoral and irreligious’ for selling his birthright for a single meal (Hebrews 12:16).

Esau had come in from the open country and was famished. His brother Jacob was cooking some stew. Immediately Esau said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew?” It was not until later that Esau knew what a bad trade he had made. He then lifted up his voice and wept. Jacob got the birthright; Esau got the stew!

Thomas Whitelaw observed, “Esau is the type of many who accept the devil’s bar-gain of the world (mostly an infinitesimal fragment of it) for a soul.

Everything old seems to be new again. Consider the world of the Apostle Paul’s day. It was a time when men suppressed the truth. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, be-cause they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:24-25)

Are we sure we want to trade?

John Gipson, WindSong Church of Christ, Little Rock, Arkansas