Tag: Trust

Making God Happy

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This past Sunday, we continued our new series, Being Useful, by looking at the first character trait on Peter’s list that will make us more useful to Jesus. Item number one: Faith. What is faith? What does it look like to have faith? And how does growing in faith make us more useful to Jesus? Read on to find out.

Making God Happy

We were sitting in a restaurant the other day and over my shoulder a family had been seated at a pretty large table.  They needed the space.  The waitress came over like she would for any customer and took drink orders.  Not long after, they called her back.  They wanted to make some special requests.  Then they called her back again.  Then she came to take their food orders…and they made some special requests.  Then the drinks came out.  And those weren’t right.  The appetizers were wrong too.  So was their dinner.  The manager came to the table at least once, maybe twice.  It took a couple of trips by the waitress to get dessert ordered and right too.  Now, this was a busy restaurant and certainly mistakes are occasionally made in the industry.  But as we looked around the room, we didn’t notice anybody else getting the amount of specialized attention they were getting.  Now, they were never ugly that we could tell, but the fact that just about all of their stuff wasn’t quite right began to suggest a pattern.  The pattern wasn’t a restaurant that couldn’t get its stuff together.  The problem was a family that was hard to please. 

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Morning Musing: Isaiah 26:3

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“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (ESV – Read the chapter) ‬‬

Where’s your mind? Ever been asked that? It was probably asked sarcastically when you said something that was possibly suggestive in some way. Or perhaps you were not paying as much attention in some sporting event as you needed to be and your coach told you to get your head in the game. Our minds are amazing things. The amount of information, they can process effortlessly and their ability to analyze complex data to find patterns is jaw-dropping. But sometimes it’s hard to keep them focused, isn’t it? 

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Morning Musing: 2 Samuel 10:3

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“But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Do you think, because David has sent comforters to you, that he is honoring your father? Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city and to spy it out and to overthrow it?””  (ESV – Read the chapter)

What do you expect from people? We live in a day in which there is a growing deficit of public trust. People are generally suspicious of one another and expect the worst out of them. The thing is, this blanket distrust doesn’t come naturally to us. It is a learned skill. But once it has been learned, it’s hard to unlearn. Read the rest…

A Message for a Stormy Day

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This past weekend, our community, like many others, was impacted by Hurricane Florence.  By God’s grace we have not been devastated to the level others have experienced, but we couldn’t meet in person.  Instead, I was able to take to Facebook Live and share a message with the community that way.  Here’s what I shared as the storm raged around the region.  Thanks for reading.

A Message for a Stormy Day

Well, good morning.  For many of you, good rainy morning.  My name is Jonathan Waits and I have the privilege of serving as the pastor of First Baptist Oakboro.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been rainy here the last couple of days.  Actually, for a whole lot of folks in this region, “rainy” doesn’t begin to cover it.  Florence has given us the kind of rain that would have given Noah some much-needed relief after building a boat for 100 years.  We’ve had the kind of rain that will leave people’s land and lives devastated for a long time.  It’s the most rain this nation has seen since Hurricane Harvey dumped part of the ocean on southeast Texas last year.  Like that one, this terrible storm has already claimed a few lives.  Those grieving families are in need of your prayers.  And if you want to give toward the relief efforts that are already underway, consider one of the many faith groups with ready-made armies of volunteers who are knowledgeable and skilled in the various aspects of disaster relief—groups like Samaritan’s Purse and the Southern Baptist Convention (specifically, the Baptist State Conventions of North and South Carolina, and the Baptist General Association of Virginia).  You can go directly to their websites and give or sign up to volunteer just as easily. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Habakkuk 3:17-18

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“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Have you experienced something disappointing yet today?  Not to start you off on a downer here, but the odds are pretty good that you will.  It may be a small disappointment–the parking space you were really hoping to be able to nab gets filled at the last minute.  It may be a big disappointment–someone close to you fails in some significant way.  Or, more likely, the disappointment will fall somewhere in between these two ends.  Whatever exactly is the extent of the disappointment, you are probably going to face one before the day is out. Read the rest…