To the Psalms of Ascent, we return

The emphasis of Psalm 125 is on the solidity of the Christian life. Living as a Christian is not walking a tightrope without a safety net high above a breathless crown, many of whom would like nothing better than the morbid thrill of seeing you fall; it is sitting secure in a fortress.

--Eugene Peterson

Sunday Lunch

Lunch together after the service Sunday is a wonderful opportunity to:

-- Enjoy food from around the globe
-- Share life with the church family
-- Welcome guests

don't settle for either mere intellectual knowledge of God’s greatness or ungrounded enthusiastic passion

Where the light of revelation is not accompanied by spiritual experience and power in our souls, then it will end either in outward formality or atheism. 


--John Owen, from the book The Glory of Christ

Playground! More Trees!

6pm Monday

We're having our first Leadership Summit. Gathering folks to pray, think, and plan for this wave we are about to ride together.

Join us.
Church office
6:00-7:45pm
Dinner & Childcare provided

.

Saturday

Men's breakfast this Saturday, February 20th 8:9:30 am at Church Office.

Come share a meal together and hear Adam Jeske speak on Missions, Motorcycles and photography.

Please RSVP fmatthews AT christsommunitychurch DOT com if you are planning to attend.

Also, there is a meeting for ladies later in the morning. See website for details.

Lent Helps

A helpful overview of Lent, by Craig Higgins

Vision of God

Last nite I rec'd to UF fca kids that they load 2 books on the hard-drive of their hearts:

The Pleasures of God, by John Piper
The Holiness of God, by RC sproul

Ashes 6pm

Come out to church office for Scripture, prayers, ashes and communion.

We are from the dust. And to dust we shall return.

March 6th Workday

We need 50 people to help landscape. Please plan to come!

Ash Wednesday

6am and 6pm

Stop by Church Office for a half-hour of:
--Scripture Readings
--Prayers
--Communion

To help you enter the Lenten season.

A meditation on 1 John 3

Does your faith almost fail you? Fear not, it is neither your graces nor
feelings on which you are to live: you must live simply by faith on
Christ. With all these things against us, now-in the very depths of our
sorrow, wherever we may be-now, as much in the valley as on the mountain,
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God." "Ah, but," you say, "see how I am
arrayed! my graces are not bright; my righteousness does not shine with
apparent glory.
" But read the next: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know
that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him.
" The Holy Spirit shall purify our minds, and divine power shall refine
our bodies, then shall we see him as he is.

--Morning, Feb 13, CH Spurgeon

Pray through this slowly, we'll use it Sunday

Father, we confess that we are satiated and bored;
Creation has bored us.
Work has bored us.
Family has bored us.
Friends have bored us.
Our homes bore us.
Television bores us.
Redemption has bored us.
Truth has bored us.
You have bored us.
No generation in history has ever had so much to entertain it.
We are jaded and cynical.
We think the world is our servant, so we are not thankful when things go well for us, and we are not patient when they do not.
We believe every desire should be satisfied, so we are not delighted when they are, and we are not humbled when they are not.
We laugh, but do not know joy.
We are captivated, but are never really awed.
We celebrate, but we do not worship.
Have mercy on us, and forgive us.
Amaze us with grace – blood stained, incarnate, Messianic grace - the Glory of God in Christ.

Ash Wednesday & Lent

Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2010) ushers in the season known as Lent, which begins forty days prior to Easter (April 4, 2010). As the first step in the Lenten journey, the Ash Wednesday service invites us to acknowledge our mortality, our sinfulness, and our dependance upon the grace of God.

Lent, a thought by D.Bisgrove
...during times of extraordinary
trials or uncertainty—which certainly describes what many are going through in this time of
economic upheaval, those disciplines become even more critical.
This argues for making use of the current season in which we find ourselves, Lent. Historically this is a time when Christians take stock of their spiritual health in anticipation of the celebration of Easter. It is a time of self-examination, repentance and self-denial (hence the idea of ‘giving up something for Lent’)—all of which are great ways to identify and repent of those things that have taken root in our lives as a replacement for the hope we have in Christ. So take time, as an
individual and as part of a community, to examine your life and access the power God has given
us in his Spirit.

Of course, there’s always the danger that spiritual introspection can make us more despondent,
which is why repentance and self-denial must be done in light of retelling ourselves the ‘old
story’ of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. Peter wrote that this living hope comes through “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). This
reminds us that Christian hope is not a philosophy or a technique but the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the reason Christians believe
that Sartre’s hopelessness doesn’t define reality; that injustice, greed, disease and death will not
ultimately define us or the world. Death has been swallowed up in victory. When Jesus died, so did death’s power over us. And when he was resurrected, it infused the whole creation with a living hope. It is this old story of Jesus’ triumph that we must tell ourselves.
And to the degree that we do, and find ourselves filled with hope, we will naturally want to
tell the story to others. For only in the story of Jesus will we find what we ultimately seek—our
living hope. --David Bisgrove

Here's more about Lent & Ash Wednesday, from years past

Lent & Fasting (from 2008)
-Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday (from 2008)

7pm @ Study Center

A guest lecturer on what the Academy Award Best Picture nominees tell us @ ourselves and good ol' USA. I'm looking forward to it.

Reaching Cabbies for Jesus? Not

from my boy, S.Addcox:
A scene in The Moonstone, a novel from 1868. In it a character named Miss Clack tips her cab drivers with tracts rather than with money. The cab drivers are certainly frustrated by her refusal to actually tip--
"He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab."



Sadly, examples of poorly representing Jesus are more frequent than we all wish. So realize that our friends may have been treated like this before. There may be a jerk-reaction to us winsomely and tactfully discussing Christ. Patience, patience.



.

Gratitude & Zeal

If you lose your sense of gratitude for your acceptance into God's Kingdom, you will lose your zeal for the work of that Kingdom.

--Paul Tripp

Sarah Hamersma speaks!!

Tonite @ CSC