Count those blessings—It’s good for you!

I enjoy doing the spiritual exercise of counting my blessings. It honors God and it builds my faith to remember the good things he has done. So let’s reflect on some of the many blessings God has showered on His people here in the Family at First.
· Bina Morgan, Kenny Miller and many others who have been steadfast in their service to the Lord for many years. What an example they set for others! Like them so many of you who have been relentlessly serving your Savior. Like Paul in his letter to the Philippians (Phil. 1:3) “3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,” We can easily point new Christians and new members toward your example.
· I’m also thankful for the new souls God is bringing our way. Do you realize that the 2009 Family Fall Festival was organized & mostly carried out by people who have been part of the Family at First for less than three years? Amen for the rookies! So far in 2009 we’ve baptized 24 people and have at least six more waiting their turn. The six souls represent 3 young couples, some with children and some without, but all with a need to have lives centered on Jesus Christ. The “new activity” that we’re seeing in the Family at First demonstrates a couple of important things: a) God is at work among us (we’ve joined Him in His work), and b) Folks at First don’t have to wait in a long line to start doing something substantial with their faith.
· The blessing of family coming together to enjoy each other and strengthen each other. Isn’t that a great priority of the holiday season???? We reorganize and prioritize for the regular family gathering। We clean up, prepare the most delicious stuff and then anxiously await their arrival. I hope that all of you will (allow Jesus to) clean up (your lives), prepare your sweetest service (to the Savior) , and anticipate meeting with Jesus in your homes and as you gather together with your Spiritual Family here at First.
I’m praying that the most exciting thing you experience this holiday season will be a praise offering for the wonderful things God has done in years past, and the new things the Lord wants to do both in your private walk with Him and in your service through your Church family. Psalm 104:1-4 “1 Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2 Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, Stretching out heaven like a tent curtain. 3 He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He walks upon the wings of the wind; 4 He makes the winds His messengers, Flaming fire His ministers। ” Until He comes, Pastor Marty

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ME SOMEDAY?

An old country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young men his age, the boy didn't really know what he wanted to do, and he didn't seem too concerned about it.
One day, while the boy was away at school, his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy's room and placed on his study table four objects:
1. A Bible
2. A silver dollar
3. A bottle of whiskey
4. A Playboy magazine.

I'll just hide behind the door," the old preacher said to himself. "When he comes home from school today, I'll see which object he picks up. If it's the Bible, he's going to be a preacher like me, & what a blessing that would be! If he picks up the dollar, he's going to be a business man, & that would be okay, too. But if he picks up the bottle, he's going to be a no-good drunken bum, and Lord, what a shame that would be. And worst of all if he picks up that magazine he's going to be a skirt-chasing womanizer."
The preacher waited anxiously, and soon heard his son's foot-steps as he entered the house whistling and heading for his room। The boy tossed his books on the bed, and as he turned to leave the room he spotted the objects on the table. With curiosity in his eye, he walked over to inspect them.
Finally, he picked up the Bible and placed it under his arm. He picked up the silver dollar and dropped into his pocket. He uncorked the bottle and took a big drink, while he admired the magazine's centerfold. "Lord have mercy," the old preacher disgustedly whispered, "He's gonna run for Congress."
While we laugh at that, it illustrates the point that we’ve reached a very sad place in our society; a place where politics is synonymous with corruption and hypocrisy. I was reading in my daily devotional time today from 2 Chron. 16. Verse 9 really jumped off of the page and hit me. One of the reasons our society is so divided and possibly even why our country is at war is because we don’t have leaders who “heart(s) are completely His.” And in America the reason we don’t have those kinds of leaders is because we, the voters, do not insist on it.
Philipp Spener। (1635-1705), was someone who was ready to let God reorganize his way of thinking and God used him to shake up the Lutheran church and help fan the flames of pietism that burned in hearts of Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists. During a stay in Tübingen, Spener read Grossgebauer's Alarm Cry, and in 1666 he entered upon his first pastorate at Frankfurt with the opinion that the Christian life within Evangelical Lutheranism was being exchanged for rigid Lutheran orthodoxy. Pietism, as a distinct movement in the German Church, was then originated by Spener by religious meetings at his house (collegia pietatis) at which he repeated his sermons, expounded passages of the New Testament, and induced those present to join in conversation on religious questions that arose। In 1675 Spener published his Pia desideria or Earnest Desire for a Reform of the True Evangelical Church, the title giving rise to the term "Pietists". In this publication he made 6 proposals as the best means of restoring the life of the Church:

• The earnest and thorough study of the Bible in private meetings (Sunday School / Small groups??)
• The Christian priesthood being universal, the laity should share in the spiritual government of the Church, (Using Spiritual Giftedness??)
• A knowledge of Christianity must be attended by the practice of it as its indispensable sign and supplement (Bear fruit of the Spirit – Go on Mission as a Christian)
• Instead of merely didactic, and often bitter, attacks on the heterodox and unbelievers, a sympathetic and kindly treatment of them (Preach the Power of God to Transform instead of denominational or methodological arguments)
• A reorganization of the theological training of the universities, giving more prominence to the devotional life (I’d rather have a minister with a high school diploma who walks with God daily and knows how to share the Word rather than someone with degrees who speaks of God like He is a stranger)
• A different style of preaching, namely, in the place of pleasing rhetoric, the implanting of Christianity in the inner or new man – (Again – the impact of God’s Word not returning void, but helping the sinner find Christ and helping the redeemed become conformed to the image of Christ)

I wonder of there are anymore Philipp Speners out there maybe just now starting to emerge? Not the cheap “junk-food” worship stylists who get really passionate about worshipping a God whom they obviously barely know, and not just those who like to bring the rebellion against the status quo (traditional church) for the joy of being a rebel, but those who will be led by God to go His way even when they must do it alone?!?

Just things I pondered today in my quiet time with God.