Making much of God in marriage

I came across this video which is partially promoting a wonderful book, This Momentary Marriage, by John Piper but the true value of the video is found in the message of commitment to God’s glory in marriage.  I know very little about this couple but what I have been able to read about them speaks volumes of their making much of God in their relationship together.  Take time to watch it and then click the link to her blog.  You will find, as I did, the need to pray for Ian and Larissa.  Pray for their commitment to each other and mostly for their commitment to Christ.  Pray for your own marriages and your own commitment to making much of God in your life.

I am convinced once again that, in general, we understand very little of suffering, of frailty of life and relationships, and lifting Him high as I watched this.  May this encourage each of us to consider this in all we do beginning with our marriages.

soli deo gloria

Building expansion update

As most people who checkout this website on any regularity will now, we at Center Hill are in the midst of a building expansion program.  We have been carefully considering God’s plan for approx. 2 years now as we have outgrown our facilities.  God has led us to consider several different options and it appears that He is leading us to build a new sanctuary and fellowship room as an attachment to our current building.  We would then renovate the current building making it ministry rooms, office space and child care facilities.

Our building committee, under the authority of the entire board, has considered biblical principles of ministry, God’s leading, our needs, our desires, state requirements, financial constraints and current facilities to come to our current status in this project. The suggested expansion plans are available for viewing by clicking here.  We have sent out our conceptual drawings and spec sheets to suggested contractors requesting bids for the project.  The committee will be opening those bids this Wednesday evening.  If any acceptable bids are received we will be making a recommendation to our church for approval in the next several weeks.

It is exciting times at Center Hill.  God has clearly spoken through the growth and discipleship of our people.  We are committed to the authority and the sufficiency of the scriptures as a people and a ministry.  God and His word are proclaimed as glorious at Center Hill and it is our intentions, by His grace, to remain steadfast to that end.  These new facilities will allow us to do that   Pray with us for wisdom and unity as our folks enter this crucial time in this project.

soli deo gloria

Sound doctrine – No laughing matter

Sometimes truth is found in the funnies!

Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz

What Troubled Jesus?

John 12:27 Jesus said, “Now is my soul troubled……”  What troubled Him?  This is a question which has intrigued me for the past several weeks as I began my study for our church’s series of messages for the Easter season.  The time of Jesus’ saying that He was ‘troubled’ was the culmination of what we call Holy Week, the beginning of which was the Triumphal Entry into the city of Jerusalem.  He had entered being proclaimed by His followers as ‘King of Israel’.  Maybe His followers had finally heard and seen Him for who He was.  It should have been a joyous and celebratory time for our Lord, or so we would think.

But as we look at the mood and demeanor of our Savior that week, we see over and over the description of a troubled soul. Weeping, frustrated, suffering, nearly a ‘tormented’ being. Was it the prospect of impending torture, scourging, denial, betrayal, abandonment by friends, or the physical death by the cross? He was keenly aware of each of these coming events.  Surely it must be one, if not all, of these factors that our Lord was so troubled over, or so we would think.

What ‘we would think’ is so many times wrong and it would be if we thought any of the former.  I hope we as a church become impressed with what impressed itself on the very soul of our Lord,  something that troubled Him and should trouble us.  For as we see it in it’s most vile and horrible light we will never look upon it the same again.  We will use it as a reminder of our only hope and eternal life and see it as a symbol of grace which should spur us on to holy living.

What prospect troubled the very Creator of the universe to such a degree?  It was sin and it’s penalty of death. It was not necessarily the physical death and anguish but the punishment of sin and the forsaking of the Father.  Something which was so foreign in God’s perfectly created good world and something which was so unnecessary for His own sake.  This separation from His Father and the glory which He shared would be such weight on His soul that He would sweat drops of blood and cry out in complete anguish, “Why have You forsaken me.”  It was the cross of Christ.

This week we saw the heaviness of Jesus and the centrality and necessity of the cross in His instituting the Last Supper. Next week we will see Him leave the supper and proceed to the Garden of Gethsemane where he will be troubled to the point of sweating blood and finally we will see the utter anguish of His words as the Father turns his back on Him at the Place of the Skull.  A period of twenty hours, the purpose or ‘hour’ for which He came.  Yes, He was troubled and so should we be by the prospect of sin’s punishment.  But as we sense that trouble and understand that He died not His own death but ours, what a celebration we will have when on Easter morning, we hear the angels say, ‘He is not here but He is risen!’.  Sins punished, Forgiveness available!  Rejoice!

It is my hope as Pastor that we get a deep sense of the vileness and filthiness of the cross and the sin that required it when we see the cross as a symbol on a t-shirt, or piece of jewelry or as an icon within a church.  I pray that we pause and remember the cost to our Savior, that we give thought to the grace extended to each of us who by faith participate in the cross with Him.

Soli Deo Gloria

As though He needed anything

I received an email from one of our members this afternoon as part of a mass emailing he had sent to our members of Center Hill Community Church.  It was an encouraging letter as he spoke of things happening at Center Hill, people who have encouraged him in the past and the faithfulness of several of Christ’s servants on the mission field.  It included a link to an article in Credo Magazine about these faithful servants which I highly recommend you read.  I have his permission to post his email here on the church website.  Read it to be encouraged by his examples of faithfulness of Godly missionaries and encouraged by our church’s commitment to the same principle of discipleship seen in their lives.

soli deo gloria

Does religion matter in elections?

With the most recent rise of Rick Santorum’s numbers in presidential polls, he is coming under more scrutiny for his words.   This being President’s Day and  Santorum’s recent mentioning of the word ‘theology’ and President Obama in the same sentence, it has raised questions in my mind as to the place a candidate’s religious views should hold in our voting for that candidate.  I’ve been amazed that for some reason certain people, liberals in particular, have divorced the issues of personal integrity and religious views from a candidate’s worthiness to hold office, especially the highest office of this country.  They seem more concerned with their ability in economics and diplomacy than they do with their moral underpinnings.  A person’s belief and thereby their morality or lack thereof will surely affect how they act and govern.   I, for one, desire to not only know of a person’s’ religious beliefs’ but in particular their belief of the person and finished work of Jesus Christ (for this makes a true Christian should a person claim to be one).

I came across this short article from The Gospel Coalition today which raised the question of the basis for the morality of two of our greatest presidents, Washington and Lincoln.  Were they Christians or not is not answered by this article, for the issue of Christ has not been answered.  But the truth of the matter, as recorded by history, is that morality (religion) was the integral strength of these leaders.  A government or governor could not exist without the foundations of religion at it’s or his core.  If that be true, can we afford not to know the religious beliefs of our candidates?

A Gracious People

One of a Pastor’s greatest joys is to have his congregation accept the preaching of God’s Word with readiness and without controversy.  Often times the Word of God flies in the face of our accepted traditions and  human understanding.  Scripture tells us that the preaching of the gospel will be foolishness to some people.  Even to God’s own children many times the scriptures seem archaic and sometimes ’optional’.  But as a church, Center Hill, believes that our final authority is the written Word of God for all matters of faith and godliness.

We are currently in the middle of a series of messages in the book of Titus.  A letter written by the Apostle Paul to a young Pastor, Titus, who was left on the isle of Crete to ‘straighten things out’ that were amiss in the church.  It has not been an easy series to preach as a Pastor for the self examination that it has required and because of controversial matters such as our past week’s message.  Paul is concerned because false teachers have entered into the church and caused ‘whole families’ to be ruined.  The Apostle gives clear instruction to the young Pastor on how to deal with these false teachers and then turns his instruction to how to live graciously in Christian community.  This he does by dealing with several classes of people, including older men, older women, younger women and younger men.

The strong words of Paul to the younger women of this church seems to contradict the secular teaching of this world and our society today that proclaims that a women is to find her ultimate fulfillment in career status or financial advancement.  Paul makes the point that the gospel message of grace and it’s power to change lives is made overwhelmingly evident to an unregenerate world when the younger women of faith find the highest calling and fulfillment in their devotion first to their husband and then to her children.  Paul no where says that a women can’t have a career or work in the work place but he makes very clear that if a women makes her career or financial advancement a greater priority than her commitment to being a godly wife and mother than she transgresses Scripture.

It was this, one of the most difficult messages I have had to preach, that was our passage last week.  The discussion of our people in Sunday School that followed and the comments from this past week have been a blessing to me as Pastor.  It has ALL been gracious.  Many times the Word of God can seem offensive but our people at Center Hill have shown themselves to be committed to the proclamation of God’s Word even when they may not agree or are not sure.  Our people have graciously submitted themselves to the scriptures since I have been Pastor here and it is a great joy and privilege for me to proclaim God’s Word each week.

Thank you Center Hill, I love being your Pastor.

Getty’s Christmas Tour

Keith and Kristyn Getty will be performing their Christmas tour in Oil City, Pa. on November 30th.  We are very privileged to have them so close to our church that we will organizing a trip to the concert.  Please contact Pastor Guy for tickets and travel instructions.  Don’t miss this opportunity to hear and see probably the most prolific, God used and talented hymn writers of our day and enjoy the season with new Christmas music.  It will be a great time! 

The Peace OF God

“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Recently I was asked about what I was preaching through in morning worship at our church (fortunately this was not from one of our members).  As I began to explain that we are in the midst of the book of Philippians, the follow up question surprised me, ‘yeh, but how has this been made real to you and your church? You know you never preach anything that God doesn’t make it real.’  This scared me.  Even though there is a thread woven through the book of Philippians of profound joy, it is not the common theme or the purpose of this book.  Joy wouldn’t have scared me.  Dealing with conflict within the church, partaking in suffering for the gospel, straining ahead and advancing the good news of Christ, all issues which Paul addresses to the Philippians, they would cause me alarm.  If my friend’s assertion was true, and I knew it was, what was in store?

It’s been nearly 7 months of preaching though this book and I find I have either a keener awareness of people’s daily struggles and the struggles within church life or we have been prepared for the trying of our faith.  Our people have faced and are facing serious struggles of living the gospel in a fallen world.

But praise God, our studies have included the above verses.  It has become apparent to me that in the midst of all these struggles, what people crave is peace.  An inner peace that says regardless of my situation there is a peace which floods my inner being, my soul is at rest.  The book of Philippians has revealed that we can have that peace.

The promise of the scripture is that when we bring our concerns or requests before God, and by the way these represent any possible source of anxiety in our lives; do they not, and they are brought with thanksgiving on our lips, God has promised not the granting of that request necessarily but a granting of a peace that cannot be described in human terms.  A peace which cannot be comprehended apart from God because as the verse says it is the peace OF God.  His own holy serenity envelopes us, a supernatural peace.  The peace which God Himself enjoys.  A peace which knows no end, knows no conflict.  Wow, what a promise!

If we will bring all of our anxious requests before the omnipotent Father with the humility of a desperately needy child, and a heart that overflows with the thankfulness of His grace already bestowed, then he promises us HIS peace.  Thankfulness of His grace to us for our salvation, thankfulness of His grace in all good things is the key to the verse.  If we come with thanksgiving in our hearts for His abounding grace than He promises us peace beyond description.   Now that is a comfort.  A peace and comfort which guards our inner beings from all anxiety and worry.  A peace which says, my soul is at rest regardless of my struggle.

So I have realized that as God begins to hold us accountable for the preaching and teaching of His word, He also includes His good promises.  My prayer is that the folks of Center Hill find ourselves strengthened in the Lord and in His word, seeking this peace, seeking His peace.

soli deo gloria

We’re baaaack!

For all of you who for months have been waiting for an update on our church’s post, WE”RE BACK!  Due to numerous reasons we have not been able to keep up with post updates.   As of today, we will be updating this site on a regular basis with information of God’s leading and His work at Center Hill, recaps of current studies, upcoming events, pictures, announcements, devotionals, issues important to the Church, and an occasional rambling from the Pastor.

Speaking of the Pastor, I write this today as the permanent Pastor of Center Hill for the first time.  I have been serving since Feb of 2009 as Center Hill’s full time ‘interim’ Pastor.  As of June 5th, I have accepted the call to be the ‘permanent’ full time Pastor at the church.  What an exciting time.  My wife and I have grown to love each and everyone of the folks who call Center Hill ’home’ and have enjoyed a freedom to preach and a willingness to be taught by a people of a church that few Pastors ever have the privilege of knowing.  What a humbling and yet thrilling time for us at CHCC.

Pray for our church as we begin to walk this path of Christian growth and worship together.  Change is part of the Christian life as we are changed from glory unto glory in our journey to Christ-likeness.  It is the goal of our church to provide a place of corporate worship, a place of Biblical education and a place to find the equipping of families and individuals to fulfill their call to let their manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.  We will continue to strive to strengthen each other’s faith and walk in the Spirit as we look to the word of God and the God of the word.

Change is coming but it is with the thankful hearts of current members looking back at the faithful individuals of Center Hill’s past who have forged a direction of Godliness and a commitment to His word.  It is the unflinching conviction of the leadership of Center Hill to allow God to build His church as we walk in mutual submission to one another and to the leadership of Christ.

It would be our hope and honor to have you join us at Center Hill for any of our worship or teaching services.  We are committed to sound doctrine and meaningful worship as we walk this Christian life together.  As was once said of a great church – ‘Come for the theology and stay for the community.’

soli deo gloria