Jesus Wept

~ By Lola French, CAPSS CEO~

 

Weeping is one of the deepest expressions of emotion.

It’s a place where words don’t even come close to being adequate. Whether we face a loss or it seems like life just doesn’t make sense, we long to know the answers to the "why?" and "what now?"

Taken from the story of Lazarus of Bethany (John 11:1-44), Jesus wept is a verse in the Bible that reminds us that God deeply loves us. God is grieved, even angered over the brokenness of life and the impact it has on us. He longs to have relationship with us. He mourns and comforts us when we have encountered loss - physically and emotionally.

Just as God was moved to raise Lazarus from the dead, through Jesus, He is moved to act out of compassion on our behalf even when the situation looks impossible to overcome.

"Jesus wept" and the story of Lazarus clearly demonstrates God’s heart toward us. Ultimately He is moved because we matter to Him - because we are all made in His image.

Imagine if the church responded in the same way as Jesus to the impact the brokenness of life has had on the pre-born.

What if the church wept - over abortion?

Abortion is a spiritual issue

. It is a direct attack on the image of God.

This matters to Him. The pre-born are the largest hidden people group in the world.

Each year abortion ends the lives of 42 million humans - that is more than one life every second, of every minute, of every day! Whether we are aware of it or not, the truth is that there is someone we each know who has been affected by abortion. The impact of abortion is devastating. Most of us are blind to it.

Through the work of CAPSS, eighty life-giving ministries across Canada are seeing lives being transformed spiritually and saved physically. Women and families facing unplanned pregnancy and the impact of abortion can be met with truth, love, and hope for the future. The heart of Jesus is the heart of this movement: "to glorify God and to demonstrate His character".

CAPSS is the only national charity that encourages, equips and helps to establish pregnancy centres across Canada. We invite you to prayerfully consider how you can enter this mission field created by abortion. Partner with us through supporting our work. Together we can make a huge difference for Life!

CAPSS and the Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre are having a fundraising luncheon "Celebrating Today’s Heroes" with Hon. Stockwell Day, on February 29 at the Black Knight Inn. If you would like to purchase a ticket, call 403.343.1611.

Lola French is a member of CrossRoads Church and is the CEO of CAPSS. Her office is located downtown Red Deer 304 - 4820 Gaetz Ave. Red Deer, Alberta T4N 4A4. (403) 347-2827. www.capss.com.

(c)2011Frontlines - used with permission.

A Different Kind of Famine

~ by Jordan Cavanaugh ~

Over the Christmas holidays I had the opportunity to drink lots of coffee and read some books, one of the books I stumbled upon was "The Divine Mentor" by Wayne Cordeir. It turned out to be one of the best books I have read this year. As I read through it I was deeply challenged by his convictions and passion for God’s Word. Wayne has a couple of thoughts in his book that I found valuable. One of the specific thoughts that he talked about in his book that was thought provoking was about mentorship. Many believers are in search of guidance and mentorship from older and wiser people who have journeyed through the ups and downs of life with a consistent faith and commitment to Christ. However, many of us have a hard time finding those people and when we do it is difficult to find time to get all the mentorship we would like.

Wayne wonders why believers don’t seek out the counsel of the Bible where the mentors are just waiting to teach you and me. These mentors have great wisdom and all the time in the world to walk with us on life’s journey. Why not let Solomon walk with you as you decide how to use your finances. Let John teach you how to love your neighbour. Let Joseph show you how to handle victory and defeat and let Job teach you how to grieve. The fact is there are mentors waiting for each one of us, will you allow them to teach you?

The second thought that grabbed me is his love for the Bible and desire for people to know and understand it. He quoted from Amos 8:11, which says, "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD." We are beginning to recognize this very thing in our context of ministry. Many of our students do not read the Bible and have little idea of major Bible stories. We are beginning to believe that famine has already arrived amongst our teens. Cordeiro says, "If the devil can keep our teens and families away from the Word, he steals the Father’s main tool for fruitfulness in our lives." If we are going to be effective disciples of Christ, God’s Word has to be a part of our DNA. Without it our journey of faith is rendered ineffective.

There are many reasons we struggle as believers in spending time with Jesus daily. One of those reasons should not be that we don’t know how to read our Bible. The following will give you an idea of what your time reading the Bible could look like:

Make sure you have a pen

Bring a Journal with you

Keep a day planner nearby (To record any unrelated thoughts that come to mind)

Dust off your Bible

Choose a Bible reading plan (A Bible reading plan is a day to day recommendation for what you should read. These Bible reading plans will attempt to give you each day’s reading so that you can read through the whole Bible in one year. Wayne’s "Life Journal" reading plan is available on the CrossRoads Mobile App.)

Then as you sit down to read, open your journal or grab a notepad and do the following: First began by asking Jesus to speak to you through what you are about to read. Next, read a chapter or whatever is allotted from the Bible reading plan and pick a passage of Scripture to focus on. Then write it down. Write down some observations or questions you find in your specific passage that you have written. Next, take some time to really think about and write about how this passage specifically applies to your life and what Jesus would have you do about what you have read. Finally, pray that the Lord would use what you have read to transform your heart. Take a little time to be silent and ask Jesus if there is anything else He would like to communicate to you for your day in light of what you have read.

I wonder what would occur in our lives if we would allow the Bible to mentor us and for the characters and writers of the Bible to speak into our lives. I guess we will only find out if we try. In the next couple days I encourage you to put this into practice. The process is as easy as remembering SOAP. Start with some Bible reading: S-Scripture. Then move on to taking some notes: O-Observation. Next it’s time for reflection on how this applies to your life: A-Application and finally spend a little time in prayer: P-Prayer. I hope that this process will enrich your times with Jesus and speak to your soul.

My God Story: Maegann Jaworski (better known as MJ)

"Teenagers are horrible, insufferable creatures that we

can’t get across to, so we might as well not try. When they’re nineteen or twenty, we’ll be able to tell if they’re normal human beings, but until then they are definitely all clinically insane"

– Everyone who is not a teenager.

Question: Why is it that when someone makes the comment, "Well... he/she is a teenager...," we all respond the same way. With an, "Ohhh... that explains it." We, as a society, generally agree that the ages of twelve to eighteen are the hardest years of our lives. Seriously, if you paid me a million dollars I sincerely, 100%, would NEVER re-live my teen years. It’s like overnight you suddenly want to be around your friends 24/7, the biggest issue becomes wearing the coolest clothes, and you definitely do not want to share anything that belongs to you! Ever! Instantly you discover that boys/girls in fact do not have cooties, and most of all, your parents are no longer the centre of your lives. It’s like all at once you realize there is a world out there, and it’s all been created just for you and you alone! (False) So how does knowing this make a difference? How does God tie in?

Unfortunately, I do not have a PhD in behavioural science. I am actually only a couple days into an entry level Psych course at the Red Deer College. I can’t tell you exactly how hormones play into the equation or how long this stage is going to last.

I can, however, tell you that no matter who you are or where you come from, everyone needs somebody in their life that they know will always be there for them. Everyone needs someone they can count on. What if when you were fourteen and the entire world was unexplainably changing in front of your eyes, you found yourself completely alone? And as the rest of the world walked out, nobody walked in? What would you do?

I can tell you what I did. I ran.

I grew up in a broken home, almost as broken as they come. Parents divorced, father not in my life, single working mom and no one helping us. I was the youngest of three, with a brother who is two years older than me and a sister who is eight years older. My sister, from as far back as I can remember, always had a rocky relationship with my mother and my mom kicked her out when she was fifteen. After that I always had a rough relationship with her as well, and I can’t remember a time when we ever got along. I don’t know if that is truth and we never did get along or if my memory is poisoned so much that I can’t recall any good times. Either way by the time the teen years hit, history was repeating itself and we were constantly fighting. A few years passed with me being in and out of my mother’s house until I was fourteen and I left for good. I thought, "Finally I’m free". The only problem was that I was alone.

I moved in with my friend’s parents and within weeks I was addicted to alcohol. I stopped going to school because I was so hung-over I couldn’t get out of bed. I started to make really bad choices and get caught up with the wrong people. I spent the summer of grade nine sleeping anywhere that I could lay my head at night. Sometimes friend’s houses, if their parents let me. Sometimes I slept in tents. Sometimes I didn’t remember. The abandonment pain was so intense sometimes, I would look for any escape. I started cutting to distract myself from the emotional hurt and eventually it wasn’t enough. I would just drink myself into oblivion, and it was only there that I found relief. Even then, although I didn`t know it, God loved me.

``Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget,

yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you

on the palms of my hands."

Isaiah 49:14-15

My mother had forgotten me, but God had not.

Over that summer I also reconnected with my grandparents who were my mother’s parents. I had been estranged from them since I was a little girl, and the reunion was bitter-sweet. After going so long not seeing each other, and finally reconnecting was great. But I was also fifteen and heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol. Life went on and I got deeper and deeper into substance abuse. Then I tried harder and harder to hide it from my grandparents. Little did I know that I did a crappy job of hiding it!

One day, in the beginning of my grade ten year, my grandparents sat me down and offered me a second chance. They told me they loved me with all their hearts and they would always be there for me. They offered me a second chance at life and told me the facts that I had heard over and over again at school and in counsellor’s offices. I was going to ruin my life if I continued what I was doing, and they couldn’t bear it. I finally believed it, so when they offered me a choice to move in with them and start over, I took it.

My life from that moment on has changed into the most amazingly awesome, horribly terrifying, outstandingly epic, and magnificently tragic life I could have ever dreamed of. The only catch is I didn’t dream it. There was a long period of time in my life that I didn’t dream. I didn’t hope. I didn’t have faith. I didn’t care. About anything. What changed?

Someone loved me. Someone cared. Someone made a difference, and for that period in my life, it was enough.

I went on to graduate from high school, and then attend college. I was well into my second semester at RDC when my life changed again. God took someone home that I wasn’t ready to let go of. At this point in my life, it was the third death in two years I had experienced. Aged seventeen, eighteen, twenty-five. I was eighteen and devastated. I didn’t even wait until the semester was finished; I moved home. Again, I ran.

This time around, my grandparents weren’t enough. During the time I was away at college, I had gone back to frequently drinking and experimenting with drugs. After I went home I fell into a dark place and I couldn’t stop drinking and I didn’t want to. Once again I didn’t care about where my life was going. I didn’t have dreams anymore. I didn’t have hope. I convinced myself that no one understood me, no one knew what I was going through and no one truly cared.

Then I met an amazing woman named Theresa. I was working for a law firm at the time, and she was a legal assistant who worked in the office with me. After a couple months of getting to know her, Theresa asked me if I would come to church with her. Her church was Pentecostal, and although I had no idea what that meant before I went, I sure did after I left. It was crazy to me; the Pastor walked back and forth on stage, yelling into the mic. I remember trying to sing songs out of the old hymn books that I could barely read, and sitting in a stiff pew that hurt my back after only a few minutes. But they were alive and full of energy and on fire for something and I wanted it. I went back the next Sunday and that’s when it happened. My God moment. The one of a kind, can’t breathe, can’t think, straight to the heart, knock you over backward, take your breath away and send you spinning kind of moment. The big one. The pastor was talking about the unconditional love that God has for us and I remember hearing him say that if anyone is in need of prayer, they could come to the front. I remember thinking about my friend that had passed away. I didn’t know it then, but I had started to cry. I felt everyone come over and put their hands on me and start praying for me and all of a sudden, I just lost it. I heard the word Love echo in my mind, but I didn’t just hear it. I felt It. On the inside, in my heart and in my soul and it just kept spreading. I can’t even describe it for you, because God’s love is indescribable. Paul tried to describe it in Romans for us, but even he could not say the words that describe His love for us.

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers,

nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 8:38-39

My life hasn’t always been exactly easy and even after I turned to God and accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Saviour, my problems haven’t just gone away. I still struggle with countless issues and problems that come up in life. Even Paul said, "I die daily" ( 1 Corinthians 15:31), but God the Father promises to never leave us. Moses says,

"It is the Lord who goes before you.

He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you.

Do not fear or be dismayed."

Deuteronomy 31:8

I’m at a place in my life where I hear God calling me to serve. I have gained a heart of compassion and empathy through Jesus Christ and feel compelled to walk in love (Ephesians 5:1-2) just as Jesus did.

So back to my first two questions. How does knowing that life as a teenager sucks make a difference, and how does God tie in? I didn’t have anyone growing up to turn to in times of trouble. I didn’t have a rock in my life, and although I know now that the Lord walked with me, I didn’t know it then. Maybe my life would have turned out differently if I had known. Maybe it wouldn’t have. Either way, I would have known someone loved and cared for me, no matter what I did. What a gift it is! Now I just want to share it with everyone, especially teenagers. If we all agree that the teen years are some of the hardest years, then doesn’t it stand to reason that they are the most important years to know the Gospel? Doesn’t it make sense that we provide people that will be there for them, no matter what, no matter when, no matter where, no matter how, to share this great news? As a youth leader, I am here to build up my students, sit with them, cry with them, talk to them, listen to them but most importantly I refer them to the only person I know that can help them always: Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don’t know what this life has in store for me, but I’m so excited to do it! I’m looking forward to "doing life" with all of my fellow Sr. High Youth Leaders, all my girls and all of the community that God has given to me. I want to thank CrossRoads, sincerely, for receiving me with love, praying for me in love, and embracing me with love. Love is my favourite!

Honouring Friendships

~ By Khristie Looy ~

Who are the people of influence in your life? What has made them so influential? Now reflect solely on those people of impact that have been a positive influence. What has made that relationship a positive one? What is it that you value most in that person?

As I ponder these questions myself I am in awe of the blessing of such solid friends in my life. These are individuals that accept me unconditionally, challenge me to press on when life is hard, cry with me, fight for me when I feel too weak to fight, hold me accountable in my relationship with the Lord, laugh with me, and celebrate alongside me in the rich gifts of life. They are the ones that I can be the most vulnerable with and share my greatest joys and deepest sorrows with.

Now I ask myself, have I been that person in return? The things that I value most in those who have invested in me, do I also possess those attributes? Do I love and accept without judgment? Am I quick to listen, slow to speak and compassionate in their life circumstance? Am I willing to do whatever it takes to spur them on in their relationship with the Lord and hold them accountable? Do I rejoice with them in the joys of life and ache when they hurt? Do I treat them the way I want to be treated?

When I reflect on relationships in the Bible probably one of the most solid friendships would be that of David and Jonathan. Jonathan did whatever it took to protect David and fight for him. Scripture says that "Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself" (1 Samuel 18:1 NIV). Even after Jonathan passed away, in return David took Jonathan’s son into his home as one of his own. Even after death, the investment in the friendship continued. They loved and cared for each other deeply. The bond that they shared is rare but is one to be treasured and thankful for.

This month in K4 we are focusing on the virtue of Honour- letting someone know you see how valuable they really are. Who are the Davids and Jonathans in your life? They could be friends from the past or friends from today. Why not take the time this month to honour them by letting them know how valuable they are in your life? Send a card, write a letter or email, take them for coffee or give them a call. Make a point of thanking them for the influence and impact they have been in your life. Journey with me in this challenge this month.

Refresh

~ by Stacy Mattheis~

Christmas was two days away and I still had a few things to pick up or so I thought. I headed to Scott’s Parables hoping to find inspiration. I was shopping around looking at the picked-over shelves wondering what on earth made me think there would be anything left on December 23. That’s when it happened. As I was shopping - well really it was aimless roaming - I noticed a familiar friend sitting by the front door of the store. She was busy on her phone but made eye contact with me and motioned me over. She was excited to see me and immediately asked me to join her for a tea.

I had told my family I would be only 30 minutes or so and almost hesitated, but she walked with such determination to the café that I followed. I sat, she ordered her tea and then told me she had something for me in her car. Now what you should know is that I haven’t seen this person in three years so I was a little surprised that she had something for me since our meeting each other was so random.

She came back in with a sheet of paper but before she showed it to me she explained that she had been out running Christmas errands and felt a sense that she should make Parables her next stop. She said she didn’t understand that feeling because the other store she needed to go to was closer on her route than Parables. She told me she has learned to just obey the Holy Spirit when He prompts her, so she travelled to Parables and sat at the front door waiting for the Spirit to reveal what He wanted her to do, when she saw me.

She showed me the paper and continued to explain that a few weeks ago during the night she was awakened and could not sleep until she typed out what God was putting on her heart. She asked Him how many to print and she obeyed. Then she prayed that He would show her who to give them to. She had printed out twelve and I received the last one. I sat very quiet and speechless as I read what was on the sheet. I couldn’t believe how I was experiencing the Holy Spirit. It was surreal. At one point I wanted to look for a hidden camera. Everything on this paper was what I had been challenged with or trying to work through over the past few months. Everything that I had made complicated the Holy Spirit had made very simple and she had no idea what those personal thoughts and conversations I had been having with God were about.

What was on the paper... one word... REFRESH…broken-down with a meaning to every letter.

Renew your mind

East of My Word

Focus on Me

Rest in my Presence

Enter My gates with thanksgiving

Share hope

Hear My still, quiet voice

What a message to receive right before the birthday celebration of our Saviour. Now I have a banner to wave over the next year and a reminder of things that are most important. I have printed this word out and put it on my bathroom mirror, the fridge, in my Bible, and in my journal. I pray that every time I see them they remind me to stop and renew my mind. It’s funny but this one word will hold me accountable to myself and to God. I want to eat of His word every day. I don’t want to attempt another day spiritually starved. I want my focus to always be on Jesus and how I long to rest in His Presence. It reminds me to be thankful and to look for ways to share the hope He gives to all of us. Lastly it reminds me of the one thing I find so difficult - hear my still, quiet voice. You see, I have to slow down and be still in order to hear Him.

The most important message I saw in this acronym was that God wants a relationship with me. Nothing here talks about how much I know but it’s about the time I spend with Him. He’s not asking me for hours out of my day…at least not yet…but He wants the first and last thoughts I have to be with Him. He has REFRESHed me and I pray this month He will REFRESH you as well.