Spiritual Growth (Page 3)

Easter is less that 40 days away. In the church world, Easter and Christmas are the two times of the year where those who don’t usually attend church are most open to attending a church service. What usually prevents them from coming? No one asks!  A recent article by Relevant Magazine lists several reasons why we don’t invite our friends to church. These reasons include worlds colliding, feeling ill-equipped to answer their questions,risking the relationship, and church not being relevant…

Most of us have friends we like and friends we don’t (and I’m not even talking about social media).  Wait – friends we don’t like?  Yup.  In fact, this phenomena is so common, it has a name – “Frenemies.”  These are the people who are your friends by association, who you actually don’t like because they do things behind closed doors that only your enemy would do to you. So the question is, why would you keep a friend who…

How many of these first day of school pictures did you see all over Facebook the past few weeks!  I saw tons of them and even though it’s fun to see everyone’s children growing up, it also hits home that it’s the turn of a new school year.  With that comes change in the household.  Some are ready and some are still dragging their feet, holding on to summer.  My household seemed ready this year and are off to a…

When we think of spiritual disciplines, we usually think of work, boring, drudgery. But, when done correctly, spiritual disciplines can bring us great joy and be a great reason for celebration.  In the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, the people had rebuilt the wall and began a time of spiritual renewal. It was during this time that Nehemiah and Ezra called the people to celebrate. “Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were interpreting…

Many times, we talk about advancements, improvements, enhancements as if everything from “the old days” has no value in todays society.  We even use the phrase, “Out with the old and in with the new.” Sometimes this is because we feel we are beyond it. We are too sophisticated now.  We are so much smarter now. But all too often we throw the baby out with the bath water. I believe this to be especially true in the area of…

Most of us who have attended church for awhile have heard the story of Adam and Eve being tempted by the serpent and eating the apple, thus committing the first sin of humanity (Genesis 3).  It’s an important story to know and most of us like to imagine that story in our minds.  But rarely do we take the time to really think about what it teaches us about sin. Sin is Sneaky The serpent told Eve that if she…

Photo copyright 2004 Elaine Baird This past week, we began a new worship series at Ashworth Road entitled “The Lost Art: Recapturing spiritual disciplines that strengthen faith.” We started this with a message about Sabbath, the importance of finding times of rest. In our society, it is not uncommon for us to run ourselves ragged, way past the point of exhaustion, to show our value to an organization, to keep others from showing us up, to provide stuff we think…

Over and over in the New Testament we find Jesus moved with compassion, reaching out, healing, and loving those who were hurting, neglected, or in pain. As followers of Christ, compassion is one trait that should not be lacking in our lives. In 1 John 3:17, we read, “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” (NLT) Recently, I saw a video…

On Wednesday evenings in our adult prayer and Bible study time,  we have been studying the topic of prayer and what happen when God’s people pray. We are now half way through the study, and each week we are challenged to pray more and believe God for more when we pray.  I recently ran across this video that speaks to the real power of prayer in our lives. God desires for his people to pray and delights in answering the…

The word friend has become so complex.  What does it actually mean?  In today’s culture we have work friends we only want to see at work, school friends we only see at school functions, facebook friends we only want to spy on online, and frenemies, those we socially have to pretend to like.  Some people have hundreds of “friends” while others struggle to find a single person they call “friend.”  Essentially, the word has lost all meaning by meaning so…

As we consider religion, Christianity, the Bible, church, it is very easy for us to compartmentalize and reduce all these down to the least common denominator. We never verbalize it, but we sometimes think “What is the least I can do to still be considered a Christian?” For some it boils down even further, “What is the least I have to do to avoid hell when I die?” So we tell ourselves if I read a few Bible verses every…

Growing up as a middle child, I suffered from a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome. What you read about Middle Child Syndrome is very true. We ARE the mistreated, abused, neglected children in every family. And no, you may not contact my mother to confirm what I just said! Every time I felt that I was being treated unfairly as a kid, my parents would respond with the same answer…Well, life’s not fair!  All of us at one time…