Keswick Chapel Announces the Message for May 17, 2020
I am the Lead Pastor for the Keswick Chapel ministry of Charlottesville First Church of the Nazarene (CFCN) in Keswick, VA. This is the announcement for the third message in a series called “5 Characteristics of a Christian,” preached by Rev. Norman Shaw for our ministry in the month of May.
His message this week is “Humility.” Rev. Shaw considers this message the cornerstone of the series. You will not want to miss this message! All of his messages for the Keswick Chapel are available on the Facebook page for CFCN at: https://www.facebook.com/cvillenaz/ or on our YouTube channel by searching for Keswick Chapel. Select “Keswick Chapel a Ministry of CFCN”
We release these messages every Saturday morning at 9 am.
walking with me
“I am so thankful for the many “trees” that have stood with me and supported me throughout the years. And I am grateful to be walking this journey of life-
with my husband
my family
and my family in Christ…
and you!” ~Julie Harris
stepping in time we walk in stride thankful you are by my side… with no one else I’d rather be- all is right when you’re walking with me I came home the other day to BOTH tv…
Source: walking with me
Who are the “trees” in your life and mine, the ones we need to reach out to and simply say thank you for being a part of my life? Great or small, each has gifted us with a portion of themselves and contributed to who we are and will become.
For those of us in Christ Jesus, God uses everything in our life to work His out the transformation in us into the likeness of Jesus! Paul told us to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind,…” Romans 12:2. As God uses His word to work this renewal, He also uses brothers and sisters in Christ in this process. In Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
Blessing and Peace Always,
~Robert
I didn’t know what I was missing
“When I finally changed my focus and made walking about spending time with Him– the whole world around me began to look different.” ~Julie Harris
Source: I didn’t know what I was missing
The first gleam of dawn…
“So, stop being so hard on yourself…surrender those thoughts to HIM! It’s a new day to love the Lord and to recognize how much He loves YOU!” ~Julie Harris
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5
The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which shines ever brighter until the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like total darkness. They have no idea what t…
Source: The first gleam of dawn…
O Light of light, shine in!
“We must stop looking down and keep looking forward,” spoke my wise friend! A simple statement, but a profound reminder to keep my eyes fixed on the path ahead, and not the ground.
Source: O Light of light, shine in!
Heart Thoughts – EXPOSED!
“…that we would be in a place where He is able to “hit” all the spots in our hearts and spirits that He longs to minister to, and bring healing and wholeness” (Pastor O).
What follows here is a message given to a dear Pastor friend who being guided by the Holy Spirit shares with us today. My prayer is that as you read the message, that the sweet Holy Spirit will guide you into a deeper walk as you meditate on these words. You will not happen upon these words by accident or happenstance, you are here by the appointment of God and have a choice before you… Read and accept or push aside as not relevant… Having read this far, I pray your heart and mind will remain open and eager to receive!
“For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are.” Hebrews 4:12………”I like to open my Bible and pray, ‘Lord God, let the words leap off the page into my soul, make them vivid, powerful, and fresh to my heart.’ ” Charles Spurgeon
Moving targets are hard to hit. Our flesh is expert in being just that when it comes to the probing, cleansing, freeing word of the Father. It finds endless ways to avoid Him. Pursuits of pleasure. Accumulation of goods. Unending forms of escapism. Busyness, and yes, even “ministry” pursuits done in His name. Anything that can keep us from being perfectly still before Him, allowing Him to search us and “see if there be any hurtful (wicked) way within us.” David asked the Father to do just that. When did we last do so?
Have you ever tried to hold a cat that didn’t want to be held? Near impossible is it not? This is exactly how we can be with Him. When His Holy Spirit starts closing in on us, and what is the truth about us, our squirming, like the cats, grows more and more frantic. There are areas of our lives where we don’t wish to know the truth, where we prefer the lie, the delusion. That’s far more comfortable…..and much safer for our flesh. We don’t want our true motives exposed. Motives that seem so noble on the surface, but at root are centered on ourselves. We can see that in so many of our prayers. Yet how many of them will have ourselves as the main beneficiary if He should answer as we want? How many people’s lives and life situations do we intercede for that in being answered will in the end make our lives better. Difficult mates, children, congregants coming to Christ, surrendering all, being delivered, will result in our lives being made less difficult, and a lot more content, and in ministry, successful. We can pray and seek for many wonderful things with so many impure motives. Yet we can go on deceiving ourselves about it all so long as we keep moving….squirming….avoiding.
We won’t be doing this forever though. Sooner or later, He will pin us down on it all. For all of our sake, I hope its sooner….on this side of eternity, rather than later, when we stand before Him, and everything becomes known. Everything exposed………May His word never cease to “hit the spot” in you and me. Giving life to us, and crushing death within us. Exposed but whole. Exposed but free.
Blessings,
Heart Thoughts – Wineskins
Chris Tiegreen writes, “Do we take the time to ponder which of our own wineskins have attempted to accommodate Jesus and failed?….On what points are we rigid? Where do our expectations lie? Do we insist that Jesus bring about our own vision for the future? Do we try to constrain Him to our church structures? Do we rely on methodology in our ministry? (They)….may be good, but Jesus will not fit. He defies constraint. The Lion of Judah cannot be tamed.”
Jesus said in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases.” We cannot control the wind. Why do we seek to control He who is the Source of the wind? Joubert’s quote is powerful. The less we seek to define Almighty God, the more we may know Him. And the desire of His heart, His greatest desire, is that we know Him. He is a mystery. He says so Himself. But He invites us to enter into His mystery, and behold Him to reveal Himself in its midst. To do that, we have to let go of all of our presumptions about Him. I had a very great friend who has since gone home to Him. One of the favorite things he used to say was that he had an “Oops theology.” As in, “Oops, I guess I was wrong.” Old wineskins can never live in such a theology. Only new ones can. He will never violate the truth and authority of His Word, but we must know that our limited minds cannot begin to understand how deep, high, and wide His truth really is.
I continue to grow older, and my natural skin is losing the soft, flexible feel it once had. Yet it is my fervent hope that the “skin” of my heart remain as tender and pliable as that of a child. How about you? In the spiritual realm, we’re all wineskins. Are we old ones…..or new?
Blessings,
Pastor O
Living for NOW
“live for Now… not yesterday, not tomorrow… NOW!” ~JH
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Matthew 6:34
Source: Living for NOW
What Is Your ALL IN?
God is so cool. Seriously, haven’t you noticed that HE loves to be in the details of our life? Last night in our Bible study we continued a conversation about our “All In’ or full surrender. For context we were discussing Jesus in the garden prior to His arrest and how it was there that Jesus surrendered His all to the Father’s plan. Knowing before hand that He would suffer unimaginable pain and that ultimately His life’s blood for all of humanity! The only thing that would resolve the Father’s requirement for the restoration of mankind back to Himself. Jesus made His commitment in the garden, it was settled.
On the heels of that we have this verse from a devotional this morning:
“After visiting Ephesus and Macedonia, the Apostle Paul got an “ask” from God the Holy Spirit to go on to Jerusalem (Acts 19:21). The Spirit warned him, however: if he went there, he’d be arrested. Paul’s friends begged him not to go. Paul answered: “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13).
We will all come to our time in the garden, some reading this may have already been in the garden. As we discussed last evening, in this life’s journey, we will find ourselves in the garden many times as the Holy Spirit speaks to us about the things that stand in the way of our “ALL IN”. The question is will we trust Him and surrender that which prevents us from being completely emptied of self and open to the fullness of HIM?
Blessing and Peace Always,
~Robert
Life’s Tools
“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty—and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
~Anne Lamott
Amen!
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