This week we are meeting on Sunday at 11 am, and preparing to serve our community on Tuesday 5:30-7 with a special food pantry featuring Thanksgiving meal items. Also welcome to join us on YouTube for this week’s message.
22 November 20 Sunday Message: “In a Big Country”
Call to Worship; Psalm 95:1-7 (Dedicated to our friends Jim and Karen Reynolds)
1 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Invitation, Offering, and Prayer Concerns; Father in Heaven, Lord today we come to you with humble hearts, and soles full of thanks to you for our very being. Lord we pray that you accept our offering of our very selves as we dedicate ourselves to serve you through serving other people. Thank you for all of your gifts of grace, beauty, and the bounty of this wondrous land.
Amen!
Message Reading; Philippians 4:4-8
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Message: “In a Big Country”
Today’s message has a couple of friends of our Church in mind. About three and a half years ago, Karen and Jim Reynolds visited one Sunday. They were flying a 65hpr single engine 1946 Taylorcraft across the country, from Port Townsend Washington to Kitty Hawk North Carolina. Or as Jim’s new book calls it; “From Sea to Shining Sea”. By the way, that’s only 10 horsepower more than my old 69 VW.
The day they visited, God placed me in the Pulpit that Sunday as a backup for our Pastor Karl (who was out of town), guided our church family to attend service (instead of all thing things they could have been doing), and the Lord brought Karen and Jim to our Church for worship. This is where we enjoy just being in God’s family together. Our Worship was followed up by an Ice Cream Social that afternoon where the Lord again gave us the opportunity to enjoy being family together.
This all was possible because our Church family listed to God gently pointing us to worshiping together, Karen Listening to the Spirit, and Jim listening to the Spirit and to Karen. Which meant that instead of flying their low horsepower aircraft through our dangerously high-altitude mountains, freezing with variably unstable air, they attended the house of the Lord.
How true to life that option is for all of us. We can choose to fly through life’s bad unstable inclimate air, or we can enjoy the lift of flight on Wings of Eagles in formation with the better angels of our nature. Establishing friendships that go into eternity, and taking God up on a standing invitation to be with Him and your family in Him.
My initial lesson that I take from Jim and Karen is that God wants us to live, and live life fully. The Lord created beauty beyond our imagination in His Big Country. It will take a lifetime to realize just how limited our imaginations are compared to God’s reality in making this big country, called the creation. And as long as we are in tune with His Holy Spirit, the promptings of His will, and walking (flying) with the Son of God, we will be equipped to push life to the limit in God. In this way we may witness His majesty!
As incredible as their story is and I suggest you read Jim’s book. The incredible; is the day to day norm for those who trust in and then live in the Lord. As I read their story of crossing God’s beautiful country, the words “In a Big Country” kept coming into my mind.
Also, as I thought about just how incredible it is when the Lord places such good people in our lives, I thought about the words I have said in this Sanctuary before. God places the perfect people for you in your life, at just the right time. Not the people you think are perfect, but the ones who really are best for you, and all of this is yours for the taking, enjoying, thanking, and sharing with other people of God so inclined. Bringing us back to our Call to Worship reading, that passage we shared with our friends of God’s awesome horizon sky three some years ago:
Psalm 95
1 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
What a perfect way to construct a prayer!
- Beginning with praise and thanksgiving in music and song.
- Moving on to the facts of God’s majesty and what He has done.
- Then a call for reverential worship before our Maker!
This formula of devotion is available to you with others or privately alone any time of the day, because the Son of God has replaced the middleman, made each of you a minister with a calling, and is listening to you!
It is so important that we make time in our daily lives to take stock of the important things in this walk of ours. This Psalm helps us by reflecting at the ways God uses to reveal His majesty to us. Three ways that God shares Himself with us that come to my mind immediately are in: Nature, Scripture, and Other People
Nature: One only need venture outdoors, or to Google earth to begin to realize the vastness of our world. And as the many people who live in it today, we are blessed to live in this country with the opportunity of freedom of travel. You can go 100 miles from wherever you are and then there you are in a new reality of splendor, in God’s Big Country. Even if you are in New Deli, Cairo, Moscow, or Pendleton Oregon, as you move around your perspective of majesty changes if you are open to a walk with Him.
Scripture: I think at least for me scripture is a great way to start down that road of gratefulness. Psalms 95 reminds me of all the wonders in nature in this land we live in and reminds me that only God could create the distinctive beauty found in every state of this most blessed land of ours. It also reminds me that my worship of God should be a communal expression.
People: Perhaps most importantly our passage in Psalms begins and ends with “let us” sing shout extol (praise) with thanksgiving, will we bow down and kneel, because we are one flock. And yet God has a special one-of-a-kind relationship waiting for you and every other person that is, has ever been or will ever be, that you get to worship with, learn from, and care about.
This is not an all-inclusive list. There are more ways God reaches out to us, it’s your job to start to look for them and to appreciate how God reaches out to touch us. As my Dad would say; whatever trips your trigger”! Scripture, nature, or people, God knows you, knows what combinations work best to reach you, wants to share all three and more with you, if you choose to, and then wants you to share the gift with someone else. Then by sharing with others, you will grow that much more.
On a side note: The difference of our God from the idols out there that people worship: They want everything you have to enslave you into itself. Our God wants everything you have and are; in order to share you with other people as you share Him with them, and in so doing God will gift you more as you learn to give to others more.
All this is possible in God’s Big Country. A land that goes beyond the standard definition in the worldly sense. The Big country of God is wherever you are serving Him in the moment. Here in this Sanctuary, or at 7,000 feet in a Taylorcraft flying at 90 miles an hour (on a wing and a prayer). Wherever you have chosen to listen to him, follow His promptings, bringing light to darkness, replacing emptiness in other people’s hearts with the love of your own self (by praying for and then acting on God’s initiative), you will find yourself in God’s Big Country.
And yet as beautiful this Big Country of God’s is (the universe of creation), we know that it is waiting for something even greater than our mere ability to edify and praise. From Paul’s words to the Roman Church in Romans 8:22 Paul instructs;
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time…
Even without realizing it, all of the creation to include you and me, we, are waiting for the return of our Lord. Who will cleanse and transform all that has been tainted since the fall of man by sin, and is ready, willing, and able to begin that work within each of us today. Continuing in Romans 8: 27-28
…27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
The good life of living in the Lord, through the Spirit is available right now to all who seek the Big Country of God. And here is some Good News of Scripture; after I have chosen to follow the Lord, His Spirit will sustain my decision since “God works Good for those who love Him”. Or as David said in Psalm 23;
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;…
By now hopefully, you are beginning to see that living “In a Big Country” really isn’t the point. It’s not confined to our country or any country but; to living! And living in God’s Big Country, is the question of the moment. And how do I, how can I, make the most of what the Lord is giving me each and every day.
You see, any two of us can experience together things like; a sunset, the majesty of flight, a walk in the moonlight, a family reunion, a birth of a child, or even a Sermon; And not see or feel the same thing, based on where our heart, sole, and mind are. That’s why God has all of those different ways to reach us where we are in life. To remind us how to stay focused in the Big Country of the Lord.
Paul instructs us how to stay on tract in our Faithwalk in the Lord, how to ask for help in that walk, and what to think about to reinforce our desire to walk in the Lord within us. From today’s Message Reading Philippians 4:4-8, Paul writes:
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
God is near indeed. Just look out the window, pick up a Bible, or tell someone they matter to you, and you will see the Spirit of the Lord proclaiming, resonating, and reverberating in and out of our daily lives. Available for our enjoyment and appreciation. Waiting for us to access into this higher stream of being – in God’s Big Country.
It is my hope and prayer for you this week as you find yourselves in this wonderful life in what we call the here and now, that you have the opportunity to travel the Big Country.
Knowing that the Big Country is not Mount Hood in Oregon, or The Dells in Wisconsin, St. Louis’ Arch towering over the Mississippi, Disneyland, the Potomac estuary, Canyonlands or the Grand Canyon, The Appellation Trail, the North Coast of Oahu, or the trail above my house in the beautiful Wasatch Front in Utah.
The Big Country resides in your heart where you host the living Spirit of the Sovereign Lord. In the ultimate Temple you share with God, any time you invite him in. The Spirit that can convert the dinge of Hell’s Kitchen or the darkness of your thoughts, into a panoramic splendor of spiritual growth, and relationships that lead into immortality. Reflecting that it’s not where you are or coming from, but where you can go; to God and His Family. That’s my hope and prayer for all of us on this day the Lord has gifted us. Amen!
Benediction; Based on 23 Psalm
1 May the Lord be your shepherd, and you not want.
2 May He make You lie down in green pastures,
leads you beside still waters,
3 May he restore your soul.
May He guide you on paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 Andeven though you walk
through the darkest valley,
May you not fear evil,
for He will be with you;
His rod and your staff,
May they comfort you.
5 May He prepare a table before you
in the presence of your enemies.
Anoint you head with oil;
your cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness, kindness and love will follow you
all the days of your life,
and may you will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever Amen!