Saturday, September 25th, 2010.  9 am – 2:30 pm. (doors open at 8:30 am)

Best selling authors Townsend and Cloud bring fresh stories and examples to help you take control of your life!

• What do I say to someone who wants my time, energy, love or money?
• Can I set limits and still be a loving person?
• What if my boundaries upset other people?

Register now!  Click Here

Hosted right here at LCF, this seminar includes a full day of high class teaching via the big screen, an opportunity to connect with other people and an in-house served lunch.  All for one very affordable price of $25 (if you act now and register before Sept 23rd).

Parents with children are asked to provide their own child care off premises.

It’s that time of the year again. Time for us to gather together after our summer of rest and relaxation (we trust). This year’s celebration will build upon last year’s ideas. This year its all OUTDOORS! (If it is terrible weather we’ll eat and have our service inside).

The basics of the schedule are as follows:

• 10 am – Fun & Fellowship for all ages.
• 11 am – Worship Service
• Noon – Lunch. (Burgers, Corn & Drinks supplied) Potluck Salads & Desserts.
• 1 – 2 pm Wet and crazy games for kids of all ages.

If you want to help out, give us a call and we’ll find you a place.

See ya here.

Have you ever wanted something so badly that the desire for this thing outweighed all common sense? Have you ever squelched that still small uneasy voice on the inside because it contradicted what you wanted? How about ignoring the good advice from people who love you or the “slow down – bridge out ahead!” sign that God put up? Have you ever made an important decision based on what your friends said? Perhaps you’re having a problem with a relationship. You ask your friends what you should do and they tell you to abandon ship when you know you should hang in there. Or perhaps they tell you to hang on when you know you should end it. Their opinion causes you to lean in that direction. It’s easy for friends to give advice when they don’t have to deal with the consequences, and it’s easy for us to receive counsel when it’s what our itching ears want to hear and validates what our flesh wants.

We are experts at making what we want, look like it is God’s will.

How often do well-meaning friends and people of influence in your life, give you good, not in the right timing, counsel? Instead of listening carefully for God’s timing when it comes to decision-making time, we yield more to an audible voice telling us what to do and when especially if we know deep down it’s not right. I know that I have in the past listened to counsel that I knew wasn’t really God’s best, but I thought it achieved my plans better and sooner. The only problem was that I paid dearly for it later when I clearly saw that waiting on and listening to God would have benefitted me far better and kept me from the pain of undoing my “great” plans. Remember that “slow down – bridge out” sign? Sometimes God doesn’t want to keep us from getting to where we want to go; he just wants us to avoid going over the cliff if we’re moving way too fast.

To illustrate: I knew a woman years ago who desperately wanted to get married. She found a man who loved her but she had her doubts over her devotion for him. But because she wanted to be married so badly, she ignored what the Spirit was telling her. She told me that even on her wedding day, she knew in her heart that she should back out and confided in her father who unfortunately was more concerned over appearances and told her that she daren’t humiliate the family; so she went ahead and married him. After two children and a loveless marriage that was full of pain and disappointment she and her husband divorced. The thing that is so sad is that I’m sure God’s plan included marriage for her, as it was already in her heart. She rushed ahead of God’s timing to achieve her plan and everyone lost in the break-up of this relationship. All that pain and heartache didn’t have to occur.

It is so worth it, to wait on God, and obey his voice.

God’s word gives us wonderfully prime examples of this in 1 Samuel 24 and 26, where David is given two key opportunities to become King of Israel ahead of God’s timetable. God had already anointed David to be King, but Saul who had also been anointed by God to be King was currently on the throne. How would God work this out? Obviously Saul had to be taken off the throne as God had also determined to depose him from the throne because of his disobedience.  In these times a King was deposed only if he gave away the throne, died or if he was removed by force. David had been nothing but consistently loyal towards his king, yet Saul relentlessly hunted him down for a long time. This became very tiring and wearing at times as God’s word says. Picture this: David and his men are hiding in a cave, and Saul goes in to relieve himself. Saul is now in mortal danger; David’s men said: (24:4) “This is the day the LORD spoke of when he said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.’” Okay. That was true; God had promised to give David’s enemies into his hands, but was this “the day”? All along David had shown nothing but loyalty to King Saul and now here Saul was, hand-delivered, by himself, alone. Let’s just pause here. Would we not think God was giving him a golden opportunity here?

He crept up behind Saul, and cut off a piece of Saul’s robe, unbeknownst to him. He must have been sorely tempted to end his days as a fugitive. David knew it was a sin to touch God’s anointed. I often wonder if a conflict raged on the inside of him. David had to discern between what God was really allowing here.

It looked so good, but it couldn’t be good, if he had to sin or disobey God to accomplish it!

He was so conscious and hungry for only God’s will, that later he was conscience-stricken that he had even cut Saul’s robe. It sure appeared to be an event from God, and indeed it was, but not for the reasons his men saw. (24:10) In this account we see David handed a prime opportunity by God, but God’s plan wasn’t to kill Saul here, it was to show the whole nation of Israel what David was made of, and that he was ‘not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion.’ (v11) It was also establishing David’s obedience to God. I do not for a second wonder that since God was so grieved over Saul’s disobedience, if He wasn’t putting David to the test and teaching him to hear Him and see if he’d obey before he became king.

How David ultimately became King is a beautifully woven account of Almighty God safely leading his humble yielded servant through many emotional and physical ‘minefields’ to incredible blessings. David was a man after God’s own heart. We need to be the same way. God does use people to give us good counsel, but that counsel should never supersede what God is saying, to us and when we should act. Not everyone has the whole picture. God does. He speaks to our hearts. A wise friend will most likely confirm what God is already telling you to do and when. When I’ve rushed into things that sure looked like were God’s will but weren’t, I paid the price. Since then, learning to wait on God and his timetable has made receiving just that much sweeter. It’s a win/win situation. There is no regret in going with God. If there is, we need to honestly ask ourselves why. Are we about our plan, or His? If you’re struggling with an issue that you are sorely tempted to rush into, a prayer that I pray frequently goes like this:

“Lord, please help me listen and watch ever so carefully, for your agenda, and your agenda, alone.  I want your will: Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. I know that nothing else will satisfy me. Help me to hear your voice and to obey in your timetable.”

The Lord God is only interested in giving us what’s best for us – why do we resist?

Have you ever wandered away from God in your heart but still wanted him handy in case you got into a jam? I have. It’s like a husband/wife relationship that starts out full of joy and intimacy doing things for each other out of devotion, but for one reason or another the relationship greatly cools down and they become cold and distant toward one another, but because they’re still married, they continue to do things for each other, but merely out of obligation thinking that will keep all bases covered. The only thing is, those bases really aren’t being covered, and eventually there will be a breakdown of sorts. The same can be said about our relationship with God.

We are never going to please God with pretence. Ritual will never replace relationship. We are only fooling ourselves if we think that God will move on our behalf as a result of an outward show of Christianity when inside we’re far away.

In 1 Samuel 4, we see a good Old Testament example of this: The Israelites had grown cold towards God. Their moral condition had deteriorated and they had quit honouring God in their midst; they worshipped idols but still wanted God handy when they needed him. They had fallen away from the devotion of their first love and were simply going through the motions mechanically. They now faced war and the army went out to fight the Philistines whereby 4,000 Israelites died. (1 Samuel 4:2) Upon reading this it struck me: If God would allow 4,000 of them to die, he’d have to be extremely serious over why he didn’t save them, wouldn’t you agree?

Okay. You would think they’d have become very solemn about asking God where they missed him. But they didn’t. They asked themselves why they lost: “Why did the Lord bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines?” They didn’t get it. They blamed God and decided it was because the ark of God hadn’t gone with them. They said: “Let us bring the ark….so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.” (v3) Notice they were relying on the ark itself, not the God whose presence went with it. You can just see where their hearts were at. They thought going through the motions would obligate God to help them. The ark had gone out in the past and given them huge victory, so that must have been the problem. So out they went again but this time with the ark, and 30,000 more died and the ark was captured. This was a big deal. God clearly was not acting on their behalf, and was using a megaphone to speak loudly to them.

No amount of procedure could replace devotion, honour, surrender and obedience. Their idolatry dishonoured and disobeyed him; they made their own plans and didn’t bother to consult him in order to obey him. I think this is a really good example of people putting their reliance in a formula instead of in God himself. They figured they were covered and 34,000 slain soldiers later, they realized they weren’t.

So often when our circumstances begin to negatively change, God allows events to occur that he didn’t want to happen in the first place, but will use them to get our attention.

Isn’t this what we do sometimes? We drift away from God and put our devotion on other things instead of him, but still expect God to bless our plans without asking him what and even if we should be doing them. In everything we do he needs to be first in our hearts. In the past when my relationship with my Lord had grown cold, the first evidence was that He was no longer in control – I was, and as a result I began to fall off the path of his best for my life. Israel losing all those men was a result of their moral decay and was supposed to be a wake-up call. They finally understood that God was using this trial to draw his people back into total devotion. This shows just how important our love for him, is to him. God is jealous for our love because he loves us way more! The Israelites remained under the oppression of the Philistines for 20 whole years before they smartened up. (1 Samuel 7:2-4) They mourned and came to Samuel and he basically told them: “if you’re returning to God, prove it”. Again, we see that God doesn’t buy ‘appearances’. They could wail and weep until the cows came home, (with the ark and which actually happened! – 1 Samuel 6:12), but being sorry needed to result in action: repentance meant doing a 180 and going the opposite direction. They repented, tossed out their idols and “served the Lord only”. And you want to know how God delivered them? With a mere show of his power: “…the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against (them) and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.” When God shows up, the enemy leaves.

It’s important to note that God never desired for them to die. We can be very certain he tried to get their attention many other ways before this. If you feel you are successfully ‘doing’ Christianity, that is, performing the outside evidences well, but your heart is far away, I implore you to ponder this: The Lord is very interested in what’s going on inside our hearts, and it won’t take long before we’re faced with a situation that will show both us and God, where we’re at. He allows this because he loves us too much to leave us deceiving ourselves. A good flag to show ourselves where we’re at is this question:

In our trials, do we seek God’s hand, or his face? Are we simply looking to have our situations fixed, or are we returning to our first love?

We are  very excited because at the end of this summer we are traveling to Romania as a team from LCF to come alongside a new church plant and help them reach out to their community.  Europe was once the stronghold of christianity and the sending point for all missionary activity but now its the least christian of all the continents.  The good news is that people with faith in God are being raised up and they are moving out in the power of the Spirit and in entrepreneurial fashion to proclaim the gospel anew.  People like Pastor Radu who we will be working with in Tecuci, Romania.

Our church is working through Next Level International (NLI) to support church planting in Romania.  More than just funding them they have also asked that we send a team.  Pastor Radu would like help in reaching children and in training for their local members.  We have all agreed that this is not a holiday for us, nor simply a visit to another church:  we are going to work.  One solid week at the end of August and into September of full out ministry.

We are currently looking for people who could come alongside and help in one or both of two ways:  Prayer and giving.  We know that doing God’s work will only succeed if it is done in his power.  “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord.” We are looking for people who are willing to pray regularly up until we leave and pray everyday while we are there.  We will e-mail out prayer updates to guide you with any specific needs and of course – testimonies of answered prayers.

We are also looking for some financial partners.  Our total cost will be approximately $12,000 and we are trying fundraise $5,000 of it.   If you would like to partner with us in this and specifically help we would be deeply honoured.

If you have any questions about this trip, any helpful ideas, any words of wisdom, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

A Word about donations:

Rules from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) make it difficult for issuing receipts for donations to individuals.  If you are desiring a tax receipt we ask that you do not specify an individual on a tithing envelope.  The correct designation is “STM” (nothing more and nothing less). The best method for having that money be credited to an individual within this project is to go directly to that person.  Team members have been trained in how to process a donation.  If you wish to give anonymously please contact the church office (604) 946-4430.