Tag: Minister

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday July 30TH 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord + Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.

This morning I’ll be back at my longtime home church in Homestead Florida for the first of 4 out of 5 Sundays through August. It’ll be good to be back with my brothers and sisters of my small church family.

So last #SundayScripture I started something a bit different. I’m taking one of my sermons from a few years ago – and I’m updating it. It’s a refresh and renew of something old.

Once I’m done updating it in its entirety – I plan to preach it to my church family. But this time – you’ll get it first – as it’s being recreated a week at a time here on #SundayScripture.

And now – Part 2 of my updated sermon on “Pray & Believe” – originally preached on Sunday June 16TH 2019:

[CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK]

I remember being asked to pray for the first time in public (out loud) in a small church group setting one day. I got really nervous. My hands started to tremble. I started to sweat. But I knew I couldn’t say “no”. I thought about it, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t say “no”.

I began to talk. It was more like hemming and hawing and stuttering and stalling. What came out of my mouth kind of sort of resembled a prayer. I kind of just repeated what I’d heard others say in a prayer – just in my own simple everyday words. And everyone around me was in agreement, and they said AMEN. I think my brothers and sisters were thinking, “Well Chris is new at all of this, and he’ll get better as time goes on.” Or maybe they were thinking, “Sounds good to me. Good prayer Chris !”

We should encourage one another’s prayers. I’ve heard a lot of powerful prayers here in this place, and at some of our restaurants that we’ve gathered at together in fellowship and food. Each and every one of us is fully capable of saying a prayer that can brighten a day – a prayer that can change a life forever. God blessed us with that gift. We must use it every day. The more we pray – the better we get at it. The more we pray – the more we glorify our living and loving God.

I’ve heard people – church members included (not here – elsewhere) – belittle other people’s praying. I don’t believe that it’s ever productive to question or criticize one’s prayers to God. That’s our intimate dialogue or conversation between us and our God. It’s intimate whether we talk to Him out loud, or quietly. It’s intimate whether we talk to Him with others around, or with no one around. See the Good News is that our God hears us when we yell and scream. He hears us when we talk normally. He hears us when we whisper gently. He hears us when we’re quiet. He hears our thoughts. He’s that powerful. Nobody else in all creation is that powerful. He is God Almighty !

My leaders at that time (when I was learning how to pray – about 16 years ago) made it a point to ask me to lead everyone in prayer on a regular basis – to build-up my courage – to increase my confidence. With time they had me leading prayer for the entire church body at our Sunday morning services. That was back when I was still terrified of speaking in front of groups of people. My God got rid of that fear of public speaking that I once had.

For several years I was part of a small group that met every Saturday morning at our church building in our office area. There were about 5 of us. Sometimes a few more. Sometimes less than that. We met for about an hour-and-a-half to two hours every Saturday morning starting at 9:30. We met for fellowship, and to share Scripture to get closer to God. And then we read all of the prayer requests that our church family had written down at the previous Sunday morning services.

Everyone in attendance at all of our Sunday morning services filled-out what we called “connection cards”. We’d spend about 5 minutes at each service completing these connection cards with all of our current information – name, address, telephone number, E-Mail address, and so on. Down at the bottom of the connection cards there was space for general comments and prayer requests. We read all of those prayer requests out loud on Saturday mornings, and then we prayed for all of them all-together. We also prayed for our Pastor, and our church leaders, and our Sunday morning services that would occur the next morning. We prayed for our homes, our neighborhoods, our city, our county, our state, our nation, and our world. There was a lot of praying on those Saturday mornings. I learned a lot on those Saturday mornings – hanging out with some real prayer warriors.

[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK]

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday July 23RD 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord + Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.

I’m going to do something a bit different starting with this edition of #SundayScripture – and continuing for the next few months. I’m going to take one of my sermons from a few years ago – and update it. It’ll be a refresh and renew of something old. You see my God – your God if you believe and follow – is doing a new thing, and it springs forth.

Once I’m done updating it in its entirety – I plan to preach it to my brothers and sisters of my church family. But this time – you’ll get it first – as it’s being recreated a week at a time here on #SundayScripture.

And now – Part 1 of my updated sermon on “Pray & Believe” – originally preached on Sunday June 16TH 2019:

You know 17 years into this fantastic journey of believing and following our God – I still struggle with prayer. And I think that – if we’re being honest – we all struggle with prayer – no matter how long we’ve been saved.

Prayer is difficult. I know I just prayed before you. It was spontaneous. It was from the heart. It was what the Holy Spirit placed on my heart at that precise moment in time. It sounded like a lot of my prayers. My prayers out loud – standing up here – at the pulpit – they sound very much like my prayers in private – at home – or in my car.

I know that God heard me. I know that God heard all of us – as we prayed together. See – whenever a brother or a sister is up here – or down there – or at the restaurant – or at the dinner table – leading us in prayer – God hears not just the vocal one. God hears each and every one of us – in unison – as one church body. When one leads a prayer, and we’re all bowing our heads together in reverence (or in awe) to God – that means we’re all praying. God hears all of us praying together.

But I struggle with prayer. Sometimes the right words are not there at the right time. Sometimes we just try too hard in praying. We just need to talk to God in our normal everyday talk. Don’t need fancy words. I don’t use fancy words. I don’t know many fancy words. I didn’t do very good (or is it very well ?) in English 9, and 10, and 11, and 12 in high school. But yet I’m a blogger and I’m a preacher, so I must’ve learned something good from those high school classes all of those years ago.

So we just need to plain talk to God. Whatever comes out of our mouth in the spur of the moment. And we all have that capability – as children of God. And God already knows who each and every one of us is, so we don’t need to impress Him with fancy talk. He hears us when we speak. He hears us when we think.

Praying is relatively new for me. I’ve been saved for going on 17 years now. It’ll be 17 years this August. I was not born and raised here, but I was saved and born again here – in Homestead.

You know for the first year or so of this journey for me – I didn’t pray. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to pray. It was because I didn’t know how to pray. I even asked God to teach me how to pray during that first year. I later realized that I was already praying to Him when I asked Him to do that. You see – talking to God – is praying to God.

And really – as I look back upon those early couple of years of salvation – I almost felt unqualified to pray. Back then I thought to myself – who am I to pray to a God I just met ? I relied on other people around me – my brothers and sisters of my church family – who had been saved much longer than me – to pray, and I agreed with everything they prayed, and I AMENed their prayers.

[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK]

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday July 16TH 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord + Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.

Today marks exactly 5 months since I made a purchasing offer with my Real Estate Agent on my new home 185 miles away from my longtime home. It also marks exactly 4 months since I closed on my new home and moved in.

Before this adventure began I envisioned that out of the following three – my neighborhood (a senior community), the Sebring Historical Society, and my church family – that I would be closest to and building relationships with my church family.

That is not the case after 4 months of living here (most of the time).

I am closest with my new friends at the Sebring Historical Society. I’ve spent more time with them (by far) than the other two, and I’ve written about our organization a lot on #TravelThursday.

I am second-closest with my neighbors here in my neighborhood.

Surprisingly – I am least-closest with my church family, and aside from my Pastor (Ben) – I don’t remember anyone’s name. I have to get a refresher each Sunday morning that I’m there. Aside from a handful of Sunday morning services since the start of April – I’ve had no further interaction with my church family. That’s sort of by design. I don’t really want to reveal my ministerial credentials and experience this early – especially since I’m not yet “full-time” (every Sunday morning). I just wish to sit, relax, and absorb God’s Good News with my new brothers and sisters. Eventually – with time – I’ll start to interact and get involved with post-service and midweek activities such as small Bible Study groups.

Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. (Romans 12:4-5 NLT)

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday July 09TH 2023, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord + Savior Jesus Christ. Let us love our neighbor as ourself.

You know one of the advantages of being a long-time blogger on the same platform is that I can go back in history, and read what I wrote way back when, and analyze it, and determine if it stood the test of time and still makes sense today.

15 years ago I was not yet a minster, a preacher, a Pastor. I was still a baby Christian – just under 2 years saved by Christ. I was training for the future – a future that I was not aware of at the time. Look what I wrote right here on this blog exactly 15 years ago this weekend on Sunday July 06TH 2008:

“Temptation is a fact of Life. Recognizing temptation to sin is a gift from God. It is the absolute power of the Holy Spirit in our Life. If we stray from what is right and then blow it then we must acknowledge it and move on. Even when nobody else is looking we must always act like a true follower of Jesus Christ if we claim so. We must not be a follower for a mere 90 minutes on any given Sunday morning, or just when our fellow believers are all around us. It must be always and forever. Our walk with God must match our talk about Him. It’s OK to be angry at one another temporarily. It’s never OK to be sinful. To be sinful is to be tragic.”

I took some good notes from that Sunday morning message on Temptation. I’m not sure what I was thinking near the end there when I wrote that “It’s OK to be angry at one another temporarily.” That sentence seems out-of-place to me today. Maybe I was angry at someone at that time. I don’t remember. I still get angry at people and systems today, but it doesn’t last very long. Anger leads to forgiveness, and all of us need continuous training on forgiveness.

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember – the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. (Colossians 3:13 NLT)

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp