alone time

Since it hasn't been as easy to just hop in my Jeep and run around the past couple days, I've been at home more than usual....a lot of alone time and have found I've enjoyed it immensely.  (Well outside the fact that our furnace is only capable of running at about 55 degrees...).

We were so busy over the holidays that it never even entered my mind to make new commitments to the Lord -  New Year's resolutions - so to speak.

That's why I'm thankful we waited to launch our "21 Days of Prayer and Fasting" until February.  You'll be hearing more about that in the coming weeks, we're working to prepare the 'guide booklet'!

I would encourage each of you to prepare now to make time in your day to really commit to being part of this!  Can you imagine the ways God could use Crossroads if we all fully turned our time and focus over to Him??

Shortly after our 21 Days come to an end, we'll also host one of the Community Nights of Prayer on March 12th. All the churches are being asked to consider hosting one of these nights.   This will be a tremendous time of prayer - coming together as the Mansfield community to lift up our leaders, broken community and ministry to the Lord!

Our area of Ohio is now known as one of the worst drug areas in the country - we can't change that alone- but God can when His people come together to make a difference through prayer and showing  the lost the only way to a meaningful life - Jesus Christ!

We know the Savior of the World personally, and it's time to start letting our community know!!

the lost

Recently, perhaps due to a more focused time of prayer with our 21 Days of Prayer & Fasting, I've had an overwhelming burden for the lost.

The thing that keeps coming to my mind is that I hold the cure for everything that makes them hopeless, and still I hesitate to share at times.

I have talked recently to several young adults who are completely hopeless in the pursuit of allowing selfish self-satisfying pornography into their lives, after being raised in amazing Christian homes! The feelings and desires that God gave us to cause us to pursue satisfaction in the context of marriage and daily living our lives properly - have been turned into unsatisfied addiction.

The physical pleasures God taught us to enjoy are the very things destroying their marriages because we do not allow His influence and teachings to form and control them. 

The claims that Chrisianity is too controlling, just a bunch of rules & foolish beliefs for the weak could not be more opposite from the truth!

The ONLY thing available to mankind to brings true freedom and complete peace is faith in Jesus Christ!

THEY instead are the ones in complete bondage when they take good things and turn them into addiction.

Their supposed freedom offers the life-long pursuit of wealth and endless competition - which offers no satisfaction (just look at Hollywood and our prominent business leaders).  Their supposed freedom offers marriages that don't satisfy because they aren't following the Lord together and in many cases are involved in pornography which no human-being can compete with.  I've watched some friends fall into the hidden at-home addiction of having to have a drink thinking a nightcap is harmless. Their supposed freedom includes deceptive friends who offer a good-time "just try it once" drugs that change their lives into complete dependance on substances that need more and more to be satisfied.  And there's that new addiction to electronic devises and phones that never disconnect and Social Media daily criticism that drives teens to suicide.  Everything their supposed freedom offers leads only to complete hopelessness and deep loneliness as the endless search for more and more continues.

Our society is falling apart due to turning their backs on a belief in the Lord.  We MUST tell them of our freedom and hope in HIM!

Easter is a time when people who haven't been to church in years will consider coming.  It's almost like they really believe if they go once a year they're covered.  I heard the other day that if a child doesn't accept the Lord by age 13, they have less than a 4% chance of ever knowing Him!  It's not enough to occasionally bring their kids to church, kids have to see how it affects and changes their lives and how committed they could be as a family!

We know the Savior that offers complete satisfaction, hope and the only way to survive the crushing culture we have around us!

This is a challenge to myself as well to reach out to my neighbors - who knows what struggles go on behind the walls of their homes.  I've traveled around the world to reach others with the Good News of Jesus, but struggle to tell the same story to those around me.  It makes no sense...

May God challenge our hearts and give us resolve to reach others around us with the only Freedom known to mankind!  The news that Jesus not only gave His life for us - but rose again!

my day off - the fast

Our ministry is doing 21 days of prayer and fasting beginning today.

As I prayed for the Lord to reveal to me what He needs me to give up it's been interesting to look at.

What I realized is for me it's more about adding not removing.  It's about practicing disciplines that I've heard about all my life but only dabbled in off and on.  My life often swallows me in it's options and opportunities and I move forward into them without regard to the deepness in Christ I may be sacrificing.

My intent is large but my focus is small.  So I quickly try things and then go on my merry way onto whatever the day holds.

So this morning I'm confessing this to the Lord and entering a time of dedicated focus, eliminating a few distractions for 21 days, reorganizing my eating which includes some elimination, but mostly entering a time I pray is rich in community with Him, and dedicated to Him and focused on Him.

I think this is a brilliant way for Pastor Dave to ask us to start a new chapter at Crossroads together as the body of Christ.  Will you join us?