Biggar Associated Gospel Church

Which is easier for you, to see and believe or to believe what you cannot see? There are many of us who struggle to believe what we cannot see. We want proof before we will even consider believing in something or someone. But the Bible says to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7) Have you ever thought about what that means or what that would look like? In fact in the whole of Scripture we are actually taught that to walk by faith is really the way to life. In the book of Hebrews  chapter 11 we are given a whole list of men and women who did that very thing. What did they do? They chose to believe God, even when what He was asking them to do or doing Himself that didn’t make sense. We’re told that many of them didn’t even see what was promised to them fulfilled and they still trusted God. How many of us are willing to continue following someone who doesn’t fulfill what they promised? Usually we are quick to point it out when we see that a politician neglecting what they promised. So what was the key for them? Why did they continue to believe God. The writer of Hebrews tells us that they had what I call a “bigger picture mindset”. In other words they understood that life was bigger than just themselves and their circumstances. They not only understood but believed that God was real and that He had a bigger purpose for their life. And not only a bigger purpose but that God held for them a bigger inheritance of meaning, significance and eternity that outweighed anything in this world. Do you believe that? The truth is that most of us get caught up in what we see. Wealth, success, entertainment, happiness, comfort, escape from the struggles of daily life are some of the things that we see and pursue. But they don’t include faith, well not faith in God.  And so they will not satisfy for long and so what then? Jesus gives us the answer when He said when talking to the Samaritan women at the well in John 4 ^“‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”(NIV) The deep satisfaction of our heart and soul that transcends our hurt and pain and fills our every longing is found in Christ and faith in Him. It is a faith that not only fills us in the deepest parts but it leads us to a life of adventure and purpose and meaning as Christ begins to lead us to follow Him and use us to lead others to that same faith that brings life to all who will believe. Will you believe today in the Saviour who you cannot see but is real and alive and wants to fill you overflowing? If you do your life will never be the same!

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With the end of summer here we tend to look back at the joy of the summer and struggle to accept the return to the routine of our life. The excitement of vacations and freedom fade into the sounds of work and school. How do we look to follow Christ in the joy of summer and in the return to routine and busyness? I believe it comes down to priorities. The reality is whatever our priorities are in our busy times we are less likely to strengthen our priorities when it comes to summer and things slowing down. In fact, if you’re like me the opposite happens and we get a whole lot more lax. No longer do we have meals together at the table, no longer do we get up early and the same unfortunately holds true for our relationship with God. And just as our priorities get lax in summer we are that much more likely to not pick them up again when things get busy. So the challenge is to make sure that as we move back into the rat race of our existence let us make sure Christ is our first priority before any thing else jumps onto our schedule.

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Why are so many people, pastors included, asking questions about the church? Is there something wrong? Is there something we don’t know going on within Christ’s body? The realty is in many parts of Canada and the USA that churches are in decline. Instead of seeing the number of people growing, many churches are seeing their numbers grow smaller. Why is this,  is what many of those asking questions about the church are trying to figure out? Unfortunately, it also seems that those that are asking the questions are coming up with many different answers and solutions. So what do we do if we find our church has or is declining? Good question? Perhaps not! Perhaps this question shows us where our thinking has gone wrong. We have become so much about building our church numerically that we have completely missed what God has called us to, make disciples! If there is any question we need to deal with it is the question of what it means to make disciples and how do we begin to do that? Many who do not attend church say that the biggest problem with the church is hypocrisy, if this is true and I think it is more than we would like to admit, than it goes back to the fact that somehow we have missed making deep and abiding disciples of Christ not just church attenders. We need to figure the discipleship thing out and adjust or we’ll find that many of our churches will remain ineffective and perhaps disappear from existence.

Pastor Curtis Klassen

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