Prayer is, above all, attentiveness.  – Douglas Steere

It is my prayer that in 2023 we will be ever more attentive to the movement of God within and around us.  In the aftermath of the beauty of Christmas, January can become a dark month for many.  The winter chill has the ability to amplify any pain and sorrow that is our reality.  May we all be watchful and careful to see and acknowledge the chill around and about us for this is where we are called out into the lives of others who have not heard and have not known the light of Christ and the warmth of His love for all people. If they have known we are all in need of remembrance.

We must admit that we cannot meet every need nor eliminate pain and sorrow.  We cannot be all things to all people. However, we can be attentive to do what we are able to do and trust ourselves and others to the tender mercy of our God.  We can continue to seek God and follow in the way of Jesus Christ.  It will not be a way of ease but His comfort will be with us and for us in abundance to share with one another.  Wonderful, Counselor, All-Mighty God!

Behold, people of God,

The promise is given!

A cry in the wilderness;

A babe in the night;

A star in the sky

A Savior for the world.

Hear, listen, and see

That the Lord is very near!

Amen and Amen.   

—-from Behold, Pamela C Hawkins

A New Year brings new life to bear for a people of promise….our expectation rests upon our God!!  Alleluia….Amen!

Praise the LORD, all you nations!

Extol him, all you peoples!

For great is his steadfast love toward us,

And the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.

Praise the LORD!    —-Psalm 117

In sure and certain faith with love!

Pastor Deb

It’s an icy start to February and it has me thinking about all of the issues that come with cold.  Some people and things thrive in the cold and some don’t.  Some people like it hot and that is when they are at their best.  Others prefer lukewarm and don’t really care about stimulation one way or the other.  I am reminded of the scripture from Revelation 3 and the message to the Laodicea church, “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 

For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see,  I reprove and discipline those whom I love.  Be earnest, therefore, and repent.  Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.  To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

I am one who slows down in the cold.  I love to sit still, snuggle in and read a book cover to cover.  I love to be still and soak in something new and also remember the things God is teaching me and bringing to bear in my life.  I have come to appreciate both cold and hot. It is the chill, the desire to be warm and to recharge for the next hot movement that helps me to keep connected and productive….moving forward.

Lent, for me, is a season of transitioning.  It is a season of beginning in the cold (at least in the Heartland!) and being willing to admit where I need to warm up and indeed fire up to red hot.  It makes me uncomfortable to think of the church as being lukewarm….mediocre and unstimulating.  It also makes me sad to think of her as cold, unwilling to warm up to the movement of the Spirit, unwilling to open the door to conversations and actions that would be life giving and saving…stimulating.  The thought of being able to accept criticism and correction, thoughts of discipline in love are all intended for our help and our healing and it all begins with being willing to repent…turning to God and opening ourselves up to listen and respond.  We always have need of God and the love that is offered to us in every and all seasons of spiritual temperature. 

Lent is a time of taking our own temperatures and of addressing what is needed to be spiritually well….as well as we can be with God’s help and the helpfulness of our faith family and community.  Together may we grow in earnestness towards God and encouragement of one another!!  Easter is on it’s way…but not yet!!

  Consider leaning into the Lenten times of reflection on Wednesday mornings at 9:00-10:00 beginning March 1.   May it be a time to conquer all that is lukewarm within us!!   Alleluia, Amen!!

With love!

Pastor Deb

The Desert of Compassion is a wilderness where we all journey.  The season of Lent is marked with the acknowledgment that we all struggle, we all fall short, we all are called to humility in the knowledge of our own limitations.  When we recognize our need of God, our inability to travel this life alone, independent from God and one another… our journey to the oasis begins as we turn to God for help and guidance.

   We must learn to have compassion for ourselves and for one another in our desert experiences.  The word compassion is based on the Latin origin: com means together with and passio means suffering with someone.  We feel together our brokenness and turn to the mercy and loving-kindness of our God for healing.  We are called to remembrance by the prophet Ezekiel 11:16, 19-20:

Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to the for a little while in the countries where they have gone….I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them.  Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

Indeed, it is the enabling of God that brings us to the end of ourselves, our senseless wandering and our beginning with the new life that is offered to us by our Creator.  Recreation is the work of our God.  Repentance, turning to God, is our work.  It is often in the desert that we learn to depend upon God to do God’s part and in so doing it becomes easier to do our work.  Our work comes from a love of the One who loves us and cares for us.  Our work is not an obligation but rather a delight as we look to the One who is trustworthy!

Rachel M Srubas offers us this prayer:  God of heaven and earth, may this season of Lent turn me around before I run headlong into danger and regret.  May your loving-kindness soak into me and change me into someone who treats other people as graciously as you treat me.  Amen!

May the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the salvation of Jesus Christ our LORD bless and keep you in the wilderness of life and may you continue to blossom and bloom along the desert  way.  The way of returning to God is always short and the way of rebellion is a long and dreary pathway going nowhere! I pray for you showers of blessing in the month of the lion and the lamb…meekness, the strength and gentleness, for your Lenten vigil. Oasis ahead!!

With love!

Pastor Deb

PS Please pray for the Young Life College spring break trip to St George Island, Florida, March 11-15.  Safety and security in the hands of the LORD!!  Thank you!!

I was reminded of God’s faithfulness in the past and the goodness that I learned in the most needy times of my life, as I traveled the road of The Desert of Compassion during Lent.  I was affirmed in the reality that I have no cause to fear the future for God is with us and for us.  I was convicted of my own worth and witness. I appreciated the reality that I succeed in witness more often than I fall short, when and if I am willing to confess my own weakness in addition to sharing the source of my hope.  I have no excuses for falling short and stumbling along the way, only confessions to make. As I take my own steps on the rocky road of humanity, I have come to know that  I am not a lonely traveler saved by the grace of God alone, but rather I am in the company of beings in need of that same grace.  Salvation is grace necessary and offered for and to all in the person of Jesus Christ. I acknowledge how much I also need the fellowship of believers and receivers of grace through God’s redemptive plans and purposes for all of creation.  I know that I need to listen more intently for the Spirit as I consider the authoritative Word of God in the scriptures.

  I also acknowledge that my struggle is with the practice of the church commending any belief or practice which perpetuates and encourages “misconduct” by fostering human fixes to spiritual problems.   To deny that there is conduct and practice that is not “unacceptable” and not problematic is futility for which there is no fix.   Denial is not healing nor  helpful and is unhealthy to both flesh and spirit.  I found the author Rachel M. Scrubas to speak truth when she wrote:

“The prickly people you’ve encountered on your journey may look downright condemnable.  Like Paul, …. you may find it necessary to condemn behaviors you cannot commend. Notice I say “condemn behaviors.” This is different from condemning behavers.  It’s possible to honor people’s essential dignity while constructively condemning their hurtful actions. This often-thorny differentiation of behaver from the behavior is not to be undertaken carelessly.  But it’s crucial to life in Christ, who teaches his followers to love their enemies.   Loving people does not mean condoning their wrongful acts.  Love does not consist of pretending those who hurt you didn’t.  At its toughest, love includes acknowledging, resisting, and renouncing misconduct.

For the sake of your wholeness, might you now face full-on some scrapes and deeper injuries you sustained getting to this place where you find yourself today?  Telling the truth of what you've been through can lead you to the desert’s oasis—the interior rest area where God’s compassion awaits you.  There, wounds can become scars—injuries not forgotten but graciously, gradually healed.”

I grieve that so many of us live as the walking wounded, numbering and unable or unwilling to forgive offenses. Remaining unhealed results when we actively flame the anger and resentment  which so easily takes root and begins to justify itself when personal offenses and opinions override and obscure the healing accessible to us by returning to the love and mercy of God which unites us. 

If indeed, we believe that God IS love and love is not easily offended, then we must hold ourselves accountable for our determination to attach ourselves and others to our own retaliatory reactions and attitudes which disregard personal accountability and complicity in exaggerating offenses or minimizing them so as to divide and polarize us. Or yet even worse exaggerating or minimizing persons in Christ’s name. Examination of our own personal accountability with honesty before God is key for healing and reconciliation with one another. What better example could we have than Jesus who prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”?

I truly believe that speaking truth in love comes first from fully accepting God’s love for us, just as we are, and trusting that knowing and loving God is the beginning of learning to love ourselves as God has loved us. Repentance is the redemptive purposing of a loving God that leads us where re-creation is both necessary and  possible in the Spirit.  The first commandment is the directive that holds the transformative key to every other commandment and directive of Christ’s witness to us. Love the LORD, your God with all your heart, mind and soul.

  Lord help us to remember, You alone are the One to follow and were sent to direct our paths in the wilderness according to Your way, truth and life. Forgiveness, salvation and not condemnation is Your way! (John 3:17-21)

“If I hold my enemies in contempt, Lord, in your greater mercy than mine, protect them, correct me, and heal us all from the cyclical sickness of sin inflicted and retaliated.  Break the cycle before we break each other.  Amen”  (prayer from The Desert of Compassion)

May the Spirit of the living, dying and rising Christ dwell in us richly according to the cycle of forgiveness God has promised and prayerfully implored us not to break!! He has united us and brought us together as one body of faith. (Ephesians 2:1-22) Remember it is Jesus who has promised, delivered and put fleshly enmity/hostility to death on the cross once and for all. Enmity/ hostility is not to be recreated or resurrected, not acted out in thought, word or deed…forgiveness IS! 

 Lord haste the day when there is no more offense by us, especially in Your name.  May our hostilities and divisions be healed in Your name, in so far as it depends upon us, may we do our part!  

All thanks, praise and glory be to God!  Amen!

Have a very blessed Easter!!

With love,

Pastor Deb

May is a month of recovery for me!  I’m so glad to have my surgery behind me and therapy ahead of me.  The good news is that I had forgotten how painful rotator surgery is.  Lots of sleeping and being still has been good. Now it's on to graduations and anniversary celebrations. 

Fifty years of marriage comes with many stories and lots of love and I’m excited to share this time at CEC.  Thank you for your thoughtfulness!

Our Easter baptisms and new memberships marked our April family month.  Let’s let May be a month of new and renewed friendships.  May it be a month of healing and hope as a springboard to summer vacation and mission projects.  Invite a friend whenever possible and share the good news of God’s love with your friends and neighbors!

Short and sweet!  Prayers and intentional living ahead!

With love!

Pastor Deb

Already June and half way through the year!! How can it be? It has been such an amazing

spring and if it were up to me it could remain cool and not humid all summer long. What a delight it has

been to enjoy the outdoors to work or sit and soak up the best of weather...in my opinion of course! We

spent our honeymoon in the Ozarks of Missouri on the first week of June and it was a disaster. Brian

bruised a kidney doing flips off the diving board and I was so sunburned I could barely move for two

weeks. Our 50th anniversary was much to be desired over the honeymoon!! We can’t thank the

congregation enough for the lovely celebration to be fondly remembered by all of our family. Many

thanks for the memories of May!

Now on to enjoy June!! May all of your Fatherly remembrance be filled with love! Yeah Dads!

We will be wrapping up the Growing Strong in God’s Family study in our Breakers class in June and

hopefully continuing to savor the lessons learned putting the disciplines to work over the summer. We

will begin the second book in the 3 book series, Deeping Your Roots in God’s Family, when we kick off

in the fall. The summer will be a time of reflective sharing on Sunday mornings as we know folks will be

in and out for vacations.

We are already making fall plans for a contemplative prayer group to begin in October, one

Saturday a month for seven months. More info is available for anyone who may be interested in joining

the group for an experience and practice of centering prayer. Let me know if you would like to hear

more about this practice of listening and resting in God.

Please keep the Young Life ministry in your prayers over the summer as folks head out to camp

in mission. Interviews are in process to find a new staff person to replace Brenna Gossett to work with

Lane Freeborn our area director. It is a very exciting time and pivotal in the Young Life College

movement at SEMO. Again, I thank you for your hospitality towards our ministry partners and friends in

Young Life! Keep the MOVAL folks in your prayers also as they seek to reach our young folks with the

love of Jesus.

I would love to hear from you if there are sermon topics you would like me to explore with you. I

am not a mind reader so do not be shy if there are questions God is laying on your hearts or thoughts

that are unresolved and troubling. If you are wondering, know that others will have the same or similar

thoughts. Summer is a great time for reflection and evaluation and I would love to hear from you! The

council will be attempting to find a time in June for reflection and evaluation so let someone know if you

would like to be heard.

Thank you so much to each one of you who keep the faith alive and rejoicing at Christ

Evangelical and beyond! We serve an awesome God and it is a joy to serve with you in eager

anticipation of what each new day will bring. You may have questions and concerns about the future as

to whether or not new life in Christ is a continuing reality and if all things will work out for good in your

own life. You may be asking, What about God’s will for my life: Will He really lead me? Us? Entrust

yourself to the principles in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the LORD with ALL your heart and lean not on

your own understanding; in ALL your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths

straight.” Lord, help us lean in

and grow us in trust together!!

With love.... Pastor Deb

Proverbs 14:34 states, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” When I think of independence I think of all of the things I have been freed from.  It took me a few years to consider independence from sin (unbelief) as the greatest freedom there is!  I guess it takes some experience with the consequences of sin to realize how precious it is that Christ has made the way for us to….let go, of whatever entangles us and go on to the upward call of believing Jesus.  Sin brings us down no doubt and righteousness lifts us up!! What a relief it is to have him to look up to, to know and to follow.  The perfecter of our faith waits for us to depend upon Him to show us the way to honor God, our heavenly Father. (Hebrews 12:2) To believe and obey God is a relief and a resolution.

To remain in “dis-grace” is a miserable place to be.  To cling to our unbelief and the actions that follow is to be enslaved by the issues of the flesh.  A people ruled by flesh, who cannot govern themselves, who have not been born again by the Spirit, will always be fighting a cause and championing a campaign doomed to failure.  The victim knows no victory and finds no solace in their groveling.  Looking for love in all the wrong places is an act of desperation that leads to a dead end. The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)

It would profit a people and a nation to set aside the sin that clings so closely and seek  to honor, truly honor and please God. God who is love. New life is found when we count ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11) May your spirits be lifted up on our national Independence Day and in the month of July. Take time to consider all of the things your faith in Christ has freed you from and drawn you to in sincerity and truth which is the worship we are called to. (John 4:24)

   May the land, the homes, the cities, towns and villages be restored and healed by those whose hearts yearn and burn with the love and light of Christ our King! They will be known by their fruits….their words and their deeds of righteousness which are never a disgrace!  Christ has set us free to fully depend upon God who raises even the dead with power and purpose.  All glory, honor and praise to God whose allegiance faileth never!

May the red blood of sacrifice, the blue of fidelity and the white of purity prevail against all our ills and evils with the love of Christ.  God bless America!!

Pastor Deb

Here we are already looking forward to the  fall season and I hope that we are falling upward!!  Just as some of the trees let go of their dead leaves in the fall we too are constantly learning the lesson of letting go….letting go of whatever stands in our way of living the new life we are called to live in the LORD.  Attitudes, expectations, sin that binds us, people, places and things that we attach to over and above the desire and willingness to please God are naturally released when we seek to please the LORD. Letting go is a growth process that is inevitable and when accepted brings freedom that endures.

Resurrection is a rising to life from all that needs to die in us and overcomes the fear of dying itself.  Looking upward and beyond whatever is released to the blessing that fills the void when we realize that God is always and forever present in the spaces within and outside of us dwelling not as material things but in Spirit is what we must remember.  It is the Spirit that brings us hope and help in letting go of what is not life giving and sustaining to us! 

I want to share with you a passage from I Corinthians 15 from The Message translation for your consideration:

 “I need to emphasize, friends, that our natural, earthy lives don’t in themselves lead us by their very nature into the kingdom of God.  Their very ‘nature’ is to die, so how could they ‘naturally’ end up in the Life kingdom? 

But let me tell you something wonderful, a mystery I’ll probably never fully understand.  We’re not all going to die—but we are all going to be changed.  You hear a blast to end all blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up and blink your eyes—it’s over.  On signal from that trumpet from heaven, the dead will be up and out of their graves, beyond the reach of death, never to die again. At the same moment and in the same way, we’ll all be changed.  In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen:  everything perishable is taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal.  Then the saying will come true: ‘Death swallowed by triumphant Life!  Who got the last word, oh, Death? Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?

It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power.  But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ.  Thank God!

With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground.  And don’t hold back.  Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.”

Fall is a time of planning and living into the next season, a time of preparation for what and who is coming.  I pray that all of us will be intentional and confident about our work together. May we have confidence as we move forward that when we continue to work for the imperishable we will find joy and freedom! Let us keep our sights on the spiritual gifts of God in Christ Jesus that we might be lifted up and not weighed down.  Be fearless and encouraged by God’s Spirit within that never dies and brings LIFE!

Live Life with love, until we meet again!  Pastor Deb