Office Devotions: True Teaching

2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

For Podcast version click here

As far as I am concerned, my wife Evelyn is the best teacher in the world. She’s been a teacher for twenty eight years, so she’s dedicated to her profession. She knows how to motivate children and has dealt with more than her fair share of anxious parents through the years. She understands the need for her students to apply themselves and she tries very hard to encourage them to reach their fullest potential.

It isn’t easy because every student is at a different individual level from all the other students in her class. Evelyn concentrates on the basics – reading, writing, and arithmetic – as well as teaching art, science, and social studies. She has a lot of lessons and material to get through in any given school year. She does her best to help the children to do their utmost in order to prepare them for the next step: Middle School.

I could not do what she does for a full year. I could teach a class for half a day perhaps and squeak through a couple of lessons. I’ve seen her come home with tons of work to mark, and new materials to read, digest, and prepare lessons. Like all true teachers, Evelyn doesn’t do it for the money – it is a special calling. Without teachers like her in our community and across the nation, our children would become ignorant, unskilled, and unemployable. As someone else once wrote: if you can read a book, fill out a form, and work for a living – then thank a teacher.

Teaching is also an important part of Christianity. Without faith teachers, people would make up their own ideas about God and end up believing in anything. Sadly, there’s a trend in today’s churches where people don’t want to accept the old truths or the absolutes of our faith. They want to discover Christ for themselves and shape Him into being the Lord of what they want. Sunday school classes and Bible study groups across the land are diminishing because people are too busy doing other things. They want to put Christ in a convenient box and not be challenged by His ways or words.

All they want to hear is that they are good people, loved by God, and guaranteed everlasting life. Heaven is a given and hell is not real. Resurrection is guaranteed but redemption is not necessary. Confession is good for the soul but contrition is not required. In other words, they want to be accepted by God by rejecting the Cross, Christ’s teaching, and the need to be saved.

That’s not authentic Christianity, that’s post-modern universalism. It’s not Christian teaching; it’s a worldly heresy.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, You were brought into the world to teach us about God. Your words reveal to us the true way to reach God. Your Gospel shows us how to be redeemed and restored to God. Keep us from false teaching and help us to pay attention to Your ways, instead of focusing on our own misconceived, misconstrued, and mistaken ideas. Remind us that no matter how sincere we are about our beliefs, we still can be sincerely wrong. Become our True Teacher and Holy Guide. In Your Sacred Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Office Devotions: Clean Water

Proverbs 11:25 A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.

Our church has a team of four people traveling to Guatemala tomorrow. They’re going on a special mission to find a site in a small village where a clean water well can be established. The team has been in training for months and they’re all excited about providing such a wonderful source of refreshment and health for the local community.

A couple of years ago, we would never have attempted such a mission, but we had a family who came into our church that had been supporting a Guatemalan school in the same region. Their enthusiasm and knowledge became a touchstone of interest for our church people. We started to support the school on a regular basis and then helped to finance sending a college student team for a week’s mission with the village kids.

These were great projects but we also wanted to do something that would have a lasting effect on the whole community. That’s when someone on our mission team was inspired by the Holy Spirit to suggest training an engineering team to build the water well. It would mean that the kids at the school and in the village would have access to clean water, which would diminish the amount of parasites they suffer from, increasing their health, and lengthening their lives.

So the Word of God is fulfilled in a beautiful way. The original church family, who generously gave of their time, talents, and resources to the Guatemalan school, has now refreshed the mission life of our church, which in turn is now refreshing the lives of an entire village. God truly works in mysterious ways!

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we give You thanks for the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in lives of church people. We thank You for motivating generosity and concern, compassion and goodness which helps and saves other people in far off lands. May we always look for opportunities to refresh others in our community and across the world. And may we also know of the life changing refreshment of the Holy Spirit in our congregation. In Your Holy Name, we pray.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Office Devotions: Faithful Foundations

Psalm 11:3 When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Our modern Western Church is facing a dilemma and we are at a turning point in our history. For centuries, Western Christianity has been one of the most dominant forces on the planet. Much of history has been shaped by the ideas, beliefs, and teaching of the Western Church, and our modern civilization would not exist today without it.

The crossroads that we have come to has a lot to do with our foundational beliefs. People no longer apply them in their everyday lives. In fact, we have so “dumbed down” the teachings of the Church that many of our own people would find it difficult to recite the Lord’s Prayer, list the Ten Commandments, or even name all the Twelve Disciples of Jesus. It’s almost as if we’ve given the importance of those sort of things over to the church professionals and so long as they don’t meddle with our individual rights, opinions, or beliefs, we can all live in harmony.

Sadly, that was the condition of the Church before the Reformation. People let their priests hold the keys to salvation and biblical knowledge. Church people tolerated ignorance and illiteracy, placing too much authority into the hierarchy of the church, rather than paying attention to the substance and foundations of the Christian faith.

I have been a pastor for almost 25 years and I would love to say that Christians have become more dedicated, influential, and effective. Sadly, the reverse is more often true: people talk the talk, but really don’t care to walk the talk.

If God allows me to pastor for the next 25 years, then I think I’ve got to work on establishing foundations of faith in the lives of the people I serve. It may not be as exciting as being innovative or creative, but it will have a lasting effect. After all, if the foundations of our faith are being so easily destroyed through our desire to be accepted by the world, then what is the point of being a Christian? To make a difference in the world, we’ve got to be different.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to focus on the foundations of our faith. Give us the grit and determination to follow through on applying our beliefs in our everyday encounters and circumstances. Re-teach us the merits of our faith and put us back on the right track. In Your Holy Name, we earnestly pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment about today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Office Devotions: Spiritual Downpour

How the outpouring of the Spirit in a church in Knoxville is helping a village in Guatemala get clean water.

Isaiah 32:15 …till the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest.

Podcast version here:

In a couple of weeks, a small team from our church will be visiting a village in Guatemala. The group is on a mission to begin the process of providing a clean water well for the town. It will be based in a school that our church has been supporting for several years. The team members have been specially trained for the project and hopefully within a short time, the villagers will soon be able to drink and wash with clean water.

Clean water will help the children and their families live longer and better lives. It will enable the school to gain extra funds, for the locals will pay, just like ourselves, for clean water. It should have a remarkable social, medical, and economic impact on the whole community. Not only will the well save lives, it will positively change them.

At the same time as the Guatemalan villagers receive and enjoy their well, our own congregation will be looking for a similar spiritual experience. Our building and campus needs to be renovated, so our people will be called upon in this generation to sacrificially give in order to build a well of God’s Word that will influence, attract, and encourage new Christians in our community for years to come.

We await the coming of the Spirit amongst us with the same excitement and enthusiasm as the men, women, and children of that little Guatemalan village. As they receive the blessings of water, we hope to simultaneously receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to make our church a fertile field of faith for the future.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are the Water of Life and we thank You for allowing us the resources with which we can help a far away village receive the blessing of clean water. At the same time, we praise You for our own challenges and ask that You help us to focus on the spiritual future of our community. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Office Devotions: A New Love

Is love at first sight predestined by God? A story from Scotland.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Podcast version click here:

On top of my church computer, I keep my old KJV Red Lettered edition Bible. It was given to me by my parents way back in 1977. Throughout the years I’ve kept special cards, poems, and bookmarks within its pages. Every now and then I like to open it up and be nostalgically reminded of people, places, and programs from the past.

Today was no exception and as I looked through the Bible, I came across an old type written invitation to a Social dinner sent by my minister. It reads:

Dear Fellow Members,

So happy and successful was our Congregational Dinner last year that the Woman’s Guild had no hesitation in planning another one this session. Again we ask for your support for this Social Occasion of our congregation which is to be held Tuesday 27^th February, 1979 at 7:30p.m. We celebrate 25 years of the united Guild at this time, so this will be an Anniversary Dinner.

That means nothing to you, but it was the genesis of something that changed my life forever. You see at that Social Dinner, the minister introduced me to Miss Evelyn Smith and as I looked into her gorgeous blue eyes for the first time in my life, I instantly fell in love. I knew then that Evelyn would become my wife.

Thirty years have passed and I still cherish that invitation, which is why I keep it in my old Bible. It was the beginning of a new life for me. Without that encounter, I would not be here writing this devotion today. My life would have been so vastly different, so I am thankful that God created something new at that Anniversary Dinner. Whilst everyone else was celebrating 25 years of a Church Guild Union, God was planning an entirely different union.

Perhaps you need something new to begin in your life. Maybe you yearn for a new start, a new place, or a new career. I firmly believe that God loves to create new things in our lives, so this could be the day that a new and rewarding journey begins for you.

Prayer: Lord God, You are the Creator of all things and the Maker of New Life. Your ways are amazing and we are blessed by Your love, guidance, and grace. Thank You for creating new events, new opportunities, and new experiences in our lives. In Jesus’ Name, we expectantly wait and pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Office Devotions: Just Another Belief?

2 Corinthians 6:15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

One of the major battles that Christianity is currently fighting within itself, is a creeping form of universalism. Universalism is a belief that no matter what people believe, God will forgive them, accept them, and bestow all of His eternal blessings upon them. Therefore universalists believe that if you’re Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, or of any other religion on the planet, it’s all the same thing in God’s eyes.

This happens because the world is a much smaller place these days and a cross-fertilization of cultures, beliefs, and traditions is happening all of the time. Rather than accepting Christianity as the absolutely true religion, people want to believe in tolerance, acceptance, and respect. It makes the world a whole lot easier and religion becomes a private pursuit.

The trouble with this is twofold: firstly, it causes people to lose their faith altogether in God, and replaces it with a faith in themselves. Secondly, we forget that Christianity emerged in a world where there were countless Roman, Greek, and Egyptian gods and goddesses. If Christianity was meant to be universalist, its first followers and devotees would never have undergone persecution and death. Rather than profess their sole allegiance to Christ, they would have gladly accepted Caesar as a god, too.

We tend to arrogantly think that just because we want it to be so, then God grants us a divine exemption from following the foundational beliefs in the Christian church. The temptation to be Christian universalists in the past is no different from today’s multi-cultural world. However, Christianity is an absolutist faith, whether we like it or not. Jesus is Lord absolutely, and not co-equally with any other religious leader, figurehead, or deity.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, You are the King of all Creation and the Ruler of the Universe. Whenever we forget that, we are in danger of falling down a slippery slope that will take us away from You and into the morass of a world gone wrong. Remind us constantly of the courage of the First Christians, and help us to avoid the same old temptations of secularism, syncretism, and universalism. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.