Seasons of Fruitfulness

In my devotion time this week I read a good devotion by Chris Tiegreen called “Seasons of Fruitfulness”. It was a good read and spoke to my heart. I thought I would share it with you!

 

“Seasons of Fruitfulness”

“The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”  Matthew 13:23

No Christian is fruitful all the time. There are silent years of Paul, Peter – even Jesus – about which we know nothing, years of pruning or preparation before a time of abundance. This is the scriptural pattern of God’s work in our lives as laid out in Psalms 1: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season.”  So we must not worry in our latent times.

On the other side of this coin is that every Christian is fruitful some of the time if the enemies of the seed are dealt with properly. A persistent and consistent lack of fruit should prompt a believer to ask these questions: What is hindering God’s fruitfulness in my life? Is there anything I’m tolerating that stands in the way of God’s full work in me?

Jesus’ parable of the sower in Mathew 13 (also Mark 4 and Luke 8) indicates three categories of enemies to the sower’s work: the evil one (v. 19) trouble and persecution (v. 21) and the worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth (v. 22). The Christian who does not actively stand firm in the opposition to any of these will bear the consequences of fruitlessness and miss out on the joy of God’s bounty.

Do you struggle with a discrepancy between the portrayal of the Christian life in Scripture – abundant life and rivers of living water – and your actual experience? You may be in a preparation phase, or there may be a hindrance. How can you know?

Fruitless periods in a Christian’s life call for discernment – a quality often lacking in such times. But God promises wisdom to those who ask. If we seek His guidance and prepare to accept whatever He might say, He will show us what hinders His work in our lives.

A.W. Tozer wrote – “Work designed for eternity can only be done by the eternal Spirit.”

Butch Stuckert
Elder

Power of Multiplication

If you were offered the choice of a $10 million dollar immediate payout or a penny that would double in value every day for the period of two months, which would you choose? The $10 million ‘seems’ like it would be the obvious choice, but is it?

At the one week point, the person who opted for the doubling penny option would only have 64 cents in his pocket…but if you allow the multiplication to continue, at the end of the first month, that 64 cents will have multiplied to $21,474,836. At the end of the two months (62 days)…a staggering $461,168,601,842,739!

A couple months ago, Spring Lake leadership introduced us to an exciting new vision statement for our local church body:  Spring Lake Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will develop and equip tens of thousands of people to be Christ followers and disciplemakers, resulting in an enduring legacy of God’s love in Northeastern Wisconsin and the world.

The ‘tens of thousands of people’ caused many of us to pause for a minute. Is this an unrealistic number? Is this something that really could be accomplished through us? My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do a little number crunching. My hope is that you find the following possible scenario encouraging.

Average attendance is higher than this each weekend, but let’s be a bit conservative and start with the number of 800. These 800 Spring Lakers, empowered by the Holy Spirit, faithfully and courageously reach out within their sphere of influence throughout the year. By the end of the year, the 800 have each been blessed to be influential in at least one person’s life and the number has doubled to 1600. If this pattern would continue, by the end of 6 years, there would be more than 50,000 new Christ followers and disciplemakers!

Before his ascension, Jesus shared these words with his eleven disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28: 18-20) These eleven, empowered by the Holy Spirit, obeyed these commands of Christ. As a result of their faithfulness and of others throughout the generations that have followed, today there are over 1.9 billion people who profess to be Christians. This is an amazing example of the power of multiplication!

The tough reality is that there are still billions represented in Green Bay, Northeast Wisconsin and in the world who are living without the hope we have as Christ followers. In fact, approximately 40% of the world population has very limited or no access to the gospel.

Spring Lake Church, this is our time, our chance to invest and be multipliers together. Will you join us?

Kristin
Outreach Director

What is an Elephant Like?

Check out this video to hear Pastor Ryan talk about blind men and elephants!

7 Hebrew Words for Praise: Introduction

Over the past few months I’ve been learning about the Hebrew words for praise. They are incredibly descriptive and full of emotion. The best part; only two refer to music as praise. The other five are all about our lifestyle. GOOD NEWS! You don’t have to be a musician to praise God! Over the course of the next year I’ll be talking about each word individually, and will try my best to live all them all out.

Man was created to worship. 2 Corinthians 5:17 describes the man who has accepted Christ as “a new creation.” We are now living a new life in Christ Jesus. This is the only time since the creation of the world that God has created new life. We are a part of that. This is our identity. And we share this new identity with all believers.

Our purpose in this new identity is to glorify God by ascribing praise to Him. This praise isn’t a song, it’s a lifestyle of worship. It’s being thankful, lifting our hands, shouting his name, dancing, and more. Does that sound reverent? To me, it sounds reckless. The goal is that worship isn’t just a mind-game or some ambiguous heart exercise; worship involves our entire being – spirit, mind, and body.

If anything, worship is not reserved and timid. 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds us that God isn’t interested in timidity; our spirit is “full of power, love, and self-discipline.” Out of all seven Hebrew words for praise, only one has a reverent solemnness to it. Biblical worship is vibrant and exciting. When was the last time you felt that your worship of God was vibrant and exciting?

Let’s go on this journey together. Let us make an effort to revitalize our worship, in the most biblical way.

Have a great day,

Brady

Bucket List

Yahoo! Summer is here!  What is on your summer schedule?  Our family schedule typically included swimming lessons at the local pool, maybe a summer school class for the kids, a grad class for my husband and camp. Joe and I spent summers before we were married working at camp, and continued that for years after we got married and had kids. We still spend a couple weeks in the summer volunteering at Bible Camp.  It was a great way for our kids to have the camp experience and have college students pouring into them.

 

I never did a summer bucket list- we never really needed to- summers flew by!  We spent time together, and time camping and at camp.  The end of summer would come though and we would say…hmmm meant to go to the Railroad museum- never found the time.  We didn’t go to the dunes at all this year…what happened?  Heritage Hill is always a great place when we had visitors or grandma and grandpa came, why didn’t we go ourselves? I tend to have the mindset of “we’ll do that later”. But “later” never comes. Summer is over and in reality; my kids are grown and those opportunities are missed.

 

I sometimes wish for a “redo” with my kids.  I feel like I missed so many opportunities to play together; but more importantly, opportunities to pour into them as Christ-followers.  Once again the “I’ll do it later” seeped in; and “later” never came. Fortunately- I work with kids all the time, and I’m a grandma now.  In some ways, I have a chance at that “redo” with the next generation.  I have the kids I work with to be intentional with.  I have my granddaughter to love on and help her to find and follow Jesus, but I can never get a “redo” with my own kids.

 

What’s on your summer bucket list?  Why not think about adding a devotional every night with your kids?  Read through a book of the Bible together?  Read The Chronicles of Narnia and talk about how Aslan and Jesus look the same?  Read Pilgrim’s Progress- I hear it’s a good read…I think I’ll put that one on my bucket list!

 

Have a great summer!