Weekly Words From Randoon …. For the week of 1/13/2008

Welcome aboard one and all!

NEWS FROM SANCTUARY –

Attendance: 111 Offering: $2,464 kids: 5

Upcoming: Saturday January 26^th – HOSPITALITY team forming and we want YOU to help us help people feel at home and included in our wonderful church body. Join us from 9’ish through our hosted lunch. Information? Contact Kate Reynolds kates813@yahoo.com.

If you happen to run into Lisa Etter this week, ask her what’s new.

Also – Big upgrades and changes at the Green Bean.  New sandwich and soup offerings, breakfast is coming, toast is on the way….and a special Sanctuary/Green Bean event to contact our Greenwood Neighborhood is on the calendar for 2/10..the week after the Super Bowl – it includes you eating Green Bean food..so, mark you calendar.

PRAYERS –

God, we thank you that Jeremy Jacobs got a replacement car after losing his beloved Saturn to theft.

Lord, we pray for all of our engaged couples at Sanctuary. Help all of these dear ones take deliberate steps to deepen their relationships as they prepare for their weddings. And, Lord, we thank you for newlyweds like Morgan and Elizabeth and Jake Cristin.

Spirit, thank you for helping Robert remain steady in living in the shelter and we pray that you will help him get his more permanent housing in Shoreline come February.

Jesus, we continue to beg for peace in our world.

REFLECTIONS – on Mark 1:35-39 We Pray

My dearest of friends, John Westfall, once preached a sermon where he informed me and all those gathered that all the devotional and prayer guides in the world are written for morning people. I think he may be right.

Are you a morning person? If you are, bravo. But, I am not….and I don’t have a personal profile for a prayer life that fits very well with much of what I was taught in my early years as a Christian.

But, in spite of not being a morning person, and being a bit different about how I approach prayer, God has met me deeply in my times of solitude and prayer…and God keeps meeting me … and in ever deeper ways and with increased frequency.

Here at Sanctuary, our vision is that we are people who are Making Space for God. We are clearing out obstructions in our hearts, in our relationships and in our world to help God be known in those places.  One of our key values in this church is simply “We Pray.”  It doesn’t matter when and how and where you pray as much as it matters that you do it…and that you do it increasingly.

Let’s take a look at one of my favorite Bible texts about Jesus and the rhythm of prayer.

Mark 1:35-39

 ³⁵ Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. ³⁶ Simon and his companions went to look for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

³⁸ Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” ³⁹ So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

 Some observations:

1. Jesus got up and left the house – Intentionality, not necessarily pre-dawn, is the point here. Jesus set aside intentional time to be in the presence of the Father…to both speak and listen…to loving spend significant time.

2. Jesus went to a place where he could pray. The word describes this as a solitary place.  Again, we see the intentionality here. Jesus goes to a place to pray where he will not be disturbed or deterred. And he finds a place that works for him for prayer. Don’t underestimate the power of  making space sacred. Where is a sacred place for you? In your office at home, in your living room? In your bed?  At a park?  Any number of places might work for you, but be sensitive to where these are. For me, our prayer room at the Sanctuary office is very conducive to both group and personal prayer. I find it easy to pray in that place. Do you have a spot or two?

3. Our personal commitment to connect with God will not necessarily make sense to others. We SHOULD ALWAYS BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE. work calls. friends call. family calls. And, these are important facets of our life. Yet, sometimes they foist themselves as being more important than time with God…and when we listen to these ‘callings’ at the expense of prayer everything suffers as our souls become lean and impoverished.

4. religious people and religious systems already have everything worked out for us and our reluctance to “go along with the program” unquestioned is considered out of step, off-base, non-compliant and generally ill-advised. TAKE HEART if this happens to you. Jesus pioneered it. When I was in college as was sold the “get up 1 hour early and do a quiet time with Bible reading, a journal and a time for prayer following the ACTS patter (adoration, confession of sin, thanksgiving, supplication (prayers for self and others).  This didn’t and still doesn’t work for me. Good grief, you cannot “task” prayer to an extroverted type A person like I have been most of my life.  I had to learn contemplative, listening prayer and get of my task and agenda based life to learn to pray.

Our Take-Away

I am beginning to get the idea that the Biblical notion of building a spiritually based and spiritually prioritized life is upside-down-and-backward from the way we are used to. Anchor Priorities: Private and Public worship. Increase these in your life. If you worship in church only once a month, bring it up to two. If two, bring it to three and so on. Also seek out time and sacred space for your own daily prayer time.  Start slow, but be determined and you will be amazed at what this yields for you.

Prayer is like breathing. In…out. Receive God. Release aspects of self. Listen. Speak. Still yourself.

This is more complex than it sounds. I was reading an interesting story just this Fall. The University of Washington has a soon to be all-world quarterback, name Jake Locker, who was just a freshman this last year.  He does some amazing running on the field and really impresses folks. But, at times he gets a little tired out. Well, guess what? They found out when he is really “getting busy with it” on the  football field – he forgets to breathe!  Are you an all-American breath holder when it comes to prayer? I sure can be…and when I don’t practice the reciprocal in/out pattern of solitude with God I suffer, as do those around me.

If you move down lower into our text for today in Mark, you notice a very powerful example of how prayer centers and directs us. Jesus followers come to him angry.  “Everyone is looking for you!”  They want Jesus to come back to town and continue to minister to the local crowds and stay where they are. Jesus responds, “let’s go somewhere else”. He has a better plan, based on data from a better source: THE FATHER! So, off they go, all through Galilee preaching good news, healing the sick and casting out demons…and the Good News spreads and touches many and spreads from there throughout the world. These anchor priorities raise us to a level of centeredness and discernment that is uncanny – Instead of, “Okay, I now have the energy to go back to town and face the masses who are waiting for me”, Jesus says, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

The solitude dictates the Active Life. The active life flows out of the solitude. Find your time – to pray in solitude. Find your place – to pray in solitude. Find your style – of prayer in solitude. Find your center and freshness of life like you have never known before.

Make it a GREAT week!

Much Love,

Dr. Randy L. Rowland

2854 NW 59th Street

Seattle, WA  98107

USA

206.953.0909

www.sanctuarycrc.org

Welcome to the New Year and 2008’s first edition of the Weekly Words …

NEWS FROM SANCTUARY--

Now Forming: A Green Bean Ministry Team – to work in the Bean and in our community to serve needs. We need volunteer barista’s, care-givers, companions, maintenance people….everyone has a gift to contribute and we need and want you! Contact Lisa Etter letter@sanctuarycrc.org or Hayden Smith hsmith@sanctuarycrc.org to get plugged in.

Interested in a small group? Contact Mark Mohrlang markmohrlang@gmail.com.

This week in Worship…

            Attendance: 101

            Kids: 5

            Offering: $6,654

PRAYERS --

Thank you, Lord, for your healing hand in the lives of several members who have been ill.

Jesus, we continue to pray for peace in our world.

Father, thank you for bringing our many students back safely from Christmas Break.

Holy Spirit, we pray that you would be with the many expectant mothers among us. Keep them safe and strong.

God, we pray for our new church plants out of Sanctuary – for Dust with Tim and Cote Soerens and for Ben and Cherie Katt with Awake. Lead these leaders and fill them with strength and vision.

Lord, we also thank you for the great support we have received from the Christian Reformed Church over the last four years and we ask that we would be able to give back as we plant new churches and ministries and offer financial support back to our denomination.

NEWS FROM SANCTUARY –

Vocational Beginnings. How do we get our starts? Unlike many of my colleagues in the radio business, I didn’t start out right out of high school or vocational school. I went to college. Worked in college radio on KPLU FM – an awesome Jazz station. Then I worked at a really great church. Then, at age 25, I embarked into radio.

Because I was a little older, I want to make fast tracks. I interviewed several very well known Seattle radio personalities and asked their advice for advancing my career. Here’s what the PROS told me: They told me to take any shift, even part time. They told me to take on any extra assignments. When I finally did get work, I helped to high school football and basketball broadcasts. I worked at a disco – thank God for the return of Rock at the end of the70’s!

AND…Over and over again, I heard, “Look to where all the other guys who have made it got there starts. Go where the did. Do what they did. Follow their path.”

I did just that….wound up in Bellingham at KPUG Radio where everybody and his/or/her brother had work early in their career as a rock-jock…and soon I was on my way. It was only just this week in my meditations and reflection time for today’s message that I realized you and I could very well benefit from the same sort of positive EMULATION from the vocation of JESUS. Where did he start? Where did he go? What was it like? What did he do?

Mark 1:9-15 (ESV). This text offers us a glance –

⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰ And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” ¹² The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³ And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. ¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, ¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

 Let’s synchronize our watches, calendars….and our spirits with JESUS and ALIGN THE BEGINNING OF HIS MINISTRY WITH OUR MINISTRY AS A CHURCH HERE IN GREENWOOD THIS YEAR.  Jesus experiences 4 things in the beginning of his ministry: Baptism, Belovedness, Bedeviling and Belief. Literarily all the B’s are known as an alliteration…And I came up with all four all by myself and without a thesaurus. But, I did get a headache…just a little one…

Baptism: A point of remembering who we are and whose we are. Baptism also means “I’M IN!” It’s an inauguration – an identification with a new direction. Owning the vocation of “Christ Follower” starts with our water baptism and moves forward toward our being “all-in” for Jesus.

Belovedness: A motivation that wells up from in, nourished by the Spirit of God and not the approval of others. “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” You are a beloved daughter or son of God. You play your life to an audience of ONE. We are motivated by the love of God and a desire to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven.

Bedeviled: Doing something good and significant enough to merit resistance from Anti-Gospel forces of all sorts. “¹² The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³ And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.”  You cannot move forward with Christ without the evil one attempting to move you backward or hold you where you are. As you step into line to follow Jesus, expect bedivlment.

Believing: The greatest labor for God of all – to place the full weight of our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our fortunes and our futures on HIM>…

“THE TIME IS FULFILLED, AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND…” The time is fulfilled. There are several Greek words for time, the most prominent of which are chromos and kairos. Chronos time is chronological, measured in minutes, such as on a wathc. Kairos time is: Timeless, god-ordained, sovereignly controlled time. Kairos is “The molten moment” – it’s eternal … and it’s now. It never has been before…and it will never be again. JUMP AT IT TIME! Kairos is the word used by Jesus to describe that the kingdom time is here and now.

This is our NOW … God is for us. God is with us. God is in us. GOD IS PRESENT IN THIS MOMENT AND IN OUR ACTIONS!!  Douglas Hyde (Dedication and Leadership) wrote a well known book after being a major leader in Great Britain’s Communist Party. He had converted to Christianity and was recounting the story of a Chinese Underground Christian leader/pastor to peasant farmers. The Chinese pastor felt his flock was not “getting it” when it came to putting faith in Jesus into action in their lives. Finally, he almost shouted in a sermon: “Look at  your hands! Look at your Hands! God is in your hands” They stared at their hands. They began to smile in the KAIROS moment. THE KINGDOM OF GOD WAS LITERALLY AT HAND…

So…take a minute and look at your hands! The delicate hands of an artist? The strong hands of a physical therapist? The ruddy hands of a carpenter? The shaky hands of a wise but aging person? The well manicured hands of someone with too much time on their hands? Hands that twist and wring themselves in worry and fear? Dirty hands that work the ground? Weak hands like mine that get thought about a lot but not used enough? GOD IS IN YOUR HANDS!

What are those hands of yours going to be up to as you – Live into and out of your baptism? Live into a deep relationship with God where you are daily reminded of your belovedness and motivated by ‘what you mean to God.”? How will your hands deal with temptation and opposition? Are they pure and resolute? And, finally, our hands are a metaphor of our WORK OUTPUT – how is it that your HANDS are gearing up to reflect the BELIEFS and VALUES of your heart and mind in ACTION DEVOTED TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD THAT IS AT HAND?

Now, go out and make it a Great Week!!!

Much Love,

Dr. Randy L. Rowland

2854 NW 59th Street

Seattle, WA  98107

USA

206.953.0909

www.sanctuarycrc.org