Come, Thou Rod of Jesse ...

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

We are right in the heat of the advent season now and as I wait for the Lord's coming I frequently find myself boggled by how utterly lost and in bondage we are to sin. This precious carol describes it so well as it describes our condition under "Satan's tyranny" and mournfully sings about our need to be saved from the very "depths of Hell".

Have you ever felt as if you were bound in an existence full of errors? Struggling under a load of sins piled so high that there is no way that you could climb out from underneath the crushing weight? Have you reached the point that these deadly patterns are so ingrained that you begin to wonder if there is anything left of you outside of what should be discarded.

Welcome to the life of the struggling drug addict. Satan has used substance addiction as an especially powerful way to deaden people's minds to the gospel and bind them with despair and hopelessness. If you know someone who is addicted to a substance, you know that addiction can take a person's "normal" bent for sinful self gratification and magnify it a thousand times. Every dollar of their income quickly becomes absorbed in to perpetuating their habit. Every relationship in their lives becomes a means to an end. Desperately lost, addicts will alienate most of the people who would normally care for them and will instead surround themselves by dealers who benefit from their progress down the path of death.

Drug addiction and substance abuse seems to have an especially tight hold over a higher than normal percentage of people in the Altoona area. Medium sized cities like Altoona tend to attract drug dealers because of their modestly large populations and relatively small police forces. Reliable sources say that approximately 365,000,000 dollars worth of heroin was sold in Blair County alone in 2005.

So, here's the point, addiction is powerful, we should know we all are addicted to sin as fallen beings. BUT addiction is NOT more powerful than the Spirit of the Living God! Consider the following biblical passage ...

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Romans 6:5-11

The only one who can save us from Satan's tyranny is Christ himself. Let's appeal to the "Rod of Jesse" that he might free those who are slaves under the powerful bondage of substance abuse.

Today:

• Pray that Jesus would give men & women the power to reject their sinful addictions and turn to Christ.
• Pray for people who are not addicted that they might be filled with compassion for those who are slaves to this sin.
• Pray that we are all able to see our wrong and our sin as clearly as a drug addict sees his.

Pray for the Lighthouse ...

For many of us getting out of bed and making it to the office on time for work is hard enough, going to a meeting at 7am Saturday morning certainly isn't on our "top ten list"! Nevertheless, that's exactly what 120 to 150 Christian men from the Altoona area do every Saturday morning as they make their way to what they call "The Lighthouse".

What's "The Lighthouse"? Well, I'm glad you asked. The Lighthouse is a unique men's ministry in the Altoona area started by a local business owner name Dick Barr. Here's a clip of their history that I pulled from their website ...

"Back in 1995 Dick Barr, invited a group of Christian men to a Saturday fellowship and Bible Study held in a converted storeroom at his auto electric business. They had joined together for coffee, prayer and a time of teaching. They met around four folding tables and an old sofa and chair at the back of the room. At first there were 10 then 20 then 30 men regularly attending the group. They were rapidly growing beyond the capacity of their meeting space.

So Dick, looked to a piece of land where he was planning to build a house for his retirement. On this site Dick and some friends built a new and larger meeting place. It started out to be an enclosed picnic shelter. However, it was quickly changed into a full building with kitchen and rest room. It became “The Lighthouse Fellowship” because of the addition working lighthouse beacon on its roof).

Later additions to the building included a women’s rest room and storeroom. The front porch was later enclosed to act as a serving area for the coffee and doughnuts. And we are still growing!"

So, why is 130 guys getting together for fellowship and worship so significant? Good question. In many larger city environments you may be able to find men's fellowships and gatherings that are as large or larger than Altoona's "Lighthouse" but here are some reasons that this fellowship is particularly encouraging to me.

• First, The Lighthouse is completely independent of any individual Christian congregation in Altoona. It seems that many widely attended worship & fellowship experiences are promoted by a exceptionally magnetic church congregation.
• Second, The Lighthouse is attended by mostly middle-aged men and OLDER. Many of the "newest, hottest" fellowship and worship experiences are being geared toward a younger crowd while the older generations are either overlooked or unwilling to participate. The fact that the Lighthouse is mostly older gentleman seems very different and very significant.
• Third, The Lighthouse is completely non-denominational. Many who are familiar with the condition of Christianity in the USA know that we are particularly prone to divisions along lines of doctrine & tradition. This spirit is certainly alive and well in Altoona's spiritual climate. However, the Lighthouse has served as an example of how we as a community can rise above that trend.

Consider the following Psalm:

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore."
Psalm 133

If you would like to know more about the Lighthouse Men's Fellowship click here to view their website.

Today:

• Pray that the Lord would bless the Lighthouse in its attempts to bring Christians together.
• Pray that the Word of God would penetrate hearts and that lives would be changed.

Lord we await your advent ...

Could today be the day of His coming?

Getting up at 4am to buy a toaster, sitting in backed up traffic while trying to get to our favorite store, listening to "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" as it seems to play endlessly on at least 15 of the local radio stations ... Yep, we've definitely entered the Christmas season.

Christmas is, by far, the number one gift giving holiday. This makes the short winter days between Thanksgiving and December 25th the most lucrative of the year for retailers ... and Altoona has plenty of retailers. In fact, if there is one thing that Altoona is known for other than the railroad, it's shopping. The Altoona area's large retail district draws consumers from as far as two hours away as they shop for the special family celebrations just around the corner.

I am profoundly thankful for the wonderful retail industry in Altoona. I really think that it's a blessing to the area that many fail to recognize. However, during this time of year I get especially worried as I see the cars packing into the parking lots of the Logan Valley Mall, Logan Town Center and Wal-Mart that we are apt to forget the real & mystical meaning of Christmas. This season of shopping bliss between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the very season that the ancient church has called "Advent".

The Latin word "advenio" literally means "to come". In the traditions of the church, Advent began on the first Sunday after the last day of November and marked the beginning of the liturgical church calendar as the faithful awaited the nativity of the messiah. But for many in the church the season of advent has both the symbolic "waiting" for the nativity and a real "waiting" for the second coming of Christ. Here's an excerpt from an article that was published in "Focus on the Family Magazine" highlighting the similarities in the two kinds of waiting:

"My daughter brought home an interesting craft one day when she was about 4. She had an empty toilet paper roll she'd colored and decorated with stickers. She held it up to her eye, scanned the sky and announced she was looking for Jesus. 'Jesus?' I asked. 'Yes,' she said with absolute confidence. 'He's coming back, and I'm watching for Him.' Her certainty humbled me. Of course I believe that Jesus is coming back, but I don't have my daughter's kind of faith. Not a faith that looks up at the sky to check. Not an expectancy that says today could be the day.

Yet expectancy is precisely what we could have. The Bible pulses with it. In the Old Testament, the Jews watched and prayed for a Savior who would come and make all things right, hoping He would come in their life-time. In the New Testament, the early Christians lived with the firm conviction that Jesus would come again - any day." Focus on the Family Magazine December '07

In a world where the ceramic Santa Clause and the stuffed reindeer are right next to the nativity sets in isle 11, it's easy to start to losing faith. Do we believe that Jesus came to Bethlehem one cold lonely night to become the Savior of the World? Do we believe that he is coming again to Judge the World with his winnowing fork in his hand? How much we believe the first will ultimately determine how much we believe the second ... consider the Apostle's Creed:

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead.He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."

This season of Advent don't be duped into thinking that the fantasy world of Santa Clause and Rudolph the red nosed reindeer are anything like the world of the nativity of Christ. Pray that believers everywhere would truly believe that Christ came the first time as a helpless babe and that he will come a second time to rule the world.

Today:

• Pray that the people of Altoona would remember Christ as the ultimate gift to the world.
• Pray that the Holy Spirit would give our hearts a sense of eager expectation of his "second coming".