Christ Living and Computers

It was at Midtown / Adamsville Road Church of God, in Elkhart, Indiana, that I wrote my first two books. First was “The Prayer Support System”, a description of the prayer ministry I began in our church when we were located on Baldwin Street in the city of Elkhart. “Let’s Get Down to Basics”, my second book, began as a class for new believers at Midtown (Now Adamsville Road Church of God), and for those not familiar with the Church of God. Both are still in print, but the Prayer Support System supply is running low. If you’re interested in either one, contact me on Facebook or through the Church of God Yearbook.

Carol and I visited Adamsville Road Church of God on Sunday, and it brought back a lot of good memories. They worship now in a new sanctuary and the original sanctuary we helped to build is now a fellowship hall and Sunday school classroom. Many familiar faces are gone, replaced by new faces with warm friendly smiles. Pastor Rob Meckley preached a great sermon and we enjoyed the day tremendously.

 

One of the dear ladies who was not there when we planted the church nor for the twelve and a half years we led the congregation, came to thank me for starting this congregation, almost thirty-five years ago. She (Dianna Berg) said something like this: “You have no idea how many lives you have blessed! Thank you!”

But as I told Dianne, “That’s the joy of serving God and it’s true for all of us who serve him. We never know what great things he accomplishes through our efforts.”

As I think about that I’m reminded of so many times when a kind word, a warm smile, a loving response or a ten-dollar-bill given during a difficult time in life, had life-changing blessings that continued generation after generation throughout time and into eternity.  We do small things and by God’s grace he turns them into awesome accomplishments that we will only fully know in that reunion in eternity.

That visit reminded me of an interesting experience while planting this Elkhart congregation. In the early days of the church plant I was earning some extra money as a substitute teacher and was asked to teach a computer class. It seems impossible now when I spend so much time on a laptop, but at that time I had never touched a computer and I tried to say no to something I wasn’t sure I could do.

 I was told not to worry. All I need do was babysit these high school students. They didn’t expect me to teach them anything.

That was difficult for me to comprehend because I love to teach and I didn’t think I could do the baby-sitting thing, but I needed the money, so I showed up. As I stood in front of a class of about twenty-five students I had a sudden moment of divine inspiration and miracle of miracles, I acted on the impression that I’m sure was a message from God.

I told the students I knew absolutely nothing about computers. I said there was no way I could teach them anything because “Every one of you knows more about computers than I do.” So, I went on to say, “I would like to ask you to teach me. You go ahead with whatever you’re doing and as I walk around the classroom, would you try to teach me something that will help me to better understand computers? This is something I need to learn.”

As you can imagine, the students loved God’s idea and we spent a delightful morning that was for me an unforgettable experience. I hope it was for those students as well. I have no doubt God directed me in that classroom just as much as when I preached to that fledgling congregation. I have no idea how God may have used it in some of those student’s lives. I know what a blessing it was in mine.

One of the students gave me my first introduction to and explanation of computer games. I had never heard of such a strange thing. That young man is probably a millionaire today. I certainly hope so.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

Who is in control?

The Holy Spirit quietly departed. He simply couldn't stand the boredom any longer. But it really didn't matter to those left behind in the sanctuary. The things they wanted to do did not require his assistance.

Oh he wasn't the first to leave. The only difference was that the others left through the door.

The people left behind were bored with each other, but did not have enough faith to believe God’s Holy Spirit was present and available to empower them and their congregation, so they pretended he didn’t exist until they came to believe their own false thinking. But without faith it is impossible to please God.

There was really no reason for the Spirit to remain. Many other churches make the Spirit welcome and allow him to gain victories in their lives for the Kingdom of God. Those churches are alive with ministry and throbbing with a contagious vitality. The power of the Holy Spirit is unleashed in those congregations. But why does it happen in some places and not in others?

The question is—who is in control?

Human control squelches the Spirit and eventually drives him away so we are left with nothing except our own petty plans and our easily attainable goals. On the other hand, loving and eager surrender to God's will by leaders, both clergy and laity, gives the Holy Spirit freedom to do his awesome work in us and in our congregations.

• Freedom to lift up Christ in the lives of his people and, through their exciting witness, in the community.
• Freedom to release the captives from sins of the flesh  and sins of the spirit and microscopic vision.
• Freedom to unleash the power of God to save a needy world.

Adventurous living and personal control do not go together in any area of life and certainly not in the life of the Spirit. We either live in the adventure of Holy Spirit direction or we languish in the boredom of the Spirit's departure.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's "My View from Tanner Creek."

Slaughter of the Innocents

It is difficult to imagine a man like Herod. He was pro­bably one of the cruelest men who ever lived. Because of a pervasive fear someone would take his throne and he would be killed, he was vicious toward any threat, real or imagined. When he heard wise men had come to wor­ship a new Jewish king he called them to his palace to find and destroy the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:13-23) His plot was foiled when God directed the wise men to go home by another route, but Herod devised another plan so vile we can hardly imagine it. He att­em­pted to destroy Jesus by taking the lives of every baby boy born in that part of the world who was under two years of age!

As horrible as that may seem, Herod's evil scheme was far surpassed in horror and blood­shed when the Supreme Court of the United States made it legal for anyone who chose to do so, to destroy their own unborn chil­dren through the practice of legal­ized abortion.

Since then, literally millions of children have had their lives callously snuffed out in hospitals designed to be in­stitu­tions of healing. In hospital mater­nity wards and nur­series throughout the world, doctors struggle to save babies youn­ger and smaller than those being destroyed in legalized abortions!

Abortion by choice is a self-inflicted death-blow to the home. If we can so easily destroy our unborn children, our living ones come next. When “pro-choice” groups first advocated legalized abortion as a means of birth control one reason in its favor was that it would diminish the incidence of child abuse since unwanted children would no longer be born. We don't hear this much anymore because we all know that since the legalization of abortion the incidences of child pornography, child abuse and child molesta­tion have literally skyrocketed upward. When we devalue any person or people, we devalue us all.

Any mother who has ever carried a child to term, any father who eagerly awaits the birth of a child, or any parents who lost an eagerly awaited child by miscarriage, will tell you that at eight months the baby is very much a per­son—a living being with an already developing personality. Thus life (as an individual hu­man being) must begin at conception or somewhere between conception and eight months....or is it seven? Six? Two?

Conception is the only answer that makes sense.

When we claim the unborn child is not human, it is only a small step to saying the helpless child, senior adult, mentally handicapped, or some other less than “perfect” beings are also less than human and they, too, can be exploited. Even as I write this, persons come to my mind in all of these categories and I remind myself they are all perfect just as they are!

When we claim unborn children are somehow less than human and therefore reasonable targets for abortion, we return to the mentality that produced slavery, the persecution and near destruction of the Native American peoples, and the holocaust of Jewish and Gypsy peoples by the Nazis. When we want to do a really evil thing to an­other human being we always seem to rationalize it by pretending they are not human, or, are somehow sub-human.

Someday history will look back on the abortion massacre of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the same revulsion with which we remember these other self-inflicted plagues of humanity.

On this January while we recognize the sanctity of human life, I know some of you who read this may have been deluded by the abortionists and agreed to a procedure for yourself, a loved one, or perhaps for unknown persons in an abortion mill. That agreement now leaves an ache in your heart that seemingly cannot be healed. I assure you Jesus Christ can heal your aching heart. He loves you and will bring grace and peace if you will surrender the pain to him. The Bible tells us there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) so I urge you to trust him for complete healing.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

When it is God’s Will for us to Suffer

Sometimes it is God’s will for us to suffer. I know we don’t like to hear that, but it is  true.

Peter wrote (I Peter 4:19) "So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good." I believe this makes it clear that it is sometimes God's will for us to suffer. Does this mean God is a sadistic God who enjoys seeing his creation suffer? Not at all, but in the same way that we sometimes need to suffer in order to accomplish something in life there are times when God knows his will cannot be done except through suffering. The question is who will do the suffering?

I think Peter was saying if that is what God wants from us, then we should be willing to do it. It doesn't mean, however, that God asks us to suffer gratuitously, or for no reason, just for some sadistic satisfaction. When God asks us to suffer, be sure he has a reason and his grace is sufficient for us to be victorious. The gift of grace is a small price for the suffering and who knows, the accomplishments of our sufferings may eventually become the greatest joy of our lives.

Some time ago I met a gentleman who was a recent convert to Christ. He said the thing that brought him to Christ was observing a co-worker who was going through a very difficult time in life. She had such a beautiful attitude and showed such amazing grace in the midst of such a horrendous time that he finally had to ask, “How do you do it?”

She told him it was Jesus—that his grace gave her the strength she needed, not only to go through the suffering, but to do her best to be like Jesus in her attitude. It took a while for him to believe on his own, but he said there was no doubt that the way she dealt with her suffering was what brought him to Christ.

If God had something he needed you to do in order to accomplish something good for his kingdom would you be willing to do it? If so, then you are suffering according to God’s will.

If an unbeliever causes persons to suffer because they are Christians, that is probably not God’s will, but it is God’s will for us to suffer in a Christ-like way. Such suffering will provide evidence the Holy Spirit can use to touch the heart of the unbeliever and perhaps bring him or her to a personal relationship with Christ.

Remember also that Jesus said, “I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33^(NIV)) I believe Jesus was saying we will sometimes have to suffer. However, he was assuring us we will never suffer alone as long as we trust in him. He is with us. And we will overcome through the marvelous power of the indwelling Christ.

Jesus is a perfect example—if he had not been willing to suffer for us we would not have salvation. It was God's will for Jesus to suffer in order that the world might be saved. Jesus was willing to suffer—leaving the wonders of heaven and the glorious presence of God, the Father, and coming to a primitive, poverty stricken earth in order to bring us salvation and the awesome privilege of living every moment of our lives with the living Christ indwelling us so that wherever we go and whatever we do, his wonderful presence can be revealed by his Holy Spirit living in us.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

When God says “No”

We can get some real junk on the internet and we do have to watch what we watch and read, but we can also find great wisdom. It’s just a medium, a network, and its value to each person is in how we and our friends use it. Recently I saw a post shared first by Nirmal Patrick, then by Robert Fry. It said God’s “no” is not a rejection, but a redirection. Since I’m always looking for something to write about, I decided to follow up on this bit of wisdom with some thoughts of my own.

We all know God sometimes says “no” to our fervent prayers. People are not healed, and sometimes die. We don’t get the job. We don’t sell the home (or buy the one we wanted). There are all sorts of prayers that are answered by God with a firm and definite “no”. Why would a loving God do something like that?

Really, you already know the answer—because He loves us. God, like any other loving parent, knows that sometimes he must say “no” to our prayers. Our difficulty is that we often don’t recognize this as love. We think if God loved us he would do what we want. But deep down in our hearts we know that isn’t true—especially if we’re parents—sometimes love demands a negative response.

If God says “no” it is only because he knows something we don’t know. If we knew as much about the situation as God knows, or had the wisdom of God, we wouldn’t have asked for it in the first place. If we could see into the future the way God sees we wouldn’t want the kind of future our misinformed prayers would bring.

It all boils down to faith. Do we trust God enough to accept his “no” with as much praise and thanksgiving as we do when He says “yes”? Sometimes faith is not about believing there is a God, as much as it is about trusting in the kind of God he is. He knows everything about you and me—including our futures and he knows what is really best for us. He not only knows us, he cares about our future state. He loves us unconditionally and understanding that we don’t have the foresight and wisdom he has, means he sometimes must forego the joy he would find in always doing what we want—because he knows if we knew all that he knows, we wouldn’t want it either. Faith in God keeps us strong when the trials of life come upon us, as they surely will. The short term answers

we would choose are not always best for life and/or eternity and God always thinks with that kind of view.

So when God says “no” remember his “no” is just as good as his ”yes” and just as much a sign of His unconditional love.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

Legacy of a Praying Saint

First Church of God in St Joseph, Michigan, just lost a great saint in our prayer ministry with the recent death of Catherine Mommany. Her funeral was today. I know she is happy to be with her beloved husband and a daughter, both who preceded her, but her children who remain, the rest of her family, and all her many friends will miss her and her extensive ministry of fervent prayer. 

Andrea wrote on Facebook, “She was one of the people who prayed for me that i come to Christ. I will be forever thankful to and for her. She was a pillar of the Church. We will dearly dearly miss her!!! I loved her calm sweet smile. She was always the first one at prayer before service on Sundays. O man what am i gonna do without her??” 

Actually Catherine prayed for all of us—even you who didn’t know her. She prayed for all the saints, as the Bible teaches we should (Ephesians 6:18) and she prayed for all the lost people on earth, as Jesus taught us to do in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10). That may seem like too great a scope for one person to pray, but Catherine knew it wasn’t too big for God.

And the effects of Catherine’s prayers will continue. Her work isn’t done until all of time is done because the influence of her godly life will continue to grow in the lives of those she has prayed with and for until the end of time. 

Goodnight Catherine. We’ll see you in the morning. Today in the service Pastor Confer gave us your message about heaven—“Be there!” Even though you’ve been promoted to glory, your prayers are still working to accomplish God’s will here on earth. And more people will be there because of your influence. 

Catherine didn’t have a computer on which to read my blog, but she always read it and encouraged me because another reader, our good friend Shirley Zick, would read it online and then print it off for Catherine to read. What a wonderful friend! Thank you Shirley! Catherine so appreciated your kindness and I treasure you as a friend and reader. 

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

Passion for Paraguay: The Kiss from Heaven

Norberto and Julie Kurrle are on mission in Paraguay where they lead a ministry to train pastors and churches for growth and outreach. This blog post tells about one of their prayer supporters who recently died of caner and the loss they felt. It is a perfect example of my last blog about laypeople who serve the Lord faithfully at home and work--we are all ministers and missionaries when we fully surrender, then follow God's leading. Click on the link below if you want to meet some really neat people.


Passion for Paraguay: The Kiss from Heaven

Serving God in the Marketplace

When we talk about missionaries we usually think in terms of people who are sent out by a church, church group, or other type of mission-sending agency. But since the early days of the church God has always worked most powerfully through people in their normal work-a-day world. Understand, I believe very much in the concept of missions as we normally think of it. Our family spent a year and a half in East Africa as missionaries for the Church of God (Anderson, IN). We were assigned to Tanzania and that was our primary field of emphasis, but we also lived in Kenya while studying Swahili at the Church of the Province of Kenya guesthouse. I believe in organized, planned, missionary sending ministries. We give our tithes and offerings to make that possible and I hope you do too. The spread of the Gospel throughout the earth depends on our doing this and doing it well and it is the directive of Christ that we do so.

However, I am also convinced that the greatest missionary impact is in the lives of lay people who serve God consistently, day after day in the marketplace of life—the schools, the factories, the retail stores, and every other place you can imagine where God’s people go to earn a living for themselves and their families. There is nothing as life-changing for a non-believer as to see a godly person live a Christ-like life in all the various experiences of the work-a-day world. They see them face tragedy and loss with a grace that is incomprehensible. They see them have fun with no need to get drunk or take recreational drugs. They see Christians get angry without sin. In all these normal life situations, they wonder how they do it. Sometimes they ask.  When the Christian identifies God—Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit—as the source of their strength it is the most powerful witness anyone can ever see. As I said before, it is life-changing!

It is sort of like prayer. Prayer meetings at church are good and we should have them, but even more powerful is for people to “pray without ceasing” by living our lives in the presence of God so that every moment of life is a prayer. Much of the time they are just fleeting prayers “Lord help me!” Or “God give me wisdom.” “Lord what should I say?” “How should I answer?” or, “How do I solve this work or life problem?” or “Thank you Lord for this beautiful day!” And there needs to be those longer personal times alone with God when we spend time in private prayer. But really every moment of every day is a prayer for people who are fully surrendered to God.

In the same way, when we live as Christ-like persons in our work places we are the real missionaries. If you are a salesman, or a janitor, or a stay-at-home mom—a business executive, a police officer or retail clerk—any work that benefits people and somehow makes the world a better place, it can also be a ministry and a mission if it is dedicated to God. A pastor, missionary, or any other ministry professional is no more holy to God than lay persons who serve God as best they can in all the areas of their lives. Any work we do is a ministry or a mission when it helps people and is dedicated to God.

So I praise God for your ministry and your mission! I hope you also give God praise and thankfulness for using you as a … whatever your place of mission happens to be. Being a missionary to a school as a teacher or principle or janitor is just as important to God as being a missionary to Tanzania or Kenya or anywhere else.

I'm Rick Blumenberg . . . and that's My View from Tanner Creek.