Grace by the Stream

This piece tells the story of the children of God who allow themselves to be chained by our own rebellion. We are really free but because we do not see or value our freedom, we chain ourselves. Check out the video and see if you don’t find a sense of freedom at the end.

Awake O’Sleeper from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

I have been thinking about Catalyst. It was a great time in my life last year and I have great expectations for the next one. A time of focus and clarity about how we are designed to live. Life is complicated sometimes and it is good to take a day or two so we can concentrate on what God wants for us. I am working on the concept of meditation and abiding in Him and my prayer is that He will give me His words in my spirit.

Praise God and know that He is in control even in the confusion that the news reports.

Thanks for listening.
Jerry

What a great time!! Worship, prayer and more worship. Singing and praise. It was good. Hope you made it. God was there and so was I. To sing in the house of the Lord. That is the best.

I just read where we as a country are ‘evenly divided’ regarding the war in Iraq. If you look back over the last few years you can see we are ‘evenly divided’ over many things. War, abortion, welfare, workfare, immigration, legalized drugs, taxes, national health care and the list goes on.

It occurs to me that we never get a clear majority in anything anymore. If the voters get out for Obama this fall he will likely win by a point or two and no more. If the GOP gets the vote out then McCain will win and whatever the case the winner will declare a ‘clear mandate’ from the people to do whatever he promised to do or to do whatever he thinks is best for the country and clearly half of the population will disagree. I would say that we all lose if this is the pattern we continue on.

This leads me to a true story about a church I was a member of that faced a similar situation. Faith Missionary Church in Indianapolis faced a crisis. We were land locked, running multiple services and bursting at the seams. We had a problem of too many people and not enough parking, seats, etc. and the battle began.

Half the church wanted to start a sister church and relieve the congestion by taking a few families (maybe 200 people) to another location and start a sister or daughter church. They would call a pastor and gather a worship team and start a church much like the one we had and multiply our effectiveness this way.

The other half wanted to sell the building we had and move to a much bigger site and build a new church that would house all of us together and allow room to expand as we needed to in the future.

Both solutions were discussed at length and every time it came to a vote we were split 50/50. There would be a vote where one side ‘won’ by 1 or 2 votes or the other side ‘won’ by 1 or 2 votes and the leadership wisely recognized that they could not follow either idea because of the close division. It got heated at times and I have to say that we were at risk for a full collapse.

As I recall it now I don’t remember how we arrived at the solution that we did but this is what happened. Since we had to do something or die as a congregation we rented a facility that would handle about 200-250 people comfortably and asked those that wanted to start a new church to plan on going to the north side facility. Plans were made and staff called and we set a date. On that day fully 400 people moved to the new facility. That was about half of the congregation. (funny how that happened) and that was the beginning of the solution. The new church as called Grace Community Church. We were never considered a sister church but I guess in effect we were for a while.

Today both churches exist and are thriving. Grace Community Church has an attendance of about 6000 every Sunday on a 50 acre facility and Faith Missionary Church is a thriving membership of less than 1000 but given the space they have that is at full capacity. Faith Missionary Church started some other sister and daughter churches and those continue but here is my point. We found a solution to what seemed like a no win problem. I believe God orchestrated what we did but it was not something forced on either side. It was a mutual agreement to disagree and one if the best church ‘splits’ I was ever privileged to experience.

We need to focus on our country that way today. There has to be a solution and the constant bickering is not going to solve it. It is not about right and left or right and wrong. It is about freedom and liberty. It is about caring for the other side more than you care for yourself. As a believer in Christ it is not about ‘thou shalt not’ but instead should be Love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul an strength and love your neighbor as yourself. If we get this it will be a better place and maybe it won’t be evenly divided anymore. Are you willing to take the first step?

United we stand. Evenly divided we fall. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

It’s a Good Life.
Jerry Robertson

I hope you all had a great celebration and enjoyed some time with friends and family. Just a reminder that we all need at times is that freedom is NOT free. I suspect everyone who reads this loves our country and all that it brings with it. I sometimes get frustrated that not everyone sees the future the same way I do (yes, that includes my wife Susan :)) but I pray we can all agree that this is the best place on earth to live today. We enjoy more prosperity and wealth than anywhere else.

Yes, gas costs a lot. Food costs a lot. Housing markets are not what they were a few years ago. Politics gets in the way of doing the right thing but we are blessed and I believe blessed by God. I believe God blesses us but he also blesses others and in the end we are all the same and we will all bless God when he finally comes back.

Take a few minutes too make a list of your blessings and get up tomorrow and be thankful for all that you have. Focus on what you have, not what you don’t have. I think your day will go better if you do.

It’s a good life,
Jerry Robertson

John Kennedy said “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.”

And that began what is arguably the single greatest achievement of mankind and launched us into a new era. I have had a thought today that I think could be the next greatest achievement if we want to take it and it looks like we already know enough to get it done in the same sort of time frame as going to the moon. That took 8 years from those words. 

It is not a new thought that I had but one I have had for years. Maybe even before John Kennedy spoke those words. One of the things that we dream about is low cost energy. Abundant, low cost and safe. When I was in school we talked about nuclear energy and being able to run our cars on it. To run our cars on something other than gasoline. I mean, gasoline was expensive. It cost almost $0.25 cents per gallon!!

Ok, here is the thought. We need to perfect a way to run our cars on water. Water. It contains hydrogen and oxygen and I have been doing a little looking on the web about HHO or Browns gas. There is enough anecdotal evidence that would show we already know how to do this on the inventor scale. I have seen what looks like a dune buggy running on this gas. I have seen small engines running on it too. At least it looks like that is the case. Now it appears there are lots of scams out there too but that is to be expected but it appears that we have something that works.

What we need now is unfettered entrepreneurial and engineering expertise to make it a reality. I think it should be possible to make a device that retrofits to vehicles for less than $500 each and allows us to fill our tanks with water and run it for hundreds of miles. I certainly don’t carry the same weight with my words that JFK carried with his but there might be someone out there that does and just maybe they read this and make a statement and we are off to the races.

Can you imagine how strong we would be if we had that sort of technology? Oil prices would be irrelevant and everything would change overnight. Water?! Maybe that is what God intended for us to use anyway. That might explain why our world is 70% water.

Well, that’s the thought and I would love to hear what some of you think. Have a great weekend.

It’s a good life,
Jerry Robertson

I learned something Sunday. In spite of what everyone says about tolerance, I have learned that I don’t have to be tolerant anymore. I don’t have to tolerate anyone that I don’t want to. I don’t have to tolerate homosexuals, smokers, drinkers, gluttons, blasphemers, adulterers, fornicators, illegal immigrants, tax collectors.. oh, wait a minute. I got carried away but the truth is I don’t have to tolerate this list of sinners or any others I don’t want to. I have to love them.

Tolerance is a negative virtue. It means to restrain hostility as in “I will tolerate you”. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be tolerated. I want to be loved and that is what the church is supposed to do. I know I have said this before but there is one thing that only the church can do. We can do lots of things. We can feed the poor but the UN can do that. We can build houses for those that don’t have them but Habitat for Humanity can do that. We can care for the sick but Doctors Without Borders can do that. There are lots of good things we can do that others can do but there is only one thing that we can do that no one else can do. We can give Grace. God’s Grace. We are to be carriers of Grace.

Here is the thing. If we are not loving others instead of tolerating them they will feel tolerated instead of loved. People can feel the difference and I hope this makes you think a bit the next time you are tempted to tolerate instead of love.

It’s a good life!!
Jerry Robertson