The Word from St. Andrews

Dear St. Andrews Family,   Are you listening?   Last week I encouraged you to “give heart to your road.” Did you?   Because when Israel heard Haggai’s words, they listened—they obeyed. And it was truly a beautiful moment. Their obedience was recorded and we are still talking about it 2500 years later.   When you hear the Bible preached, do you hear it as if it is coming from God’s own mouth? Or is...

Dear St. Andrews Family,   What’s the most important thing in your life?   “Duh, pastor, I know the church answer: Jesus is the most important thing in my life.”   Okay, yeah, of course he is. We all like to claim that. We are generally good people, doing good work in a good place for good reasons. We all love God.   But are you kinda like me? Maybe your everyday “to-do list” doesn’t exactly match...

Dear St. Andrews Family, There is something happening here. I can feel it. Most of you have known it far longer than I have. God’s Spirit is moving in our midst and I can’t wait to see what happens next. If I am right, then our church will cling to one another in unityaround the cross. Our people will marry the church and devote themselves to it. Our faith community will touch others with infectio...

Dear St. Andrews Family, Sometimes I wonder who is driving this car and then people remind me that it’s me. While this may not be a great testament to my confidence and leadership, I think its good that I am reticent to be the driver. I know myself well. I want to be liked. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. I don’t always know what direction we should go next. I don’t think this necessarily a pro...

Dear St Andrews family,   It took me 8 years to propose to my wife. It took 3 years for Rebecca. And I still freak out about it a little. I have trouble with commitment. Its scary. I like dating, but marriage concerns me. It means I am 100% in. It means I am totally devoted.   I kinda like dating the church. She is cute. But man does she have some problems. I am not sure I really want to be totall...

Dear Family, There are some really weird “rules” in the Old Testament. It tells me stuff that can't be eaten or worn or planted or read.  I am pretty persuaded that we aren’t meant to be bound by all that stuff, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant. It’s part of a story about what it means for God to get close to us. Leviticus (for instance) has a lot to unpack hermeneutically and I won’t do al...

Dear Family, Few people have friends that they can be themselves with, . . . and that is true even in the church. And yet, the church should be the place where real and vulnerable relationships flourish. I am persuaded that our church should and can be a place of “mystic sweet communion.” A place of welcome and generosity and compassion—a place where everybody knows your name and they’re always gl...

I don’t know what your vision is for this church, but I can pretty much guarantee that my vision will blow yours out of the water. No offense, but you may not be thinking big enough yet. I think the church is so much more than a cool institution of worship and fellowship. I think it’s God’s way to tell everyone on earth and the cosmos itself that He is God and He is worthy. I am excited about this...

Are you excited? In eight days, you will wake up and the smiles will be huge.  You get to stay in your pajamas. You get to eat breakfast together. You get to see him open the gift you worked so hard on.  It is truly a day of great joy. And it should be.   I wonder though, are you excited about what Jesus has done in the world?   How about this? Let’s remember, together, what Jesus did. In the mids...

Dear Family, I am a relatively intelligent guy. I have a few degrees and have been known to use big pretentious words from time to time. You know, when I talk with colleagues, I have no trouble talking about the change from methodological and didactic hermeneutics to the ontological hermeneutics popularized by Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit and the movement from a merely symbolic communication to a mor...

Dear Family, I have been hurt a lot of times. Insulted, punched, ridiculed, patronized, lied about, rejected. But only a couple of times has that pain continued. Only a couple of times has the hurt been so bad that forgiveness is a struggle. But those couple of times still haunt me. I still struggle.  I will bet you know this struggle. Maybe it's only one or two people or maybe it's a host of peop...

Sometimes we need to step back and re-evaluate our lives and the life of the church to make sure we are not letting time be wasted on busy work, frivolous work, or work to prove our self-importance. We also need reassurance in discipleship and reaffirm God's direction in our lives.

The discipline of our discipleship is to help us enjoy our relationship with God.  We are created to value our relationship to God and live in the hope of our relationship to Him.  We are reborn to be Jesus' disciples.

Because of what Jesus did for us and the focus He brings to our service, we are free to find the blessings of serving one another.

To be led by God's commands we should be lead into His love and into Jesus' perseverance.

God forgives us of our confessed sins. This calls us to forgive others. Our forgiveness should empower us to forgive others.

Discipleship is an individual commitment involving actions that lead us to experiencing God’s victories.

Are we spending the patience of God wisely? Every day is an opportunity to know repentance and redirect our lives to holy living closer to Him. This is spending God’s time wisely.

God is outside time and space, but we see in our time is His timeliness, timelessness, and his ability to bring fullness to our time.

Freedom in Christ leads us to share Him with one another in His Body, share Him with those who are lost and find our lives being transformed more and more in His glory.

We live in a secondhand world which needs fathers who have a firsthand faith. Jesus demands a firsthand faith in Him, shared firsthand and benefited firsthand in fellowship with others in Christ.

We can’t be perfect, but Christ makes us perfect. Paul said he would boast about his weaknesses. It is what we do with our imperfections that makes us better for being imperfect. We sometimes give in to our imperfections which keeps us from fulfilling our potential, but our weaknesses are God’s opportunity to give us His strength and others in Christ can help us.