Death Into Life -- by Linden Malki

"You are all dead men!" was the thundering message from a speaker at a conference I attended several years ago. We have to be willing to surrender our human, sinful lives to God's eternal destiny for us. This is perhaps the hardest part of facing God's truth: that we, in our own strength, cannot be the people we were created to be. I am becoming more convinced each day that we have to be willing to let go of anything that is not fit for the presence of God. In Romans 6, St Paul tells us that when we are baptised in His Name, we die with Christ Jesus and our old lives die with Him. And if we have truly died to our sins, we need to bury them. It is too easy to let them creep back into our lives, stumbling blocks that pull us backwards.

But look at the end of the story! Jesus died; our sins died with Him. But what looked at the time as an end was truly a beginning of something new. "We were buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."* Look at how the glory of the resurrection blows away the sadness of death! We are not called to look backwards, but with St Paul, forgetting what is past and straining forward to what is ahead, to press on to win the prize for which we are called Heavenward in Christ Jesus.** He has told us that He is the Resurrection and the Life; that He came so that we can have Life and have it abundantly!

* Romans 6:4
** Philippians 3:13-14

When you hear the same thing three times! By Pastor Paul

When I hear something once it might slip by.
When I hear something twice I pay attention.
When I hear it three times in a row I fully engage!

Last week I was fully engaged three times by God's Word!

On Sunday our missionary Michael Weiss and I stood in the parking lot of the Elks Lodge prior to worship.  As we talked, Michael sensed that God was leading him to change the message and share about Gideon.

On Wednesday evening Karen and I taught our Life Group Kids Slot.  The material was several weeks behind because of unavoidable circumstances.  The lesson was on Gideon.

And on Wednesday, when Karen went to do her devotions... you guessed it... Gideon!

So what is the message?

Gideon was hiding under the ground when God called him a mighty warrior.  Gideon raised up 32,000 soldiers, God sent 31,700 of them home.  When three hundred Israeli's beat the massive forces of Midian it was for one reason!  God wanted to get the glory!

As NorthPoint prays about selling our Sierra Way property and buying 764 Inland Center Drive it is easy to connect us with the Gideon story.  On Easter Sunday several years ago there were 650 people.  This past Easter there were 100ish in the parking lot at Castaways Restaurant.  Before the financial collapse of 2010 there were 350 active people.  Today there are around 100 in Life Groups and 75 in Celebration.

So what is the point?  Eight years ago I was talking about moving NorthPoint down near the 215 fwy.  Eight years ago I stood in the Sierra Way parking lot and told God that "if something is going to happen here He will need to do it with His Spirit."  Now, eight years later, The Way is rocking the North End on the Sierra Way property, and NorthPoint is looking at a property one block off the 215 freeway!

Whatever happens next... you can be certain of one thing!
We did not do it and God will get the glory!

I can't wait to see what God does next,
Paul

A Mission in Music by Linden Malki

There were pilgrims from all over the world in the Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. The street outside was crowded with tour buses, and you could hear a babel of languages. There was a solid ring of people all around the edge of the main worship area. During a lull in the conversations, someone began singing "He is Lord". Immediately everyone in the room picked it up, with different accents and even different languages, but totally together. It ended with a total reverence, as everyone slowly, in silence, faded out the doors. This was 25 years ago, but I will never forget the power of the very simple music to bring this wildly diverse group of people together in worship and acknowledge of our common Heavenly Father.

We in the church have an incredibly rich heritage of music, all grown out of experiences of God's working in the lives of many people over not just centuries but millenia. We have a Scriptural record of a song praising God in Exodus 15, and it appears to have been something that was already part of worship. The Bible mentions singing or song in at least 254 places! We have the whole book of Psalms, that gives amazing spiritual wisdom in songs.  Music has always been a part of church worship, and it has spread outside of churches. Some of the greatest music ever composed has been for the glory of God.  Today we can find praise and worship music on any radio dial. It is hard to imagine worshipping God without music.

Music has always been a part of my own spiritual life. My parents met at a church choir party. I've been part of choirs, praise bands, children's music and musical drama. I am priviledged to be part of the NorthPoint Choir Team Life Group, and we have a mission for the music we sing. For three years now, we have been going out to a variety of care facilities all over our Valley, and presenting a program of traditional hymns, country gospel and traditional favorites for people who can't readily come out to worship, in the name of our Father in Heaven and of NCF. We have seen listeners in tears, we have been asked to repeat someone's favorite. We have been told that we have made a day that started badly into a good day, and have given someone a piece of their life back. This month we are scheduled for four programs, three of them at places we've been asked to come back to. We may have some new and exciting opportunites this summer! I will be posting them on the NCF Facebook, or you can call me for more information (909-844-1920). We'd love to have NCF folks come along, sing along with the residents, and offer a handshake and smile to people who don't have much contact with the outside world.

A Little Bit About Michael Weiss

Hello Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I am Michael Weiss, North Points missionary to the international military community. Since this is my first blog I was asked to provide an introduction. I grew up in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley, and graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1976. It was during my junior year that a couple of my high school classmates shared the Gospel with me. After much wondering, drugs, parties and an arrest for stealing I decided I needed God’s help. So, soon after my graduation I gave my life to Jesus while serving as a camp counselor at Camp Whittle, a YMCA camp near Big Bear Lake. At first my Jewish parents were not very excited about my decision since they thought I was abandoning their religion. But after following Jesus for about nine months my parents gave me permission to be a Christian because they saw a noticeable change in my life. Before this time they thought I would be dead or in jail by the time I was 21 years old.

The following year I joined the Army to become an Airborne Chaplain Assistant. After my initial training I was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Home of the Airborne, and assigned to 7^th Special Forces Group with duty at John F. Kennedy Memorial Chapel. I was here, in February 1978 that I met Sergeant Paul Reinhard, a Special Forces Soldier who had been tasked to work at the chapel until is Army commitment was over later that year. Needless to say we became close friends and partners in sharing the Gospel with our fellow Soldiers. Many years, and stories, later Paul and I are each other’s oldest friend.

Susie Masters Grad

I met and married Darlene, daughter of an Army Chaplain, in 1980 and we were blessed with our first child, Susie, in 1982. In 1985, while stationed in Hawaii our second blessing, Michael Jr., was born. Time, nor this blog, permits me to share all the joys we have being Susie and Michael’s parents. Susie is currently an Elementary School Art Teacher in Colorado Springs and Michael is an Infantry Lieutenant stationed Fort Bless, Texas with his wife Elizabeth, a Physical Therapist.

We have been stationed at numerous Army bases in the United States, in Heidelberg, Germany and I did an unaccompanied tour in Korea in 1993. Everywhere we went we connected with the Body of Christ at our local chapel where Darlene would serve in various women’s ministry leadership positions. Throughout the 90’s we were Associate Staff Members with the Navigators.

Michael Jr. Infantry Grad

Upon my retirement in 2007 I attended Regent University; I completed a Master in Theology in 2011, while developing an international military and discipleship ministry. I have provided ministry training in Europe and in a number of African countries. I am meeting with a number of men weekly to include connecting with Patrick in Malawi and Osman in Sierra Leone via Skype. Later this year I will train military ministers in Ukraine, Liberia and Cameroon in addition to events with the U.S. Army.

Last May Darlene completed a Masters Degree in Conflict Resolution from Abilene Christian University and is working as a Family Deployment Coordinator for the U.S. Navy in Norfolk, Virginia. 

Cleaning Up Our Acts--by Linden Malki

"Following Jesus" does not mean "being good", it means "being obedient." Back at the very beginning of mankind's relationship with God, we find that disobedience breaks this relationship. Restoring it, from Genesis forward, invoves sacrifice; and we find in Exodus 19 that the people are told to prepare for an encounter with God by washing. We see throughout the Old Testament the cycle of disobedience and restoration, over and over again. As the children of Adam, we are incapable of perfect obedience. And when God sent Jesus, the Messaiah, He provided in His own death the perfect and permanent sacrifice, once for all.

The other requirement for coming back into God's presence was ritual washing. Every procedure in the Torah, the ancient law (the first five books of the Bible) ends with a bath. Over the centuries, this became formalized with descriptions of basins in the Temple, and requirements for a pool with running water. One of the features of the ruins of the first-century fortress of Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea, is their mikvah, the pool, and the elaborate water channels that fed the pool there on the top of a sheer-walled mesa. To this day, Jewish communities have a mikvah, used for ritual purifications, and for the initiation of a convert to the community.

Our Gospels each begin the story of Jesus' ministry with his cousin John, the prophet who preached as he performed the ritual bath of the crowds who came to him at the Jordan River. Jesus Himself came to participate in this, not because He needed purification, but in obedience to His calling, and an example for His followers. But as the sacrifice of the Cross, which we have just celebrated in the Easter season, was once for all, our obedience to this command is also a watershed moment in our life as His disciple: a symbolic sacrificial death and resurrection with an immersion in water, coming up to a new life and new enabling through the Power of God.

Believing the Impossible--Linden Malki

 "Faith" is sometimes thought of as deliberately believing something impossible or untrue, just by an act of will. I've heard people brag about "having faith" in someone they actually know to be totally undependable, or walking into situations that have "disaster" written all over them. 

This is not Biblical faith!  One of the most powerful verses on the subject is Romans 1:17, where St Paul says speaks of the righteous living by faith. He is quoting the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, who says it this way: "The righteous shall live by faithfulness".  (Habakkuk 2:4)  We are not called to blind stupidity, but to deliberate commitment. Faith is better defined as believing on the testimony of someone or something you know to be dependable. This is part of our calling to witness: being faithful people whose story is true. 

In God's world, a true story can look impossible! Jesus' followers saw Him do things that were, by the standards of a skeptical world, impossible.  We have records of God's having done the apparently impossible throughout His relationship with His people. When God set about moving a whole bunch of people into a promised land, who did He use? The ten guys who believed it couldn't be done, or Joshua, who had been faithful to God's leadership?  How likely was it that a bratty little brother who got dropped in a well would become the prime minister of Egypt? Who did God use to build his earthly kingdom--the boy who was willing to face a giant, or his grandson who thought he could outdo his father and believed the wrong advice from the wrong people, and lost the larger part of the kingdom? Or the biggie of them all: using an unjust death to break the power of death--and a resurrection that we believe because there were credible witness that were faithful unto their own deaths. 

On Balance--by Linden Malki

"I just need to know what comes in and what goes out, and we can make sense of it from there."  This is what John's tax guy told me when I first started doing the bookwork for our auto repair business. This made sense, because I had had enough math to know that everything has to balance. Whether it's a checkbook, or a ledger, and now a spreadsheet, there is a point where you push the magic button and the number that appears has to match another one. This is also the way the physical universe runs: physical and chemical processes can only produce the equivalent to what is put in. 

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the giant figures in the development of our understanding of the physical universe, distilled his observations and calculations into a short list of "laws", one of which is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."  It seems to apply to our own lives as well. Even small children seem to want fairness--how often to we hear a kid scream "That's not fair!" In our desire to be "fair", it's easy to think that all questions and disputes have two sides, equal and opposite. Even our classic personification of Justice is a goddess holding a balance scale; the evidences are put on their appropriate side of the scale, and one will overbalance the other. Some traditions even see God's judgment as a similar scale: our good behaviors go on one side, bad stuff on the other, and our eternal fate depends on which is greater. 

This is not how the God we see in Scripture works. In His eyes, there is no equivalence between Good and Evil. God's first relationship with His creatures was based on His scale: This you must do, and this you must NOT do. On this scale, anything in the "NOT" side tips the scale against us. Whatever is not compatible with God's presence cannot be in God's presence. If this were all there was to it, we are all doomed to be banished from His presence. 

However, this is not what God wants. He made us so that we could be in a loving relationship with Him. He makes us an offer: If we are willing to give up everything on the negative side of the scale, He will  take it all and give us Himself on the positive.