Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Road Through Romans: The Miraculous Method

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We continue our discussion through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Today we are discussing Romans 1:16,17

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

My  fellowship, the Assemblies of God has 16 fundamental truths that every one of our churches adhere to. Of those 16 fundamentals there are four cardinal or primary doctrines.

  1. Salvation by grace alone through faith alone
  2. Healing spiritual, emotional and physical is found in the atonement
  3.  The baptism in the Holy Spirit with the initial physical evidence of speaking in other tongues is an experience available to every believer in the church past, present and future
  4. Jesus is coming again to judge the living and the dead and shall set up His eternal reign on Earth.

Each of these doctrines speaks of an incredible, miraculous manifestation of God’s grace and presence in the lives of men and women across the face of the globe.Of all those miraculous interventions into the lives of people the most miraculous is the salvation of man from his sin. Jesus died and rose again to perpetuate this miracle in our lives. That alone is an incredible thought.Yet one of the most miraculous things about the miracle of salvation is the way it is applied to the life of a man or a woman.The power of salvation is applied to a person’s life through the gospel. A person gets saved when someone else tells him the story of Jesus and he chooses to believe it.

Paul said it this way, “21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ” 1 Cor. 1:21-24

Preaching the gospel as we have said in earlier posts is not just a job for professional ministers. It is the job of every Christian.You may not feel qualified to share Jesus with other people. Honestly who is? We are sharing GOD with people! What ex-sinner could ever be qualified for such a job? That’s part of the miracle, don’t you know? God could have chosen angels to preach. He could have chosen to use supernatural visions or dreams to proclaim the gospel. He could have made the mountains sing it  if He so desired. Instead He chose to use sinful people to proclaim righteousness to other sinful people so that righteousness could be formed in them all!

Ain’t that a hoot?

If you have missed any of our previous conversations they can be discovered on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE

Pastor Wrinkles’ Sunday Quips & Quotes

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Q&Q

Hey there folks! Here is a challenge for all my Sunday readers. Every Sunday I will post one quip or quote that struck me during the week. You can join along in the quipping and quoting. Here is what to do:

Publish a post of your own, using one quip or quote that grabbed you during the week. You can add a picture to it if you like or even photograph the quote from it’s source.

Link back to my post

You can include the Pastor Wrinkle’s Q& Q photo in your post if you think my mug worthy of your blog.

Quote of the week:

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Through a glass darkly

“What are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears.” Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

Travel Theme: Waves

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This week Ailsa has asked us to show her WAVES WE HAVE MET IN OUR TRAVELS.

She has come up with some really unique ways to display waves so check out her post and those of her contributors at the underlined link above.

Here are my thought on waves

Waves at Galway Beach
Waves at Hampton Beach NH
Waves upon the cliffs of Moher

There are traditional waves of course.

The wind moves on the water taxi on Boston Harbor

Then there are banners that wave.

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There is the waving of hands,

And of course

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 There is the wave of relief that comes when a job is done.

The Road Through Romans: Ashamed How?

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We continue with our discussion through Paul’s Letter to the Romans, verse by verse. Today we reach one of the most famous portions of the letter. In Romans 1:16,17 Paul writes,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

We are going to camp right here for a few days if you don’t mind because there is a lot I do not want to miss.

If you have missed any of our previous discussions they can be found on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE.

Paul has already discussed that he is obligated to bring the gospel to the Greeks and the barbarians because of a debt he owes them which is actually a debt he owes to God the Son, Jesus. That said he takes things a step further when he says, “I am not ashamed” of the gospel.

We have all been obligated to do things we would rather not do, things that we are forced by some higher power to do that make us almost ashamed, things like: taking your little brother to the movie with your friends because mom says so, dancing the Polka with your little sister in front of the relatives because Gramma thinks you are as good as the dancers on Lawrence Welk or taking your third cousin to the prom because your Dad owes Uncle Innunzio money.

I bet you’re getting the picture here. There is a world of difference between being obligated to do a thing and being unashamed to do it. Paul is letting his readers know that not only is he obligated to do this thing called preaching the gospel he is unashamed to do it. He is glad to do it no matter the consequences. He would choose it even if he was not obliged because he loves God and because whatever anyone else may think Paul is genuinely sold on the concept that the gospel works. Paul is not some used car salesmen playing a numbers game to please the boss man. Paul is a true believer.

I’m a New Englander. I really get the concept of obligation. Duty is practically my nick name. I cut my teeth on the Protestant work ethic and I come from a long line of work-a-holics.  I can put in more than an honest day’s labor. But that alone doesn’t cut it for God. It’s the attitude that is the key. You see, no amount of work can make up for doubting “your product” and to be honest sometimes it is doubt that fuels my work. I wonder sometimes if Jesus is really going to show up and so I work extra hard at being a back up savior in case the REAL ONE doesn’t come through. Can anybody out there relate?

This is a problem that I have had to work through for many years. I am getting better at remembering I am not the Savior nor am I responsible to prove that Jesus is. My only job is to proclaim that He is Savior and Jesus takes it from there. Anything else is just me being ashamed and doubtful that the gospel will really work.

I suppose being ashamed of the gospel can come out in a lot of ways. Have you ever struggled with it? IF so what did that struggle look like?

Life’s Ripples

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This post is written in response to Chris Donner’s journaling post: RIPPLES. Please check out  her site when you have finished here.

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I often think of life like a river or a stream. It has a source. It has an outlet. It has a direction. It has twists, turns, forks and varying currents and it is fluid, which means it is changeable to a degree. Maybe we can’t from our low vantage point change the place the river goes to.We can, however, have an effect on how quickly we arrive at the end. We can determine the state we are in when once we do come to the sea that is eternity. We can also have an effect on the state of the arrival of others who ride the river with us.

I guess the changes we affect on the river of life are the ripples we make. For myself I have spent all my life on one small fork of the river. I was born and raised in the town I now pastor in. My father and my grandfather before me made their own ripples in town business and politics and I for one have swum in the waves they created in this little place.

From them I learned the value of staying, rooting in one place and one more thing. I have learned that the value of our lives is not found just in the ripples we make but in how many other “ripple-makers” we can inspire.

When I reach the sea I imagine my name will be pretty quickly forgotten but maybe others will make ripples in my stead heaping one small change upon another. It won’t change the direction of the river but it will change the people who meander through the little tributary I have lived in.

This thought of making ripple-makers rather than ripples came to me as I considered the people who have swum in the middle of the little ripples I have made. This weekend I will preach at Cornerstone Church in Winchendon. My sister will preach at two churches in Connecticut even as I step into the pulpit at my church. My daughter Amanda will be preaching to our children’s church downstairs at Cornerstone. My daughter Melanie will be preaching to her children’s church in Saugus MA and my son Joe will be making ripples of his own as he preaches to a children’s congregation in Seoul South Korea. Beyond that is our youth pastor Brad Hackett, Rev. Julie Slocum , Rev. Erin Schlaupitz, Rev. Jon Michael Nalette, Garrick Brewer and Lillian Lapoint all ripple-makers who I was privileged to swim alongside for brief periods.

My ripples have caused as many problems as they have solved I suppose but that’s another post for another day . For today I am content to think that perhaps some of my ripples have gone beyond me into the wide world to help others reach the sea that comes after the river. Perhaps I have helped people I have never met to be ready to ride the real waves that come after this little journey we call life.

 

The Road Through Romans: The Holy Obligation

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We are continuing our discussion through the Book of Romans today and we are moving on to verses 14 and 15 of chapter 1 which reads,

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

I am interested in the word right at the beginning of the verse, “obligated”. What does Paul mean when he says he is obligated?

I am also interested in who Paul is indebted to. He is indebted to the Greeks and the barbarians; that is the people of Greece and all the  Gentiles beyond the influence of the Roman empire.

Why is Paul indebted to all these people? Is it because they have been so nice to him?

By the time Paul writes his letter to the Romans he has been stoned by the Ephesians, whipped and unjustly imprisoned by the Philippians, sued by the Corinthians and unjustly arrested by the Jews who also plotted to assassinate him. The debt he owes cannot be one of gratitude.

Could he be talking about a cultural obligation. Is he saying “The Greeks have created western culture! They are so awesome I feel obligated to them!”?

Nah! Paul was a Jew a Pharisee even associating with Gentiles was something frowned upon, never mind considering their culture as something to be admired and feel indebted to them about.

So what did he owe the Greeks and barbarians, money?  I am being totally tongue-in-cheek.

The word “obligated” here is the word, opheiletēs. It refers to a person who owes someone else a debt. It refers to someone who has wronged another and must make amends.

Had Paul somehow wronged the Greeks and Barbarians? No he was not a debtor to any of them strictly speaking. The debt Paul owed was to God. It was a debt he could never pay back. Jesus had taken Paul’s sin and paid for it with His life and Paul owed Jesus, God the Son, an eternal debt of gratitude.

God had transferred Paul’s debt to the Greeks and the Barbarians. Paul owed them the right to hear the gospel not because he owed them but because he owed God.

Every Christian today  owes that same debt to God. God has done the same thing with us that he did with Paul. God has transferred the debt to those people around us. You see God needs nothing from us but they do. They need to hear the message of salvation from us. We owe it to them not because of who they are but because of who God is.

Sharing the triuth we know is an obligation not an option. It is a duty not a choice.

If you have missed any of our previous discussions on the Book of Romans they can be found on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE.