A Year of Hope

There has been so much to be thankful for over the last year, where we learned to lean into what we have always known to be true: with God, nothing is impossible. We’ve been blessed abundantly, and prayers are answered in our midst every single day. When we moved to our new location on Highway 280, we planned and prayed to be a church for and with our community. God has said yes, over and over. He has gone before us and made the impossible possible. He has opened hearts and eyes to see what His Kingdom looks like when we seek Him first. First United Methodist Church is a body of Christ excited to serve others both here at home and abroad. This body of Christ has seen and felt what it means to gather together in His name, to love one another and those around us, to meet the needs of the lost and lonely, and to find joy in all things.

To celebrate all God is doing, we began today by lifting the roof in song during worship. Goodness! The Holy Spirit’s presence was palpable! With tears in our eyes and chills covering us all, we said, “Thank you, Lord,” for all you’ve done. Rev. Donald Smith brought us to audible “Amens!” over and over. Worship continued as we broke bread together over brunch and an update from our Long Range Planning team. Again, trusting God has gone before us, we are excited to see what 2024 has in store!

Because our true calling is to serve God and serve others, the day wouldn’t have been complete without reaching others in His name. We partnered with Rise Against Hunger to pack 22,464 meals to be shared across the world! It is such a blessing to know thousands of people will be touched all because we understand what’s important: loving others as Christ loves us.

Friends, neighbors, and community…we pray you have a church moving heaven and earth to show and demonstrate God’s love. If you are looking for a church that is embracing every moment together, loving God, reaching others, and seeking the lost, we’d love for you to join us. Trust this; you will be welcome here.

Lent - Let’s Be Quiet

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

John 10:27

Before the automation of refrigeration, families kept food cold in icehouses. These structures had no windows, often partially underground, with tight-fitting doors, where ice could be stored for months. As such, big blocks of ice were collected in the winter months and covered in sawdust so the ice would last through the summer.

There’s an old story of a father working in his family’s icehouse to prepare it for summer. After bringing in blocks of ice and distributing sawdust, he realized his prized watch had fallen off somewhere in the icehouse. He searched and searched but ultimately gave up looking. Knowing how much this watch meant to her father, his young daughter decided to sneak into the icehouse to look for the watch herself. After just a short time, she emerged from the icehouse with the watch and presented it to her grateful and astonished father. Of course, he wanted to know where it had been found and how she had managed to find it. She said, “I went into the icehouse, closed the door, lay down in the sawdust, and was very still - and I listened. Very quickly, I could hear the watch ticking.”

Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. Christians acknowledge and celebrate forty days of reflection, prayer, fasting, and serving others. We do this in preparation for the beautiful season of Easter. An integral part of Lent is a call for quiet, stillness, and reflective time with the Lord. Calling ourselves to be still and quiet in this noisy world is a challenge. Lent is a time to cease searching for the external gratifications this world offers, like material success and fulfillment. May we be able to settle in to be quiet and listen for God’s voice, even in a whisper, to direct our lives and hearts.

The noise of our lives comes at us from every direction. We have noisy television, radios, social media, email…all the media sources. But the noise also comes from all the “things” that require attention from us each day - family, friends, co-workers. We know our God is in all these things, but Lent is a time to take a step back and re-order.

Lent calls us to a quiet place to order the priorities in our lives. Perhaps it’s an extra minute or two of prayer before going in to work. Maybe you find time to experience the natural sounds of a quiet walk in the woods. You see, we need to close the door, lay it all down, and be quiet to hear the soft voice of God, ticking…waiting for us to find Him. He’s calling us to return, calling us to faithfulness, calling us back home to Him. There is no greater treasure.

I hope to embrace this Lenten season as a time to seek God’s voice in my life and turn off worldly noise that makes no eternal difference in my life.

Tammy

An Open-Door Policy

Lately, I have been reminded more than once about the need to find time alone with God, encouragement to make this a priority daily. I’ve seen the reminders in print, heard the words in a sermon, and song. 

As disciples, we are the great cheerleaders of gathering. We are gatherers of people, excited to come together to share in a joy and love for our God. We encourage one another to be in worship, join a small group, serve on a team… These are incredibly important elements in our discipleship and without a doubt, we need to gather together, learn, and serve together in His name. But the picture is not complete without quiet, alone time with our great God. We have an open invitation from the very God that spoke to Moses from a mountaintop, split the sea, and resurrected our Jesus from the tomb. We’ve been invited into his presence for a personal relationship.with.God. He has an “open-door” policy designed especially for each of us to come often and individually. We can’t miss out on this. God is waiting for us to open the conversation, “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you” Jeremiah 29:12-14

When we can’t or won’t take the time to make prayer/devotion time alone with God, there’s a problem to be dealt with. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book “Life Together,” reminds of the pitfalls of only finding God in community.

“Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Such people will only do harm to themselves and to the community. Alone you stood before God when God called you. Alone you had to obey God’s voice. Alone you had to take up your cross, struggle, and pray and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot avoid yourself, for it is precisely God who has singled you out. If you do not want to be alone, you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called.”

As we move forward, one step at a time, on our journey, may we remember to gather one on one with our Father in heaven regularly, intentionally, and thankfully.

Tammy

Practicing the Presence All Day, Everyday

"You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you'll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren't willing to receive from me the life you say you want." John 39-40 (MSG)

Generosity, It's More Than That - Tammy Wendling

After working in the non-profit world for a few years, talking about generosity is about as uncomfortable as “hearing” someone speak on the subject. Our minds immediately refer to dollar figures. For today, I’d like to wander down the road to suggest we view the spiritual discipline of generosity as a beautiful and transformative gift that enriches our lives well beyond those receiving our generosity. Putting aside the obvious and much-needed financial offerings to charities, groups, or individuals, let’s consider how we become more generous in new ways in our everyday lives.

     -With each day, we have the opportunity to share and show love to everyone we meet. A kind word, a smile, a head nod are undoubtedly lovely, but how do we elevate our offering of love to a generous offering?

Think about it; generously offer love.

     -Perhaps we consider how to be generous in how we judge others. Ouch! While we typically value our thoughts, decisions, understandings greatly, what happens when we broaden our judgment of others’ thoughts and decisions more generously? Instead of snap judgments confined to our own points of reference and context of understanding, we pause to consider something larger than ourselves.

   “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38

Think about it; consider generosity before quickly judging others.

     -This thought is challenging and difficult to consider. What if we commit to generous forgiveness? Forgiveness is a challenge with the best of intentions. How our relationships, spiritual health, and our world would benefit if we committed to abundant forgiveness.

Think about it; generous forgiveness.

     -What about our time and how we spend it? Do we have the ability to give more generously of our time to the Lord and in service to others? We are indeed an incredibly “busy” society, but are we “busy” with things that matter eternally?

Think about it; generously offering our time to the Lord.

     -And our talents, each of us has a spiritual gift God wants us to share to glorify His kingdom. The difference we would make in this world if we confidently identified our spiritual gifts and chose to share them with others is hard to imagine. Do we view this gift from God as an opportunity or burden?

Think about it; sharing our spiritual gifts to glorify God’s Kingdom.

     The list could go on. Overall, in considering the spiritual discipline of generosity, it’s my goal to view it in a larger frame than mere financial means. There’s so much more to giving generously. It’s essential to commit to becoming generous in all aspects of our lives. 

Dear Lord, help me commit to becoming a more all-around generous believer.

Tammy

Scripture and Meditation - Tammy Wendling

SCRIPTURE AND MEDITATION

Soooo, the spiritual discipline, meditation, conjures up for me, a calm, peaceful, intentional quiet time where incredibly abled believers sit in prayer and thought. The same thought gives me a panicked feeling of suffocation at my own inabilities with regards to meditation. It’s why I’m terrible at contemplative yoga and why I still haven’t signed up for a silent retreat. It’s just not how I process thoughts, and thankfully, I’ve come to understand - IT’S OKAY!

It’s taken many years of prayer and study to realize meditating on God’s Word and presence in my life is personal to me and my walk with Him, as is yours. I’ve come to appreciate how I process and celebrate how God’s word reverberates in my heart and soul continually. I believe it’s imperative we read, hear, and experience scripture every day to meditate/process His voice in our lives. Thankfully, we have many options today to receive the Word of God. We can read and study the Bible and other books. We have the ability to listen and watch online, hear podcasts, or even via CDs and tapes. The key, beyond experiencing scripture, is to think, ponder, converse, pray. Meditation happens within ourselves as we reflect, consider, and contemplate God’s Word. It’s an active response to engage our minds and hearts centered on what God intends for us to know.

Anyone that knows me knows I want the “how-to’s.” Below are a few practical ways to experience and meditate on scripture and its meaning in our lives.

1. Study God’s Word! Take the time to put scripture in front of you. Slow down your reading; re-listen to the scripture. Highlight, circle, underline points that stand out to you. Read it again. Listen again.

2. Memorize scripture or even memorize what it means to you. Think on it; pray over the words for God to make them clear to you as you need them this day.

3. Remember the spiritual discipline, adoration. Adore and admire God’s creation all around you. Breathe in the immense beauty in every piece of nature and being, and this includes yourself. Smile in the knowledge you belong to Him, and he’s taken the time to speak to you through the scripture you read today. The omnipotent, omniscient God of our universe loves you and speaks to you!

Overall, meditating on God’s Word doesn’t necessarily mean you must be in a yoga pose on  a mountaintop, although I surely think it would be a beautiful way to meditate. What’s important is that we constantly seek communion with our loving God, where we are, in whatever form that takes. Get His Word front and center every day and contemplate, think, pray, reflect, repeat.

Thank you, Lord.
Tammy

FirstKidz bring us perspective on Prayer.

Tammy Wendling on Adoration & Worship

Adoration & Worship

Tammy Wendling

Adoration and worship; these words excite me. Seriously. Considering each word individually, "adoration" or "worship," my heart beats a little faster, and my spirit rejoices. Put the two words together with an AND; I almost can't type fast enough. 

Merriam Webster, as you might imagine, defines adoration as "the act of adoring." Thanks, Merriam. So what does it mean to adore something or someone? "To worship or honor as a deity or as divine; to regard with loving admiration and devotion; to be very fond of." Yes, yes, and YES! I adore my God! 

As believers, how do we adequately express our adoration for God when all we can tangibly understand is the praise and love we offer for earthly beings and earthly things. We adore things we can touch and feel. It's essential we figure this out. It's important we acknowledge God's eternal love and mercy, His sovereignty over all creation, His omniscience, and his total in-dwelling in every breath we take. Whew - see? It's exciting to come to understand "adoration." We often go to God in prayer with true hearts rejoicing and giving thanks for answered prayers. We plead with repentant hearts. We seek intercession for others. Oh, how God must be pleased in our efforts to communicate with him. It's vital to our personal relationship with our Lord, but my friends, each of those efforts to acknowledge what God has done for us is not adoration. Again, all very important in our spiritual journey, but adoration is not appreciating and giving thanks to God. It's a wide-open opportunity for us to lavish praise for who God is to us. True, unfiltered, unapologetic adoration moves us out of ourselves and what we need from God to connect with the mighty wonder of God. I mean, even in adoring Him, we are yet again gifted! What could be more perfect and beautiful than to get over ourselves and truly connect with God in total adoration?

The time for adoration can be whenever we let go enough of this world to pour out our awe-struck emotion for our creator. While there are no rules to when this should or could be, consider a worship service where believers are POURING out true adoration for our Lord. Yes, both adoration and worship can occur anytime, in any place, but for a moment, imagine a Sunday morning worship setting where every person has come in total adoration and wants to offer it all to the Lord? It gives me chills to consider the energy and excitement! 

About 20 or so years ago, I was lamenting to a friend, a wise gentleman as it turns out. (His first name begins with a G and his last name ends with Blackmon.) Our family was attending a church where worship simply wasn't measuring up to my expectations. After listening for probably too long, my wise friend looked at me and asked, "What do you bring to worship; what's the condition of your heart in worship? What if you considered worship as a time to praise (adore) God instead of what you're 'getting' from it?" Game-changing conversation! So for the last couple of decades of my life, I consider it an honor to walk into a worship setting (inside the church or otherwise) and pour out utter adoration for a magnificent Lord and Savior. I encourage you to give it a try - it's incredibly exciting!

"Give to the Lord the glory due his name! Bring gifts! Enter his presence! Bow down to the Lord in his holy splendor!" 1 Chronicles 16:29 (CEB)

In Adoration of Him,

Tammy

Self-Denial & Fasting, Spiritual Discipline Worth the Work - Tammy Wendling

As I sit here contemplating Lent and the spiritual discipline of self-denial and fasting, I'm in my make-shift home office (you know, CoVid). This space was, not so long ago, my youngest daughter's bedroom. The last renovation we did in this space was when one child moved out and an older sister moved to a room of her own. To make both of their bedrooms new and unique, we decided to paint - easy, quick fix, and the kids would be happy and set for the duration. Since it had been a while since we had painted anything, I checked the internet for suggested steps to prepare these rooms to be painted. Good grief, what an ordeal this was going to be! I wanted a simple fix and to move on. I took the "must do" steps, paired it back, kept it simple, and everything seemed fine. Except, looking at it now, the quick fix doesn't look so great. There are specks of paint on the ceiling, and a couple of places are even peeling up a bit. I guess the "ordeal" of more extended preparation and more involved steps had value and merit after all.

It occurs to me our spiritual lives are often like the decision and quest for a quick fix. Each new year, each Lenten season, we make well-intended plans and start reading the Bible more often, attending worship regularly, offering kindness to those that cross our paths, etc. Even with the best intentions, often these devoted efforts only work for a short time, and we fall back into old patterns. Like this peeling paint in my daughter's bedroom, it works great for a bit, but now we're back in the same place, needing to paint again. Perhaps doing the necessary and recommended prep work in our spiritual lives would also produce better results.

We consider what it means to put ourselves and our wants/needs last during this focused week of self-denial and fasting. Well, that's a cultural novelty today - putting ourselves last… We often consider fasting as a time to deny ourselves one food or another. It's so much more and includes any particular activity in our lives that has come to mean more than it should (electronics, hobbies, eating, work, etc.). The goal of fasting and self-denial is to connect our physical self to the spiritual. It means we learn to give our spiritual life prominence each day rather than the physical. It means we devote our whole spiritual attention to God. In doing this, we re-center ourselves with God and less with the messes and materialism of the world. We prepare to live fully with Him forever - not temporarily (like this paint job gone wrong).

We're moving through this season of Lent in self-reflection, repentance, and hope. As we set our eyes on Easter, let's embrace the "ordeal" and do the work to get our spiritual lives in order.

"Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.'"

Matthew 16:24

Living In A State of Gratefulness

What does it mean to live your life in a state of gratefulness? Do we hear the word “gratefulness” and immediately consider and remember the positive, good, rewarding things in our lives both now and from our past? Rarely do we consider hardships, struggles, and pain as something to be grateful for. Without fully realizing and honoring the past in all its glory and heartache, how do we fully live today and tomorrow in a true sense of gratefulness - of true spiritual gratefulness?

True spiritual gratefulness is to embrace and honor it ALL - the good, the bad, the ugly, the joy and sorrows in our lives, the mountaintop moments and the valleys of darkness. Unless we learn to do this, to recognize the entire journey, we fail to acknowledge God’s loving presence all along the way. All of life’s experiences happen in His presence and it’s only with His guidance we move fully into tomorrow.

In honoring and acknowledging and remembering the past with a heart of gratefulness, we can freely move forward to share God’s Kingdom with others. Don’t be bound by the restraints of less than the full story - count it all.

“Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:28

Tammy Wendling

It's Mother's Day...

It is Mother’s Day week.  We tend to at least acknowledge all the TLC that our mothers gave us.  Granted, many people have unfortunate experiences or memories around the subject of motherhood.  I have been personally touched by friends unable to have children. Others have had bad memories of a mom who wasn’t life-giving to them. If this is you, you are loved and thank you for your kind understanding as I write today. You have my deepest hopes for healing and wholeness.

It is true that generally, motherhood is a design from heaven. Why not celebrate this through our wives? A part of kingdom living is to bring new creation, beauty, hope, and wholeness to everyone in the sphere of our influence.  So, join me in adding value to the quality of the life of the mom at your house.  So husband/dad, for this week, cherish your wife/mom in a special way.  Write her a love/thank you note beyond the usual, “roses are red, violets are…”  Or, cook a meal without having to ask for instructions while providing a stay-at-home spa for her, alone, without you or the kids. Or, be more creative than me, just Google something neat. The point is that to “love and cherish” are vows of two different kinds. Focus on Cherish.  Mom’s tend to get pulled on, rubbed out, and just run down from giving. Cherish that fact in them. Pour back into them through appreciating and noticing.  Now, this should not be only once a year, but Mother’s Day is an opportunity to give it a try.

Gary Thomas writes and speaks on the subject of cherishing, and he has a great article published in Focus on the Family. The link is below. I truly hope you will read it. In the article, he refers to a gentleman he met who had been married twice due to the death of his first wife and became a case study on cherishing. Sadly, he noted that he had taken the blessing of his first wife for granted. He said that they both were wonderful, beautiful people, but he was different.  He confessed that his deliberate cherishing of his second wife had led to his own joy and added true happiness into their marriage. Take Gary’s advice, “instead of trying to change your wife (mom at home), change your attitude.”  This is a great gift.

Barry

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/what-cherishing-your-spouse-really-means/

Just Call Me Peter

Just Call Me Peter
Matthew 26

We arrived in Georgia in the suffocating summer of 1980, begrudgingly accepting our new normal. Mere months prior, my dad had taken up employment with my uncle and uprooted our family from all we knew and loved in North Carolina. For a young, pre-teen girl entering 7th grade, I was less than excited or supportive about this ridiculous relocation of our family.

School started soon after we arrived, and I quickly found my place and my people in the junior high school band. Coming from a musical family, I had started playing the clarinet in 4th grade and was at least at ease in this environment. On my very first day of band class, I met a young girl. She was my friend. Oh, how I needed a friend in this strange new world I was trying to navigate. Every day…every, single day she met me in that old stinky band-room with a smile and warm greeting. Over the course of the year, we did all the typical pre-teen girlie things from sleep-overs, shopping, tanning by the pool, manicures, 4-wheeler rides, and I was certain we were quite inseparable for life. Thankful as I was for her, as it goes, I continued to make new friends and spent less and less time with my “other” friend. She was as steadfast as the first day I met her. While she wasn’t the flashy, princess popular type, and didn’t hang with “the in-crowd,” she was true. She was true to herself, and she was true to me, even when I didn’t deserve it. How often I turned my back on her when more exciting opportunities and people crossed my path, I can’t count. Yet, through the junior high and high school years, she continued to stand in the background, propping me up. 

As Holy Week unfolds, I continue to find myself along the path Jesus walked. How often am I the cheerleader on the side of the road welcoming Jesus into my day, into my life only to put him aside and deny him in my choices? What decisions and failures have me as one of the faces in the crowd yelling, “Crucify him!” then running to the cross on Sunday morning looking for my Savior? As Jesus sat at the table with the disciples for their last meal together, he looked directly at Peter and acknowledged the upcoming denials, and loved him anyway. While Peter couldn’t imagine turning his back on the Lord, he did again and again. In the time that followed the denials, Peter, utterly sorrowful, wept bitterly at his betrayal. From that time until the end of his own life, Peter was a devoted follower and came to be “the Rock of the Church.” 

Thankfully, my denials of my childhood friend have been forgiven, and she remains today, my best friend, for life. Even when I turned away from her and all the love and acceptance she offered me, she never wavered and continues to walk with me even now. We’ve meandered through adult life, sharing joys and sorrows, mostly by telephone conversations. Like my relationship with the Lord, when I reach out to her, she will answer, and I’m so very thankful for the forever friendship and forgiveness. Just call me Peter. 

Tammy Wendling