Wednesday, July 15th

This week Pastor Ali Kalkandelen from Turkey will be guest-blogging on 10 Minutes with God. There will be no audio this week, but we please enjoy Pastor Kalkandelen's posts!

Wednesday

A NEW LIFE STYLE: REPENTANCE, THE OLD DIES AND THE NEW BEGINS
Repentance can open doors for salvation. People of Nineveh repented when they heard the message of Jonah. They turned their back to their sinful life style and embraced a new life style. That was living under the rule and dominion of God. Jonah 3:10 says that “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” 

We see in their example that repentance is not just realizing that you are a sinner and acknowledging that you need God’s forgiveness; it’s new way of living with inner and outer fruits. John the Baptist mentions same message when he preached repentance. He said “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” He also said that “… bear fruits worthy of repentance…” There for repentance is a life style, a radical change in someone’s life. It’s lifelong. It’s not something that you do once and totally forget about it. But it’s something that you live on it every day. It’s not like deciding that you lose weight but eating more every day; or exercising once a while for a short time or for a short period. It’s deciding that you lose weight and you do the right things not only for your body but also for your soul every day, every moment. It’s a new life style. 

People of Nineveh confessed their sins and repented. God saved them from the destruction that was about to come over them. However, the change that they made in their life didn’t last long. With the new generations they had they were backslidden and now, one more time, they were worthy of God’s wrath. 

Today, some many Christians believe that, if they once do prayer of salvation ONCE and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, that is it. They are saved and go to heaven afterword. Some people call this type of repentance and then the life style as “the cheap Gospel”. People and churches are doing crusades and other events just to get people to that place that they say “Yes. Jesus I believe you!” That is not the purpose of the Gospel. That was not what Jesus Christ and His followers preached and died for. 

When we repent, we need to change. We need to turn our back to our old life and begin living a new life. Our son Elijah was diagnosed with Type one diabetes four years ago. It was a shock to learn that. We, as a family, feeling free of what we do, what we eat, where we go. But after his diagnosis we couldn’t live our lives the way that we lived. We had to make changes and these changes should have been lifelong. The doctors kept us at a hospital for a whole week to teach us about the changes we need to make: we couldn’t eat the things that we use to eat. In order to live, he had to exercise daily and get use to a very different routine. He had take insulin shots every day. It was a new life style and a new life that we had live. 

We have been living this new life for last four years. We are careful and we have to be careful. If we do a mistake we see a negative sign right away. If we don’t go back to the life that the doctors thought us, we have to face consequences. It’s not some thing that we lived in future and forgot about it. We live it 24/7. 

This is a change and a new life that I’m talking about. When we repent nothing can stay the same. It has to change. We can’t be the same person and our life can’t be the same as well. When we make a mistake and sin we can’t just backslide and go to the life that we had once. We repent and continue as a repentant, more careful this time. 

What are some of the elements of a repentant life? We’ll talk about them in next two posts.

Pastor Ali Kalkandelen

Tuesday, July 14th

This week Pastor Ali Kalkandelen from Turkey will be guest-blogging on 10 Minutes with God. There will be no audio this week, but we please enjoy Pastor Kalkandelen's posts!

Tuesday

LEAVE A GREAT HERITAGE TO YOUR CHILDREN

We have a couple who are family friends. They both, husband and wife are real entrepreneur. They work hard and he makes business out of things that we would never think of. They both find ways to make very good money.

This couple has four children. They work really hard and make very good amount of money so that, one day, they may leave all of them to their children. They would like to leave a great heritage for their children that they may live a life comfort without worrying for their needs or their children’s needs.

Our friends are not only trying hard to make a good business they also teach their children how to make one. They don’t want their children to take the heritage they will receive from their parents for granted. They work hard to train their children for hard work, to make money; and to spend it carefully. They expect them that they will grow the business that they inherited and not to shrink it.

I think most of us will be agree with our friends on working hard to leave a good financial heritage for their children and also teaching their children not to take it for granted.

Have you ever thought about your faith as a heritage? Is faith something that you receive from others or build up and then pass on to next generations? Yes it’s. That is why the Bible talks about teaching our faith to our children. Deuteronomy 11:19 says “Teach them (God’s law and godly living) to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. (New Living Translation). Proverb 22:6 says that: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (NKJV)

The book of Nahum talks about a nation which was saved by the grace of God once and then turned to idols and wicked lifestyle a few decades later. Their forefathers were saved, this is what we learn from Jesus: In Mat 12:41 He says that: “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah…” But, God, now talks to the people of Nineveh again 150 years later and say “Behold, I am against you …” (Nah 2:13). And even He says that “Your name (Nineveh) shall be perpetuated no longer…”

Therefore, it’s our responsibility to carry the faith we receive from our forefathers or others and pass on to the next generations. We need to teach our children not only having a faith in Jesus Christ but also living with this faith and for this faith. One of the great examples of a father leaving a spiritual heritage to his son is Paul. Although he was the spiritual father for Timothy, he invested so much in him. Paul travelled with Timothy and ministered with him. He thought Timothy everything he knew and played great example before him. At the end of his time, now, Paul had a great heritage to leave to Timothy and expected him to pass it onto others.

I suggest you read Paul’s letters to Timoty with this in mind. Especially second Timothy talks about what Paul has invested in Timothy and what he expects of him. Here are some examples of it: (2Ti 3:10) “you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, … what persecutions I endured. (14) But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make a you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (4:2) Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. (5) But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Pastor Ali Kalkandelen

Monday, July 13th

This week Pastor Ali Kalkandelen from Turkey will be guest-blogging on 10 Minutes with God. There will be no audio this week, but we please enjoy Pastor Kalkandelen's posts!

Monday

REPENT AND PRAY FOR YOUR NATION

In the book of Nahum, God speaks against Nineveh. Nineveh was ancient city, capital of Assyrian Empire. I’m from Turkey and Nineveh was located not far from my country. It was in Northern Iraq, presently known as Mosul.

Jonah was another prophet spoke to the same nation more than 150 years before Nahum did. According to the book of Jonah Nineveh was a wicked city. Jonah went to Nineveh and spent three days in the city and told them if they don’t repent God will destroy them. After his message, the whole people including their king took the message well and repented. So, God decided not to destroy them.

But now, a century later, this time in 7th century, God speaks to the same nation through Nahum. He proclaims destruction over them. This time the destruction is inevitable. Historically we know that the city and its king were taken over by Persians and other nations in 612 BC.

We can understand the reason of Nineveh’s destruction from the context of the book, Nahum. I think history is full of nations once were exist but not anymore. Nineveh and its people are just one example. I’m coming from a country that was one of the first Christian countries. Paul was born in Turkey. The seven churches of the Revelation were in Turkey. It was Paul’s footstep in his mission trips. I don’t know their exact numbers but it must had been more than 80 % Christian in one point. However, there is less than 1 % Christians there right now. We can say almost the same thing for Europe. It’s claimed that numbers of Christians in Europe is not more than 5 %.

You, Americans are proud of your Christian heritage: how those Christians years ago immigrated to this country for seeking opportunities to freely worship God. Your ancestors had built the foundation of this country with faith in Jesus Christ. However, after so many years now, I know that some of you are so much worried about the future of you own country.

God expect the whole creating have faith in Him follow His rules and standards. Isaiah 1:28 says that “The destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.”

Therefore, it’s important to acknowledge our sins and repent, not only as individuals but also as communities.

We can pray and repent not only for our personal sins and salvations but also for our communities and nations. This is much more important than we may have ever imagined. In Ezekiel 22:30 the Lord says that “I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.”

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have a responsibility to repent for our nation’s wrong doings, and pray for their salvation. James 5:16 says: “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” Pray fervently for your nation. Get together with others who share the same heart with you. You pray together for the sins nation and for the salvation of your nation.

Pastor Ali Kalkandelen

Friday, July 10th

To listen to the audio version, click here.

Many years ago, a very intelligent young lady who had been attending our church off and on for several months sent me an e-mail with the following question...

Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand. God is supposedly an omnipotent being who, for reasons unknown to us, decided to create some beings other than himself. Why should he expect us to worship him? We didn’t ask to be created. Our lives are often difficult and troubled. We know that human tyrants, puffed up with pride, crave adulation and homage. But a morally perfect God would surely have no such insecurities or character defects. So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday?

This is a very good question, and there is no doubt that the Bible is full of places where God commands and even demands that we praise Him.

James 5:13 - Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

Psalm 148:5 - Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created.

Hebrews 13:15 - Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

The problem with the young woman’s question is that she assumes the only reason that God demands our praise is because of some insecurity or defect in His character.  But with God there is another possibility.
Author and self professed atheist Ayn Rand once said, admiration is the rarest and best of pleasures?  I don’t think Ayn Rand understood this, but what if God really is the most admirable being in the universe? Wouldn’t this imply that God’s demand for our praise is actually an expression of His desire for our highest joy?  And if the fulfillment of that demand for praise cost him the life of his Son, would that not be love (instead of insecurity or arrogance)?

The reason the Bible gives why God should be greatly praised is that he is great. “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised” (Psalm 96:4). He is more admirable than anything he has made. That is what it means to be God.

The Bible says that praise – overflowing, heartfelt admiration – is a pleasure. “Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant” (Psalm 147:1).  And this pleasure is the best there is, and lasts forever. “In (God's) presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

The upshot of this is that God’s demand for supreme praise is his demand for our supreme happiness. Deep in our hearts we know that we are not made to be made much of. We are made to make much of something greater than ourselves. The best joys are when we forget ourselves, enthralled with greatness. The greatest greatness is God’s. Every good that ever thrilled the heart of man is amplified ten thousand times in God. God is in a class by himself. 

C. S. Lewis broke through to the beauty of God’s self-exaltation (thinking at first that the Psalms sounded like an old woman craving compliments). He finally saw the obvious:
My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation...by commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

So, let’s enjoy God today by praising Him!

Jeff Frazier

Thursday, July 9th

To listen to the audio version, click here.

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
    praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of the Lord
    from this time forth and forevermore! 

From the rising of the sun to its setting,
    the name of the Lord is to be praised!

- Psalm 113:1-3

Psalm 113 is the first in a series of 6 Psalms (113-118) known as the “Hallels”, meaning “Praises”.  These Psalms were sung in the Temple and in Jewish homes at the great feast days of Judaism, they held an especially important place in Passover.  In fact, when Matthew records that Jesus and His disciples sung a hymn together before they went out to the Mt. of Olives (Matt. 26:30), it is almost certain that the hymn the disciples sang together with Jesus after the Last Supper was one of these Psalms.  

The Hebrew word hallel, while most often translated as “praise”, can also be accurately translated as “boast”.  It may not seem appropriate to many of us to associate worship with boasting, but that is actually what we are doing when we praise God - we are boasting in the greatness and the goodness of our God.  In fact, the simple three word phrase, “Praise the LORD”, which appears so frequently in the Psalms, is actually a single Hebrew word which we have transliterated as hallelujah.  This is a compound word made up of the two words; Hallel = praise/boast, and Yah = LORD.  Hallelujah is actually a call, or a command for God’s people to make their boast in Yah, in the LORD.  

Imagine two children on a school playground boasting about their fathers...”my dad is bigger than your dad...oh yeah, well my dad is stronger than your dad.”  As God’s children, we are called to make the boast of our hearts in the fact that God alone is worthy of our praise!  When we come together to hallelujah, to sing the praises of our God, we are actually reminding ourselves and each other of how great and good our God truly is.

One of the places in the Old Testament where this idea of boasting in the LORD is most clearly stated is the words of the prophet Jeremiah...

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”  - Jeremiah 9:23-24

Every human being is boasting in something, that is every person is placing their hopes, their significance, their ultimate value in someone or something.  As David puts in Psalm 20:7, Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the LORD, our God!

Hallelujah!  Praise the LORD!  Hallelujah!

Jeff Frazier

Wednesday, July 8th

To listen to the audio version, click here.

 A couple of weeks ago (thanks to the generosity of a friend from church) my family and I had the chance to go to a Chicago Blackhawks game together.  We had a terrific time together as a family, the United Center was sold out and the Hawks won!  During the course of the game I had a couple of very interesting experiences that have taught me something about what it means to worship.

The first experience happened during the singing of our national anthem.  I know that they sing the Star Spangled banner at just about every sporting event, but I don’t think they do it the way the Blackhawks do.  The organ was cranked up, the singer was belting it out and 20,000 people all singing and cheering at the top of their lungs. Mid-way through the song the noise was deafening, by the last few lines of the anthem, I thought the roof was going to blow off of the United Center!  I felt chills the whole time, it was a truly thrilling experience.

The second experience happened during the course of the game itself.  Because we didn’t have 5 tickets all together, I ended up sitting one section over and a few rows up from the rest of my family so that they could all sit together.  I found myself sitting between a couple of businessmen on one side, and a fellow who looked like he might have slept in the United Center on the other side of me.  Each time the Hawks scored or made a great play, I found myself turning to my right and to my left to high five these strangers that I had never met before.  The Hawks dominated the game and ended up scoring 6 goals that night so there was plenty of high-fiving going on, and after the 6th goal, I actually ended up embracing the rough looking fellow to my left!  I didn’t even know these men, and I was laughing, cheering, high-fiving, and hugging them over a hockey game!?

I have thought a lot about that experience, about how it compares to the common experience of corporate worship in a church service today.  I think we have bought into the great cultural misconception that religion and worship are private matters and we should keep them to ourselves.  Most Sundays, we come together to “worship” and to praise our God in church, yet we act like complete strangers to each other when we share a love for the great God of all creation!?

This is certainly not the message of the Bible and it is certainly not the picture that the Psalms paint for us of what it should look like when God’s people praise His name.  In fact, the Psalms call us to praise, they command us to praise the name of our God together.  Take a moment and read/pray/worship through Psalm 150, the last chapter in the Psalms, and as you read pay attention to how this incredible book ends.

Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
    praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
    praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
    praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
    praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.   - Psalm 150

Jeff Frazier

Tuesday, July 7th

To listen to the audio version, click here.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
    let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving
    and extol him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God,
    the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
    and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
    and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship,
    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,
    the flock under his care.
- Psalm 95:1-7

This Psalm is one of the classic texts in all of the Bible on worship.  It is the called the Venite because that is the first word Venite = “Come”.  It invites us to come into the presence of God and worship him with all that we are.  The word worship comes from the old english “worth-ship”, and it means to ascribe worth, or value to an object.  To recognize the true worth and value of someone or something and to act accordingly.  

Let me give you an example:  Imagine you are cleaning out you grandmothers attic.  As you go through old trunks and boxes of things, you come across an old shoebox full of cheap costume jewelry.  Your mom tells you to either take it home or toss it in the trash.  You decide to take it home with you for sentimental reasons.  20 years go by, and that old shoe box is buried somewhere in your basement.  Then one day, your daughter finds it and begins to play dress up with some of the items.  You notice her wearing a brooch you don’t ever remember seeing before, she says it came from that old box in the basement.  On a whim, you decide to take it to a jeweler to have it appraised.  As the old jeweler is examining it, he suddenly gasps, his eye loupe pops out.  He turns to you and says,”do you realize what you have here?”  “No”, you reply.  He goes on to tell you that this brooch is one of the most rare and precious pieces of jewelry in the world!  It is more valuable than all of the jewels he has ever had in his shop combined.  In fact it’s value cannot really be calculated, it is quite literally priceless!  Now what do you do with that brooch?  Do you put it back in the old shoebox in the basement with the rest of the junk?  No way!  You will act totally differently toward that piece of jewelry now that you know its value.  This is essentially what happens to so many people, even in the church, we just do not recognize the incredible worth and value of what we have in Christ.

True Christian worship is to ascribe ultimate worth or value to the proper object - to God!  This is what the Psalmist is urging us to do in Psalm 95, to recognize, acknowledge, and act upon the reality that God is the only object worthy of our worship.

Notice that each time the Psalmist calls people to “Come” to worship, he follows that call up by giving the people thoughtful reasons why they should come and worship God.

Psalm 95:1 - Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord...

Psalm 95:3 - For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods...

Psalm 95:6 - Come, let us bow down in worship...

Psalm 95:7 - For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture...

Why should we worship God?  Because He is the most valuable and worthy object in the universe!  Because He is the one true God, the great King above all gods,  He made all that exists, and everything belongs to Him.  Not only that, but we also belong to Him, and He cares for us the way a shepherd cares for his sheep.  Therefore, let us come and worship this incredible God!

Jeff Frazier