Pastor Blaik's Blog

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Gifts Given for Divine Purposes (Luke 1:26-38)

This post exists to help you answer the profound and pressing question (which, I’m sure, is on your mind or at least will be in a moment): What do Mary the mother of Jesus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and you all have in common? This question is so compelling, you will keep running it over and over in your mind, searching for the answer, even as you continue to read! Have you ever received a gift that really was for the benefit of the person who gave it to you? Have you ever received a waffle iron from someone in your family who likes waffles (and you are the one who makes breakfast)? Gifts like that are given for the purpose of the giver, not the receiver. In a way, many of the gifts God gives are like that. Throughout the Bible, when God gives someone something, it is usually for the fulfillment of a purpose God has in mind. Many of the gifts God gives are for God’s purposes. Often, people who receive such gifts from God are not too happy about receiving them – at

Avoiding Devilish Glitches and Maintaining Godly Control When I was a young boy, I built and flew radio-control model airplanes with my father. You would stand of the ground with a little box in your hands that had an antenna out of the top (for transmitting radio waves) and two metal sticks on the one side. You moved the sticks to fly the airplane. It was amazing how much control you could have with this kind of a system. Every now and then we would experience what is known in radio-control speak as a “glitch.” Being radio-controlled, each plane operated on a certain frequency - a certain kind of radio wave. Anyone operating a radio device nearby with too much power could cause your system to go haywire. Such lapses in control were known as glitches. When encountering a glitch, some planes would just keep flying straight, no matter what the person did to try and turn it. Sometimes, planes would just keep going, getting smaller and smaller, while the

EASTER MAKES THINGS LESS CERTAIN

To get maximum benefit from this post, you will want to do the following: Think about a time when something you thought to be one-hundred percent true was cast into doubt - a time when something of which you were completely certain became uncertain. According to the way the Bible tells it, Easter is first and foremost about that kind of uncertainty. The people who came to the empty tomb that first Easter morning came to it certain about a part of their lives, and, after they left the empty tomb, they were more uncertain about it then they had ever been. And what certainty does Easter seek to make less certain? When followers of Jesus went to the tomb that first Easter morning, they were certain that Jesus’ life was completely over. Why else would they bring spices with them? They came with spices that were used to embalm dead bodies so that the stench from the tombs wouldn’t be overwhelming. They came expecting what had been their experience - that death eventua

DUST, DEATH AND DISCIPLESHIP

Lent is that forty-day period before Easter that many churches have set aside as a time of reflection upon Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and our response to that sacrifice. Lent, basically, is a season of spiritual inventory. In Genesis 2:4b-7, we read how God created us out of dust. In Genesis 3:1-19, we read how we will return to that dust. Physically speaking, our origin and our destination are one and the same – dust! Do you know that household dust is made up mostly of the discarded skin cells of the occupants of that house? Sometime, when you’re brave and you can handle a sobering dose of biblical reality, lift up the bedspread from where it touches the floor, get on your hands and knees and stare your mortality square in the face! Doing so is part of what Lent is all about. That’s why some people have cross-shaped smears of ashes put on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. Those smears are a reminder that we are all returning to dust, which is a rather eup

WORSHIP STARTS A FIRE “I don’t need to go to worship to experience God. God is everywhere, so I can experience God anywhere – in the park, on a golf course or resting in my bed on Sunday morning. It doesn’t matter where I am or who I’m with. I can experience God anywhere I want and any way I want.” I’ve heard people say something like that many times. It sounds so right and so true – and I believe parts of it are right and true. It’s true, I believe – God is everywhere. It’s true, I believe - you can potentially experience God anywhere. (God is not confined to little boxes called church buildings.) However, just because something is everywhere doesn’t mean that you can experience it the same way everywhere. Take the sun, for instance. I think it’s fair to say that the power of the sun is pretty much everywhere. (If it weren’t, we’d all be ice cubes!) However, there are certain things which can intensify that power for us. Walk outside o

HOPE AND CONSEQUENCES Have you ever felt that something or someone was just too far gone? I mean like when your favorite team is losing so bad that, even though the game isn’t over, it’s over. It’s too far gone. You turn off the TV and go to bed. Or, like when a car you’ve enjoyed for years starts to need repair after repair after repair. You want to hang on to it. It’s served you well. You like the way it looks. You like the way it rides. You don’t want another car payment. But your current car is just not long for this world. It’s too far gone. You buy another car. Maybe it’s a person. This person keeps making the same dumb mistake over and over and over again and it’s just destroying him or her. You care about this person, but you know there’s nothing you can do to affect a change in the person’s life. He or she is just too far gone. Have you ever felt that a person is too far gone for God? Have you ever felt that you were too far