OOPS

If you are reading this from the HTML email that Holy Cross sent out.. Well, Chris sent you to the wrong blog.. Click on the link below and you will go to the new Pastor's Blog.

THE PASTOR'S REAL BLOG

The blessings of God

This weekend I had the privilege of sharing what has happened at Holy Cross over the last 25 years with six pastors from around he country. Whenever I tell the story, I am struck with just how blessed we are and have been!
The Pastors who come take notes and gather information with the idea that somehow what is happening here can happen at their own congregations, and that is certainly our prayer and the reason that we spend this time together, but the fact is that it is the blessing of God that will transform their congregations.
One of the questions that they kept asking was how did you know which things would work? I told them what I have come to believe and that is that we have a tendency to plan where we would like to go and then we ask God to go there with us. Instead we need to look around us and see what God is blessing and then go there! Whenever I have tried to plan just what would work for Holy Cross it has failed. The things that have worked are the things that I would say just "fell into our laps". Again and again God has shown me that it is in His time and in His way that He will bless us in our task of reaching the lost for Christ in the Central Florida Area!
Do you think that this attitude works in our personal lives as well? Should we be looking for where God is blessing you and your family and go in that direction?
What do you think?

In Christ,
Paul Hoyer

a prayer

Here is something I prayed today

Hey Father, teach me what it looks like to be known by you

I mean I know you made me for yourself, 

things work best when our relationship is dynamic

But sometimes I struggle with how that looks for us

So today, Holy Spirit, would you come

Open my mind and heart to new ideas and fresh disciplines

to new possibilities and different approaches

So I can become who I already am, a man known by you and living with you for the sake of your son in his kingdom. In Him and through Him...Amen

sparrow

I like to listen to podcasts while I work out; things like this american life or speaking of faith. I know it's not pump you up music, but workouts for me are relaxing and these add to it. 

This morning, relishing the anonymity of being one of several people on dozens of elliptical machines, I listened to a conversation with an interesting atheist turned Jew. She wrote a book called the Sparrow. The book sounds a little crazy if not interesting, but it was when she spoke about how she got the title that I was really intrigued. 

She quoted from where the Bible mentions that not even a sparrow falls without God seeing it. She said that is supposed to be a comfort. But it has always caused her to question: why then does the bird still fall? If God is watching why does the bird die. I love this question. 

Our God is complex. Larger than we can handle or understand. Often we try to explain away the problem of sparrows dieing, like we are trying to get God off the hook. To imagine up our own reason why God might have the sparrow die. But in the end the two things exist right next to each other: Bad things and all powerful Good God. Both are true...some things are just all bad, and the all powerful God is all good. It can be confusing if you think about it too much. We're better off letting this be a comfort--in the midst of bad the all powerful Good God is on your side. 

rain, rain

I have a friend whose favorite weather is cold and rainy. Normally I don't agree, but for me today has been nice. It has given me an excuse to drink coffee and eat tasty vegetable soup (made by my talented and beautiful wife). 

In the olden days (days were never golden but just older) rain was associated with the blessing of God. Lots of rain was lots and lots of blessing. Usually we associate sun and blue sky with God, maybe that's because we don't grow our own food. 

It's good to remember that our God has been around a long time. That people have been dealing with him for a lot longer that we even have a concept of. That American or Enlightenment understandings of scripture, or spirituality, or even God are relatively new. We have definitely learned some new things that help, but I think we are losing some things too. Maybe rain ought to be associated with our good and gracious God. That helps me when I look out my window, welcome the rain and imagine God's blessing coming down with the water.