Life Purpose

Have you ever seen the movie “Facing the Giants”? Throughout this movie, numerous life obstacles are presented to Grant Taylor and his wife. He owns a car that constantly dies on him, they live in a house that has numerous problems to be fixed, and he does not make enough money on his job. As if that were not enough to overwhelm them, Grant and his wife have desired to have children. Their attempts for four years have been unproductive. Needless to say, life is not going well for them. Does this sound familiar? I know that a few of these situations have been the events within my life from time to time.  But in the mist of it all, God has a purpose and a plan. 

 

Let me share a scene from this movie that had a major impact on me. Coach Grant Taylor has his football team on the field, practicing drills. His lead player, Brock, has a negative attitude that is affecting the whole team. The coach is addressing this issue and has just said, “Attitudes are the aroma of your life.” He calls out Brock, (who is displaying a bad attitude), to do the death crawl. With another player on his back, he is asked to crawl as far as he can.  Coach Taylor blindfolds Brock so that he does not give in at a point in which he feels that he has done well enough. He wants to have Brock give him his best. As Brock crawls the coach is encouraging him all the way. He directs him, and consistently tells him not to quit. When the weight is starting to cause Brock pain, the coach tells him to keep going. Brock yells, “it hurts, it’s too hard”, but the coach yells back, “keep on going, don’t quit, 10 more steps, you can do this. Give me your very best!”  Brock continues on and then collapses on the field. The coach takes off the blindfold and tells Brock to look up; he is in the end zone.

 

Coach Taylor tells Brock that he is his most influential player on the team and if he walks around defeated, so will they. He points out the fact that he just crawled from one end zone to the other with a 140 pound man on his arms. Then he says “God has gifted you with the ability of leadership- don’t waste it.” 

 

Maybe you are like Brock, with a bad attitude that is becoming a roadblock to your potential. Maybe those attitudes are affecting the power of your influence on everyone around you, your family, your co-workers, your friends. Maybe you are feeling like the weight of life is just like that player on Brock’s back, too much to bear.

 

You see, I passionately believe that God has gifted every one of us with abilities, to lead, to comfort, to inspire, to create, and to share. How has He gifted you and are you like Brock, just wasting that ability?

 

As a Christian Life Coach, I help clients to step into their destiny and discover all that God has created them to be.  I am here to cheer you on and speak into your life, “Don’t quit. Give your very best, keep going, you can do this.”   

 

Connie Hanten, BCMCLC

New Hope Life Coach

Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength

Assertiveness

I’ve been thinking about assertiveness. Assertiveness is the ability to express your feelings, opinions, beliefs, and needs directly, openly and honestly, while not violating the personal rights of others. Assertiveness does not in any way mean being aggressive. Aggressive behavior is self-enhancing at the expense of others. It does not take other individual's rights into consideration. If you are aggressive, your spouse's, children's, extended family members and friends' feelings are ignored, violated and not taken into consideration when interacting with them. Furthermore, as a result of aggressive behavior, they feel hurt, humiliated, angry, and revengeful.

Assertive communication can strengthen your relationships, reducing stress from conflict and providing you with social support when facing difficult times. A polite but assertive "no" to excessive requests from others will enable you to avoid overloading your schedule and promote balance in your life. Assertive communica-tion can also help you handle difficult family, friends and co-workers more easily, reducing drama and stress.

So why be assertive?

1. By standing up for ourselves and letting ourselves be known to others, we gain self-respect and respect from others.

2. By trying to live our lives in such a way to NEVER hurt ANYONE under ANY circumstances, we end up hurting ourselves and other people.

3. When we stand up for ourselves and express our honest feelings and thoughts in direct and appropriate ways, everyone usually benefits in the long run. Likewise, when we demean other people, we also demean ourselves and everyone involved usually loses in the process.

4. By sacrificing our integrity and denying our personal feelings, relationships are usually damaged or prevented from developing. Likewise, personal relationships are hurt when we try to control others through hostility, intimidation or guilt.

5. Personal relationships become more authentic and satisfying when we share our honest responses with other people and do not block others from sharing their responses with us.

6. Not letting others know what we think and feel is just as selfish as not attending to other people's thoughts and feelings.

7. When we frequently sacrifice our rights, we teach others to take advantage of us.

8. By being assertive and informing others of how their behavior affects us, we are giving them an opportunity to change their behavior, and we are showing respect for their right to know where they stand with us.

Tom Horst, MAMFT

Marriage and Family Therapist

When God Speaks

One morning as I was getting ready to go to work my mind was filled with frustration and angst over a situation.  I confess there was a spirit of revenge in my heart and in my thoughts. As my thoughts rolled over and over in my mind I became more and more uptight and yet determined.  As I worked on knitting that ball of frustration tighter and tighter a voice suddenly came out my radio and shouted very loudly “Get out of God’s way”.   There was a pastor preaching a sermon on forgiveness on my radio station.  He continued to, in his boisterous manner, to go on to say that God cannot take care of the wrong doing that has been done to us till we get out of His way.  I looked heavenward and rhetorically asked with a smile, “That was no accident was it Lord?”  I had to laugh to myself, then sincerely repent and move on. 

I pondered what had happened as I made my way to work.  I love when God sends loud and clear messages to me and this message was certainly loud and clear, straight from the mouth of God through that pastor.  I started to think about how God knows our end from the beginning. He knows every choice we will make along life’s way.  He knows how every moment of our lives will play out.  Every moment…those few tiny seconds when that voice came out of the radio…God had to create that pastor’s mother and father, they gave birth and one or both had to raise him or influence him to be a good and godly man. He had to grow up and he had to choose to become a pastor, my radio station had to put him on their schedule at just the right time for me to hear that. All the human choices along the way. I thought about all the possibilities of how just one thing going differently in this chain of events and that voice would not have come out of my radio at that time – the perfect time.

What a peace and joy that gave me as I realized how intricately God has planned my life.  Imagine- Before the world began God had a plan for every second of everyone’s life.  Not impossible for a God who spoke the world into existence. God’s fingerprints are all over my life and yours too. There is nothing left to chance.  Sure man has free will, but God has His provisions for those wills already worked out. I can bask in the safety and security of the mighty hands of God.  I can know that He has everything already worked out for me.  If I make a “wrong” choice He has made provisions for that. If someone else makes a bad choice and it hurts me He has people and supports already worked out to help heal the hurt. If I stray from Him he already has folks in place to steer me back. His guidance, safety and protection are absolute. 

So relax! Get rid of that anxiety.  You have nothing to worry about.  Live in this world like a child under the tender loving care of the perfect parent of the universe.  God and all His angels are looking out for you.  You have only to put yourself in the capable and loving hands of God and His precious son Jesus Christ! 

Shelva Hess, Counselor

Anticipation

I recently received a text from one of my sisters about how many days there are until spring.  We are so focused on the weather and how soon this “season” will be over that we lose focus on more important things going on around us.  We are like the disciples in Mark 4:35 – 41 where they are on a boat and they start to fear for their lives because of a storm.  They wake Jesus who was asleep and he calms the wind and the water and questions their faith.  We are just like the disciples when we question the storms and trials that we face.

During the snow storms we have going on outside our homes we don’t always recognize the raging storms of our mental wellbeing.  Are we so focused on the next “season” so much that we lose focus on the here and now in the anticipation of what is to come next?  I have learned that if I don’t take care of my mental wellbeing and remain focused through faith in Jesus that I am not able to handle the little things that I over look.  My anticipation should be keeping my focus on Jesus and everything around me will fall into its proper place.

While we are in the storms of our lives where is our focus?  Would Jesus call us out on our faith as He did his disciples?  It certainly helps us think about our “storms” from a different perspective and realize where our anticipation and focus need to be!

Elaine Campbell, MA, MHC

How Can Anyone "Delight in the Fear of the Lord?"

Part 6 – Revelation of Jesus’ Interaction with the Holy Spirit

In the light of this powerful prophetic revelation offered to us by Isaiah, in chapter 11, the first and foremost aspect for us to see and to understand, so that we may digest carefully what the prophet has shared with us here, is not only his picture of our Redeemer Himself, but also with Him, the abiding Presence of the Spirit of God resting forever on Jesus.

 

In His state of humiliation, in which Jesus permitted Himself to become dependent on the third Person of the Triune Godhead, the Holy Spirit, our King also became for us the truest example of steadfast and unfailingly obedient humanity.

 

Jesus’ example for us, is the best one which we all can choose to emulate, in our own growing dependent faith in God Almighty, living by faith and trust in Someone beyond ourselves, our own resources, or our own devices.

 

Isaiah’s description that follows, is a complex revelation, touching on the interaction of Jesus as the incarnated GodMan (Theanthropos), with His unique human and divine natures in hypostatic union in one Person, and His interactions with the Holy Spirit during His time on the earth, but also giving evidence of His continuous, intimate, eternal coordination with the Holy Spirit:   

 

ISAIAH 11:2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the reverential and obedient fear of the Lord—

 

The Hebrew word used here by Isaiah, translated as “rest” in English is nuwach or nuah, conveying a basic sense of absence of movement and of being settled in a particular place with overtones of finality.

 

W. E. Vine, in his Expository Dictionary notes that "To rest’ can sometimes indicate a complete envelopment and thus permeation, as in the spirit of Elijah “resting” on Elisha (2 KINGS 2:15), the hand of God “resting” on the mountain (ISAIAH 25:10), and when Wisdom “rests in the heart of him that hath understanding.” (PROVERBS 14:33)

 

The Septuagint translates nuwach, with the Greek verb anapauo in the sense of "to settle on an object" as exemplified by the Spirit resting on believers who are reviled. (1PETER 4:14)

 

The Holy Spirit will rest on the Messiah (permanently; not temporarily come upon, e.g., NUMBERS 11:25, 26), a prophecy that was fulfilled at His first coming, but will also be fulfilled at His Second Coming.

 

This is a fascinating and somewhat mysterious statement, in view of the unity of the Trinity and yet the Gospels speak very prominently of the ongoing role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus.

 

While this is indeed a great mystery, Jesus' dependence on the Holy Spirit to control and empower ministry during His time on earth, should also be a great encouragement to all believers and strong motivation for each of us to seek to learn to walk by the Spirit, keeping in step with Him!  (GALATIANS 5:16, EPHESIANS 5:18)

 

After laying the revelatory foundation that the Holy Spirit will eternally rest on the Messiah, Isaiah continues to unfold the revelation before us, showing that this is the sevenfold Spirit, Who is from the beginning and is without end!

 

The Holy Spirit is first and foremost, the Spirit of God, the Lord, Who as third Person of the Trinity, is co-essential with the Father and the Son, having every attribute of the Godhead within Himself.

 

After this firm foundation concerning His deity is laid, the prophet reveals six other amazing attributes or qualities of the Holy Spirit of God:

 

Spirit of Wisdom – indicating a level of discernment and discretion that can come through experience and/or revelation/insight that causes the most appropriate, or proper application, of knowledge into a particular situation, to bring about the best solution to the problems that are being faced.

 

Spirit of Understanding - the ability of perceive and comprehend moral, ethical, and abstract truths which can also come through both revelation and insight from the Lord, as well as experientially.

 

Spirit of Counsel – this attribute of applied knowledge, to strategize and to capitalize on understandings that have been retrieved, itemized, catalogued, and integrated, to form a plan, is coupled in a special way, linguistically termed a hendiadys, a figure of speech used for emphasis, where two words joined by and are used to express a single complex idea, in this case with the Spirit of Might.

 

Spirit of Might – once a wise plan, using insightful understanding, is properly applied with strategic precision, it must have the power or might to be acted upon – thus Counsel must have Might to move to completion and conclusion.

 

Spirit of Knowledge - the accumulated accrual of practical and useful facts about the material and spiritual reality in which we live, used as a resource to draw upon in addressing issues and solving problems

 

Spirit of Reverential and Obedient Fear of the Lord – implies a true core, intimate, experiential knowledge of God, just Who and what He is, which comes from a basic foundation of believing, saving faith in Him, serving to separate the follower of Jesus, yet also engendering respectful, honoring, reverence to the ultimate Source of all that is, and the almighty Ruler above all that is, was, or ever will be, bringing about obedient surrender of selfish, willful, thoughtless living, into selfless, passionate desire to serve Him lovingly, worship Him totally, creating within and acting out of compassionate care for all others.

 

Neil Uniacke

Executive Director

Memories

Memories can be pleasant or unpleasant. Sometimes a memory of a certain event can have both good and bad connotations associated with it. Measles has been in the news lately due to the fact that some parents have chosen not to have their children vaccinated and people are worried (and rightly so) that this serious illness will make an unwanted comeback.

Most times when a person recalls their own encounter with measles, the memory is not a happy one; however, while my own experience with this illness certainly had its unpleasantness, it also evokes a sweet memory of my mother. My mother has been gone for almost nine years and this month would have marked her 89^th birthday. In memory of her, I share this memory.

Most people in my generation (which was way before the vaccination was available) had the disease as a child, but I progressed into my teenage years without being exposed to it, or if I was, I didn’t contract it. Finally, when I had less than two weeks remaining in my freshman year of high school, I came down with the measles.  Besides being miserable, I was concerned that I would not be able to complete the necessary studies or assignments that needed to be finished before the school year ended.

Of course the school was understanding and I was allowed to do my work at home. However, one of the discomforts of measles is watery eyes which makes it difficult to read. Also, it was thought that if you didn’t protect your eyes from the light while having the measles you could end up with serious eye issues and even ultimately blindness. (I think this is just a myth. My Google research hints at that.) Anyway, like everyone else did in that era, I laid in bed in a dark room so as to protect my eyes from any horrible lingering effects of the disease. Of course this didn’t bode well for doing schoolwork.

I was taking an Advanced Reading class and I still had a book to read before the end of the year. This is when my mother entered the picture. The book I needed to read was “To Kill a Mockingbird.” She picked up the book and sat by my bed and read the entire book out loud to me while I lay with a cloth over my eyes to protect them from any light. I actually think she read by flashlight instead of turning the ceiling light on, but my memory is a little fuzzy on that. Mother was a great reader and made the story come alive and we both became absorbed in the exploits of Scout and Atticus.

When I went back to school there was just a few days left and I honestly don’t remember how I did in any of my other classes, but on the test for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I got 100%. I returned home that day and said to Mother, “We did it. We aced the test!”

So although to most people, the work measles strikes fear in their hearts or a reminder of a painful experience, it brings to my mind the picture of a 15-year-old girl lying ill in bed, and her mother sitting beside her, reading a book out loud. It is a memory I will always treasure.

I think it does us good to revisit a special memory from time to time, especially when the person is no longer with us. It is also important to share those memories with others (particularly those who also knew the person), so they too can be reminded of times shared together with that special someone. Do you have a memory that triggers a sweet remembrance of someone who has gone on before you? Share it with someone who would appreciate hearing about it.

Mary Lehman

Secretary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stories from Door #128

This is the door where we receive most of the donations that our friends and neighbors bring in so that we can stock the Community Closet Thrift Store. If the back door at 128 TownsEdge Drive, Quarryville could talk, there would be some very interesting stories that you might hear.

 

Some days Door 128 would tell you happy stories.  Someone lost weight and is donating clothing that no longer fits them.  The kids are getting bigger and a parent drops off clothes that are too small and toys that are no longer played with. A couple got married and doesn’t need all the pictures and decorative items that they accumulated.  Christmas is coming, and a family will be getting new items so they are cleaning out some things that they no longer want.

 

Some days Door 128 would tell you stories of grief and sadness.  A loved one passed away either suddenly or after a long illness.  Those who are donating do so with a heavy heart and a weary look.  They bring us things that belonged to their mom, dad, husband or wife.  The unspoken words are of missing someone who means so much to the person who is donating these items.

 

Some days Door 128 would tell you angry stories.  A relationship fell apart and they no longer want to remember the other person.

 

Some days the stories from Door 128 would make you laugh.  Clothing comes in that was in style 20 or 30 years ago and today makes us smile.  People hide things in their shoes and we have stories of dentures and bullets found in these hiding places.

 

But every day, Door 128 tells stories of our neighbors' generosity.  They donate their little or their much to help their neighbors who cannot afford faith based counseling.  They donate so that the Strengthening Families program can run and families can learn how to communicate better with each other.

 

We don't always know the stories that are behind the donations.  But, we hope that when you donate to the Community Closet Thrift Store, you are greeted with kindness.  We thank God for you and we pray for you often.  Thank you that your story is part of our story.

 

Deb Riddell

Closet Manager