Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski was invited by the Sioux Chief Standing Bear to carve a memorial to the Indian People. A television documentary covered the progress of the carving of Crazy Horse into a hue granite face of the Yellow Stone Mountains. Clearly this work was going to exceed the life span of the sculptor. He has since died and the sculpture is far from complete. Yet his children continue his work. Current estimates are that it will be completed without federal funding by the year 2050. The sculpture of the warrior astride a stallion will be 563 feet tall. That’s eight feet higher than the Washington Monument and nine times as high as the faces of the four American Presidents carved in Mount Rushmore, just a few miles north of Crazy Horse.

Why go to such effort? In an interview late sculptor said this:

When your life on earth is over, the world will ask just one question.

Did you do what you were supposed to do?

When Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he was told: Don’t you know you can lose your life?!? His reply? What else is life for?

These two artists from different eras had a similar view of their work. The question  is this. What is your life work?

Some people do great things, but have no contentment. Others know that they have accomplished what they were created to do. Paul the apostle, and pioneer of the early church said this. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. Yet Michaelangelo had no assurance of his spiritual prospects after death. John Wesley founded a movement that far exceeded his years. His counterpart, Whitfield, did amazing things, and yet even a brief look at his life finds a lack of contentment, he himself said that he had built a rope made of sand. Jesus’ words to His Father was this, I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you have sent me to do.

By contrast Pancho Villa’s last words on earth when the US Military had tried him and sentenced him to death were this. “Don’t let it end this way, Tell them I said something.” How about you, will you be searching for words on your death bed or will you say as Christ said, I have brought you glory, because I have done what you sent me to do?

You say I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How do I find out?

Well let’s look at a few things, First, there’s your part. ‘

This includes your cooperation in simple steps of obedience that increase your understanding, preparing for and walking into the Creator’s purposes for you. Your availability in God’s hands as he weaves together the tapestry of your life, pulls, knots, and polishes the strands of your being. Submission, Obedience and availability. That’s your part. Do you want to live a life that leaves a mark? Commit your life to making Jesus the central figure of who you are, Submit yourself to the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and Give yourself to only that which is pleasing to the Father.

So there’s our Part, then there’s the Sovereign Part.

This consists of the deliberate drawing together of those threads, the tapestry that is your life, that have been woven together for as long as you have been alive in a way that reveals your calling. What are the God given passions deep down inside. What has He equipped you to do. What are you weaknesses that when submitted His strength is found. The wonderful thing about the sovereignty of God is that it will always be revealed if we commit ourselves to seeing it.

Your part, the Sovereign Part, The end part.

Listening, understanding, realizing that yes indeed, this thing being birthed within me is what my life is for. It is my divine calling, it is my life’s work.

Leaving your mark is not setting about to do great things. Leaving one’s mark comes through setting one’s face toward a walk of obedience that is carried to completion.

I heard recently a dear friend say that one of the reasons the church isn’t realizing it’s full potential is because we aren’t focusing on the right things, we aren’t focusing on anything consistently.

Why are men not content, because they lost their focus. No longer are our families our focus, but our careers, our money, our position are now our focus. Why are families falling apart? Because we have lost our focus, families don’t even eat together at the dinner table anymore, we’re too busy running off to soccer games or dance recitals. Why are we so tired? Because we think that true rest only comes when we’re on vacation. If we can’t rest in our homes, how dare we think we can rest anywhere else.

Setting one’s face towards a walk of obedience requires focus that will last until the end.

Without vision, the people will perish, how often have we heard this preached. How often have we been told that we must conquer the world. So we set forth with our mighty programs, and ideas of grandeur and we attack hell with barrels blazing only to find that we are carrying water pistols. I think what that verse is saying is simply this, we must have a vision, for our families, for ourselves, and for those we do life together with, and that in and of itself will change the world.

Our focus must be sure, our focus must be consistent, and our focus must centered in Christ.

To leave our mark we must know our purpose, our life’s work. To accomplish that we must obey, and listen. Once we know our life’s work we must commit to it, with our focus never wavering, even if the grass is greener on the other side and there are better offers on the table.

God has given us each the privilege of serving Him. With that He has given each of specific Callings, we are all called to something.

I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course. Those are the words of a man who knew he had left a mark. What will yours be?

“My grandmother Bought it, My mother threw it away, Now I’m buying it back!”

Read Kevin Twit’s Insights Here

Palm Sunday is one of the most significant holidays on the Christian calendar.  It celebrates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion.  The classic Old Testament passage prophesying the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is Zechariah 9:9 which says:

Shout in triumph O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your King is coming to you;

He is just and endowed with salvation,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

These words foretell of the coming day of the Lord and the coming King who will usher in that day.

Just a few verses earlier in Zechariah’s prophecy, he mentions another significant event that will take place in the day of the Lord.  Zechariah 9:5-6 details the humbling of the Philistines, the traditional enemies of Israel and the quintessential Gentile nation.  All of the cities mentioned in the following verses are prominent cities of Philistia:

Ashkelon will see it and be afraid.

Gaza too will writhe in great pain;

also Ekron, for her expectation has been confounded.

Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza,

and Ashkelon will not be inhabited

and a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod,

and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.

At first glance, these verses seem to bespeak the end of the Philistine people.  It sounds almost like a song of praise to the Lord for wiping out the Gentile enemies of the people of God.  But God has something much greater in mind for the Philistines.  Verse 7 goes on to say:

I will remove their blood from their mouth

and their detestable things from between their teeth.

Then they also will be a remnant for our God,

and be like a clan in Judah,

and Ekron like a Jebusite.

The divine plan is to make the Philistines into a “remnant for our God”!  This is the same language that is often used of Israel herself.  God wants to save the people of Philistia just like he wants to save the people of Israel.  And just to make this point abundantly clear, Zechariah says that the Philistines will “be like a clan in Judah.”  The Jebusites mentioned in the last line were the original inhabitants of Jerusalem who were eventually absorbed into the people of God.  They became partakers of the covenant relationship that Israel enjoyed with the Lord.  The prophet here says that the Philistines (symbolized by the city of Ekron) are going to be like that: they will enjoy a fruitful relationship with God.

This is God’s heart for all the Gentiles of the world.  He wants them to become part of his chosen people.  It is a grave mistake to think that God didn’t start caring about the Gentiles until the Apostle Paul started preaching to them in the book of Acts.  His intention to reach them is as old as his intention to be worshipped, which is to say that it is as old as the creation itself.

It is vital also that we don’t miss the prerequisite to the inclusion of the Philistines in Zechariah 9:7: they needed to be purified from their abominable practices.  They were in need of cleansing from their habit of drinking blood and eating detestable things.  This cleansing though, was not to be initiated by themselves but by God (“I will remove . . . .”)  All Gentiles, all people, must be cleansed before they come to God, and that cleansing is found only in Jesus Christ.  It is by resting on his finished work that we are being saved.  Zechariah teaches us that this work was always intended to be extended to the nations.  God has an unremitting passion to reach the nations with the news of his goodness and glory through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  May this reality lead us into even deeper worship of him during this Easter season.

“There aren’t many great leaders who are cynics” – Don Miller

Read his post here on the one thing that may be holding you back as a leader

Without the resurrection of Christ, we have nothing.

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. … If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are all men most to be pitied                (1 Corinthians 15:14-19)

Will you please join us on March 16, 2010 @ Common Ground as we celebrate the greatest event in the history of mankind; The Risen Christ and the mystery of Faith.

Christos Anesti; Alithos Anesti – Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed

6:35pm

725 Beechnut Lane, Martinsville, VA 24112

Christos Anesti

Did Jesus live a one question life? I think He did. I think His only question was “Father, is this my cup?” “Is this how I should deliver your love?” Even Jesus had to ask how to love!

Read More Here

Contributed by: Adam Hughes

Recently, I have had the opportunity to talk with quite a few people who seem to have one major item missing from their life: Joy!  If we all desire to be happy and have joy in our lives, why does that seem to be the one thing that proves to be consistently missing in the hearts and minds of so many?  I don’t know everything but I do believe God has shed some light on this subject!

“These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may

be made full.”  ~John 15:11

Since the beginning of The Table, we have been talking about this whole process of abiding in Christ.  When Jesus was investing in the lives of His disciple, just before being betrayed, he explained to them what it meant to abide and at the very end of that, talked about what it meant to be have joy while abiding. What I find extremely important about the placement of this topic, on joy, is that He waits until the very end of His abide talk to deal with us about it!  So if it was important enough to Him that He make it last, so that it would be fresh on our mind, why do we tend to lose sight of joy so easily?

First, let me ask a question?  When you think about the word joy, what comes to mind?  Is it family, friends, jobs, money, material things; or is it Jesus?  We live in a time and culture in which we are taught that our joy is found in the material things we have.  If that is true, then how many things do we have to own in order to truly find joy?  In getting them how much debt do we enter into or how tight do we stretch our bank accounts to find ourselves hopelessly miserable, without joy because we have become stressed on not having enough money to pay the bills because of our lack of “joy”?  Circumstances also tend to be a large deciding factor on how much “joy” we claim to have.  Life isn’t always good and things don’t always go our way.  When that is the case, do we find joy in our circumstances, through Him, or do we become believers with something else to complain about?

Here is the point that Christ was trying to make!  He says in John 15:11 that, “these things I have spoke to you so that My joy may be in you.”  It isn’t our joy that we are living for, but more that perfect life and that perfect joy of Christ that lives in us!  He then goes further to say, “and that your joy may be made full.”  He desires that we be made full in Him.  You see, God made a promise to us and James spoke about that promise.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”  ~James 4:8a

God desires to be close to us.  In that closeness He wants to make our joy full, through Christ, in our life.  So the question remains, how do we get to that place?

We have done such a great job to replace the joy of Christ in our lives with so many other things.  The problem is this: the joy these things bring us only lasts for a short time. God designed a place inside of us that belongs only to Him.  When we place other things there, they fade away.  However, Jesus Christ never fades away.  In that, our joy in Him remains a constant in our life when we learn to keep our priorities in check.

So go back to the question we asked earlier.  When you think of joy, what comes to mind.  If Christ isn’t the first thing to come to mind, then maybe it’s time that we take a reality check of our relationship with Him.  When we finally learn to truly fall in love with Him and put Him above all of our circumstances, ipod’s, cars, jobs, family and church, it’s then that we will begin to understand what it means to abide in Him and find the true joy that lives inside us!

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan relates the story of a cleaning-woman whom his main character, Christian, sees sweeping the wooden floor of a large room.  The sweeping of the woman produces a cloud of dust that rises and begins to blind her.  The more she sweeps the more the dust is stirred up and the more the dust is stirred up the harder and faster she sweeps.  There seems to be no end to the hopeless situation until another woman comes and sprinkles some drops of water over the dust, causing it to drift back to the floor where it can be swept into a neat pile and disposed of properly.  This sight, Christian is given to understand, represents the futile human effort to deal with sin apart from the effective work of the Holy Spirit.

The discussion here of late has been largely focused on the meaning of abiding in Christ as we are taught to do in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of John and elsewhere (Galatians, chapter five comes to mind, for example).  One important aspect of abiding in Jesus is the promise that those who rest in him will find the strength to resist the temptations of this life.  This strength comes not from themselves but from the one in whom they rest.  The abiding Christian will enjoy the experience of Jesus Christ triumphing over sin in his or her life.  Abiding, in this sense, means allowing the righteousness of Christ to work itself out in our lives.   And yet, Christians still sin.  To believe otherwise is to betray either an ignorance of the true nature of Christianity or an ignorance of the true nature of sin, or both.

And so we have this tension, expressed very simply by the apostle in I John 3:6: “No one who abides in [Jesus] sins.”  This ego-shattering proposition is at once a call to Christlikeness and a recognition that the failure to resist sin is, at its core, a failure to abide in Jesus Christ.  Here’s the problem: We who claim to follow Jesus, who attempt to surrender ourselves to him daily, still regularly find ourselves not fully surrendered and not faithfully following.  What’s the answer?  How should Christians deal with sin?

We usually get the answer to this question wrong.  Our tendency is to deal with our sin through our own strength.  We exert greater personal effort and expend more personal energy.  Different traditions of Christianity mishandle sin in different ways.  Roman Catholic tradition is full of things like priestly confession, various forms of penance, ritualistic prayers and the like.  All of these activities offer a very impressive display of human will power but they do nothing to deal with the root issue of sin.  Protestants are not much better.  We have our accountability partners and bible memorization and our own kinds of ritualistic prayers and they are good things all, but at the end of the day, our sin is still alive and well.  The reality is, when we attempt to fight sin in our own strength, we are simply allowing the battle to be waged on sin’s own turf.  If it was a failure to fully abide in Christ that made us vulnerable to sin’s attack in the first place, then why would we suppose that a continued policy of non-abiding would be successful in defeating sin?  We are too much like the driver who, though realizing he is lost, continues to drive in the same direction thinking that he will soon come across something he recognizes or like that cleaning-woman in Bunyan who, when confronted with the dust clouds raised by her vigorous sweeping, attempts to solve the problem by sweeping more vigorously.  We must find a wiser way.

That way is found in the same passage of I John which we mentioned a moment ago.  I John 3:2-3 reads,

“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.  We know that when he appears we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is.  And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”

The apostle John here is urging us to understand that just as the simple sight of Christ on the last day will be enough to accomplish our transformation, so simple hope in Christ today is enough to accomplish our purification.  Just hoping in Christ; just resting in Christ; just abiding in Christ.  This is all it takes to save us.  This is all it takes to restore us.  This is all it takes to defeat sin.  It is simply putting down the broom, taking a seat at the table and watching in worshipful awe as the Holy Spirit of Christ sprinkles our sin with the water of his grace and then bears it cleanly away.

Common Ground is the location of our future gatherings.  God has provided in amazing ways for us to partner with Forest Hills to use this space.  Great things are happening, and we look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, Feb. 16 @ 6:35pm to gather at The Table.

725 Beechnut Lane, Martinsville, VA 24112

If you have any questions call us @ 276.403.0822

Or Email us @ mike@thetableinc.com

What do we need? Committed Christians or Surrendered Christians?

Read Bud McCord’s Answer here