We interrupt our normal subject to celebrate God’s goodness to his people at Bethlehem – the overwhelming affirmation of Dr. Jason Meyer as Associate Pastor for Preaching and Vision!
In a few weeks following his installation we can officially call him Pastor Jason. I think I’ll start now. I love my pastors; it isn’t a title I use lightly, and hopefully always with affection.
Here the elders are praying following the announcement of the vote.
As always, our hope does not rest on any man except for the God-man Jesus Christ. But isn’t God good to give us men who long for us to know God more clearly and passionately!
The worship in music before the meeting began was also sweet, including the music below. God is good!
A word from the Apostle Paul on Jesus, suffering, and hope.
There is no need for us to pretend we are strong or that we do not suffer. There is purpose in it all!
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
The Reimer family is incredible in the best sense of the word. God gripped them and guided them into full-time ministry to families like ours. This 3 1/2 minute video will introduce you to them and their work.
I’m hoping Tamara Reimer will get some camera time in future videos!
And then I had this stark reminder: there is a war in our culture against people with disabilities.
For some reason, my news reader on Wednesday brought up an article that is almost a year old. The title reveals exactly what it is about: I saw my son’s bleak future and knew I had to abort him. Note: this article is very descriptive about what happened to her, including the abortion process. Please use care.
I don’t fault the mother. She had, it appears, literally no support to spare the life of her son. Her sister, who is a nurse, advised her to abort. Her brother, who parents a child with CP, said it could be unbearable for everyone if he lived. The health care professionals focused on what was ‘wrong’ with this boy. She was entirely alone with her fears and prejudices and assumptions.
We must tell our stories, pointing people to God as the source of hope. Of course it is hard, and God is good. The pressures and heartache are incredible, and God will supply everything we need.
We simply must let the world know these children are infinitely valuable, all of them. We must tell people that the little ones were created to live for eternity, even if some of them will live hard lives here.
He understands what it is like to love a child with a disability.
He was invited to speak because he wrote a great book on prayer, A Praying Life.
It is full of reminders and pleas like this:
Prayer is asking God to incarnate, to get dirty in your life. Yes, the eternal God scrubs floors. For sure we know he washes feet. So take Jesus at his word. Ask him. Tell him what you want. Get dirty. Write out your prayer requests; don’t mindlessly drift through life on the American narcotic of busyness. If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don’t let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day.
We can absolutely trust him! God even has it covered when we don’t know how to pray, or simply can’t pray, because our sorrows are too deep:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:26-28 ESV)
I’m pretty sure most of you have already seen this video somewhere! But I’m a sucker for boys born with no eyes and cleft palates – since I have one. That’s a pretty rare combination.
Please pray for this young mom – she’s still very new to this life.
I’ve included a picture of Paul below when he was a baby. Those were hard days. But they weren’t all bad, either.
Like many churches, Bethlehem celebrated Mothers Day with a special dedication of children. It is a serious and joyous occasion where parents and members dedicate themselves to the raising of these children.
And, similar to last week when Dr. Meyer (hopefully soon to be Pastor Jason!) inserted references to disability naturally into his sermon, Pastor Kenny reminded everyone that all children are gifts:
I find this so helpful and encouraging when my leaders do this! My child with disabilities is welcome in this place, and everyone is reminded that families like ours are gifts to be celebrated.
But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. (1 Corinthians 12:18-20 ESV)
You’ve probably already seen this – its been viewed more than a million times and many people emailed it to me.
It is still a great 2:32 seconds to watch again! (Note: this is a slightly longer version than has been showing up on CNN and other places.)
Three highlights for me:
1) A dad who shouts his boy’s name in delight.
2) A dad who lets his son demonstrate his hard work, until he couldn’t stand it anymore and rushed to pick him up.
3) A mom who rightly observes about her son, “I ain’t taking my eyes off daddy.”
I hope my sons feel my affections like that. We dads have been given a good model for how to behave toward them!
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17 ESV)
Note: This was first posted last year for Mother’s Day. May God’s peace which ‘surpasses all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7) be with every mother today.
There are scores of women who have children of all ages who cannot speak an intelligible word because of their cognitive disabilities. Or their children, like my son, have some language, but those children can never make a spontaneous call of deep affections for their mother.
There will be no handwritten cards, telephone calls or gifts from those children to their mothers today.
Yet, most of those children have mothers who pour their lives into them, sometimes for decades beyond what they anticipated when that little life first starting growing in their bodies.
For all of you moms in that circumstance, know that this proverb is still for you, just not yet!
Her children rise up and call her blessed. Proverbs 31:28
Why do I believe this?
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. Revelation 21:1-7
Those mothers who cling to Jesus for daily strength and as their future hope have a glorious eternity waiting for them.
Someday, I believe my son will tell me things almost too wonderful for me to comprehend about what he experienced in this present age. And I expect one of the things he will talk about is his tender, eternal regard for the woman who cared for him without a thought about what she would receive from him in return. On that day, he will rise and call his mother blessed!
As I write this, Ian and Larissa’s video has been viewed almost 500,000 times! Please pray that saints all over the world would be encouraged to persevere and that those who are currently blind would be given eyes to see, through the testimony of a disabled life, that God is more glorious than anything this world has to offer.
Please also pray for this young couple. Satan hates them for this testimony and how he can’t use the things this culture fears to shake their faith. They, like our loved ones with disabilities, are very dangerous to his evil cause because of how God’s strength is magnified in weakness.
If you haven’t seen Larissa’s three blogs, all are worth reading. I’ve included a brief excerpt from each.
And even though we chose marriage, we chose it sadly. Sorrow has been a permanent resident in our 20s. It feels like the rest of the world uses these years for really fun things. But in our 20s, we have watched our future crash with him in that white station wagon and we now live with two versions of Ian. Weʼve watched all of our friends get married and have health. Iʼve watched as my girlfriends and sisters found husbands who could dance with them at their weddings and drive them to church on Sunday morning. Weʼve watched our dad fight and be taken by brain cancer, only to see life keep marching on.
Fortunately, our hope is that weʼve also watched all of these alongside Jesus, who is our own man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). So we have not walked it alone.
I didn’t know contentment in my prosperity — contentment then meant health and ease, not God. God has not given us an indication that Ian will be fully healed here, which means that we have needed to enlist ourselves in our suffering. We still pray for complete healing, but we also pray for strength to endure a life-long disability. We are learning that contentment is produced as we obey and act on His promises, like the one mentioned above, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
In the middle of these losses, though, sometimes weʼre given little glimpses of the beauty God has designed in disability, and in Ianʼs in particular. Ian is the happiest and funniest person that I know.
The Works of God 
“Right away we knew our calling. . .”
Posted in commentary on May 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »
The Reimer family is incredible in the best sense of the word. God gripped them and guided them into full-time ministry to families like ours. This 3 1/2 minute video will introduce you to them and their work.
I’m hoping Tamara Reimer will get some camera time in future videos!
Thank you to Pastor Paul Martin for tweeting this video.
As I write this it is 92 degrees in Minnesota; the snow in this video looks pretty good to me!
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