Blog #5: Goodbye HopePark

Today being my last day at HopePark Church was a bittersweet feeling.  In the year and a half I have been here I have considered HopePark my church home.  After you invest so much time and effort into a church and a ministry it is always hard to leave.  However since I have graduated college I have trusted God to guide my path, that is what brought me to HopePark and I truly believe that trusting God is what is leading me into this next stage of my life and ministry.

Everyone from the staff to the students have made such and impact on my life, my passion, and my spirituality.  You have shown me what true love is and pray that you continue this long after I live.  I appreciate you letting me yell at you with a microphone every once in a while, allowed me to speak wisdom into your life (as much as I probably shouldn’t) and simply opening up your lives to me.  I pray that some of the things I have shared with you have stuck and you will take into the world.

Remember the challenge laid out in Ephesians 4:11-13.  BE THE CHURCH!  Do the ministry and commit fully to what the staff, Revolution, and Hopepark is doing.  I guarantee that when you commit fully and leave nothing back you will see a change, a change that only God can make in you.

You will always have a special place in my heart.

Later for now

Stefan Deli-something or other

Blog #4: Ananias

Original date written 1/30/10

When I was younger and fresh in my walk with Christ I was always afraid to tell others about God, Jesus, Church, or the Bible. I always felt inadaquete as if I didn’t know enough about any of those things to really make my point known. I felt as though I should leave that up to the pastors and preachers of this world. After all they are trained to know the Bible. They study it (or are supposed to) and they have such a way of explaining it that I never could.

Little did I know that I was going to be one of these so-called pastors.

Its not until now that I have realized. Even with all of my “formal teaching” in the Bible and all the time I have spent alone in my studies, I am still learning new things about all this, everyday. If I wait until I know everything about God, Jesus, the Bible, before I tell anyone, I will waste my entire life walking around with my mouth shut.

There is a story in John 9 that spoke so clearly to me. It is a very popular story, mostly because it displays Gods awesome power of healing and gratitude. It is a story of a man who had been blind since birth. Jesus approaches him as he is begging on the street, Jesus picks up some dirt, spits in His hand and creates a mud that He puts over the mans eyes. He then tells him to wash the mud off in the Pool of Siloam and the man who had been blind since birth, could see.

The next part of this story is what amazes me. The once blind man then gets put in front of the pharisees and they continue to ask him “who is this man that has healed you?” The once blind man is so excited he just simply says” Look! Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” They continue to ask him questions about him. Baffled the guys answers again almost confused about why this is even an issue. Why aren’t they excited! He was no longer blind! So again he says “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” The blind man had no idea what had happened. He just knew the results of it.

If we have accepted Jesus, we have been healed of our spiritual blindness. We were once blind but now we can see.

It doesn’t matter if we know how it happened or why it happened, we just know that it happened. That is enough to get excited about! That is enough to tell people about!

In the next book called Acts we read about a man named Ananias in chapter 9. Now Ananias is a disciple of God. Ananias receives a vision from God to meet a man named Saul.

Coincidently Saul is also blind at this point.

Saul had been blinded by God after he appeared to him and told him to go to where Ananias would be. Now Ananias shows up. Leads Saul in prayer. Heals his eyes. Saul accepts that Jesus is the Lord. And Ananias goes on his way never to be heard from again. This man Saul who was known for murdering Christians and persecuting them, eventually changed his name to Paul and wrote majority of what we have as the New Testament today.

One man who is only mentioned for about 10 verses in the entire Bible, one man who is just a small portion, who we may read over many times, lead the one person to Christ who changed Christianity today as we know it.

So my question to you is…. Who is a potential Saul in your life. Who is someone that maybe God has been showing His light to and is just waiting for someone to talk to him about it. Who is someone that is spiritually blind in your life? Who is someone you have felt God leading you to talk to but you have felt inadequate? Who could you talk to that could potentially change Christianity from here on out.

Ananias was not a major guy. He was simply a segment in a much bigger story. Yet, he played a substantial part in the Bible as we know it today.

If God has been leading you to talk to someone about Jesus this month, do it. Don’t pass the opportunity up. Who knows, it could be the next Paul…

Potential Ananias,
Stefan

Blog #3: Thanksgiving

Original date written 11/26/09

Thank you is a term that we use very often in our lives. We thank people for gifts, we thank them for their service, we thank them when we get things. But many people think that there are not many things to be thankful for, especially with everything going on in our country. Yet there are some people who seem to be more affected than others. It always makes me cringe when I see people who have so much more than me. They have nicer cars, nicer houses, nicer clothes… It’s easy to look at people like that say “They are so rich, they can buy anything they want”

We can look at others that have more than us and say “rich”. But let’s do some math. America is only about 6% of the world’s population yet we consume around 40% of its resources.

Do you own a car?… Only 8% of the world owns a car. So 92% of the world would see you or me driving around in our cars and think “rich”.

How many of you have access to clean drinking water? Around 1 billion people in the world don’t have clean drinking water. And there are times that we get upset that it’s not in bottles or we have to drink it out of the tap. Those people would look at us and say “rich”.

How many of you will be gorging yourself with so much you food today you well be sick? Close to 800 million people in the world won’t eat today. In fact every couple seconds someone dies of hunger.

You see by simply living in a place where we don’t have to worry about where we get food or water. By living in a place where we don’t have to worry about how we can get from point A to point B we are so “rich.” Everyone reading this has been blessed by God. We have so much to be thankful for.

There is a verse in 1 Timothy that talks about being rich. It’s found in chapter 6 verses 17-19 and it says this.

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Although we may not believe it, this verse is talking to anyone who is reading this. If you own a car you are richer than 92% of the world! If you have access to clean drinking water and food, you are in the top 25% of wealth in the world. 75% of the world’s population would look at you and say rich. And what does this verse say about us people who are rich? It says that we should not be arrogant but to put our hope in God, why? Because God has richly provided us with everything we have. Not only that but when he created the world he created it for our enjoyment!

Everything we have is a gift! And what do you do when you receive a gift? You thank who ever gives it to you! But what if being thankful was a way of life. We should walk around with a constant feeling of thankfulness because everything in this world is a gift to us from God!

Car? Gift. Food? Gift. Shelter and Clothes? Gift. Even that breath you just took is a gift from God who gave you the gift of life.

Happy Thanksgiving

Being Thankful,
Stefan

Blog #2- Potter’s Clay

Original date written 8/11/09

Many times throughout the Bible, God, is known as the potter and we are His clay. He molds us and makes us into what He has destined for us. So why is it that so many times we try and clean ourselves or others up before we stand before cross. We mold ourselves, put ourselves in the furnace and glaze ourselves. We feel we need to be at our best before we come to God. We feel that if we can just clean up these little areas of our lives or convince people that they should clean up their life that eventually salvation will come to us or them. However Jesus does not want us that way. In fact that is the exact opposite. If we come to God as a finished piece of pottery that we have made ourselves, He has to shatter us, grind us down and make us back into clay so He can mold us again. He wants us to come as the lumps of clay he created us to be. He wants us to come to Him as we are. It is also a much less painful process for us. However we tend to do things backwards.

Throughout Jesus’ life He showed favor to those who most people believed He shouldn’t. In the Gospels there are two stories in particular that stick out to me. The first one is a story of a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. Jesus showed this woman compassion and favor when everyone else was ready to stone her to death. There is another story of a woman who was a known prostitute in the area. She comes to Jesus crying, broken, and asking for forgiveness. She pours a bottle of expensive perfume on His feet and he forgives her sins while everyone else is looking at her in disgust. Jesus didn’t tell them to go quit sinning then come back. Instead he forgave there sins at that moment, and told them to go sin no more from this point on. Jesus still loves to bring the lost into his kingdom, no matter what their background or previous way of life. Through faith the lost can be forgiven and made new.

Challenge: Allow God to be the potter

In Christ
Stefan

First blog ever: The Light

Original date wrote 4/28/09

Ok so i have never really done this blog thing before but I have been having a lot thoughts and ideas floating around in my head and would love some feedback from people. Who knows if people like them I could do it on a normal basis

If anyone has ever spent time talking to me about my views of ministry they have probably heard much of this before, but even more recently I have been seeing signs of John 3:16 not being evident in Churches today. Correction not so much John 3:16 but John 3:16-19.

We have all heard the verse John 3:16. It is probably the most well known verse in the entire Bible. Yet has it become so common, so mundane and seen so much that we forget what it says? What it stands for? What we need to realize is that there is a challenge here, a challenge for everyone but especially for us, as Christians.

We live in a fallen world. It is very easy to see that. Ann Graham, Billy Graham’s daughter, was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this happen?” (regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).

Here is her extremely profound and insightful response. She said:

“I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.
In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.

I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school … the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.
And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK.

Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don’t want any bad publicity, and we surely don’t want to be sued (there’s a big difference between disciplining, touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc..). And we said OK.

Then someone said, let’s let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won’t even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.

Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they’re going to do it anyway, let’s give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won’t have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said OK.

Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn’t matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn’t matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.

Then someone said let’s print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK.

And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children , then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they’re entitled to free speech.

Then the entertainment industry said, let’s make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let’s record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it’s just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”

We live in a dark world and I believe many Churches today are Myctophobic. Or afraid of the dark. There are many things that we need to look at here. We have all heard the phrase “Be in the World, Not of the World” however I think that there is something that we need to add to that phrase “Be in the World, Not of the World, Yet Love the World.” Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here, I know as well as you do that we should not love the temporal things of this world. The Bible clearly states this many times. But what about the other things of this world those that are not temporal, the things of the World that God not only tell us to love but that He loved himself. I am talking of course about the people of the World.

I think that too many times, we, as Christians are so afraid of the World that we forget to reach the world entirely.

We, as a church should not be avoiding the World we should be showing it love. This is an underlying theme throughout the Bible. We see from verses like this one “For God so loved the WORLD, that he gave his one and only son” verses in Gospels or the great commission that states, He said to them, “Go into all the World and preach the good news to all creation” and John 9:5 “While I am in the world, I am the light of the WORLD.”

Although verse 16 is the most well known verse of John 3, I think the further we read the more we get what Jesus was trying to tell us. Verse 18 states:

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Here’s the challenge, the challenge for us as Christians. We should be bringing the light to the darkness rather than trying to be bringing darkness to the light. So often I hear people who talk about people they work with or they meet and how they are going to try and bring them to church. As if the church is the only place that they can get saved. Instead of bringing the darkness to the light we need to take the light into the darkness. I know this because Jesus says “Everyone who does evil hates the light.” We need to meet people on their level. Talk to them in an environment that is comfortable to them and then they can open up to us.

All darkness is, is the absence of light, nothing else. We as a church try to make it much more than that but it’s not. This is my challenge to all of us as Christians with a firm foundation. To no longer be afraid of the dark and use the light that God has given to you to shatter the darkness of this World. We need to stop trying to bring the darkness to the light but rather the light to the darkness.