Riley McKenna Klocke was born yesterday at 3:40PM. She was 7lbs 6oz and 20.9 in. She’s a beautiful little baby and we are thrilled to welcome her into the Pathways community! Congrats Josh and Heather!
(click on the picture for a slideshow)
Hope looks to the future. Without it, there is no way to move into the future. In a culture with a suicide rate that consistently climbing, it is crucial that followers of Jesus speak of HOPE! Hope is the fuel that moves our faith forward – they go hand in hand.
At our home group this week, we looked at the story of Elijah in I Kings 18 & 19, which demonstrates the importance of remembering as a basis for our faith and hope for the future.
So reminisce with me…about a time in which a look to the past fueled your hope about the future.
Just in case you were curious. If you type “ice creek Western Australia” into a Google search engine, Pathways Church is the #1 hit. Someone actually found our website using this concoction.
As we talked about this past weekend, I want to encourage all of you to literally sit down and remember your story. Find those moments of redemption in which you experienced truth, love, joy, or peace. You might be surprised to discover them amidst some of the most bleak and painful memories that reside inside you. Name those moments. Mark them. Make an “altar” and remember that God met you there. It is an important part of who you are and a part of God’s story that is unique to you.
I also told you about a book that has greatly influenced me in messages that I will deliver over the these three weeks leading up to Easter. It is called The Healing Path by Dan Allender. I can’t recommend highly enough that you get this book and read it.
Next week we talk about Faith & Hope.
The Pathways community has a wonderful opportunity to partner with Faith Fellowship Church to present a dramatic presentation of the last moments of Jesus’ life. The dates of this production are April 4-6 in the evenings.
We need people who are willing to help in various areas. From greeting, to technical, to just helping guide people through the journey. If you are available and would like to help for any or all of those dates, please contact Josh (josh@findpathways.com) as soon as possible.
This weekend we are beginning a three-part series called “Redeeming Your Story”. All of us have one. A history – that is. In that history is written the story of our lives. The pain and the joy. The laughter and the tears. There are parts of each of our story that we don’t like to tell. The words to the story are almost easier that the emotions that accompany them.
Yet, to believe in a Creator God who created with purpose and chooses to love rather than domineer, we must be able to find God in the story of our past.
Faith is simply the ability to remember the actions of a redemptive God and trust that this God will carry you into the future. Too often we think of faith as believing from scratch…nothing. That is not true for any of us. Faith in God did not come out of a vacuum. It came from experience and memory of things having taken place in the past.
For our discussion, can you remember your first memory of trust in God? It might seem like nothing to anyone else. It might be minute in scope to your faith today. It might have happened yesterday. All the same, share that first trigger that hit in your memory of a God that might be able to be trusted.
Mikel Selin is a student in the Pathways community. A few months ago, her orthodontists office held a contest:
To celebrate this past holiday season, we announced an essay contest designed to get kids to think of creative and resourceful ways to help people in the community. Each contestant was required to submit an essay that addressed the following questions: If you had $250, how would you use it to help others? Why is that person/organization important to you? How did you become aware of this need?
Mikel wrote a fantastic essay on the needs of orphans in Africa, and she won! You can read it for yourself here! Congrats Mikel — we admire your heart and we’re proud to have you as a part of Pathways!
Last week, we looked at how Aflluenza attempts to make our human value about beauty, achievement and power. It robs us of the value that God has placed on every human life (equally) and creates a caste system based on societies values.
This week, we will look at how Affluenza tempts us to take credit for all that we have rather than giving honor to the Creator. When we believe that we are the source of our stuff, we believe that our stuff’s purpose is the building of “our kingdom”. When I acknowledge that I am a steward of my Creator’s stuff, I see it’s purpose for the building of “His Kingdom”.
While we are on topic here…what item have you had in your house/garage for over a year, that is not yours but you have intended to return to it’s rightful owner. Confession time, anyone?
This week we talked about value, not in a dollar sense, but in regards to the value of people. We live in a world that devalues people based upon the criteria that society has set for beauty, wealth, or achievement. As followers of Jesus, one of the greatest ways that we can reflect our Creator is to help people to understand their great value, simply because they are a unique creation of God.
This week we want to challenge the community of Pathways to take $5 and use it to bless somebody in a way that communicates value to them. Be creative. Think about someone in your sphere of influence who needs to know of their great value in God’s eyes.
This week’s challenge is not intended to be completed with a simple five dollars. It is also not intended to imply that money is necessary to communicate value to someone. It is simply something to get us all off of the starting blocks and into a race that will exhilirate us all if we are constantly looking for ways to value the lives around us. In a world that is diminishing human value daily, this is a way for the followers of Jesus to shine.
A few weeks ago, we challenged our community to go through your closets and clean out all the excess clothes. As this picture shows, the Pathways community responded.
Ron Burgard rightly named this pile Mount Goodwill, and it was a blessing to me to see it last Sunday morning. We filled up two SUV’s and a minivan in order to clear all of this out, so thanks to all of you who brought bags.
We just wanted to give you an update on some of the different organizations that we were able to help out:
Thank you so much for blessing others!