Pathways Church Blog

Can you believe that it’s only a little under two weeks until Easter? I know, where did the time go?!?!

This Sunday, we will begin our easter season by celebrating Palm Sunday. Very simply put, Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter which commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

Read this.

You see, Jesus’ entrance to the city was a celebration. People were going crazy! I mean, stop for a second and try to imagine what it must have been like to be there.

What thoughts come to mind? What do you see?

This Sunday, we will celebrate our Lord and Savior as we will devote our entire service to a time of worship. But what does that mean?

When you think of “worship”, what comes to mind?

This Sunday, we will explore what it means to worship as a community. I hope you’ll be there. I’m really looking forward to it!

In case you weren’t with us this past Sunday, Dean was gone, so his dad Bob stepped in for the preaching duties. This is how Dean introduced him to the Pathways community.

Bob Kuest Video Introduction from Pathways Church on Vimeo.

I’m excited to let you know that my Dad is going to “bring the heat” this weekend. He and my Mom just got back from spending three months in places like Cambodia, East Timor, India, Myanmar, and Thailand. It is awesome and amazing to see what God is doing through their teaching in these countries. I asked him to give you a bit of a teaser about his message this weekend and this is what he had to say…

Is submission a dirty word? While helping a young couple plan their wedding service the young bride told me there were two words I was not allowed to use during the ceremony – obey and submit. Is this marriage doomed before it starts, or is this just a sign-or-the-times?

Submission has become a special word for Peggy and I as we study its importance in teaching church leaders its application in both leadership and marriage. What God gives us as a beautiful step of faith, the world has turned into something to be dreaded. Let me ask, “Would a loving father require his children to do something that would cause them physical or emotional pain?” When we understand the biblical definition and purpose of this spiritual discipline we find that it can be a little scary at first, but so full of joy and meaning. I look forward to sharing this subject with our Pathways family.
- Bob Kuest

Is prayer just a set of words being spoken to an unseen being? Is prayer simply a ritual to appease a deity? Is prayer an equation that unlocks supernatural happenings?

Prayer was meant to be a relationship in which we connect with our Creator, not a duty or an appeasement. However, there are subtle (and not so subtle) ways that prayer can be reduced to “religion”.

Take for instance this website that Beth Rogers told me about. You can pay money to put your prayer requests into a computer with speech capability that will then recite your prayers out loud to God. For a nominal subscription fee of course.

I also found this service online as well. I like the way it attaches your brain to the computer. Please tell me this is a joke, because it’s kinda funny if it is a joke.

Personally, I think I would rather pay this cat to pray for me.

The answer to the above question is…probably not. I’m quite sure that I am not, but I am always blown away when someone tells me that they have been praying for me. It’s an amazing feeling.

So today, I found this website. It is a prayer conference that a friend of mine leads. His name is Paul Covert and he spoke at Pathways last year (on the topic of prayer by the way). This is a page that deals with the basics of starting to pray, which I thought would be helpful for all of us. But it was awesome to see that in #9, he suggests praying for Pathways as an example.

WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE PRAYING FOR US!

This Sunday, everything we do will be simplified. Our set-up will be simplified. Our worship will be simplified. The message will be simplified and the message will be about simplicity. Our world is so complicated and often that translates into our pursuit of God. The message of Jesus is not complex, in fact, it is so simple that many people reject it because of it’s simplicity.

As we talk about about Gaining Traction in our relationship with God, we’re going to slow it down and focus on the simple, unchanging message of Jesus.

St. Patrick has for a few years now, been one of my heroes of the faith. Why?

- Patrick, who grew up in Briton and was raised in the church, was kidnapped by Irish raiders and lived much of his younger life as a slave in Ireland.
- After his escape and return to Briton, he encountered the truth about Jesus in a way impacted his life forever.
- In a time when the Catholic Church believed that only those who spoke Latin could be a Christian, St. Patrick defied the church and went to Ireland to share the truth of Jesus with those who had enslaved him.
- In a time when the Catholic Church believed you could only worship in a Roman-built church, St. Patrick worshipped in huts of straw and stick, speaking the language of the people.
- St. Patrick took the gospel to the people, rather than insisting the people meet some invisible set of standards.

That’s the short version. So this year, I picked up a book by Stephen Lawhead, who is one of my favorite authors, about St. Patrick. Lawhead is well studied in the ancient history of the British Isles and has written historical fiction about King Arthur, Robin Hood, the Crusades and such. The book I picked up is Patrick: Son of Ireland. I would not call it a biography, for there is more fiction than history in his portrayal of Patrick’s life. But it is an amazing story of a young man who lost his faith in the midst of incredible struggle and yet, reconnects with his faith in a powerful way. So much so, that it leads him back to the very place of his greatest struggle.

Several years ago I posted the Prayer of St. Patrick. I think it’s only appropriate, in our series on Gaining Traction, that I draw our attention to it once again. This would be a great one to meditate on this week.

By the way, if you are looking for a good biography on St. Patrick, the one that has been recommended to me is St Patrick of Ireland: A Biography.

Want to join in the fun? Go the ESPN site and click on Tournament Challenge. Do a quick search for Pathways Church and join our group. Fill out your bracket for bragging rights. Invite family, friends and co-workers to join us.

Somewhere along the lines of history, the word “meditation” was hijacked and taken to represent a half-naked person sitting yoga-style with fingers pressed into a circle and muttering the word, “Ooohhhmmmm” over and over again. That may well be some people’s idea of meditation, but that is not where we are going on Sunday.

Check out Psalm 119:9.
Living according to the way of Jesus requires that I’m pretty familiar with God’s Word.

This is why I associate words like “wrestle” and “digest” and “focus” with the word meditation. The only way that I’m going to really grasp God’s Word is to wrestle with it a bit, chew on it and let it digest in my system. As I do that, I focus on what God is saying to me through His word.