So the full title of this entry was going to be In A Baskin Robins World, Be a Chick-Fil-A.  However, that was a rather lengthy title, so I tried to shorten it a little.  But what exactly am I talking about?  What is Baskin Robins known for?  Their 31 flavors.  What is Chick-Fil-A known for?  Chicken.  Any clearer yet?  What I mean is also captured in an old saying.  That saying is this, “jack of all trades, master of none.”  My point in saying be a Chick-Fil-A is this, be a master of one thing instead of being a jack of many trades.

Matthew 6:33 says, “seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  Have you ever said something along the lines of “my schedule is out of control?  Or “there aren’t enough hours in the day.”  What would your day look like if you aligned your schedule around seeking God?  No I’m not saying quit your job, hole yourself up in your house and do nothing but read the Bible and pray.  What I’m saying is what Stephen Covey in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, said, “put first things first.”  Be intentional about scheduling time with God.  Get into His Word and spend some time praying.  Then do the difficult task of listening for His response.  The reality of Matthew 6:33 is that if we make our life’s goal the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He has promised that He will take care of all of our needs.  We need to re-orient our thinking.  So many times our time with God is an after thought or something that is put in the pile of “if I have time I will.”  It is time that is on our to-do list.  But what if seeking God was our list?  What if before we put something on our calendar or agreed to do something we asked and answered the question, how will doing this help me grow closer to God or tell others about God?  When we begin to think that way, it will radically shift how we approach our day.  Instead of we need to get up and go to work so that we can make money to pay our bills.  Now, we are getting up going to work with the mindset of, God has given me this job so that I can honor Him by how I work for my boss, interact with my co-workers, and I can share the Gospel with my co-workers and invite them to church.  Now work has has a redemptive purpose!  Or when we are dreading having to cart the kids all around town to various activities.  We can understand that, I will have time in the car with my kids and I can talk to them about God, and invest myself in their lives.  Then while I’m at practice I can see it as a God-given opportunity to talk with other parents about who Jesus is, share the Gospel, and invite them to church.  Now, kids practices have a redemptive purpose!  The same thing can be said for our time at the grocery store.  Instead of looking at the long check out lines as an inconvenience.  See it as an opportunity to talk with the person in front of you or behind you about Jesus and invite them to church.  Or what about everyone’s favorite, going to the DMV?  If there has ever been an opportunity to share the Gospel or invite people to church, it is at the DMV!  I mean, we know we are going to be there for a while :).  I think you get the point.  If we allow God to change our mindset on how we see our everyday activities from they are something I have to do, to something I get to do to know God more and make Him known; then I believe our attitude and outlook on life will be radically changed.

So I want to encourage you this week to look at every opportunity you have from a kingdom of God mindset.  Then let’s do what Paul said in Ephesians 5:15-16, “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk (live)–not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”  Let’s be a Chick-fil-A this week and focus on one thing, the kingdom of God.

Pastor Justin

After getting some bugs worked out, taking some downtime to re-charge and re-energize, the Westlake Baptist blog is back!

Thank you for your patience, and as always for taking time to read and comment on our blog postings.  In 2018 we want this blog to be a place of encouragement for your walk with God.  We also want it to be a supplement to your personal time of Bible study and prayer as well as your local church’s teaching.  If you don’t presently have a local church you call home, we want to encourage you to pray about it and ask God to lead you to the right house of worship.  Hebrews 10:25 tells us to “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, and so much the more, as you see the day (Jesus’ return) approaching.”  The previous verse is the writer of Hebrews telling us how the local church is a gift from God and can help you grow in your relationship with God when it says, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.”  We are to provoke or prod one another to love as Christ loves us.  And we are to provoke or prod one another to do the good works that God has pre-ordained us to do according to Ephesians 2:10.

If you live in the Smith Mountain Lake area in Virginia and you don’t have a church home, I want to encourage you to come visit us at Westlake Baptist Church.  We currently offer to worship services on Sunday mornings.  Our 8:30 service is a traditional worship service in which we play the great hymns that many of us grew up with.  In the 11:00 service we have more of a blended approach to our worship music.  We still sing the hymns, but we also sing some of the contemporary songs as well.  The one thing you will find whether you visit us at 8:30 or 11:00, is our primary focus in worship is to make much of Jesus.  As we have said before, we want to pray the Word, preach the Word, and sing the Word so that we can go out and live the Word.  We offer children’s ministries and youth ministries on Sunday mornings during the 11:00 service.  If you are unable to make a Sunday service, we encourage you to join us on Wednesday nights beginning at 6:45.  Wednesday nights are a little different than Sunday mornings.  We still offer a children’s ministry and youth ministry.  But the adults focus more on prayer as well as a time of Bible study.  On Wednesday nights we encourage the adults to dialogue with the pastor as he teaches.  It is a place to ask questions, and really dive deep into God’s Word.

Thanks again for reading this post.  I hope you will add our blog to your regular routine of reading.

Serving Christ,

Pastor Justin

My family and I are walking through a devotion called “The Story” this year.  Yesterday’s devotion was about Abram’s call.  It is found in Genesis 12:1-3, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”  With these verses, Abram’s life would forever change.  There are several lessons that we can learn from these verses and some others.

The first lesson we learn is that if we are going to follow God, we are going to have to forsake ourselves and our plans.  Abram probably had a pretty comfortable life up until that point.  There was no reason to think that life was going to change.  Yet with God interrupting Abram, everything changed.  God told Abram, “Get out of your country, from your family, and specifically from your father’s house.”  Everything that Abram knew and was comfortable with, he was going to have to leave.  Talk about a major change!  Yet even today, if we are going to follow God, we are going to have to forsake the comfortable, the convenient, and the things that make us complacent.  Luke 9:23 is where Jesus says, “If any man desires to come after Me, let Him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”  Jesus was saying that a call to follow Him is a call to relinquish all control of our lives.  Instead of being “masters of our own destiny” (a false illusion anyway), we must willingly submit ourselves to the plan and purpose of God for us.  Now if that major of a change doesn’t cause enough anxiety to rise up in us, there is a second lesson.

Following God doesn’t mean that we are given the entire road map.  God tells Abram, “get out of the familiar and follow Me to a land that I will show you.”  I am a planner by nature.  It is not an exaggeration to say that I generally have a plan for my plan.  Yet I have learned over the years that God does not always reveal the entire plan at once.  It is generally just a piece at a time.  What makes it possible for us to do this is the knowledge that God is trustworthy, He is faithful, He loves us, and He has our best interest in mind when He calls us out.  Not only these things but when we trust God we are trusting the one that Isaiah said “knows the beginning and the end.”  Therefore, following God is not a blind leap of faith.  Rather it is following the One who has the best map to get us to the best destination.  Because God has the map and knows the way, and because I have relinquished all control of my life over to Him, it is not necessary for me to have all the steps.  I would even say that it is for our good that we don’t know all the roads God is going to lead us down, because some of them might scare us enough that we choose not to trust Him and follow Him.  On the night Jesus was betrayed as He was walking with His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, where He would ultimately be betrayed by Judas, Jesus told His disciples, “I have many more things that I would like to tell you, but you are unable to handle them right now.”  Jesus knew that the events that were going to be set in motion with His arrest in a short time would rock their world.  Although Jesus had told His disciples that He would be betrayed, given over to the authorities, crucified, and three days later rise from the dead, His disciples struggled with believing it.  Jesus knew that once they saw Him arrested and ultimately led away to Golgotha to be crucified, that their faith would waiver, and that they would struggle.  If Abram would have known all the roads God was going to lead Him on to fulfill this covenant, Abram may not have been as willing to follow God.  In the same way, because of God’s love for us and His knowledge of what we can handle and when we can handle it, God only gives us what we need, when we need it.  We just have to trust that if God is calling us to walk down a certain path, He already knows how it is going to turn out, He knows the dangers and the pitfalls, and that He is walking with us every step of the way.

The third lesson we can learn from this set of verses is that certain promises from God are conditional.  God told Abram to leave his land, family, and specifically his father’s house behind for a land He would show him.  As a result of doing this God promised Abram that he would be blessed, he would become a great nation, and that the world would be blessed through Abram’s descendants.  However, all of this hinged on Abram trusting God enough to leave.  If Abram didn’t leave his land, family, and house then those promises would have never been fulfilled.  Does this mean that God’s plans can be held hostage or changed by our actions?  Absolutely not, God is sovereign, all-powerful, and all-knowing.  God knew that Abram would respond, and so by God telling Abram what would happen when he responded, God was showing Abram that He truly is all-knowing.  God desires that the world would respond to His invitation to the gift of salvation.  2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance.  God not only desires that we would be saved, but He made it possible for us to be saved.  He did this by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, that as we believe on Jesus’ sacrifice as the only way to be saved, we will be saved.  Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  So God desires we would be saved, He provided the way for us to be saved, but we must still have faith in that God’s way is the only way. That is why salvation is available for all, but it is not automatic.  Regardless of our past or our present, God is able to overcome our sin and save us from sin’s penalty which is eternal death (Rom. 6:23a).  It is important to know that salvation is more than a prayer we pray, a card that we sign, a church aisle that we walk.  Salvation is an attitude of our heart that depends entirely on God to save us, and it is evident in the life that we live.  While we are not saved by our works, our works demonstrate the we have been saved.  As James said in James 2, “faith without works is dead.”  In Genesis 12, Abram demonstrated his faith in God’s promise in verse 4 that says, “So Abram departed…”  So we see that God’s promise here is conditional, but there is one more lesson we can learn from Abram.

The final lesson is that God will fulfill His promises.  As we progress through the book of Genesis we see how God fulfilled His promise to Abram.  It began by God giving Abram a son named Isaac (Gen. 21).  Isaac would have a son named Jacob that would continue to be a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram (Gen. 25).  From Jacob would come the 12 tribes of Israel.  These 12 tribes of Israel would be God’s way of making them a mighty nation.  The second part of the promise was giving Abram’s descendants a land of their own.  We see this through the book of Exodus and through the book of Joshua as the nation of Israel traveled to their land (Exodus), and conquered their land (Joshua).  Yet there was another part of the original promise in Genesis 12 that God would provide for. That part of the promise is that through Abram’s descendants the whole world would be blessed.  This was ultimately fulfilled through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  It was through Abram’s lineage that the Savior of the world was born, that all who believe in Jesus would be forgiven of their sins and given eternal life in heaven with God.  As we trust God and walk by faith we can know that whatever God has promised us as His children He will fulfill.  That is because according to Titus 1:2, “God cannot lie.”  So whatever He has said will come to pass.  So even if you don’t see all of God’s plan, even when it doesn’t make sense, remember who your faith is in, walk by faith, and know that God will bring to pass what He has promised.  May that encourage you as you walk with Him this day and everyday until we are face to face with Him.

By His grace and through His strength may we live for Him

Pastor Justin

One of the highlights of my mornings are when I get the chance to do a devotion with my wife and we get to pray together.  Few things set my day up for success as well as that special time.  As we were having that privilege this morning Diana said something that has stuck with me now for several hours.  She was praying for God to guide me as well as herself, and that we would pray before we did anything because “there are so many opportunities for us to fall into sin.”  That line was so impactful this morning, and I have been thinking about all the opportunities since our prayer time that I could have miss stepped.  We live in a world that is full of temptation not just out in the physical world, but especially within our digital world. God then brought 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to my mind.  The book of 1 Thessalonians is a book inspired by God and recorded by the apostle Paul to a church that was struggling with pressure inside of the church as well as from outside the church.  Persecution was very real for the Thessalonian believers at the time Paul was writing.  In some ways persecution is beginning to become real to believers within America.  I want to be clear that we are not facing the persecution that many in the New Testament faced, nor are we facing the type of persecution many brothers and sisters around the world are facing.  However, we are seeing a culture that is becoming less tolerant of Christianity, and a government who seems set on defying biblical mandates.  Towards the end of his first letter to the church at Thessalonica Paul writes, “pray without ceasing.”  This doesn’t mean that Christians are to go around all day, every day mumbling prayers.  Rather Paul is speaking more of an attitude that we should have.

To pray without ceasing speaks of an attitude in which we are always ready to pray.  We are to be faithfully consistent in our prayers.  This is certainly a challenge for many Christians.  As one pastor put it, “We need to pray more than just rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub.”  Prayer is being connected to, in communion with God and that cannot occur mindlessly or flippantly.  If I am going to be in an attitude of prayer, then I need to be on guard for those many opportunities that present themselves every day to get out of fellowship with God through sin.  If I am watching something that is inappropriate, reading something inappropriate, listening to something inappropriate then I have become disconnected with God, and therefore I’m not ready to pray until there is confession.  If my attitude towards someone isn’t loving, compassionate, and kind then I am not ready again because sin has disconnected me from God.  Therefore, I have to be vigilant to guard my heart, my mind, my words, and my actions.  The natural outflow of guarding ourselves is that we will be connected to God in a spirit of worship and prayer, because we will actively be seeking to please Him in our lives.

Another part of praying without ceasing is seeking God’s guidance throughout our day.  There are many decisions that we must make, the majority of them we make without giving it a second thought.  It is my belief that the greatest temptations lie within the ordinary, mundane parts of life.  A Christian man or woman is going to know that going into a strip club isn’t honoring to God.  But how many of us watch shows on TV or the internet that have strong sexual connotations in them?  Watching TV is ordinary and mundane, most of us after dinner sit down in front of the TV, turn it on, and give very little thought about what we are seeing on the screen.  Some decisions that we have to make don’t have the danger of temptation connected to them.  Sometimes you will have to decide between two things that are good, but you must decide which is the best.  We see this in Luke 10:38-42.  Jesus comes and visits Mary and Martha in Bethany.  Martha is being a good host, which was the job of the woman in those days.  She was making sure that the house was straight, a meal was being prepared, and that Jesus would be comfortable during His stay with them.  Martha wasn’t wrong because she was being a good hostess.  Mary on the other hand chose to sit at the feet of Jesus.  In those days it was a symbol of putting yourself under the authority of a teacher.  So while it looks like Mary was being lazy and just sitting while her sister was working, that isn’t what was occurring. Mary wasn’t wrong in her decision to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn.  Mary and Martha had a decision to make between a good choice and the best choice.  Mary made the best choice because she was focused on Jesus and learning from Him. Jesus had already predicted His death on several occasions.  There was always going to be housework to be done, but Jesus wasn’t going to be with them much longer.  Mary focused on a relationship not works.  This is the constant pull many people feel, and without trying to judge or condemn anyone who has uttered the statement, “cleanliness is next to Godliness” or “God understands I only have two days to get all this done so I will miss church”; neither of those statements are true or biblical.  When presented with two good choices, we need to prayerfully seek which is the best choice.

As we live a life that is connected to God throughout the day, a life in which we are ready and able to pray at any moment we will find it easier to live out the words of Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”  The reason many times we struggle to pray, to feel connected to God, to know God’s will for our life or this situation is because we have disconnected ourselves from God.  Therefore, let us be intentional about striving to live in connection with God.  Pray each morning for God to help you guard your heart, your mind, your mouth, and your actions.  Be on the lookout for those opportunities to fall into sin, they are there, and they will rear their ugly head when you least expect it.

By His grace and for His Glory,

Pastor Justin

Below is a copy of a Post Sunday Follow-Up message.  Each week on Monday or Tuesday we pick one point of the previous Sunday’s message and we try to dive a little further into it.  In this Post Sunday Follow-Up we look at the name of God and why it is so important and why it should be treated with such reverence.  If you would like to receive this each week or for more information on the teaching ministries of Westlake Baptist Church please e-mail us at westlakebc@gmail.com  Hope you enjoy!

This past Sunday we started talking about learning to pray like Jesus prayed.  We studied Luke 11:1-4 with our focus on verses 1 and 2.  Lord willing, we will look at verses 3 and 4 this Sunday.  The main point of this past Sunday was that when we pray, we need to come into God’s presence and not just give Him a laundry list of needs and/or wants, but rather we need to take time to worship Him for who He is.  Who exactly is this God that we are praying to and trusting to answer our prayers?  That is the focus of this e-mail.

In the story of the burning bush we see the name of God.  In English Exodus 3:14 says, “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”  I AM in the Hebrew is “yehweh” which is where we get Yahweh.  You have have even seen it has Jehovah.  In English you will see it written as LORD (all capital letters).  Yahweh, Jehovah, or LORD all refer to the personal name of God.  It is important to remember that names in the Bible have important meanings.  “Yehweh” means “He is” and as you can see in the verse it says “I AM.”  This speaks to the fact that God is self-existent.  He needs nothing or no one for Him to exists, He exists because it is His nature to exist.  Not only is God self-existent, but He is also eternal.  I AM is another way of saying, I have been ,I am, and I always will be.  There has never been a time nor will there ever be a time in which God doesn’t exist.  His name also shows that all things have their existence in and from God.  We see this further in Scripture in John 1:1-4, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.  In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  John 1:1-4 are so theologically rich, but I will resist the temptation to break it all the way down.  What we should notice is this, the Word (John’s reference to Jesus) was with God from the beginning.  In verse 3 we see that God is the Creator of all things.  In verse 4 we see that God is life.  Therefore, without God not only would there have been no creation, but life would not exist without God.  So by calling Himself, I AM, He is pointing to the fact that He is the Creator and Sustainer of all life.  But Yahweh reveals even more about God in Exodus 3:15, ” And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.”  By referring to Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He is revealing to Moses, Israel, and to us that He is a covenant God.  To help that make sense we need to understand why God revealed Himself to Moses here in Exodus 3.  Israel had been in slavery to the Egyptians for 400 years (prophesied in Gen. 15:13-16).  God promised in Genesis 15:13-16 that He would deliver Israel from their slavery.  God in Exodus 3 says in verse 7 that He has seen their affliction and heard their cry.  God is coming to Moses for two reasons.  First, it is to fulfill the prophecy in Genesis 15 about delivering Israel from their slavery after four generations.  The second reason deals with the first in that God had to deliver Israel from their slavery so that He could lead them to the Promised Land He told Abraham that his seed would have.  God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 that they would have a land of their own, they would be a great nation, and the world would be blessed through Abraham’s seed.  So in Exodus 3, God tells Moses to tell the nation of Israel, the very God who created everything, is the same God who made the covenant with Abraham, and is the same God who is now going to deliver them from slavery and lead them to the Promised Land.  God wants Israel and us to know that the promises He makes, He will fulfill at the right time.  So this one name shows us that God is the Creator, the Redeemer (Israel from slavery in Egypt, us from sin through the cross), and He is the covenant maker and fulfiller.

Notice in Exodus 3:15 the last phrase, “this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.”  The world will know who God is by His name, I AM (Yahweh, Jehovah, LORD).  It is a unique name, no one else is Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, or Covenant Maker and Fulfiller.  That is why when we get to the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20 we see God protecting His name.  Exodus 20:2 says, “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”  There we see LORD (all capitals) again to remind them of who is doing this.  Verse 3 of Exodus 20 says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”  God is saying you can’t have anyone before Me, because there is no one like Me.  That goes back to telling Moses to tell Israel that “I AM” sent him.  Who else is like God?  Who can you compare Him to?  The answer is that no one is like Him and no one can compare to Him.  Don’t put anything that was created in front of the One that Created everything.  We see that again in verse 4 about not making any graven images.  Then in the Third Commandment we see that we are not to take His name in vain.  We aren’t to use God’s name flippantly or lightly, because His name is a reminder for Israel and the world of who He is and what He has done.  When we use God’s name lightly or without regard we are devaluing who God is and what He has done.  We are essentially saying there is nothing special about God, that we could have done any of the things that He did if we wanted to.  When we speak the name of God we are remembering His work in creation and in redemption.  We see those two themes in heaven that the angels and saints of all time praise God for in Revelation 4 and 5.  Let us therefore remember when we speak His name or when we go to Him in prayer, that the same God we are praying to and asking for help, is worthy of our praise because of His work in creation and in redemption.  So let us come into His presence to worship Him, to focus on Him first, then may we remember that this same God created everything in the right order, He sustains all things, and so as we ask in prayer, may we know if He could create something out of nothing, He can surely change and work in my situation no matter what it is.  This same God gave His Son when we had nothing to offer Him in return that we might be forgiven and given eternal life.  There is nothing too hard for my God!

Serving Him,

Pastor Justin