Mar 12

Generosity of TIME Stories

Generosity 2011, Northshore Baptist Church No Comments »

Here are some of the generosity of TIME stories people sent this week as we learn and practice Generosity: Choosing a Life of Overflow.

Story #1. The Junior High 30-hour Famine. Check out this video.

The junior highers not only went 30 hours without eating (praying and learning what it’s like to be hungry ), they also raised over $10,000! They gathered over 1,500 non-perishables to take to a shelter and did community service projects around the area! They did an awesome job and exceeded their goal of $8,000. They initially pick the $8000 goal because 8000 children under age 5 die every day from hunger related causes. For $1 you can feed a child for a day. We raised enough to feed 27 children for a year!

Story #2. From Pastor Andy Wright (our Junior High Pastor):

A BIG SHOUT OUT for Dawnelle Patterson and Andrea Langkow, two women in our church who are taking 10 girls from their Jr. High Small Group to a cabin this weekend to love and connect with them.  They both have very busy lives but have generously given so much to these girls!  These weekends are often the spark that starts a major fire in young peoples’ lives!

Story #3. From a busy mom:

During my small group this week, one of the questions was along the lines of “what holds you back,” and I felt that not being an extrovert sometimes hinders me. I was stuck in the frame of mind that generosity of time means volunteering for everything that comes up. Right away one of the group members reminded me that just last week I left my family to stay overnight with friends’ kids so they could have a night away. There had/has been a lot going on with my friends, so I felt they needed that time and asked if I could do this a few weeks prior. I really didn’t consider that generosity of time. It just felt like a need that I could fill.

Story #4. From Sheila Jarvis (whose generosity of time story we celebrated in the study guide and during the weekend services):

Thank you so much for the way you presented my Celebration Story on Sunday. It was a real blessing.
 Since talking to you, the Lord reminded me that I missed out on one very important part of my story… one which highlights the fact that people can be generous servers of God without even realizing it. Because I don’t drive any more, my husband Maurice happily drives me to Moorlands (where I volunteer every day) and then comes back later to take me home. If it wasn’t for his willingness to do this I would not be able to volunteer. In thinking about it I realized that there are many people I know who are faithfully, and often sacrificially, giving their time to minister to others.

Thanks for the stories and keep ‘em coming! Send them to generosity@nsb.org

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Mar 03

Generosity: Choosing a Life of Overflow

Generosity 2011, Northshore Baptist Church, Spiritual Disciplines 5 Comments »

Generosity begins with a generous God. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…” God is the most generous of givers and as followers of Jesus, we are to become like the God we serve.  And in the joy and act of giving, we are most like God when we give and serve like God. People who have experienced the transformation of Jesus through the Holy Spirit choose to live a life of overflow, freely giving their time, talent, touch, and treasure. But it’s something we have to learn…something we have to live…something we have to commit to.

In our Generosity series during the month of March, we are going to see what the Bible has to say about generosity. We’ll discover biblical pictures of what it looks like to be people who choose a life of overflow with our time, our talents, our treasure, and our touch.  It’s about transformation, not transaction.  And through this series, we’ll learn the heart of sacrifice…giving up something we love for something we love even more.

Generosity is such an important topic and principle for our lives, our church, and our mission to the world that we’ve developed a Generosity Study Guide for this series. We have also developed Children’s Ministry and Student Ministry curriculum, which will mirror the weekly messages in the worship services.

In the study guide, you’ll find an overview and review of Sunday’s message. You’ll also be given questions to discuss in your small group community. During our Sunday services we’ll celebrate stories of generosity, discovering what it looks like in the real world to live out each week’s generosity value. You’ll also find prayer points to pray through so that you might begin and continue to live generously. Lastly, there are also some ideas for families to discuss with children so that we can teach and model generosity for a lifetime.

As you live and experience generosity and choose to live a life of overflow, I’d love to hear your stories. You can send them to generosity@nsb.org.

If you’d like to listen to the four messages on Generosity, here’s the link.

I pray that God would teach and train us to be people who live generously like our Savior does. I pray that God’s generosity would shine through our lives, our families, and our church. And I pray that we’d be changed in the process to become a people and a life-transforming community that lives, looks, and loves more like Jesus.

Welcome to the journey of generosity!

Pastor Jonathan

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Sep 02

Time, Seasons & Eternity

Bible, Ecclesiastes: Meaning of Life, Sermons, Theological Musings 2 Comments »

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11

Everything ultimately matters, so how we use our time, journey through the seasons of life, and spend eternity ultimately matters.  This is what the ancient philosopher and king Solomon discovered on his quest for meaning of life. There is a time for everything, and there is a God in heaven who rules over an all-encompassing plan of life and eternity. The invitation to us on this side of heaven is to allow the God of time, seasons, and eternity to shape our time, seasons, and eternity

Time. How are you spending your time? If you allowed someone to look at your calendar, would it sync with what you say is most important? If not, what do you need to change in your day, your week, and your month to live out what is most important?

Seasons. Do you recognize the season of life you’re in right now? What’s best about it? What’s the greatest challenge of this season? How can you find someone who has walked this season before to help you navigate it well?  If you’ve been through a particular season, will you be generous with your heart and time by helping someone else walk through that season?

Eternity. Ultimately God has placed the longing for eternity, the longing for more, in the human heart. And the God of eternity longs to have us be with Him for eternity. That’s the great hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ… that our sin would be done away with by His cross, the barrier removed, our weapons laid down as we come to Him. His death for ours. His life for ours. But death could not hold the God-Man in the grave. He is risen, and He invites us to everlasting, eternal life with Him… forever. And forever is a long time.

Make the most of your time and seasons on this side of eternity, and make the most of the opportunity to be with God on the other side of eternity.

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Aug 08

Spending Your Life & Time on Purpose

Bible, Ecclesiastes: Meaning of Life, Sermons, Theological Musings 2 Comments »

If reality says “life is brief” (read Ecclesiastes 1:1-11), and the gospel says that Jesus can bring meaning and purpose into every life, every aspect of our lives, and every moment, then a crucial question is “Am I spending my life and time on purpose?” If life is brief, then how we spend our time and energies is crucial to avoid “chasing the wind.”  This calls us to wise “life” time management.  In my last post “Ultimate Meaning” we addressed life values and vision.  And now we have to take those values and vision, the things that are most important and ensure that we are using our time to live those out.  If you tell me a relationship is important, but you spend little to no time with that person, I’d ask you how important that relationship really is.  If something is important, we’ll invest our time.

Here’s an clarifying exercise:

1. Record how you spend your time over a week (and even two or three if you want an accurate snapshot).

2. Put each activity into a category and then assign a percentage of how much of your week is spent on that activity.

3. Is there a “gap” between your time and your values?

4. What can you change to ensure that you’re spending your time in alignment with your values?

Americans watch more than 200 Billion hours of TV each and every year. Clearly, we collectively have more time than we think we have. We just use it on other things.  We will always find time and money to do what is important to us.

How we spend our time reflects what we value most. If we value other things more than we value Jesus Christ, His gospel, and His mission, we will not live with ultimate meaning and purpose.  We’ll wonder where life went.  Remember, we can’t ultimately fix what we originally broke – only Jesus can.  And there’s a world of people around us who need to hear that from us and see us live that out.  So our prayer becomes what is written in Psalm 90:12 – “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

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