The Cross and the Switchblade

I received this book at the Teen Challenge dinner I went to last night. I sat down and stared reading it casually this afternoon. I just finished it. It's that good. What's it about?

Basically, this book is the beginning of the Teen Challenge ministry. It centers around David Wilkerson's call to gang ministry in the roughest, toughest most violent places in New York City. He builds relationships by courageously going to the gang members and witnessing to the presence and love of God in their lives. He goes where Christ would have gone and proclaims the love that Christ proclaimed on the cross.

The book goes on to highlight the beginning of the ministry of Teen Challenge. It is extraordinary the way the Holy Spirit worked in the ministry to enable them to meet their spiritual and personnel needs. Just when the night was darkest, dawn broke. The Lord provided, for David and his family as well as the boys and girls who came to recognize themselves as sons and daughters of God. The story is not without lows to go along with the highs, but the presence of the Lord fills this story. It is inspiring and amazing to read about what God does in the lives of David and those who cross his path. I would highly recommend this easy to read testament to God's presence in every place.

New Hope E-News

Announcements

Lula Lake outing this Sunday, May 3, just after church! Bring a friend, bring a covered dish, and come enjoy God’s good creation with us!

There are three weeks left in the sock & underwear drive!

VBS is nearing: the dates are June 8-12, for your calendars.

I’m trying to find something different to spotlight about Honduras each week as we draw nearer to the mission trip. This week: The CIA’s report. (I’d never been to the CIA’s website before. Who knew they had such helpful stuff? Makes me feel better about my taxes)

Next Wednesday night program: Deborah Phillips, the Hunger Action Enabler, will join us

Young Adults: Game Night! Derby Party! Tomorrow @ 5:30. Let me know if you’re interested.

Pray for…

The country, that panic doesn’t ensue after the constant flu reports

Links

Green Living from the PC(USA)

Sustainable homes, just down the street!

Urban Century Institute

Yay for LEED!

Turning Wine into Water

An update from Presbyterian missionaries in Zimbabwe

Church History Quiz (Answer Below)

Q: Who most famously opposed the king when the Church of England broke from Rome in 1534?

A Reading from the Confessions

THE SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION 5.188

WE ARE BAPTIZED WITH WATER. And therefore we are baptized, that is, washed or sprinkled with visible water. For the water washes dirt away, and cools and refreshes hot and tired bodies. And the grace of God performs these things for souls, and does so invisibly or spiritually.

Text for Sunday, May 3

John 4:1-15

4Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” ²—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— ³he left Judea and started back to Galilee.

⁴But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. ⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

The Monastic Moment (from The Monastic Way.)

April 30

There is a widely accepted misconception among us that when one becomes involved in work at home or in business, immediately one steps out of the godly realm and away from God-pleasing activities. From this idea, it follows that once the desire to strive toward God germinates, and talk turns toward the spiritual life, then the idea inevitably surfaces: one must run from society, from the home—to the wilderness, to the forest.

Both premises are erroneous!

Homes and communities depend on concerns of daily life and society. These concerns are God-appointed obligations; fulfilling them is not a step toward the ungodly, but is a walking in the way of the Lord.

(Theophan the Recluse)

Church History Answer

A: Sir Thomas More. He refused to swear loyalty to king Henry VIII as head of the church and was imprisoned. His answer to his daughter’s beg for him to recant: “I never intend to pin my conscience to another man’s back.”

After his trial, where he was condemned to death, he wanted to be certain that it was clear he did not believe a layman capable of being the head of the church. He was executed in the Tower of London.

(Answer taken from Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, Volume II, pg. 73)

WWW.NEWHOPECHATTANOOGA.ORG

TGIF

Holy God,
I have watched as you have changed lives. I have listened as they told their stories about pain and suffering, darkness and struggles, and yet they can say that Christ was their, somewhere in the midst of all of that. I have heard stories about jail, and about prisons of drugs, walls constructed of lies by the Devil. I have heard you in these stories, for just as you have promised, there, in the darkness, you were there.
Convert my heart, O Lord, so that there is nothing but faith left in me. Mark out the selfishness and the greed, the lies and the wandering. Cleanse me, O Lord, and transform my life, so that I am white as snow, and my actions point to this truth. May I be filled with you, O God, and point to your eternal grace and goodness in all I do. May your power to change be true in my life so that all I do is offered to you in thanksgiving and praise.
I love you.
Amen.

Teen Challenge Dinner

Last night I attended the Teen Challenge dinner at the Convention Center. Never having been to one I wasn't sure what to expect, but I know that I didn't expect to walk into a room with 1200 people, many of whom had heartbreaking stories about how the Devil has worked in their past. But, as one put it, 'When the Devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future.'

They told stories about drugs and alcohol, abuse and prison, but each story ended the same way: with transformation through the power of Jesus Christ. It was heartbreaking, and yet there was so much hope I found myself with goosebumps half the night. It was exciting to hear how Christ was working in their lives through individuals who were willing to love and support them, even in the darkest of nights. THe power of drugs, the power of alcohol, had been shattered by the power of love, and their lives were transformed by the HOly SPirit. It was humbling, and it was convicting. Teen Challenge doesn't work for everyone, but those whom it does work for are witnesses to how Christ is with us in our darkest hour and is working, constantly, to illumine our lives with the everlasting light of love that shines only from God.