Lake View Activity Center

27/04/2024

20/02/2024

WILL WE OPEN THE GIFT?

One of the many tragedies of life is that God’s grace — his free gift of unmerited favor and love — is too often left as an unopened package. And if Jonah had chosen not to receive God’s free gift of grace, he would have forfeited his hope of salvation, his chance for reinstatement, and his opportunity to become reusable and reclaimed for God’s work.

The conclusion of the movie The Fugitive has uncanny parallels with Jonah’s life. As Dr. Kimball continues to run from the police and the federal marshal, he learns the identity of his wife’s real killer. In the end, Dr. Kimball eludes each of his potential killers, only to be arrested by the federal marshal.

However, after Dr. Kimball slides into the backseat of the federal marshal’s car, the marshal takes off Dr. Kimball’s handcuffs and hands him an ice pack. Since at the outset of the chase the marshal had said that he didn’t care if Kimball were innocent or guilty, Dr. Kimball says to the marshal, “I thought you didn’t care.”

The marshal replies with a chuckle, “I don’t. Don’t tell anybody, OK?”

In Jonah’s story, it appears that God didn’t care. With the storm threatening Jonah and the large fish swallowing him, it even appears that God was trying to kill Jonah. But he was not. God cared (and, unlike the federal marshal in The Fugitive, he wanted all to know it). He was trying to save Jonah. He wanted him to live not as a fugitive but as a free man.

When we stop our running and accept the grace that God offers, we also will live in freedom and fulfillment.

20/02/2024

OUR SEARCH FOR JESUS CAN’T WAIT

If we don’t find God, we have missed the very reason for our existence. Compared to knowing the One who made us, everything else is just crumbs.

Deep down inside, all people have this hunger. God’s handprint is on us. His very breath spoke the world into existence. He set eternity in our hearts. We, therefore, are incurably spiritual by nature. That’s why every human society — no matter how primitive — has some concept of a higher power, some vision of a reality that goes beyond the natural. On one level, this explains why science has not eradicated religion from the earth. Technological achievement cannot meet the deepest needs of the human heart.

People are hungry for spiritual truth and if they cannot find it by normal means, they will reach for anyone or anything claiming to give them an answer. Something inside us drives us to seek ultimate meaning outside ourselves. God puts that something inside us. Augustine passed on this oft-quoted prayer: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” All of us are on a search for the Savior. We desperately want to find him.

The search for God can’t wait. The longer you wait, the more clouded the mirror will get. Seeing the whole picture merely requires the clarity that discovering God can bring. Searching for God is good; finding him is much better....

14/02/2024

You probably have heard someone say that you don’t need to attend church to worship God. In one sense, they are right — certainly, we can worship God anywhere. Our very lives should be an act of reverent worship for the goodness and mercy God showers on each of us. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we can seek God and offer our praises to him.

However, we also are called to worship God in a specific place and to share in worship with others. God promises to meet us there at that chosen place. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). Whether an elaborate cathedral, a simple clapboard building on a country hillside or an unadorned room in a modern office building, our church provides a sanctuary where we can experience a sense of reverence and peace whenever we enter to worship. There we gather with our families and friends to rejoice in all we have because the Lord our God has blessed us.

Where do you really connect with God? Where is the special place you feel his presence and honor his name? Is it in a building? Your garden? A place in your home? In your car commuting to work? How wonderful that you can seek God wherever you are and honor his name in whatever you do!

13/02/2024

Whether through separation, withdrawal, loss, isolation, or abandonment, loneliness has become a modern epidemic. Cut off from loving relationships — by divorce, death, conflict, or circumstances — people feel empty and alone. We picture a single individual sitting on a bench at dusk or someone on a dusty road, with downcast eyes and slumped shoulders, trudging one halting step at a time. But even in a crowd, at a party, in church, surrounded by happy, animated faces, individuals can be lonely. And we are adept at masking those feelings with forced smiles, all the while dying on the inside.

Is that how you feel — as though no one really knows you or cares about you and what you’re going through? Whatever is causing your loneliness, remember that God is the cure. You may be separated from others, but you’re not far from him. He loves you and cares for you, and he’s close beside you.

Remember, nothing can separate you from God. If you doubt that statement, reread today’s passage and highlight all the places, powers, and possibilities that Paul eliminates. Then in case he forgot something, he adds, “nor anything else in all creation.”

So no matter what you face, no matter where you are — high above the clouds, in the deepest cave or ocean, at work, in the car, or at the mall — you can never be lost to God’s love.

12/02/2024

If you are a father, you know what having a child means to you and to your son or daughter. The relationship is deep and profound. And this is true, regardless of whether the child has been born into your family or adopted.

God uses this image to describe our relationship with him. We are children of God! Through the work of Christ and our faith in him, we have been born again and adopted into God’s family. God is our Father, and Christ is our brother.

Paul wrote that God’s plan is for believers to be “conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). This means we are becoming more and more like him as we grow and mature. No wonder the world does not know us — we’ve changed.

And if God has chosen to make us his children now, just think of what he will do for us in the future! Through John, God says we will be like Christ, bearing fully the family likeness. Truly God has “lavished” his love on us.

What love! What a plan! What a future!

Regardless of what the world thinks, you are special. Regardless of your status in society, you are a member of God’s family. Regardless of pessimistic predictions, your future is bright.

You belong to the King! AMEN..

11/02/2024

Remember your first love? You weren’t sure about what was happening, just that you felt attracted to her. And your attempts to express those feelings were probably pretty awkward. Through the years, your love experiences have grown, and you’ve gained a deeper understanding of that powerful four-letter word, love — a basic human need.

Love is a popular topic. We talk about it, write about it, and sing about it. Everyone wants to love and be loved. But true love becomes obscured in all wordiness and confused by counterfeits. True love moves beyond talk into action. John states that we can see true love by checking out what God did: he sent his Son, and Christ gave his life. God’s love sends, gives, serves, feeds, heals, and dies. For God, love is an action verb.

True love is also others-centered. In modern society, we sing, “Give me some lovin’,” and we meet our needs by “making love.” Again, God provides the contrasting example — Christ came to earth to give himself for us.

How can we respond to such sacrificial, selfless love? By loving God and others in the same way (see 1 John 4:11-12).

Thank God for his great love for you, and demonstrate your gratitude by giving yourself to others, just as Christ gave himself for you...

05/02/2024

The Lord’s announce to Moses that there was no power shortage in the wilderness: “Is the LORD’S arm too short?”

The Lord knew the people were beginning to doubt his ability to care for them en route to the promised land. Time and time again he demonstrated the degree to which he was in control. It saddened him to see the children of Israel act like spoiled brats, throwing tantrums instead of allowing their experience of God’s power to motivate their desire for more of him.

Yet don’t we do the same when we resort to complaining instead of praising, worrying instead of depending, shrinking in fear instead of going boldly forward in God’s power? Like the Israelites, we need to pause and remember how God has demonstrated — time and time again — his power in our lives.

Look around you and then inside you. Where do you see God at work, using his awesome power to change lives?

31/01/2024

Separated For Worship

What does it take to create an elite group — whether it’s soldiers, athletes or scholars? Elite troops, athletes or scholars need to commit to being isolated, often physically, in order to properly train for their tasks. Separation enhances focus and change.

God gave the ancient Israelites marks to set them apart — marks ranging from peculiar food choices to a unique ceremonial and legal system. We, also, are to be different from unbelievers. Adopting worship as a lifestyle means accepting an identity as something of a holy oddball, for unlike others, our first motivation in life is to know God.

As we write the scripts of our lives day by day, let us make choices that will help conform us to the nature of Christ rather than to any other pattern set before us. Through this choice, we say, “Father, your will be done today,” and we commend our spirits to God.

A worshipful life separates us in regard to the world. A worshipful life will allow Christ to mold us into our right shape.

31/01/2024

29/01/2024

A wedding invitee was digging postholes on his ranch when he suddenly remembered the wedding, which was to begin in less than half an hour. He hopped into his pickup and raced off to the church. At first congratulating himself on managing to slip into a pew before the bride began her procession, he soon noticed other guests casting glances his way. This was a formal church wedding — and he was in dirty work clothes! He was mortified.

The lyric to an angel praise chorus begins this way: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8). The triple use of “holy” indicates complete holiness. God is not just rather holy or considerably holy but wholly holy.

Singing such a song is all well and good for angels who have never sinned. But what about us? How can we, who swim in the sin-polluted pool known as humanity, presume to come near God and declare his holiness?

God chooses to see us as righteous if we ask to be clothed in Christ’s righteousness and washed in his blood. Do a mental assessment of your spiritual attire. What is preventing you from worshiping him “in the splendor of his holiness” (Psalm 29:2)?