The Gift of Generosity

Some time ago, a major university studied the effect of lifestyle on a person’s contentment or dissatisfaction levels. It was discovered that people who are generous usually have a contented, joyful, enriched life. At the physiological level, when a person is generous with time, talent and resources, a chemical is released in the body that acts like endorphins. This chemical produces a positive feeling of well being, and brings a purposeful meaning to life.

On the other hand, people who are by nature selfish generally do not have contented lives. They are always looking for something more, or are disappointed that the momentary high of an experience fades so quickly. At the physiological level, when people are selfish, a chemical is released in the body that acts like a toxin, producing negative and depressed feelings.

This is not really new information. Thousands of years ago the wisdom literature put it this way, “A generous man will prosper, he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” Proverbs 11:25 This is a timeless axiom. Pragmatically, generosity is the ultimate win/win proposition. People who give feel good about themselves and are blessed, and people who receive the gift feel good and are blessed. What an investment that has double returns!

Everyday observations of life also confirm this. When people are misers, they tend to be miserable–note that miser and miserable come from the same root word. How many families have members who seem to turn into barracudas when someone dies and the family has to settle the will? Whenever we act in a miserly fashion, it destroys others and ourselves.

We feel encouraged and positive when we give to others. It is good for us and good for those around us. During the Christmas season, there is a major focus on giving. It changes relationships. Wouldn’t it be good to experience this Christmas spirit twelve months of the year?

Jim Elliot put it this way, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Becoming a generous person is the smartest way to increase the quality of life now! I encourage you to practice “the gift of generosity!” It will change you and those around you as well.

Go with God,

Pastor Qualley

Pass It On

Life’s true treasures are those we can share with others without ever reducing our own supply. Traits like kindness, courage, and happiness have no expiration dates. They can be transferred from life to life and shared from generation to generation, and with each new experience they further brighten the world.

One aspect of the human family is our ability to share what we feel and to teach what we know. By sharing the things that have enriched our lives, we make the world a better place. Through explanation and example, we can increase our own joy by offering it to others. As one expressed it, “have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on!”

It is interesting that when kindness, courage and happiness are shared, they have their ability to reproduce themselves. Grateful human hearts may amplify even the simplest acts of generosity and goodness. In ever-widening ripples, like those that silently spread after a rock is thrown into a still pond, the influence of doing good to a single individual may expand in every direction.

By passing on the best that we know and the best that we are, we are changing the world–sometimes even during our daily routines. A mother gently rocks her baby to sleep with a lullaby she learned from her grandmother. In snarled traffic a patient driver allows someone to merge; and that car’s grateful driver extends the same courtesy to others.

Each day we have the chance to blaze trails of character and compassion that others can follow. Each day we can share our happiness with friends and offer kindness to strangers. And each day we can be courageous and patient in enduring our trials. Ultimately, what we pass on to others will outlive us.

We became architects of eternity when we live the present moment will, using unselfish hands to share lasting values and to create timeless memories. Some of life’s most enduring and inspiring gifts will forever bless the lives of others if we will simply remember to pass them on. Let Jesus shine through you in word and deed!

Go with God,

Pastor Qualley

Somewhere, Over the Rainbow

 

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

 

We often accuse people of dreaming, even if we think their expectations are too high; but maybe a little dreaming and reaching is necessary. The lyricist wrote that, “Somewhere, over the rainbow, dreams really do come true.” That is another way of saying that faith and hope and positive attitudes have a positive impact on our unseen, unknown, and uncertain futures.

Test pilots have a phrase they use to describe their climb to heights and speeds only dreamed of. They call it “punching holes in the sky,” or “purchasing the envelope.” We, too, should do that. Unfortunately, we often aim too low. The majority of people are masters of the mediocre. We’re satisfied with “good enough.” We tell ourselves we’re only human. We convince ourselves its impossible, and we stop trying.

In the Bible we are told that, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The word faith appears over twenty-nine times in the four gospels and the word, believe some 125 times. There is great power in faith.

In the book of Mark, we read, “All things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27) What a mighty spiritual power there would be in our personal lives if we were to live under the impact of both of these statements. Therefore, “If we have faith, nothing would be impossible for us.” Faith is a channel of power.

One of the best-kept secrets of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We won’t necessarily get what we want in life; but, in the long run, we well usually get what we expect. Faith is the key to unlocking the door to our expectations. It is power that everyone has, but which few consciously use. The only real failure in our lives is the failure to try. And so, with the power of faith, we, too, might sing and realize that, “Somewhere, over the rainbow, dreams really do come true.”

I like the words from Henry Chester, “Faith and initiative rightly combined remove mountainous barriers and achieve the unheard and miraculous. An enthusiastic attitude is nothing more than faith in action.” I thank God that Lord of Life is a place where dreams continue to come true.

Go with God!

Pastor Qualley

One in Christ

“We are one in Christ Jesus” is a familiar statement one hears many times and in various places. This phrase and many like it are frequently used to describe the common ground for Christians as they describe the basis for the common life of the Church Universal. However, when it comes time to deal with particular issues, we easily abandon the oneness we confess around the Person of Christ, and splinter according to habits, expediency, localized agendas or simply strongly held opinions.

Perhaps that pattern is inevitable. We especially live in a time when events and opinions are converted into impassioned words and pictures which find their way into the minds and attitudes of people in almost every corner of the globe. There is precious little of verification in the vast clouds of information and opinion that become the environment within which our sense of reality forms. Conclusions are readily drawn from the most convenient medium: the press, television, the web gossip, friend and neighbors, fellow workers, bosses, politicians, celebrities and clergy.

The personal opinions of the ancient common classes are hard to research, but they seem to have been shaped by the tyranny of heavy handed rulers, clever religionists or primitive myths and superstitions, and of course by the compromises forced by the struggle to survive. Many similar pressures still weigh in on us, shaping the arenas of our conflicts. For us, however, there is more. We are the recipients of messages, arguments, images that we often do not even recognize, bending our minds to lean one way or another. Many of these messages bring us information which is often either subtly biased or blatantly claiming our allegiance to one or another vested interest. We are tempted to join ourselves to various communities of similar opinions, and find comfort not so much in the desirability of the positions we endorse, but rather in identifying ourselves with certain persons whom we respect. Having either incomplete information or simply overwhelmed, we allow them to sway our allegiances.

Isn’t it true, especially in our times that the “One in Christ” phrase actually could have the power to pierce through the din of all the chatter and debate and dissent of our times? The chief matter is still that rightly or wrongly the grace of God reaches out for every heart whether an ally of ours or an opponent, whether we can persuade him to agree with us or not. When the Day comes that the wise and the proud are long disenfranchised, when the celebrities and the rest of us are indistinguishable, when the suffering and the agonies are long past and when the heated debates about all the issues of this moment have long been swept into the rivers of history–the one shining reality will explode to the farthest reaches of heaven itself– One in Christ!

As a matter of fact, would we not be very wise, even now, to examine every issue of our time, every challenge and every allegiance in the gracious light of that final and inevitable day?

Of course,

Pastor Jansen

A Prescription for Prayer

Prayer is an unnatural activity. From birth we have been learning the rules of self-reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seated values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. For people convinced that they can make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption.

Prayer is alien to our proud human nature. And yet somewhere, someplace, probably all of us reach the point of fixing our attention on God and praying. In spite of the foreignness of the activity, we pray. We pray because, by intuition or experience, we understand that the intimate communion with God comes through prayer. Ask people who have faced tragedy or trial, heartbreak or grief, failure or defeat, loneliness or discrimination. Ask what happened in their souls when they poured out their hearts to the Lord.

People will say, “I can’t explain it, but I felt like God understood me.” Others have said, “I felt surrounded by His presence.” Or, “I felt a comfort and peace I’d never felt before.” That is why the apostle Paul wrote the above verse of scripture because he knew from experience. Then he ends it this way, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

God’s power can change circumstances and relationships. It can help us face life’s daily struggles. His supernatural strength is available to praying people who are convinced that He can make a difference. Someone has said that when we work, we work; but when we pray, God works. An English archbishop once observed, “It’s amazing how many coincidences occur when one begins to pray.” I encourage you to take your prescription for prayer.

Go with God!
Pastor Qualley   

The Ultimate Rescue

The entire Christian enterprise, all two thousand years of it, stands or falls on the confession of the Gospels that Jesus Christ “…is indeed risen from the dead.” It is the absolute center of the Christian message that this impossible proclamation is reality and truth. However, even with eye-witnesses at great risk making clear and emphatic testimony in the early hours of the Easter Age, what had happened in the Easter event has been lost on many.

For some the Easter Gospel may be an offense, or nonsense; for others an ancient idea too remote to be considered credible. Yet, the Christ that these two thousand Easters has been celebrating has made all the difference wherever people have turned to Jesus as the risen Lord.

Our age tends to accommodate the most astonishing events and reduce them to a few sound-bytes in a news program, or a few lines of print, and occasional photo or film-clip. Mars landings, fiber-optic cables crisscrossing the globe, medical marvels vie with many other technological miracles for headlines, but usually hold center stage for only short periods of time. The public has a very short attention span unless the news impacts their personal lives.

Easter does just that. Easter is a cosmic event that impacts the entire roster of the population of earth, from the very first human being to the very last, forever. However, since it speaks in terms that woo rather than mandate, that offer rather than demand, the engines of persuasion many are expecting do not overwhelm those around whom the Easter celebration happens. Some hear the message as too extreme, or the response called for too drastic.

Yet the Church rises in awe and wonder at the Easter message every year. The message of Jesus, that “because he lives, we shall live also” has been the word that has turned our lives around to look forward with hope rather than backward with regret and frustration and impotence. Easter is God’s down payment on a “future and a hope,” of which Jeremiah could only dream.

If we do not welcome the Easter Gospel as it comes to us in the sweet cadences of the Easter festival, we may well find ourselves desperately searching for it in the midst of grief and loss. The resurrection of Jesus Christ may for the moment be not much more than a festive occasion. In time it will prove to be the ultimate rescue from our most profound calamity.

Go with God,

Pastor Jansen