Dreaming

Dreams do not come true until you write them down and make them goals. The last Saturday of January, 2010, the leadership of Larkspur Christian Church held their annual retreat. We dreamed together. We wrote down our dreams. We came away with some goals we want to accomplish within the next twelve months. Our church will focus this coming year in three areas: growth (evangelism), finances (tithing), and property (beautification of our church building). We came up with a theme for 2010, “Making it Happen.” Everyone in the retreat had dreams for our church and we wrote them down. (I have them in my office to prove it.) Our goal is to fulfill our dreams within the next 12 months so we need your help to “make it happen.” We want to get everyone involved because we only have until December, 2010, to fulfill the dreams for our congregation.

As we begin Lent, let’s start a life of sacrifice and penitential practices as we focus on growth, tithing and beautifying our church property. Lent is a season of fasting, giving up, service, and prayers. But if we change a little, this Lent will be a time of growth: spiritually, numerically and personally in commitment to God. This Lent do not give up something like chocolate, candy, beer, etc. This Lent take up one more thing; take up the cross of Christ and follow Him. We have forty days to tell someone about Christ. We have 40 days to bring someone to church. We have forty days to perform a miracle, and we have forty days to start a Bible study. Lent is a time of growing closer to God.

This Lent give more. Tithing (10% of our income) is not about God, or about the church.
Tithing is about us. It is about our hearts and where our treasure is. As we celebrate Lent I encourage all of us to fully tithe, to give until it hurts, and to reach out with whatever
abundance we have. God has a special blessing and a promise to those who tithe to the fullest as is written in Malachi 3:8-14:

“Test me in this and see if I don’t open up heaven itself to you and pour out blessings beyond your wildest dreams.”

In Larkspur we have enough love for all of us. We have enough talent. We have enough dreamers. We have enough resources for the ministry God has called us to be part of. Our mission is “to exist to spread God’s love through service and making a difference in the
community.”

The building belongs to the community. The generation before us gave it to us and now it is our turn to prepare the building for the next generation. So during this Lent let’s do something for the building that will last for the next 40 years, something that the next generation will use for its’ ministry.

Lent is a time for us to dream, to dream of a world in which God’s mercies and blessings are new every morning, (Lam. 3:22, 23) to dream of a church which is always ready to proclaim the good news of Christ to others, to dream that all that we have belongs to God, to dream that we have a place of worship which resembles heaven. The challenge is that we only have forty days to fulfill the dream. So let’s get to work and make it happen.

Your Pastor
Job