I hate to admit it, but I have felt empathy with old Don Quixote at times, but the difference is, I know the times have changed.  I’m not mad, just a little miffed because I miss certain things about the old days.  I’m sorry to say, despite all the technological improvements, I think we’ve slipped down the proverbial slide as a society ethically and morally.  We’ve regressed and devolved, yet we boast that we’ve come a long way and are so sophisticated.

I’m beginning to understand what Solomon meant in Ecclesiastes when he said, vanity, vanity all is vanity. Don’t get me wrong, the point I’m making is actually positive.  Yeah, I miss the Beatles and “Leave it to Beaver,” but I am coming around to the point that Solomon was really making; yes all is vanity, that’s why we need the Lord.  Any human effort to find success and fulfillment will be frustrated, our satisfaction can only be found in the Lord….that’s the good news!

I have to check myself by asking the rhetorical question, am I aimlessly swinging my sword at windmills? (perceived enemies)  Ouch!  OK, Don Quixote and I may have something in common after all;  so here’s what I really want to do… begin wielding the Sword of the Spirit in such a way that I will be the one who changes.  Knowing that in the Lord we find our satisfaction, our peace, our solace and our home. And by the way,  the real enemy hates and dreads the sword of the Spirit.

in Jesus’ name!

Let me pose the question to you, have you ever visited Knotts?  People in the theme park industry refer to the once farm, now Ghost Town themed amusement park as KBF.   I remember going to Knotts as a six year old kid and being quite impressed by the train that went down underground into a mine, full of geysers, animated miners working and dramatic dynamite explosions; a thing like that makes an impression.

Knotts to me, is a great example of the “American Dream.”  A modest farmer plants an obscure hybrid berry that no one ever heard of, the Boysenberry and it becomes very popular, Mrs. Knott opens a tea room to make some extra money during the depression and it becomes the most popular restaurant in southern California, Mr. Knott builds a ghost town to celebrate American history and entertain the long lines of hungry patrons to his wife’s restaurant, a wonderful theme park is developed with a real church and a chapel right in the center of it and some cutting edge rides are introduced at this humble place just outside the shadow of their neighbor, Disneyland.  Walter and Cordelia Knott were people who inspired me with their hard work, faith, creativity and generosity.

I recently read about their visit to the opening day at Disneyland, they were very impressed and thought Disneyland was a wonderful place.  When I read about this, I was impressed with the fact that they didn’t seem threatened, jealous, angry or defensive they just seemed delighted to have a neighboring park in the area.  When they arrived back at their place, they didn’t know if anyone would still come there, and they were encouraged to find their parking lot full.  I think this is a great story of God’s blessing.

Since returning home, I’ve been at work on our upcoming musical/drama…”Elijah baals out Hopeless.”

I’m looking forward to this presentation and I hope you’ll come on out to see it.  It is an upbeat, fun show with a powerful message, that I believe is relevant in our time.  The show opens Friday, November 13th at 7:00 pm at Bear Creek Church and it’s free.  The presentation will be repeated on Saturday November 14th at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm and Sunday, November 15th at 2:00 pm. Oh yeah, it’s definitely appropriate for the whole family even those youngsters over 65.

thanks,

Pastor Jebby

Our job is to play uplifting music to the festival goers and model the love of Christ to everyone we encounter. The music is to draw people in. Everything at the festival is free, face painting, jump houses, English lessons, hair and makeup,  all kinds of fun things for kids and adults, but most importantly the information about a relationship with the Living God.   There’s a large group from the States here, called Delta Ministries to work alongside the local folks.  There’s a prayer tent and a message from Pastor Douglas at the close of each evening.

So far the journey has been wonderful, stressful, exciting, exhausting, joyful, taxing and worthwhile.

We had a bit of a trial just getting to Italy.  On our first lay over in Phoenix, the airlines had overbooked the flight.  I don’t understand how, but they didn’t have enough seats for a plane full of paid customers.  After standing in the jetway until 30 minutes after our flight should have left, a party of four gave up their seats for a $300 voucher to let us sit down and continue our journey.  When we landed in Philadelphia for our second lay over, we barely got to our connection on time that was two terminals away in order to find that they didn’t issue us boarding passes and nearly missed our transatlantic flight.

In Rome, we spent about 3 hours trying to find our first night’s accomodations, only to be locked out of our room.  Our proprieter explained to us on the phone in broken English how to negotiate the lock.  On the train to Naples we were confused about our station to exit the train and almost unintentionally made a trip to Sicily, but the Lord directed us to jump off of the train about a minute before it left the station.

The other side of the trip is we met Christians on the plane, one who proved very helpful in our efforts to minister in Italy. We have been meeting great people at the festival, at the Casoria church, in town and on the train as well.

Tonight during Pastor Douglas’ message he showed a video of Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary to be crucified.  It looked like a video of their Easter play, it reminded me of Picture of Jesus a little bit.  I looked over the audience watching the video and listening to Pastor Douglas speaking to them in Italian and my heart was moved.  I felt the Spirit of the Lord moving tonight; that is what this is all about.

One of Bob Kilpatrick’s songs is called; “God is Good.”  I have had that one on my mind all week and am so thankful that the words are so true.

“God is good, God is good…all the plans He has for us are good.   God is good, always good; we can trust His love for us, ’cause God is good.

This is why I’m a fan of Bob Dylan, Bono, The Beatles, T Bone Burnett, Matt Redman, Mike Peters of the Alarm and Steve Scott.   No doubt good tunes with lame lyrics have become hit songs, they’re just not my favorites.

I’d like to quote some lines from the above mentioned artists for you to ponder.  If you can identify the lyricist…write me back in the comment section.  Anyone who gets a hundred percent, I’ll give them a free copy of my Picture of Jesus CD (Limited to five winners)

“It ain’t dark…but it’s getting there.”

“If you’re listening late at night, it may sound like the band are not quite right…but they are…they just play it like that.”

“Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

“Still looking for the face I had before the world began.”

“Now, taking up the cross, walking on Your paths, holding out Your truth, running in this race, bowing every day…all for You my Lord.”

“The funny thing about pride is when you’re being proud…you should be ashamed.”

For example; I have three cats, each of them have distinct personalities; Suzy the mother cat, is very smart, affectionate and quite pushy at times.  Leo is a free spirit; he has a touch of wild animal in him and he’s basically a loner, and Fluffy…Fluffy is full of mischief. My cats probably think to be generalized in human terms is an insult…oops, there I go again…thinking of them in a human way.

How many times have we heard people refer to a car as “she?”   And as for the anthropomorphization of  food, we have Veggie tales, Mayor McCheese and the Cool-Aid guy.

How often do we think of God as a human being?  After all we are created in God’s image, but isn’t He is so far beyond our image that we are remiss to think of Him in merely human parameters?  The first step of wisdom is the fear of God, reverent, awed, overwhelmed, enthralled respect for our creator, the Author of Life, the Great Physician, the Lover of our Souls, the Man of Sorrows.

The beautiful fact is, God did take human form…Jesus Christ.  Talk about a step down, but that’s real love now isn’t it?  Even in His humanity, Christ’s godly side was clearly recognizable:  blind were given back their sight, lame were made to walk, the dead were raised, the devil was cast out of tormented souls…and there’s the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ himself!

I am trying not to carelessly anthropomorphize my Lord anymore.  He can do so much more than we can dream.  No earthly problem is too difficult for him, there is no kryptonite, no foe too formidable, no limit to His power and we can’t out think Him, hide from Him or predict His will….praise the God of the Universe, because He loves you and He even loves me!

I met Brandon in Italy 3 months ago while serving on an outstanding mission team.  He and I had a blast covering the electric guitar department of the music outreach team.  Night after night we took our turns at guitar solos and just playing off each other’s guitar parts. 

Even more importantly, this young guy has an amazing heart for worship.

I really enjoyed talking to him and picking up great insights to worship and ministering to people via music.

Come on out tonight, you’ll be glad you did.

Of course, no person is perfect, except Jesus. And with all mortal humans, it doesn’t take long to find fault; we all fall short of the glory of God.  But we do need people we can look up to and learn from.  People whose life stories encourage us to keep working, dreaming and practicing.

These days there’s more than enough wet blankets that are ready, willing and able to pour rain on the parade. Nothing or no one is sacred; Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Walt Disney and John Lennon are all on the firing line just to name a few.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to hear anymore negative press on people who I have been inspired by!  I don’t think I’m being naive, I just think it’s bad form to attack those who have long since gone on.  I would rather focus on the clearly positive things these individuals accomplished in their time, like restoring the Union, inspiring the country to move forward, work toward civil rights, take creativity to a new level, and madly work for peace in the face of madness.

As a Christian, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that I should know my history as well, the history of the Bible, the history of the Church and the history of my own spiritual journey.  My story of faith began at birth, born into a Christian family and raised in the church by Bible believing parents.  Despite the many hours I spent in church as a kid, being a church kid didn’t make me a Christian.

I remember my mother and father explaining the reasons I should receive Jesus into my heart and as an eleven year old, not going to hell stood out as the most valid reason.

It wasn’t until I was a fifteen year old at church camp when I realized, if I didn’t make a complete commitment to Jesus Christ, I would be throwing my hope for God’s blessing away.   I knew receiving Jesus merely to avoid the lake of fire wasn’t cutting it, and if  I was going to be a Christian…I was going to be a Christian because I recognized my utter dependence on Jesus Christ.   I wish I could tell you that I haven’t messed up since then, but you already know that would be a lie.  The truth is I have sinned a lot since then, but I return to the Lord with an honest confession, an apology, a renewed desire to follow Him close and the faith that my sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ.  If I looked at my “history” of missing the mark, then I would be discouraged; however, I prefer to look at my history of receiving the amazing grace consistently from Jesus Christ over these many years, and how He has been faithful to forgive my sins.  I look forward to the future because I long to see where the Lord will take me next.  I endeavor to study the Bible everyday, because I want to understand what the Lord has done and base my daily steps on the history of God’s word.  It’s becoming apparent that when religious people conduct their lives without studying the scripture, they start believing all kinds of wacky things.  I need to study history in general, so I will be able to learn from those who lived before me.  I want to pay close attention to the ones whose lives made a difference for good. 

At a Civil War reenactment several years ago, someone asked me…”which ones are the redcoats?” Not only did they have the wrong war they were watching out for the wrong enemy.