The Blog

Today, the greatest woman i ever knew passed away. If you were ever a part of Crossfire then Joyce Taylor (or Poppy as we affectionatly called her) was part of your family. She was always there with a word of encouragement when you needed it the most. She was never afraid to tell you what you needed to hear the most. She was amazing. She, more than any woman i've know, knew the word of God. And though she will be dearly missed, we rejoice that she is now in the presence of the Lord.

Please, please, pray for the Taylor family. Pray for Robert(her husband). Pray for Pastor Aaron Taylor (her son) and the rest of their family. They will need prayer, encouragement & support through this difficult time.

Last week at Crossfire Masters Commission we talked a lot about integrity. Thinking on the subject brought to mind a quote that I'd heard once, "Integrity is what you do when you know that no one will find out." D.L. Moody called it, "what you do in the dark." Integrity is defined as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. It is also defined as the state of being whole and undivided (as in structural integrity).

Now lets think about that second definition for a second. What would happen to a building if it's integrity were compromised? It would collapse, plain and simple, without structural integrity a house cannot stand. Now why would you think integrity in our lives would be any different? After all, 1 Corinthians does compare our lives to buildings.

When thinking about integrity there is one story in the Bible that stands out above all the rest in my mind, that shows perfectly the results of an integrity breakdown, the story of David and Bathsheba. The whole story from beginning to end, shows how integrity compromise builds on its-self until your whole life is falling apart. Go ahead and read it right now if you haven't already it's in 2 Samuel chapter 11.

The story starts out with David sitting at home when he's supposed to be at war and ends with him murdering a man to cover up his own adultery. You see the story starts out innocently enough, King David is just taking a break, and why shouldn't he, he's the king. But it was the first compromise of integrity that set off the whole chain of horrible events. And this isn't atypical, it shows perfectly the way integrity breakdown occurs in every one of our lives, seemingly small decisions build on each other until all of a sudden everything is falling down around our ears.

So I want to encourage you, hold strong in your integrity, even in the small things. Maintaining strength of character even in the little areas of life can give your life the integrity to withstand the storms.

Doing Christmas trees now for the last couple of days have been the coldest I've experienced in my four years at Crossfire Masters Commission. Today the temperature barely poked it's head above freezing and the forecast calls for more to come. Despite the cold something really cool happened today. It was really, really cold, and I was helping a gentleman tie down the tree his family selected, when I was done, he shook my hand and said that he appreciated what I was doing. Not about helping him with his tree but with Masters Commission and our church.

There are just really cool things that happen during a Christmas tree fundraiser, it's hard to appreciate them when you're facing the cold right in front of you, but in the comfort and reflection of the Masters Commission office it becomes a lot easier. I suppose that life is the same way sometimes. When we're in the cold, harsh times it's hard to see the good things that are there. Maybe if we run to God as our warm office, our place of comfort and refuge (read Psalm 91) then we'll be able to better see the great things that there are to appreciate in our lives. Really read Psalm 91, try running to God as your refuge, you just may find that He is all you ever need.

This blog was written by Casey Craigie his first year in Masters Commission as an assignment for ACTION, a class they were taking at the time.

So, last week in action there were a number of different topics that we discussed. However the one that stands out most in my mind is best described by a poem by the great Christian apologist and literary critic C.S. Lewis.

"all this flashy retoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am a mercenary and self-seeking through and through,
I want, God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleausre are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot my talk greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin."

There are two parts of this poem that stand out in my mind above all the others. The first is that he calls himself a mercenary.

Now I don't know about you but I don't have the highest regard for the idea of a mercenary. Yes, they do make very interesting charachters for movies and books, but in the end they represent a very negative ideal. A mercenary, to me, is a person who is willing to do anything, no matter how wrong or unappealing, to further their own ends.

The second part that stood out to me was the part about the parrot. We as humans may feel that there is some higher standard to live up to, that we have a certain responsibility to others, that unselfish sacrifice is somthing that should exist in the world. but in the end we always look out for our own interests.

We are all royal screw-ups, constantly looking out for "number one". No matter how much we talk about love, and sacrifce and loving others as ourselves, we always seem to come back to what can I do for me. Thankfully our God is not a god who is concerned only with himself! Jesus Christ came and gave himself as a sacrifice for us! He paid the price for our failure in the ultimate act of selflesness.

- Casey Craigie

Man, I cannot stress enough the importance of getting enough rest. Life gets so busy, there's always stuff to be done and it's easy to get caught up in just running non-stop and never taking a moment to stop, rest, and refresh yourself.
This isn't just something I'm saying from my own experience either, although from my experience I can say it's true. But if you look in the Gospels you can see numerous examples of Jesus taking a moment, withdrawing from his hectic surroundings, and spending some time alone with the Father.
My favorite story of when we see Jesus resting is when he's sleeping on the boat during a storm and His disciples are all running around frantically trying to keep the boat from sinking, when they wake Him up He tells the storm to calm (almost as though he was hitting the snooze button on His alarm clock) it wouldn't surprise me if afterward he went right back to sleep!
The point is, Jesus is the only person to ever live a perfect life, and even He rested. There isn't anything wrong with taking some time to rest, recoup, and spend some good quality time with God, I think if you try it you just might find that it makes it easier to handle all of life's craziness.