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Hey Friends…
Imagine this: You settle into your airline seat, take a much-needed nap, munch on tasty snacks, and dream about all the amazing things you’re going to do on your long-awaited tropical vacation. Then the airplane lands. As you pull up to the terminal, you suddenly discover you’re not in the Bahamas as you expected. Or paid for. You’re in Detroit. And it’s not to catch a connecting flight. It is your final destination. (No offense to you Michiganders, but is Detroit really your first vacation choice?) Now what? When it comes to our spiritual lives, is it possible for Christ-followers to put all the right effort into getting where you want to be, only to find yourself in the wrong position and nowhere to turn? I’ll tell you more in Deeper Thoughts below… But first…. Three important dates for the calendar: · Are you interested in becoming a “Covenant Partner” of Mt. Hope? Traditionally thought of as “church membership,” those who make a covenant of partnership with the mission, values, and ministry of Mt. Hope are those who own the direction of our church. Join us for a no-commitment orientation on Sunday, August 11, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., lunch included! Click here to let me know you’re interested. For those who are traveling that weekend and can’t make that date, click here anyway and we’ll line up an alternate time to get you oriented! · Join us for a super-important all-church information, vision, and business session right after church on Sunday, August 18, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. We will present and discuss our status and next steps with the potential expansion of our facility. We will share, process, and pray about next steps in our ministry. Our Covenant Partners will vote regarding our fiscal year ‘24-’25 budget, vote regarding contracts with architects and civil engineers, and elect new members to our administrative board. All are welcome, and we always have fun with these meetings! · Kids & Parents—mark your calendar for an important after-church parent’s luncheon on Sunday, August 25, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. We will explore your ideas and family needs for long-range planning of our kids and family life ministries. We’ll share what’s upcoming this fall, and have you help co-create our direction for the future. This is a don’t miss event… yummy lunch provided! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who prefer to roll the dice on your travel plans. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… When I was thirty, I met a VERY rich fellow. He had boarded the wrong flight and climbed the wrong ladder. His name was Glenn. When he was young, he took a massive risk and bought 8 square miles of empty farmland in rural Loudoun County. He drew some maps of what could be done with 5,100 vacant acres. And then he sold it all to some people who built what he had drawn. He named it “Ashburn Village.” When I met Glenn, he was 60. He was a multi-multi-millionaire. Glenn had gathered a couple-dozen young adults at his mansion in McLean to share some wisdom. By this time in life, he was a serious follower of Jesus. But his bold faith in Jesus came out of a profound crisis—a moment when he realized he had been on the wrong airplane all along. Here’s the metaphor he used: “I spent my entire life trying to climb the ladder,” he told us wide-eyed young adults who were still admiring the marble floors in his palatial home, “only to discover when I got to the top of the ladder, it was leaning against the wrong wall.” Glenn had made his life all about the pursuit of wealth. Money was his hobby, his vocation, his dream, his goal. And he got it. He won. It wasn’t at all what he thought it would be. That was when he turned to Jesus. There is a moment recorded in the Bible where the whole world will realize they’re on the wrong airplane. Their ladder is against the wrong wall. (I know I’m mixing metaphors.) I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in that crowd. I don’t want the terrifying disappointment of realizing everything I built was absolutely not what I thought it would be. Here’s the Bible’s metaphor: In a powerful vision, God revealed to John the Apostle a great city that was called Babylon. It was “a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit” (Revelation 18:2). That sounds scary, doesn’t it? Hidden in this great city were all the systems of power and wealth and luxury and excess—everything the world thinks is important, the ladder everyone is trying to climb. “The merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries” (Revelation 18:3). Then the truth comes out. Babylon is not the good everyone hopes for. In God’s game plan, Babylon will fall. Then “the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury…will weep and mourn over her… The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more… They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered’” (Revelation 18:9-14). “So what’s the good news in any of this, Chris? You really want me to come to church tomorrow and hear about all this misery?” I’m glad you asked. All this negativity is not for us. As John saw this image of collapsing Babylon, there was a “roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God” (Revelation 19:1). The joy of the angels and the elders in heaven over us is tremendous. “Praise our God, all you his servants… Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready…. Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19:5-9). Friends, pick your preferred metaphor. We do not have to be on the wrong airplane. We do not have to climb the wrong ladder. We do not have to live in the wrong city. We get to fly with Jesus, to climb with Jesus, to live with Jesus. But there is one choice we must make to be certain we are on the right flight, on the right ladder, in the right city. Wanna know what that one choice is? It sounds important, doesn’t it? Here’s where I bait you into coming to church tomorrow. I will tell you. The instructions are super clear. The choice is singular. We need to know it. We need to make it. And in that one choice, our hope is fundamental and secure. Our destination will be awesome. Dig around Revelation 18 and 19 in advance. You might find the challenge on your own. But let’s explore it together. The angels are filled with joy for us. We’ll discover it, too. 10:00 a.m. tomorrow in-person (best!) or online livestream (if you’re stranded in Detroit). Here we go!! Much love to all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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Hey Friends…
I hate fire drills. They startle me. But I suppose it’s a good idea to visualize how to evacuate a building quickly. I always sleep during safety briefings on airline flights. But it is worthwhile to know how the oxygen masks work. (Anyone see that Southwest flight that lost cabin pressure a while back? Everyone wore the masks over their mouth, but not their nose. Dumb.) As a 55-year-old male, there are a couple of super-uncomfortable medical checks I’m supposed to get every so often. But it’s helpful to catch some things early on. I wonder: How many Christians view biblical prophecy like an annoying fire drill or an uncomfortable annual physical? We really should know what we need to know, but nothing in us wants to go there. I think this might be a uniquely American problem. I’ll tell you more in Deeper Thoughts below… But first…. · Ladies: Join us for a prayer walk and fellowship time at Morven Park in Leesburg, TOMORROW, Saturday, July 20, 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. Click here for more details! · A memorial service for our beloved Mike Anderson who unexpectedly passed away last month will be TOMORROW, Saturday, July 20, 2:00 p.m. at the church. All are welcome! · Youth & Parents--we need your feedback! The power of being a small church—and therefore a small youth group—is that we are a family, not a program. This enables us to custom tailor the experience for exactly who is present. Chris Bowen wants to keep a pulse on who’s around each week as the summer months have less-predictable rhythms to ensure our Sunday programs are spot-on for your teen. Please be sure to stay in touch with him—240-422-6287 (c). · Kids & Parents—mark your calendar for an important after-church parent’s luncheon on Sunday, August 25, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. We will explore your ideas and family needs for long-range planning of our kids and family life ministries. We’ll share what’s upcoming this fall, and have you help co-create our direction for the future. This is a don’t miss event… yummy lunch provided! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who prefer to be unprepared. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… We Americans have a special problem. You might say we have quite a few special problems, many in full view these days. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. The problem that I’m speaking to is more systemic, more long-term. It’s been taking root in our society for at least 100 years or more as we began to crest into position as the most prosperous, powerful, technologically advanced nation in global history. All that prosperity has been good for us in one sense—life here in the western world has been pretty easy compared to most other points in humanity. But it has also darkened our understanding of authentic spirituality and robbed us of our true hope in Jesus Christ. Here’s our problem: We’ve become so accustomed to peace and prosperity that we cringe and duck the moment something uncomfortable needs to be discussed. The result? We often miss important data we ought to know that might just save our spiritual lives. To save my natural life, I need to know how to exit a building, how to wear an oxygen mask, and how to spot an illness early. To save my spiritual life, I need to know God’s plan for what is coming my way, how to protect myself from deception, and how to place my hope in Jesus when trouble rears its ugly head. Our summer teaching series is all about hope. The scriptural content might feel a tad uncomfortable. But the New Testament proclaims these difficult matters with great joy and hope, anxious for Jesus’ deliverance, and speeding towards what is to come. “God’s Game Plan: Beginning, Middle, End—a study in biblical prophecy” we are calling this series. We want--and need—to know how God sees our near-term future. We need to know how to evacuate the enemy’s deception in our lives. And perhaps most importantly, we need to know how to don our spiritual oxygen masks—the life-giving hope of Jesus Christ that belongs to us in times of darkness, turmoil, and despair. For the final five Sundays in our summer teaching series, we will look at a few specific details we might want to know about. We will learn how to escape the enemy’s trap and how to find Jesus’ rescue: · THIS Sunday, July 21: Let’s start with this creepy fellow called “The Antichrist.” He’s a deceptive little bugger, and if he can, he’ll trick us to unwittingly join his team. Jesus will defeat him, and we will overcome him. But we need to know how. This is your airline safety briefing. “There are two over-wing exits on this aircraft…” · NEXT Sunday, July 28: “Overcoming Babylon” – let’s discover the root behind ungodly global and political systems, how Jesus will overthrow them all, and how we can be marked as Jesus’ very own. (Perhaps you’ve heard rumors about this nasty “mark of the beast?” We have a much better tattoo that buys us total victory and freedom. I bet you want that mark and not the other!) “Please be sure you’ve boarded the correct flight… we are headed to Heaven today, not Rochester…” · August 4: “How It All Goes Down” – The New Testament book of Revelation provides details of the final wrap up—a tribulation period, God’s judgment on the earth, the final battle of Armageddon, and a 1,000-year reign of Jesus. What’s it all about, and what do I need to know? “This is your captain speaking… we’ve got a bit of turbulence ahead, but there is nothing to worry about…” · August 11: “Will There Be a Rapture?” – Most Evangelical Christians have been taught that before it gets real ugly, we are going to be snatched away by Jesus and escape the coming tribulation. I really like this idea. But is it in the Bible? Where did this teaching come from, and is it useful to me? “Please review the safety card in the seat back in front of you. It contains useful information in the unlikely event of an emergency…” · August 18: “Rolling Into Heaven” – How does it work? What will I experience? How do I know I will get in? What about everybody else? Is that Saint Peter scanning tickets at the boarding gate? “Please arrive two hours before your scheduled flight to allow time to get through security screening…” You in? Oh… wait… I almost forgot. We have one more talk in our series on “God’s Game Plan”: On August 24, 1835, nine men and women gathered in a little schoolhouse not far from our church and made a covenant to become “Mount Hope Baptist Church” pledging themselves “to God and one another, to live together as a Church of Christ, pledging ourselves to strive together for the faith of the gospel, by all the methods laid down for our observance in the Word of God.” A lot has happened since then. We unmistakably see God’s plan for this little fellowship thriving 189 years later. How about we celebrate this history—and look towards God’s plan for our future—on Sunday, August 25, 2024? Here we go… God is SO good! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey Friends…
It was a stunning prediction. It would be tough for anyone paying attention to deny the reality and power of God as a result. Hardened or ignorant hearts missed it. And many still do today. You might not have ever heard about it. But I’m confident that when you do, it’ll knock your socks off. Wanna hear the play-by-play? I’ll tell you more in Deeper Thoughts below… But first…. · Men—don’t miss our big, yummy, full-cholesterol men’s breakfast and Christ-following challenge THIS Saturday, July 13, 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. This month’s men’s ministry event will be the full-service bacon & eggs & pancakes deal with a great time of fellowship, focus, Word, challenge, and prayer. C’mon out on Saturday morning! · Women—next up for you is our ladies prayer walk and fellowship time at Morven Park NEXT Saturday, July 20, 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. Click here for more details! · Youth & Parents—we’re experimenting with the right programming model for our teens and need your feedback! The power of being a small church—and therefore a small youth group—is that we are a family, not a program. This enables us to pivot our programming each week to custom tailor the experience for exactly who is present. As the summer months have lots of travel and less-predictable rhythms, Chris Bowen wants to keep a pulse on who’s around each week to ensure our Sunday programs are spot-on for your teen. Please be sure to stay in touch with him—240-422-6287 (c). · Kids & Parents—mark your calendar for an important after-church parent’s luncheon on Sunday, August 25, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. We want to explore your ideas and family needs for long-range planning of our kids and family life ministries. We’ll share what’s upcoming this fall, and have you help co-create our direction for the future. This is a don’t miss event… yummy lunch provided! · A memorial service for our beloved Mike Anderson who unexpectedly passed away three weeks ago will be NEXT Saturday, July 20, 2:00 p.m. at the church. All are welcome! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who prefer to stay in the dark. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… Jesus stunned them. I bet he would have caught your attention too. At first, it was his preaching. He wasn’t dull and rambling like all the other rabbis everyone had grown up around. There was fire in his presentation. “Who is this guy?” they asked, incredulous that the earthy carpenter’s son from small town Nazareth could command such an audience. But it was more than just his charismatic oratory skills. It was the content, too. Jesus spoke of God as someone we could access and relate to—a fatherly Deity driven by mercy and grace. He exposed and annihilated the religious leaders’ hypocrisy and judgmentalism. He performed dazzling miracles of healing and compassion. He attracted the most unlikely of followers, later transforming them from crooks, thieves, and addicts into spiritual giants and evangelists. And then he got himself killed. This is where the hard-hearted stopped paying attention. Widespread noise about a resurrection kept a few curiously at hand. But for most, the brutal crucifixion was enough to turn their heads away and wonder in disbelief that perhaps he hadn’t stayed dead. It was only later that people started adding up the math. Thousands of people began to put their faith in Jesus as his disciples carried on the miracles and commanding grace-filled preaching. Scholars began to look carefully at what had been written about Messiah centuries before. And they were once again astonished. You see, prophecy never gives us perfect foresight. It is not supposed to. Nor could it. But prophecy fulfilled stuns us with its precision. Have you ever read the prophecies of Daniel? It will knock your socks off if you understand the details. With remarkable precision, God revealed the exact date of Messiah some 500 years before Jesus was born. No one recognized it ahead of time, so few were able to pick Jesus out of the crowd of Jewish babies as anyone significant. But after the fact, an ancient prophecy that nailed the date precisely would make them sit up straight. Daniel was a powerful political leader serving in a corrupt, tumultuous kingdom in which many Jews had been exiled. Despite all the political depravity surrounding Daniel’s day job, he was a devout believer and a resolute prayer warrior. One night, as Daniel was faithfully reading the scriptures, he stumbled upon a prophecy written 67 years earlier where God told Jeremiah that the Babylonian exile would last precisely 70 years. Daniel did the math; he realized they had three years left to their political captivity. He dropped to his knees and sought God with prayer, fasting, sackcloth, and ashes (see Daniel 9:1-3 and Jeremiah 29:10-14). That’s when God stunned us later students of Messiah’s coming. With precision, God answered Daniel’s prayer with another revelation. There would be exactly 483 years from a decree by Daniel’s boss to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah would be on the scene, be put to death, and then God would start wrapping up all of human history. First read through it (see Daniel 9:20-27), you’ll likely feel a bit lost; the language and imagery are quite confusing. I’ll make sense of it for us on Sunday. But if you want to do your own research, click here for a rather detailed article. Bottom line: The decree to rebuild Jerusalem came. Then, exactly 483 years later, Jesus. Bam. Mic drop. God is smart. Why am I telling you all this? (And why should you keep reading such a dense letter… if you’ve not bailed out just yet?) First, God has always been in the business of revealing His play-by-play game plan. Prophecy’s precision should build our faith that He is indeed real, engaged, and intentional about what is coming. But what’s more, Jesus looked his disciples square in the eye and told them to sit up straight regarding Daniel’s prophecy. When asked about the precise timing of the end of the world, Jesus told his disciples there was just one marker. One thing they needed to pay heed to. One event that would be the sign and trigger of it all. And it was from Daniel’s prophecy: Daniel 9:27. That sounds like something we should sit up and pay careful attention to right here in 2024, does it not? Jesus: “So when you see standing in the holy place the ‘abomination that causes desolation’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand [a parenthetical comment added by gospel author Matthew]—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15-16). In other words, when you see Daniel 9:27 coming to pass… run. It is in those days—the days when this prophecy has been precisely fulfilled—that “the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky…he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call and…gather his elect from…one end of the heavens to the other” (Matthew 24:30-31). This is the play-by-play. This is where we need to sit up straight. This is when the end is near. “So, when is it, Chris?” Well… Jesus revealed it. I will explain it. But not until Sunday morning. You gotta show up. It will knock your socks off. And it will knock you to your knees. Sunday morning, 10:00 a.m. in-person (best!) or online livestream (if you’re home sick ‘cuz I infected you with the zombie virus…) It’s gonna be good… Here we go… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey Friends…
Well, this week’s planned vacation didn’t go so well. That nasty head cold bug that’s been going around caught up with me hard all this week—far heavier than I expected last Sunday when I showed up at church with what I thought was just a mild congestion (ooops!!). As evidenced by me even telling you this now, we men especially have a reputation for complaining loudly when we’re sick. It consumes our every thought. We whine incessantly (ask my wife). We mope around. And we fiercely look for every solution possible. But I wonder: Do we put the same vigorous attention to our spiritual unwellness? [Insert uncomfortable cough here.] Let’s talk more about this in Deeper Thoughts below… But first… just three super-quick mentions on important dates… · Men: Our next men’s breakfast and challenge is NEXT Saturday, July 13. More details to come on Sunday! · Ladies: Saturday, July 20… 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. – Let’s meet with God again! Join us for a prayer walk at Morven Park in Leesburg. Click here for more details! · Our memorial service for Mike Anderson will be Saturday, July 20. Time TBD… more info to come… OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and those who have never had a spiritual cold. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… It’s curious timing that Pastor Will Cravens has been on the schedule to preach this Sunday for a couple of months now. He’s one of our favorites at Mt. Hope, having shepherded many in our congregation in years past. So, whenever he’s in town, I try to grab him to share the Word with us. His humorous and bold approach to the scriptures adds a layer of fun to counterbalance my often-heavy teachings. So… I’ll stay in bed the rest of this week, let Will get the Word put together, and maybe I’ll see you Sunday if the heavy antibiotics I started yesterday have done their work in time. BUT… more curious timing: Will’s teaching for Sunday that he’s received from the Lord ties right into my probing question about our spiritual unwellness. As you can imagine, wellness has been on my mind a lot this week. In part, it might have something to do with my genuine worry that I may have been infected by the Zombie Apocalypse Virus and all of our impending doom will soon result from my breathing on some of you last Sunday. But more likely, my thoughts have to do with the sense that most of us American Christians are limping along with less spiritual vitality than we realize. It’s like we have a chronic low-grade fever of spiritual apathy that we’ve lived with for so long that we don’t even realize we are not well—at least not as well as we could be. Now, don’t get me wrong. Especially around the family at Mt. Hope, I see a lot of passion for the Lord, a lot of commitment to grow in our spiritual lives, and a genuine hunger for God’s Word. We’re a beautiful family seeking the Lord at various levels which are truly authentic to where we each are in our personal journey. So, don’t hear me saying that I think any of us on this email chain are on our spiritual death beds. But I also recognize that when we do face things like an apocalypse--real or imagined—we might discover our desperate need for an even stronger spiritual health than we presently have. We’re in the middle of this teaching series called “God’s Game Plan—Beginning, Middle, End: A study in biblical prophecy.” It’s a study of what God has laid out from the beginning as to where this is all headed. We need to study this so that we can be prepared for… well… an actual apocalypse. The scriptures reveal an apocalypse is indeed coming. It is a mystery whether the end is just around the corner or is further down the road sometime after our own personal departure. But that’s the whole point: Precisely because it’s a mystery, Jesus recommends we be about the business of the Father as if his return is imminent…um… like maybe even today. When Jesus explained in terrible detail where everything is headed (check it out in Matthew 24), he rolled right on into a couple of parables that explained how some folks live fully prepared and how some don’t (see Matthew 25). Jesus told two stories: One about a gaggle of wedding attendants who were lazy in their focus and another about financial stewards who squandered their responsibilities. Both found their master’s unexpected and untimely appearance catching them entirely out of position and out of relationship with the one they were called to serve. When we are sick in bed hacking up microbes of the zombie virus--or Covid, or flu, or strep…pick your poison—it is all we can think about. We lay there desperately committed to do whatever we have to do to get it right. When we are living with a low-grade disease of spiritual apathy, we rarely think about it and have little motivation to change anything. (Hmmm… that might be why we call it apathy.) But what if we had amazing clarity on how real and how close this next chapter is—the chapter where the King of Kings returns and reveals all of His wonder and beauty in unmasked glory; the chapter where we get to see and understand all things for what they really are; the chapter where we get to shed all the suffering and sorrow and pain and disease; the chapter where a brand new reality in both the spiritual and natural realms becomes our home? What if we could see that not in some distant, abstract imagination, but in its actual, immanent splendor? Wouldn’t that make you so anxious--in a good way—to get prepared and live a “no regrets” kind of life? I promise you that Will is going to make this a much more fun, exciting, and humorous conversation than I’m cobbling together for you here. For now, I’ll go pop another antibiotic and some Sudafed and hopefully see you on Sunday. But in the meantime, do some thinking and some praying. Are you hungry to know the Lord with every ounce of preparedness, focus, and drive as you would be driven to get over any yucky unwellness in your life? Are you ready to live a “no regrets” kind of life? What would need to change within you? Let’s seek God together on this. I bet His Word and His servant Will Cravens have something powerful for us this Sunday… 10:00 a.m. in-person (best!), or online livestream (if you have the zombie virus...). Much love (and wellness) to you all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend |
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Jesus said, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, & with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matt. 22:37-39
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