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Hey everyone…
There’s a double meaning here. First, I have something important to tell you, and I realize summertime readership is spotty. Can you give me five minutes and lean in? But also… God spoke “please read this” directly to me a few weeks ago. There’s a section of scripture I have largely ignored my entire Christian life. Maybe you have, too. God asked me to step up and read. Let me tell you about it in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first… check out these summer happenings: · Men’s Breakfast TOMORROW, July 26, 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. – Come eat, connect with the fellas, and explore what’s upcoming in Men’s Ministry. Text Phil Trazinski to get involved helping make the breakfast (571-328-8099). THEN… afterwards, at 12:00 p.m., for those interested, join us for an escape room in Ashburn! o ALSO: Be sure to sign up for our Men’s Ministry updates on What’s App… Here’s how: 1) download and open the free “What’s App” application to your device. 2) Search for “Mens Ministry M25:40”. 3) Ask to join. 4) You’ll be welcomed by an admin once he confirms you’re not a robot. · Help us gather school supplies through Tree of Life Ministries! Sponsored by our Women’s Ministry, Mt. Hope is collecting school supplies and backpacks to help jump start the new school year for students who may not otherwise be able to purchase needed supplies. Click here for a list of what’s needed; bring your donated items to the collection bin in the BROWN room at church by Sunday, August 3. · Teens: Youth Group THIS Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m.; only $25.00 per student! Transportation to/from the church is available. AND… there are several opportunities for adults to volunteer. Click here to email Chris Bowen to RSVP or with questions! · Join me for “The Daily Six” – six minutes each morning in the Word of God, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Plan to join us for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration Sunday, August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God for all He has done at Mt. Hope. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads. OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who giving five more minutes would lead to drowning… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… For my entire 40-year run as a Christ-follower, I have been misreading Jesus. I bet many of you have, too. Like most Christians who love Jesus and live in the New Testament, I have been fed a steady diet of theology that dismisses the Old Testament as irrelevant to me. Jesus set me free from the Law of God (see Romans 8:1-4 and Galatians 3:23-25). His mercy and grace have forgiven all my transgressions and sins, so I really don’t need to pay attention to the Old Testament Law—the classic Ten Commandments followed by another 603 super-detailed and super-strict regulations. Net result: I regularly--like I mean, regularly—transgress at least one part of God’s Law with confidence and intentionality. About four weeks ago, God firmly sat me down and asked me to read. I had been aware for several months that I was living in what I call “the red zone.” It’s a cycle I imagine is familiar to many: The pace of life and responsibilities consistently overtake our schedule, energy, and capacity—and often do so for quite an extended season. Usually, there is no obvious way to trim down the workload; the to-do list is legitimate and all that’s on it is high priority. It’s a common condition among most professionals. Because “they’re paying us the big bucks” to buckle down and do what needs done, we grit our teeth, dig deep, and press through. We cling to visions of a tropical vacation somewhere in our distant future to muscle up the energy—occasionally aided by an IV drip of caffeine. Sound familiar? Truthfully, I enjoy being close to the red line. I consider myself a high-capacity person, and I often do my best work under pressure. Living near the red zone can be a thrilling ride as we jump from one task to the next. We feel important. We feel accomplished. We certainly are not bored. My problem develops when I move from living near the red zone to living in the red zone. That’s when I turn cranky. I get sloppy in my communication with others (interpretation: I get snarky and punchy… people get hurt). I struggle with motivation. I even get angry at the simplest things. God told me to sit down and “please read this.” God has a game plan to avoid the red zone entirely, to squelch stress, to live in abundance, and to do so every single week. Tropical vacation unnecessary (but still fun!). I have been largely ignoring His plan for 40 years. “Please read this,” God said to me. I have never carefully read every verse in the Bible on the Sabbath in one sitting. I have read over and over again every mention of the Sabbath in the Gospels—Jesus had a continuous fight on his hands with the legalistic Pharisees who believed he was constantly violating it. I read Jesus not-so-politely telling them to take a hike and that he was going to do whatever he liked on the Sabbath, which in his case was usually healing somebody, casting out a demon, or just eating lunch (see Mark 2:23 – 3:6). So, armed with my Romans and Galatians understanding of freedom from God’s Law, I’ve assumed I can be like Jesus and just do my own thing. Problem: I’ve been misreading Jesus. God asked me to read again. Jesus was specific about the Sabbath. It was made for me. Oh… and you, too. “The Sabbath was made for man,” Jesus said (Mark 2:27). Then I read all 96 mentions of it in the Old Testament. Plus the 430 mentions of “rest.” Here’s what I discovered: The Sabbath is a gift to you and me. It is a command, yes—in the top ten, which I figure makes it fairly important (see Exodus 20:1-17). But it is also a gift. Failure to obey the command will yield a failure to experience the gift. God commanded that we not murder, steal, cheat, or lie. He did so not to be a killjoy, but rather so we can enjoy the gift of an abundant life free of guilt, destruction, relational loss, and jail time. Even though I am free from the judgment of God’s Law in the grace and mercy of Jesus, I still keep those commands because of their wisdom—and because of their promise that life is significantly better when I don’t kill anybody. So why don’t I keep the Sabbath with the same unflinching integrity? This Sunday, will you come to church--in person if you’re able (online if you’re sick or away)—and let’s read together what God has offered to us? How about we figure out what the Sabbath practically looks like in our New Testament life? The command is crisp. The promise is rich and abundant. Perhaps we shouldn’t ignore it any longer. A more abundant life might be waiting for us. Much love to you all… let’s “Sabbath” together this Sunday!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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Hey everybody…
It is unquestionably one of the most disorienting experiences in life. It can also radically bewilder and confuse us in our relationship with God. It’s one of our greatest barriers to faith. It is why many in our world simply cannot trust or believe in God. Simply put, it’s humanity’s greatest question about the Creator. Curious yet? Let me tell you all about it in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first… some great stuff is happening at Mt. Hope! · Men: We have a ton of exciting new activities and events in the works to reconnect our men and grow in Jesus Christ: o Saturday, July 26, 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. – Men’s Breakfast. Come eat, connect with the fellas, and explore what’s upcoming in the Men's Ministry. Text Phil Trazinski to get involved helping make the breakfast (571-328-8099). o THEN… afterwards, Saturday, July 26 at 12:00 p.m., the guys are going to an escape room in Ashburn! o Sign up for our Men’s Ministry updates on What’s App… Here’s how: 1) download and open the free “What’s App” application to your device. 2) Search for “Mens Ministry M25:40”. 3) Ask to join. 4) You’ll be welcomed by an admin once he confirms you’re not a robot. · Teens: TONIGHT – meet at the church firepit 7:30 – 9:00 p.m. for an evening of worship, prayer and sharing. Weather permitting we’ll be at the fire pit; if storms arise, we’ll meet by candlelight in the sanctuary. o AND… Youth Group THIS Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp is coming up FAST! Join us for this Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m. each day. BEST NEWS: For Mt. Hope families, the cost is only $25.00 per student! For a whole week of camp!!! Transportation to/from the church is available. To secure our special Mt. Hope pricing, Chris Bowen will be handling your registration individually. Click here to email Chris to RSVP or with questions! · Join me for “The Daily Six” – six minutes each morning in the Word of God, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Plan to join us for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration Sunday, August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God for all He has done at Mt. Hope. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads. OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who have not a single question about your life… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… Anyone who has faced this will tell you it is stunning, disorienting, confusing, and usually quite debilitating. Sorry to hit you with a heavy on a warm summer Friday. I know you’d rather sit outside at your favorite restaurant and think only happy thoughts tonight. And I pray that’s what your Friday evening has in store for you as it does for me and Sherri—spending some quality time with close friends and family in abundant joy and peace. Most of the time, this is what life is. Good times, peace, fun, and joy mixed in with an annoying touch of mediocrity and drudgery. That’s the good life, and it’s what we all pursue. But then there are the really dark moments. It’s when the whole world seems to collapse in on us. · A lay off. Loss of income. Unemployment. · A divorce. Broken trust. Hurt feelings. · A dismal diagnosis. Pain and suffering. Fear. · A tragedy. Loved ones killed. Raging grief. · A fire. Everything gone. Immeasurable loss. · [Insert your horrific event here…. ] Did I mention an apology for throwing a heavy on you this evening? When something of this magnitude hits, the timing is never good. Worse: the pain, hardship, fear, and disorientation are truly overwhelming. This is when the spiritual life becomes incredibly difficult. Where is God? Why is He not helping me? How could He let something like this happen? What did I do to deserve this? If you’ve been keeping up with our “Knowing God” readings and The Daily Six this week, you’ve been with us in the Book of Job—the story of a perfectly righteous man who lost everything in a single day. His family. His business. His money. His prosperity. His health. Job’s wife wanted him to curse God and die; his friends badgered him about what kind of terrible sin had brought this tragedy upon himself. What would you do? What would you say? What have you said when something like this has occurred in your life? For Job, his trust in God and his worship of God were unshaken. As he learned the news hit-after-hit over the course of just a few hours—messengers coming one after the other with more and more bad news—his response was instinctive and unflinching: “At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’” (Job 1:20-21). Did you catch that? Instantly. Reflexively. He worshipped. For most of us, great tragedies of this sort lead us to charge God with wrongdoing. “God, this isn’t fair! What did I do to deserve this?!?!” Not Job. He believed the goodness of God despite what he was experiencing. This isn’t easy. Especially with the further revelation that behind the spiritual curtain, God and the devil appear to be playing a game of sporty chess with Job’s life (see Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-7). The goodness and worthiness of God to be worshipped is really, really hard to stomach under these conditions, is it not? This Sunday let’s take a deeper look behind that spiritual curtain. Let’s try to make sense of what was—and is—really going on between God and the devil. Let’s see if we can make sense of where real suffering and hardship are coming from. Let’s see if we can discover the heart of God in such a way that makes us spring-loaded to fall down in worship the next time we hit a hard wall of trouble. I truly hope your summer is going super-well, that you are super-chill and having a great time. If that’s you, this teaching should not bum you out. It will equip you, though, for that future tough day. And, if you’re in a tough spot right now, well… the relevance to you from God’s Word is obvious. Our God is awesome. Even when it’s tough. Job again: “My ears had heard of you. But now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). He got it. He saw it. He got his question answered. The Word of God will do the same for us this week. Of this, I am sure. Much love to you all… can’t wait to see you… 10:00 Sunday in-person (*Best!!) or online… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey everybody…
We’ve both missed all of you these last couple of weeks while Sherri and I took a much-needed vacation. We got home on Monday, but then I jumped on a flight to Colorado for a quick visit with my father who is in failing health. I fly home tomorrow. But before then, can you look into getting a boat? We might need one. Let’s chat about it in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first… some key upcoming things: · THIS Sunday, God (and United Airlines) willing, I am back and will be sharing the scriptures with us. But more than that, we’ll be baptizing one of our Mt. Hope teens! Come out for a great worship experience and time in God’s Word! · Teens: Youth Group meets THIS Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp is coming up FAST! Join us for this Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m. each day. BEST NEWS: For Mt. Hope families, the cost is only $25.00 per student! For a whole week of camp!!! Transportation to/from the church is available. To secure our special Mt. Hope pricing, Chris Bowen will be handling your registration individually. Click here to email Chris to RSVP or with questions! · Join me for “The Daily Six” – six minutes each morning in the Word of God, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Mark your calendars for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads. OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who don’t like boating … BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… There are times when real-life current events come into stark contrast with the Word of God. This past week has been one of those. I’m sure you have been watching the terrible accounts of tragedy in central Texas as flash flood waters took the lives of so many precious people last weekend. Notably, long-ago pre-recorded episodes of The Daily Six were scheduled to air this week that took us into our next chapter in our Old Testament study of “Knowing God”—the very well-known character of Noah, through whom God chose to save humanity during a massive global flood. It’s one of the most recognizable of all Bible stories. And it is all about a boat. My first instinct was to pause our series for a week and put this topic off so we wouldn’t accidentally create too direct a comparison between Noah, his ark, and the horrible suffering of the Texas flood. And yet, while we may recognize parallels in human suffering between that biblical story and our precious peers in Texas, the events are tremendously different. God’s purposes with the global flood of Noah’s day were unique. God covenanted with Noah that it would be a once-in-all-history event. The tragedy in Texas is connected to our more generalized troubles of living in a fallen world—curiously the topic of NEXT week’s Daily Six as we study the life of Job… also pre-recorded weeks ago and airing this Monday. While a first read of the story in Genesis 6 - 8 could very naturally lead us to focus on the flood, the real subject of the story is not the water. It is the boat. You’ve probably heard of this boat. You might have even had a picture of it painted on your bedroom wall when you were a little kid. In every cartoon picture I’ve seen of the ark, everybody is smiling. There is, of course, Noah with his long white beard and happy family. And the giraffes. You can’t forget the giraffes—two of them with their smiling heads towering above all the other happy animals. Monkeys. Bears. Goats. Horses. Pigs. Tree sloths… er… I never saw a picture of Noah’s Ark with tree sloths hanging out the window, but they must have been there. The colorful, cheerful animations of Noah’s Ark adorning walls of children’s bedrooms might seem a bit insensitive if you think about the story from the perspective of the flood. Devastating floods are never cheerful. You’ve seen that on the news this week. Multiply that sorrow by a million-fold when the flood is entirely global. So why the cheery images? It’s the boat. The story of Noah is not about the devastation of the flood—though to be sure, it is the starting point. The story is about the ark. While God had His infinite reasons to engage humanity in this horrific judgment and great “reset” of everything, the real movement of God is His ark of rescue. Judgment leveled against such grand wickedness also immediately garnered a grand rescue. God had Noah build a boat so God could rescue his family and all the happy animals. And in it, God was rescuing the future of His entire creation. You, me, and the tree sloths all included. This rescue has a critical detail we need to explore this Sunday. It will land with incredible relevance to you and me. This detail is why I also need a boat, and why you need one too. We need God’s ark of rescue to overcome. We need a boat. So, let’s lean into Noah. If you haven’t already been with us in Genesis 6 this week, spend a little time there. And… everybody grab something new as well: Check out 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1. Let’s see where we need God’s ark of rescue and how God is going to pull all this off. Much love to you all… so glad we’re going to be with you once again!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey everybody…
I hope you’re having a great Independence Day as we contemplate the unique freedoms given to us by God, recognized by our founding fathers, and enshrined in a one-of-a-kind U.S. Constitution. While many flaws and even some great evils have beset our nation throughout the centuries--and to be true, some great challenges still beset us today—there is a blessing from the Lord for which we should give Him thanks and steward well. Let’s chat about it in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first… a quick reminder of some key upcoming events: · THIS Sunday, Pastor Will Cravens will be sharing the scriptures with us. Come out for a great worship experience and time in God’s Word as we continue our teaching series, “Knowing God”! · Teens: Youth Group meets NEXT Sunday, July 13th, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp is coming up FAST! Join us for this Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m. each day. BEST NEWS: For Mt. Hope families, the cost is only $25.00 per student! For a whole week of camp!!! Transportation to/from the church is available. To secure our special Mt. Hope pricing, Chris Bowen will be handling your registration individually. Click here to email Chris to RSVP or with questions! · While Sherri and I are away on vacation, “The Daily Six” videos WILL continue!! Join me for six minutes each morning, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Mark your calendars for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads (but note that she’ll NOT be responding to emails until July 8!) OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who are running late to the fireworks and can’t take the time to read anymore… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… We have been studying the early chapters of Genesis a LOT in recent weeks. I hope you’re not tired yet of this vitally important foundation to our faith. To understand our Creator is to make sense of why we are here. God made you on purpose. We need to know why. Genesis 1:27 has been pounded into our heads and our hearts for nearly a dozen weeks so far—that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:28 and 2:15 reveal that our placement on this earth is to be a stewardship and a governance of everything that has been created. This has tremendous implications to how we view and how we treat everything and everyone around us. You and I were made to bear the image of God. This means that we were created to carry His identity, His character, His way of thinking into every corner of our lives. We are to live as if we have the same nature God does. This is also the New Testament vision of Romans 8:29: “For those God foreknew [would be saved] he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness [the image] of his Son.” In short, we are to look like God and Jesus in everything we do. This includes bearing His image in our patriotism and citizenship. Every 4th of July, Americans gather to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence where our nation’s founding fathers took the bold step of rebellion against tyranny and the establishment of genuine freedom for every man, woman, and child. This grand idea was birthed, in part, from the study of scripture. More than half of the Declaration’s signers had Christian theological education, most were Christian believers, and a few were even pastors or chaplains in ministry. (One of those signers, William Whipple of New Hampshire, was a direct ancestor of mine. It is unclear, but it is possible that I may have one of his personal Bibles on my bookshelf at home.) This idea of God-created freedom and equality that human governments must recognize matches the Biblical narrative of our Garden of Eden design to faithfully steward all of creation. But even in these United States who formalized this idea into the largest experiment of freedom mankind had known to date, the path to true freedom and true equality being universally applied has been rugged, twisting, tentative, and at times troubled. The end of slavery, the granting of equal rights to women and minorities, the acknowledgement of great atrocities committed against the natives of our land—all of these and much more have taken the entire lifespan of our nation to mature. I’ll leave it to others to offer a detailed assessment of the vast range of considerations regarding our nation’s history, humanity, and progress yet to be made. But I believe as we seek to know God and express His image, we would do well this Independence Day to be thankful that He created us--and thereby empowered us—to live with the same character, impulses, identity, and nature that He lives from. And… most importantly… to ensure that everything we think, say, and do with our fellow patriots and fellow citizens reflects that image. Let’s be thankful bearers of God’s image first. Americans a distant, yet truly thankful, second. Those are my two cents this great Independence Day, for whatever they’re worth… which analysts report might only be worth $0.013 or so when the market opens on Monday. ;-) FINALLY… As Sherri and I finish up our vacation this week, if you have any needs that arise where our Elder Team or others could be a help or blessing to you, please reach out to Kristie Zoller via email ([email protected]) or by text/phone at 703-999-3156. She’ll coordinate response and support for your situation. Sherri and I will NOT be checking our email or texts until Tuesday, July 8, so if we need to know anything, Kristie is your POC. Much love to you all… we’ll see you NEXT Sunday!! 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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Ashburn, VA 20148
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