Teague Bible Church

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

I had a friend who was going to take me on my first sailing boat adventure. This was a boat about 45 ‘ long I would guess. It had a motor on it to troll around the docks if need be. It had an inside cabin in which to sleep. It was very old and if truth be known, not as sea worthy as it was in 1965.

As we go to unmoor the thing ( is unmoor even a word?), the Captain said the strangest thing. He said, “This is such an ugly place!” Well, I took the bait. “Why is it an ugly place?” said I.

(I said a lot of “I” that day. “Aye, Aye Captain; Aye, Aye, Heave Ho, Aye , Aye, 10 degrees to port side, shiver me timbers!” The letter “R” was mumbled about also. (Now I know why he did not ask me out on the boat again. )

OK, where were we? Yea, the ugly place. “Well,” says he, “There be nothing as ugly as a sailing ship tied down and bobbing in the water like it is alive, yet we all know it is dead. It is only alive when it is moving on an open sea!” ( He really did not say, “There be.” Pirate talk just seemed natural at that moment.)

We had just gone through John 3:1-21 at church. The same passage we are doing now at our church. “Do not be amazed that I say to you, ‘You must be born again,'(from above, or born anew). The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3: 7-8.

So old Captain Jack was right. Then I saw the ugliness of the place, and have seen it every since, when I see boats tied up at dock.

Church can look just as ugly when filled with people who have heard and read all about sailing, ( i.e., being born-again) but never took the risk of braving miles of open water. I am not talking about an honest seeker, coming to the Lord to receive more light, like Nicodemus did. I am talking about the ones who have substituted many other things for what only the fresh and powerful wind of the Lord can provide.

It is not a matter of grit or determination that makes us new, but a surrender to the “wind” of the “Spirit” of God. Many hear about a new life in Christ, and try to engage in it, yet will not give up the controls to the Captain of their souls; the Lord Jesus Christ. They refuse to open their heart and catch the wind. A closed heart catches no wind.

The word for “wind” and the word for “Spirit” (Pneuma) in the Greek language is the exact same word! The context lets us know what kind of wind we are talking about.

All the boat preparation in the world cannot command the wind to blow. We surrender to it; i.e., we surrender to Him; to Jesus, and he causes us to be supernaturally born- again into a new and different life.

So the wind of the Spirit blows often enough, but some only sense a bit of bobbing up and down and go nowhere. As we set sail that day I was so busy getting the main sail ready, hoisting the jib, tightening the rigging, keeping the boom from hitting anybody in the head, moving the thing, then moving another thing, that I did not notice the changing. Did I know how to do all this stuff? Of course not! He would gently correct all my mistakes and was having fun watching me move about. I was exhausted. He knew what was about to happen. It was not my prep work, it would be the wind that lifted thousands of pounds of boat out across the water.

“Your last job,” said he. “Yes, and what is that Captain Bligh?” “Look at the shadow of the boat on the water! We are sailing!” All those mechanical things I was required to do prepared us to move. But like a great ax handle with no ax head, we had no power to change anything, without the invisible, refreshing wind.

My job was to get the sails open; the wind did the rest. The wind I do not control. The wind that is invisible and can drastically change a static situation! How beautiful!

I cannot express what that felt like. This big boat was running tight sail with a slight wind pushing us silently through the water at about 12 knots. How could this be?

The Captain said, “She is alive now, but we can’t see why. How beautiful she is now, only because she opened her arms to embrace the invisible wind!” JWP 8/15/2020

“If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Some day, please God, it will be. The same is true of many other behaviors which now appear as duties. If I love my neighbor as myself, most of the actions which are now my moral duty would flow out of me as spontaneously as a song from a lark or fragrance from a flower.” C.S. Lewis “Letters To Malcolm”

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!

                                                                                                                    6/24/2020

I love the study of the Civil War. I see great bravery exemplified on both sides and admire the leadership and character and dedication. Many of these men had attended West Point together, and knew each other before the war. Stonewall Jackson was pursuing a Northern army late in the day. Some of his lieutenants suggested they wait till tomorrow to pursue further. Jackson felt it was a good time to overtake them. So late in the day, and running ahead of his own troops, mixing now with the Northern troops, in failing light, a shot rang out. Jackson had been shot in the left arm by his own troops. Robert E. Lee said that when Jackson lost his left arm, that he, had lost his right arm. Without the leadership of Jackson it would be difficult to continue a winning campaign. Jackson had gone too far; too fast.

The Corona virus caused the world to come to a dead stop. That, my friends, is an opportunity to evaluate your life before God. Politics, the media, the novelty of the virus itself, cannot take away from the fact that God is using this time to talk to you. If you are still mad that it all happened in the first place, and set your plans back, and you do not see the hand of God in it, then I have nothing else to say to you today. Go off and get yourself stirred up again; stay mad, listen to mere men act like they have control of God’s world. But there is something else you can do. Think about the statements below.

“ Nothing is more intolerable to man than a state of complete repose, without desires, without work, without amusements, without occupation. In such a state he becomes aware of his nothingness, his abandonment, his inadequacy, his dependence, his emptiness, his futility. There at once wells up from the depths of his soul weariness, gloom, misery, exasperation, frustration, despair. Sport, pleasure, entertainment and society are so often pursued not because they bring pleasure, but because they take men’s minds off themselves.”

Wow, whoever said that really knew our times. The activity of the world has gotten faster and faster! But we have surely gone too far; too fast. Real meaning and real fulfillment are sliding behind us.

Psalms 46:10 is now a joke, even to many professing Christians. “Cease striving; and know that I am God!” Patience and gentleness is considered a weakness today. Impulsiveness is hidden behind a noble idea of, “Get it done!” Like the old saying goes , “ I don’t know where we are going, but we are getting there in record time!” That attitude has all the earmarks of an addiction. A meaningless addiction!

So who wrote the above quote? When was it written? It was written by the great Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662 A.D. Yea, horse-and-buggy days!

Judgement begins in the household of God (I Peter 4:17-19). Till the Christians face these things then there is little hope for unbelievers to see Christ in us. What do they see? As one unbelieving friend said to me when I ask him what he thought of the best Christians he had seen, he said this; “ Well, they are just like me, but very nice about things. They have the same drives to look successful and have stuff. They have fit their beliefs nicely into, as a supplement, the American dream of prosperity.” About the saddest thing I have ever heard.

So is that it? The world will clearly see Christ in us if we will just be really nice? It is a lot deeper than that!

 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12: 1-2.

We have to be different from the world. I have been around a lot of military people. I cannot express how much I admire their focus and dedication. For example, I can spot a Marine now in the public square about anytime and anyplace. The respectful way they speak to civilians, the way they take the back of the line and don’t act like they need to be admired. No amount of plain clothes can hide the fact that they are Marines. They can’t hide the hours and hours they have spent in training to be the defenders of this country. They suffer by having many of their rights taken away that we enjoy as civilians. How ironic that they have to be different, in that way, to guarantee our good!

 Finally then, can you be spotted as a Christian quickly in this world, even though all people look about the same physically, and good social mannerisms are about the same? Your speech and actions should make people say, “ You are not from around here, are you?” It has to be, not because you come from a different part of the country, therefore you merely sound different, or look different, but because you spend time with God you have a certain glow! We are the light of the world. Light it up my friend!  JWP

Please join us in today’s word. And let us know what you think….either in our comment section or in person at our next service. Join us every Sunday at our worship times–9:30am for Sunday School and at 10:45am for Worship Service. We’d love to see you here!