Grace Church at Seven Lakes, North Carolina

Pictured are Joanna and Jimmy Coxe, leaders at "Grace Church at Seven Lakes."  

“Grace Church at Seven Lakes” plans a “grand opening” celebration at 10:00 a.m., April 8 (Easter Sunday), at 145 West Plaza Drive Suite A and B, located in Seven Lakes Plaza in front of the Peking Wok.

Jimmy Coxe of Pinehurst, who has served as an elder for 21 years at Grace Church in Southern Pines, is the church’s “campus pastor.”

“We’ll have a worship team led by Brandon DiBianca and a full children’s ministry,” says Coxe, who also works as lab manager for the Campbell’s Soup processing plant in Maxton.

He and his wife, Joanna, grew up in Red Springs and have three children. Joanna serves as the fulltime children’s director for Grace Church in Southern Pines and will also direct the children’s ministry for Grace Church at Seven Lakes. Children will follow the same curriculum on both campuses.  

“We want to reach people who wish to experience the life-giving power of Jesus,” Coxe says. “About 50 people already attend, and we have 170 chairs and plenty of parking. When this takes off, we plan to go to two services.”

Coxe says he wants the fledgling church “to serve” the Seven Lakes community.

“We want people from all socio-economic groups to feel they can come and worship,” he says. “It’s ‘come as you are.’ If you want to dress up, that’s okay. If you feel more comfortable in jeans, that’s fine, as well.”

Grace Church at Seven Lakes services will feature live worship, a full children’s ministry and a “video-streamed live message” from Grace Church in Southern Pines, where Randy Thornton serves as senior pastor. For more information, call 910-692-6711.

Win from Within

By Pastor Randy Thornton of Grace Church of Southern Pines, N.C. (pictured above)

“God has a plan for your life and so does Satan,” the Rev. Randy Thornton said, as he delivered a recent message at Grace Church of Southern Pines, N.C., where he serves as senior pastor.

Satan has a plan to snag you in your vulnerable places, he said.

“Millions are spent on how to improve,” he noted, mentioning teeth-whiteners, diets, exercise regimens and self-help programs.

Thornton talked about “the power to change” and listed the first principle of dedication as: “Commit my body to God.”

“Eat right, feel right,” he said. “The body affects the psychology (the mind). The body affects behavior.”

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1 NIV).

“Your body is important and what you do with your body is important,” Thornton said.

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Thornton said Christ paid for our sins and “Emmanuel” means “God with us.” He inferred that if God is with us, where are taking him?

“Sometimes we take our bodies where they shouldn’t go,” he said.

“Change is my choice” is the first law of change, Thornton noted, adding, “Nothing changes until you say, ‘I’ve got a problem.’”

He proposed three ways to “offer your body as a living sacrifice”:

1. Cleanse (detoxify) your body. (God dwells in your body.) For what a man sows, he reaps.

2. Take care of your body.

“Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).

“When is the last time you had a physical?” Thornton asked. “Let’s take a little bit better care.”

“After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church,” (Ephesians 5:29).

3. Control your body.

“God wants us to take control of our bodies,” Thornton said. “Learn to control; learn to say ‘No.’” (Avoid saying, “The Devil made me do it.”)

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). 

Thornton talked about a principle of concentration: “Refocus your mind.”

He spoke about a second law of change: “To change, I must change my model.”

“If you want to see change in your life, hang around people you want to be like,” he said. “We all need Barnabases.”

Paul and Barnabas were in a peer-to-peer relationship. We need to be “poured into” (receive) and give out to others. We are selfish people. Men should mentor men, and women should mentor women. 

 

“A pond that only has water coming into it becomes stagnant,” Thornton said. “Healthy things live; unhealthy things die.”

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

The third principle for lasting change is evaluation – humbly assess my current state.

“I can only change what I can measure,” Thornton said.

He suggested listing on a paper, in left and right columns, things in your life that are pleasing and not pleasing to God.

“Do an honest evaluation,” he said.

Write what needs to change. Know your starting number. Record and review your progress. Know that sin is cyclical. Be aware of HALT, an acronym for Hungry, Angry, Lonely and/or Tired.

“HALT is when you’re most susceptible to sin,” Thornton said.

He listed the fourth principle of change: “Get group support; be part of a small group.” 

“God never created you to be lone rangers,” he said. “Lone rangers get shot down. They [early believers in Christ] met in the temple and house to house.” 

He said that in a church you can only know about 75 people.

“Jesus wants you connected,” Thornton said. “We need each other.”

“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4-5).

The fourth law of change requires that you be in community, Thornton said.

He noted that the fifth principle of affirmative change is this: Fill my life with love.

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:9-10).

“You need God to fill you with his love,” Thornton said. 

Job had most everything taken from him by God. He had friends who hurt him. Job prayed for his friends, forgiving their comments and advice.

“You want to see things change?” Thornton asked. “Pray that God bless them [those who injured you].”

The sixth principle of lasting change is motivation, he said.

“Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (Romans 12:11-12).

“Don’t let your circumstances dictate who you are,” Thornton said. “God is waiting for you to respond the right way. I believe God has called us to be a people of change. Now is the day of change … Let’s let the prayer of expectancy change the way we live.”

Fasting - Rooting Out 'Stumps in Your Lake'

From a message by Pastor Randy Thornton (pictured above)

“Fasting is one of the great Biblical disciplines,” said Pastor Randy Thornton, during a recent Sunday morning sermon at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C. “But how many would say it has been a top priority of the top three practices (praying, giving and fasting) of the Christian life you’ve actually participated in and done on a regular basis?”

John Wesley said, “Is not the neglect of this plain duty (I mean fasting, ranked by our Lord with almsgiving and prayer) one general occasion of deadness among Christians?”

Thornton, 52, Grace Church’s senior pastor, announced that the church is starting 21 days of prayer and fasting. He connected prayer with fasting, saying prayer changes situations, prayer changes lives, prayer changes a church, prayer changes a city and prayer changes a community.

“One of the things I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking is that there needs to be a renewed interest in prayer,” Thornton said.

He described various kinds of fasting, such as a “Daniel fast,” which involves eating only fruits and vegetables and “no pleasant food.”  He said people with medical problems should fast appropriately, not stringently.

“You can fast TV,” he said, adding that a person can abstain from TV or watch fewer programs in order to spend more time praying or reading the Bible. He explained that fasting is not dieting. “Food, among other things has a hold on people. Fasting draws you into a great awareness of God. God wants you to be free. God wants to see his love poured out. Fasting and prayer can help.” 

Thornton said fasting, for believers, is like lowering the water level in a lake. When you drain water from a lake, you notice stumps and debris – they were hidden by water.

“God wants to get the stumps and junk out of our lives,” he said.

He read Mark 9:29: “And he (Jesus) said unto them, ‘This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.’”

“Do you have stumps in your life, or silt?” Thornton asked. “Some of us need a supernatural Roto-Rooter or a fresh dunk in Jesus. God is saying in America, ‘Is there a people who will call upon me?’ I don’t want to be a church that just operates in religious performance. The miracle business has never left. God has called us to be fishers of men, but if our ponds are full of stumps…” (he left that sentence unfinished)…Confess ‘the stumps,’ the ‘things’ that have control in your life…God wants to remove the stumps, to restore what we call a ‘sense of innocence.’”

Fasting gives us great sensitivity and removes clutter and confusion, Thornton said.
John Wesley cautioned those who fast to have one motive: “First, let (fasting) be done unto the Lord with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven.”

Martin Luther offered this caution: “He (God) wants nothing at all to do with you if by your fasting you court Him as if you were a great saint, and yet meanwhile nurse a grudge or anger against your neighbor.”

“Spirithome.com” gives this summary:

“Usually, the fast is to do without food. Food is one of the great blessings of God in our lives, a true pleasure and a true necessity. But humans tend to be gluttons; we want to eat more. Our hunger can compel us, force our hand, occupy our thoughts. When we have anything in our lives that we don’t or can’t say no to, then it is lording over us. But God is in control. If something else takes up God’s place in our lives, it is an idol, and we are living in something akin to idolatry. Fasting helps to bring it back into enough control for us to surrender it to God so it can be returned to its rightful place in life. Food is the foremost example of such a thing.

“You can fast from some foods, and not others. You can fast from watching television…and buying pleasure items, even from buying ordinary stuff. You can fast from hobbies you crave, places you are unhealthily drawn to, music, books, news, and movies. You might even find it necessary to be fasting from use of the Internet…For most people in North America, and the upper classes all over the earth, the most important fasting may be to fast from being a consumer of goods, for our role as a consumer consumes us spiritually.”

As Pastor Thornton said, fasting can help lower the “water levels” of our lives and let us see the “stumps” that clutter and “junk-up” our lives. Maybe some of those stumps will come out only “by prayer and fasting.”

Sandhills Teen Challenge Christmas Banquet, December 2011

Sal DiBianca welcomes guests to the STC Christmas Banquet.

Sandhills Teen Challenge recently held its 25th annual Christmas banquet on its Carthage, N.C., campus, a 31-acre site serving as home for “a residential faith-based recovery program for men ages 18 and over with drug or alcohol problems.”

 

A reported 1,008 guests attended one of three banquets held at 6:30 p.m. on December 8, 9 and 10, 2011. Each gathering featured a meal, a concert by the Sandhills Teen Challenge Choir, testimonials by program graduates and students and an inspirational-and-fundraising presentation by Sal DiBianca, STC director. He and his wife, Debby, are graduates of the Teen Challenge International program.

Before the Dec. 10 banquet began, guests filled the STC Chapel/Dinning Hall. Tables placed end-to-end were covered in white and decorated with poinsettias.

 Sal DiBianca welcomed attendees to the festivities and introduced the Rev. Brent Thompson, a 2006 graduate and current Academic Dean, to open the evening with a prayer of blessing over the meal.

                        The Rev. Brent Thompson prays before the banquet.

              Attendees at the Dec. 10, 2011 banquet enjoy a fine meal.    

After the meal, served by STC staffers and students, attention was turned to the stage as Sal DiBianca started the program for the evening. 

“My wife and I came here 25 years ago and tonight we are celebrating 25 years of ministry at this location,” DiBianca said. “How many of you know that behind every good man there is a better woman? God gave me a great helpmate. I really ‘married up.’ She’s the queen of Teen Challenge.”

                             Debby DiBianca greets guests at the STC banquet.

Debby DiBianca welcomed guests and thanked those who sponsored tables at the dinner. She also thanked pastors for their support and thanked STC volunteers such as; Brad Roback, who teaches small engine repair; Bernie Markey, who teaches beginning carpentry; Merv and Maggie Mullet, who’ve prepared STC banquet foods for 22 years; Pastor Gregg Newton, who preaches chapel services at STC every Tuesday; and Sandhills Classic Car Club for staging STC benefit exhibitions.

Debby then told her story of addiction and the tragedy of having eight abortions before giving birth to the DiBianca’s two children.

“I had one small spot on my uterus that was still healthy, and that’s where Brandon and Jamie were placed,” she said. “I’ve always prayed for my kids to meet the most awesome spouses, like my ‘Italian Stallion.’”

Audience laughter.

The DiBiancas’ son and daughter-in-law joined them onstage.

Brandon and Nicole DiBianca, were married on Oct. 1, 2011. He works as a student youth pastor at Grace Church in Southern Pines. She works as a nurse. The DiBiancas’ older child, Jamie, is married to Matt Gilliam. She serves as music director at Albemarle High School. He works as the church worship and creative arts pastor at Albemarle First Assembly.

“On October 1, I was ‘mother of the groom,’” Debby said. “I’ve been praying for her [Brandon’s wife] for 25 years.”

       Pictured (from left) are Debby, Nicole, Brandon and Sal DiBianca.

Sal Dibianca said Teen Challenge began in February 1958 with the Rev. David Wilkerson’s work in Brooklyn, New York.

Wilkerson was a young country preacher pastoring a church in eastern Pennsylvania. He read an article in “LIFE” magazine about seven teenagers on trial for murder.

During a Manhattan gang fight, those teens beat a young man to death. Wilkerson made a trip from his hometown in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, to New York City. He eventually resigned from his church and moved to the New York City area to work fulltime with teenage gang members. His work, called “Teen Challenge,” began to offer help to drug and alcohol addicts of all ages. The story of Teen Challenge is told in “The Cross and the Switchblade,” a best-selling book.

DiBianca said there are over 200 Teen Challenge centers in the U.S. and 1000 centers in 80 countries around the world. Teen Challenge students “find freedom through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“‘The Cross and the Switchblade’ used to be a public school ‘textbook’ in N.C.,” he said. “Teen Challenge has the answer. Catherine Hess studied Teen Challenge to disprove a cure rate of 70 percent. She found the ‘Jesus factor,’ and she came to Christ.”

[Catherine Hess works with the National Academy for State Health Policy. She joined NASHP in 2005 and in 2011 she was promoted to managing director for coverage and access. She works with a team of program directors, managers and staff to develop and implement programs and projects focused on state policies and practices related to insurance coverage, access to care and health care reform.]

[A 1975 Federal Study of Teen Challenge (Rehrersburg, PA) found a 70 percent success rate for those who graduated from the program seven years earlier. In 1999, a 3-year research study supervised by Northwestern University (Chicago) concluded that 86 percent of those completing the Teen Challenge program remained drug free.]

The STC mission statement is this: “To help people who have life-controlling problems, and initiate the discipleship process to the point where the student can function as a Christian in society, applying spiritually motivated Biblical principles to relationships in the family, local church, chosen vocation and the community. Teen Challenge endeavors to help people become mentally sound, emotionally balanced, socially adjusted, physically well and spiritually alive.”

 DiBianca said, “God has sent people our way over the years who have helped to develop the campus we have, today. Bed capacity has gone from 24 to 38. An academic wing housing a computer literacy program, which is an extension of Sandhills Community College, and a vocational training facility have been built and the programs launched.”

He described the student routine at STC: wakeup at 6:00 a.m., breakfast at 6:30, prayer at 7:00, work chores at 7:30, chapel at 8:00m group studies at 9:00, personal studies at 10:00 … other activities … lights out at 10:00 p.m.

“People come here not because their lives are straight but because they need them straightened out,” DiBianca said. “We believe in a disciplined life – teaching students a new way of life to replace old habits. One of the biggest problems of drug and alcohol abusers is they’re selfish.”

STC gives its students opportunities to learn unselfish behavior by volunteering weekly distributing food to 175 children (Back Pack Pals during the school year) and to nearly 200 elderly people (Snack Pack Pals).

DiBianca said the cost per day for each STC student is $47, which translates to $1,786 per year per student. The STC 2012 fund-raising goal is $651,890.

“I usually don’t have a problem asking for money, because I’m not asking for me – I’m asking for broken people,” he said. “We help people whose lives are damaged or destroyed.”

DiBianca told about his early life in the Los Angeles, California, area.

“March 1979 I was living in my car,” he said. “I made a choice at 12 years of age to smoke pot with a friend. When I was 17, my dad had lung cancer surgery. At 17, I was dealing drugs. My father died, and I was addicted to drugs and losing my education. Someone introduced me to cocaine, not long after my father died.”

At 21 years old, living in his car he stopped by his mother’s house. She was watching a TV evangelist’s program.

“I heard a preacher say, ‘God loves you and cares for you.’” DiBianca recalled. “I knelt and prayed a prayer in front of a TV. A year (to date) later, I entered Teen Challenge. It was Teen Challenge [Los Angeles] where my life was turned around.”

He talked about his early relationship with Debby.

“I got her pregnant when she was 15,” he said. “He [Jesus] has actually allowed us to show people our scars. … He [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Look at me,’ and he showed them his hands. He’ll allow you to use the pain in your life to heal the pain of another.

“We challenge students everywhere to say ‘Yes’ to life and ‘No’ to drugs,” so they don’t have to come to Teen Challenge. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

 DiBianca then led and sang with the STC Choir, made up of STC students and Debby and Brandon DiBianca (vocals and guitar), along with Jared Guden on bass guitar. The choir sang classics such as “Silent Night,” “O Holy Night,” “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

        The STC Choir sang favorite Christmas carols and gospel songs.

        Jared Guden, left (bass guitar), and Brandon DiBianca (right, vocals and lead guitar) accompanied the STC choir, along with Sal DiBianca on drums.

  

After a rousing concert, DiBianca told a story about a man and numerous beached starfish. The man was working hard at throwing perishing starfish back into the ocean, when a passerby commented to the man, “You can’t save them all.” The man picked up one starfish, threw it into the ocean and said, “No, but I just saved that one.”

“Change a life, one at a time,” DiBianca said.

He next asked some STC graduates to give testimonials.

Jerod from Portland, Oregon/Charlotte, N.C., said he grew up in a Christian home but started manipulating people, drinking and smoking “weed.”

“By age 27, I was a heroin addict,” he said. “I ended up here; my family lived in Charlotte. God changed my life. I have twins who live on the West Coast. I’m renewing my relationship with my wife. I’m not hurting … not screwing people over.”

Jerod said he’s thinking about pursuing youth ministry.

Jeff spoke next, saying he came to STC in 2004 but left he program after four months. (The Teen Challenge program usually lasts 12 to 18 months for each student.) 

“I thought I had it together,” he said. “In a month or two, I was in the Wake County jail because of ‘crack.’”

Jeff went from the Wake County jail to a homeless shelter but eventually returned to Teen Challenge and graduated in 2008. He recently married.

A young man named Gordon said, “I tried to drink half a cup of bleach, just to get out of this world. I was tearing my family apart.”

He referred to Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (NIV).

“I’ve got something now, and I want to keep it,” Gordon said. “I love the Lord.”

DBianca asked the men in the choir to tell their names and what God had freed them from. The men gave information such as the following: 22 years of methadone and oxycodone; cocaine for 20 years; 11 years of drugs and heroin; 33 years on crack cocaine. A 40-year-old told of addiction to weed and alcohol; a 54-year-old said he spent 35 years with a crack addiction; a 32-year-old told of 21 years of alcohol and drug abuse and “a violent lifestyle”; a 25-year-old said he used drugs and alcohol for 12 years; a 26-year-old spent 10 years focused on drugs and alcohol; an 18-year-old became meth-addicted; a 48-year-old was on drugs … .

Sal and the choir then finished with a song titled “Our God.”

 

DiBianca showed a short video featuring the Linus character from the comic strip “Peanuts” reciting “the Christmas story,” found in Luke, chapter two. When the character Charlie Brown asked what Christmas was all about, Linus quoted the famous Christ’s-birth passage from Luke.

The clip ended and DiBianca said, “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” He then preached, “gave an altar call” and led responders and the audience in a corporate “sinner’s prayer.”

He gave banquet attendees opportunity to give funds and provide written information about periodic contributions. STC staff members collected the offering and envelopes in large Christmas stockings.

DiBianca led the audience in a chorus containing these words: “I believe in Jesus … I believe he came for us all … I believe he’s here, now … here with the power to heal, now … and the grace to forgive.”

"Merry Christmas, everyone," DiBianca said. "May the peace of God that passes all understanding rest on you this Christmas." 

The Faith of Leap

From a message preached on November 06, 2011, by Pastor Randy Thornton, pictured above

Pastor Randy Thornton said he saw Jordan, a small child, holding his father’s hand. As father and son came to a descending flight of stairs, Jordan boldly negotiated the first step but would have missed the second and stumbled had his father not air-lifted him by the hand and zoomed him to the bottom of the stairs.

That pictured “The Faith of Leap,” said Thornton, senior pastor of Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C. He delivered the following message, “The Faith of Leap,” on Sunday morning, Nov. 6, 2011. Someone said he should call his message “The Leap of Faith,” but he called it “The Faith of Leap.”

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8 NIV).

“Abraham was called from Ur of the Chaldees,” Thornton said. The ancient city of Ur was located in southern Mesopotamia, near the Euphrates River. “He was called from a plush land to go to a barren land. Being able to hear from God is very crucial for our livelihoods and families. Abraham was 75 when he left Ur of the Chaldees. ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’ If you don’t think you’re smart enough, you probably never will be. Everyone say, ‘I’m God’s favorite child.’ God has greater plans than what we can see.”

Thornton said there are going to be some young “Davids” among the youths of our time and that Paul told Timothy, a young Christian, to set an example for the believers.

“When did David begin to be a giant-killer?” Thornton asked. “David killed a wolf, a bear, a lion. David heard Goliath and believed God. He believed God gave him the victory – not he, himself. God wants to teach us to be giant-killers – young and old.”

Taking a leap of faith depends on the “faith factor.”

“James says show me your faith by your works,” Thornton noted, adding that the necessary step of risk is the faith of leap. “Satan wants to cripple us. Conviction is a gift from God. Condemnation is a gift from Satan. Satan does not want us to take that leap of faith. He wants to cripple us, immobilize us and tell us we’re junk.”

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9). 

  

To exercise faith, one must take a risk, expecting God to do a miracle.

“God wants you to know he loves you and is going to take care of you when you step out in faith. He wants to bless you, so you can bless others,” Thornton said. “Many say they have faith in God – ‘We have entrusted our lives and hopes to a good and powerful God’ – but this faith is usually inward and passive, inwardly focused, comforting, with a sense of security.”

That’s good, Thornton said.

“The other kind of faith is active and is outwardly focused and usually very discomforting,” he said. “Knowing that we are sent and to whom we are sent, we take deliberate risks that put us in complete dependence on God for a miracle.”

Many Christians play the “safe mode.”

“It’s time to kick it up a step,” Thornton said. “The risk key is a purposeful action you take, in spite of discomfort or fear, to exercise your faith during an act of obedience.”

Matthew 17:19-20: Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it [a demon] out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

“How many of you parents know your kids have to learn some things the hard way?” Thornton asked. “How many of you know you are all in fulltime Christian ministry? The amount of our faith is directly related to our understanding that we have heard from God.”

“And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith,” (Matthew 13:58).

“Sometimes those who are going to be the last to believe you’ve heard from God is your own family,” Thornton said. “We must name our unbelief in an all-powerful God – where it lies – and reject it [unbelief]. If we want to pursue the life of the supernatural, we must take action. I’m really glad it doesn’t take a superstar. It just takes you and me.”

Thornton prayed this benediction:

"Father, I thank you, today, that we are your favorite children because of what you’ve done on the cross … God, I pray you’d begin to set your people free in Jesus’ name … Raise up a generation of young people wholly devoted and sold out to you!”

A Child Is Impressionable

A lady (on the left in this photo) worships with her arms half raised, while her granddaughter, standing in the center aisle, lifts her hands during a 2011 worship service at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C. Most children attending this service had already gone to Grace's children's church meeting, but the grandmother in this photo wanted her granddaughter to experience the worship service before joining the other children. (Left-click on this photo and see it enlarged.)

Dealing with Despair

From a message given by the Rev. Randy Thornton (pictured above) on September 5, 2010

“Despair can come in a multitude of situations,” said Senior Pastor Randy Thornton, 52, during a recent sermon at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C., “but for believers in Jesus Christ, God has given us hope.”

The word “despair” means “sunk down,” and the word “encourage” in Greek means “putting wind in your sails to move you forward,” Thornton said, adding that despair involves a sense of hopelessness and can connect to past wounds.

“Despair slices your sails and leaves you dead in the water,” he said.

King David wrote, “O my God, my soul (one’s “soul” involves one’s mind, will and emotions) is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan…” (Psalm 42:6).

Thornton referred to the Old Testament account of Nehemiah the Cupbearer:

According to writer John C. Westervelt, the Hebrews of Judah, the Southern Kingdom of divided Israel, were exiled to Babylon before Nehemiah’s time. The Persians under King Cyrus overthrew the Babylonians in 539 B.C. The new king let foreigners return home. Cyrus decreed that Hebrews could return to Judah and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Fifty thousand Jews accepted the offer to go home. Nehemiah had risen through the ranks to become cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. Besides certifying wine served to the king was safe, Nehemiah was a counselor to the king. When Nehemiah asked men who returned from Judah about the Jewish homeland, they said, “The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

Nehemiah fasted and prayed. He had never shown sorrow in the king’s presence, but the king saw his sad countenance and inquired. Nehemiah said, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?" (Nehemiah 2:3).

The king sponsored Nehemiah’s return and his project to rebuild Jerusalem. The prophesied 70 years of Jewish captivity were fulfilled when the new Temple was completed in 516 B.C., but Nehemiah faced danger and despair while rebuilding the Temple.

“Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall’” (Nehemiah 4:10).  

Fatigue may cause despair by draining energy and making a person feel as though he “can’t take another step,” Thornton said.

Despair often comes when we are in the middle of building. Jerusalem’s walls were erected halfway when discouragement came (Nehemiah 4:6).

“You may say, ‘I thought I was a good Christian until I got married,’” Thornton noted. “In life, God doesn’t put two perfect people together. We walk into relationships wounded and hurt. And what do wounded people do? They wound people.”

There is a good plan God has for you, but we often have to go through “dark timber,” he said.

Thornton, who grew up in Colorado, described his love of hunting and hiking in that state’s rugged mountains. He told of encountering forests with foliage that darkened the sun and of growing weary of “one more log to cross.”

“‘Dark timber’ is so thick you lose direction, lose perspective,” he said. “In life, we’re all going to have patches of ‘dark timber.’”

Failure can generate despair that dominates our feelings, but we must trust God. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

“Emotions don’t tell you the truth all the time,” Thornton said. “There is a ‘clearing’ on the other side.”
Fear may cause despair.

“There is a spirit of Sanballet and Tobiah that wants to kill you,” Thornton said, referring to Nehemiah 4, which tells of conspirators against the Jew rebuilding Jerusalem. “But we are more than conquerors. We cannot let fear dominate us. Despair is not the expression of faith.”

How to get rid of despair:

1. Get rest for your body.

“In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves” (Psalm 127:2).

Do something that energizes you, Thornton said, adding that God created a time for rest.

“There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the LORD” (Leviticus 23:3).

“Our culture has robbed us,” Thornton said. “God created a Sabbath rest. God designed a day to bet built up with the love of God.”

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

“Put God in your life,” Thornton said.

2. Reorganize your life.

Get priorities straight.

“The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out” (Leviticus 6:13).

“God put us in families,” Thornton said.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work” (Ecclesiastes 4:9).

“Lone rangers always get shot down,” Thornton said.

“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

“Reorganize your life,” Thornton said. “You may be here today, and you’re trying to do life alone.”

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Ephesians 1:4-5).

3. Remember the Lord.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze” (Isaiah 43:2).

Three things to remember when feeling despair:
God knows your situation.
God cares about your situation.
God can change you and your situation.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:18-21).

“Despair is a real thing,” Thornton said. “You don’t have to stay there. You have a choice! Believe there’s a clearing at the end, or stay in the dark timber!”