From the Heart of Pastor Jacqueline A. Thompson

March 17, 2014

 

Good Monday Morning To You!

I hope this week's devotional finds you well and having fully embraced the Journey To The Cross: Remembering Jesus, every step of the way. I have to admit, this past week I was faced each day with a situation that presented me with an opportunity to practice the inward discipline of Surrender. Often, it was frustrating having to surrender the need and desire to address, control and fix every matter that presented itself. But, I was so grateful to have a daily word to revisit and remind me that If I just let it go, God is well able to handle every challenge life presents. I am grateful for the peace that comes with knowing God is in complete control and that ALL things are working together for my good!

We live in such busy world. Everyday it seems as if there are more things to do than there is time to do it. Many of us find ourselves moving, moving, moving, from the time we wake up until long after the time we should be sleeping. Each day is filled with constant talking, texting, tweeting, emailing, checking Facebook and sometimes all at the same time. Our days and evenings are filled with work, meetings, and more meetings, ministry and family responsibilities. Even as I write this, I am on a plane headed to Chicago and by the time you read it, I will have preached four times in two days. Perhaps it's just me but it seems as if the more we do, the more there is to do. We often find it challenging to even connect with God through personal study and reflection because of the many things we feel we MUST do. And if busy were not enough, each day and night is filled with the constant noise and chatter of daily commuting, television, Netflix, iTunes, Podcasts and Pandora just to name a few.

Often this hectic pace leaves us feeling constantly depleted and functioning on fumes. But in the life of Jesus, we find a better way, a more productive way. Not only did Jesus practice the discipline of Surrender but throughout His life and ministry, we find Jesus slipping away to spend time alone. He actively and regularly practiced the discipline of SOLITUDE: Intentional isolation for planned availability to God. "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." (Luke 5:16-NIV)

The power, wisdom and direction needed to live the abundant life Jesus taught about requires a vital connection with God. The courage and strength required to combat injustice and speak truth to power requires a vital connection with God. To see the Kingdom of God fulfilled and world transformed requires a vital connection with God. Maintaining the vitality of that connection requires our intentional isolation and planned availability to God.

As a child, I remember hearing and singing in church the hymn, "I Come to the Garden Alone". The spirit would always enter in as the entire church sang in harmony the chorus, testifying of their time alone with God. "And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known." There is joy and fulfillment that comes from time alone with God.

The scriptures this week show us how Jesus practiced Solitude despite his busy life and ministry. As you read, also take note of the situations that occurred before and after his acts of solitude asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you about how and why Solitude is so necessary for our relationship with God.

Monday - Matthew 14:22-23
Tuesday - Luke 6:12-16 .
Wednesday - Mark 6:30-33
Thursday - Luke 5:15-16 .
Friday - Mark 1:35-39
Saturday - John 6:14-15
Sunday - (Worship)

As you read, reflect and respond to the daily scriptures this week, why don't you find a garden or make one. Find or create a time and space where you can meet the Lord in Solitude. Your garden may have to be your car or the lunch room or that place you drive to for peace and quiet. If you do that this week, I believe he'll walk with you and he'll talk with you and he'll tell that you are his own, and the joy you'll share as you tarry there, none other has ever known.

I'll be praying for you this week. Feel free to share your journey experience with me and invite others to join us. We are on this journey together, abstaining, adopting and Remembering Jesus.

Let's Grow!

Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson
Assistant Pastor
 

March 10, 2014

 

Good Monday Morning To You!

I hope this note finds you well and excited about beginning our Lenten Journey to the Cross: Remembering Jesus. I am excited that so many of you have decided to join us as we explore the power of the disciplines practiced by Jesus. Hopefully by now, you have prayerfully considered what you will abstain from and what you will adopt. It has been uplifting and encouraging reading all the responses from those of you who have shared. We can pray for and support one another in our commitments along the way.

Richard Foster, a renowned Christian theologian and author best known for his groundbreaking book, Celebration of Discipline wrote in 1978, "Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people."1 These words are still true for us today. The many challenges we face in our personal, professional and spiritual lives require us to live, think and act from a deeper place. So as we endeavor to answer the call to go deeper, we look to the life of Jesus Christ as our guide and example. Scripture says, "And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness." (Col 2:6-7) With this goal in mind, Let's Grow!

The first discipline found in the life of Christ we will explore during this first week is SURRENDER! I know, I know. If you are anything like me, just hearing the word makes you slightly defensive. The notion of giving up control to someone else; to stop resisting and fighting and allowing something/someone else to influence and control you is not a happy notion. But there is power in surrendering our lives to God. Jesus lived a surrendered life. He was totally and completely consumed with doing, saying and being all that God, the Father desired. When speaking of his life's purpose, he says "For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will". (John 6:38)

As you read and meditate on the daily verses for this week, ask God through the Holy Spirit to show you those things and areas of your life where you may need to surrender or surrender fully. Maybe it's the need to be right or understood. Maybe it's in the area of finances. Maybe it's the desire to control outcomes or certain hopes and dreams of our future. Maybe you need to answer a call or surrender to a direction in life, career and ministry that feels uncomfortable and unsure. We all have something and maybe even someone that we need to surrender to God. Let's hear what the word has to say to us about the power of surrender this week and believe God to speak to us in powerful and transformative ways.

Monday - Mark 8:34-37
Tuesday - Galatians 2:20
Wednesday - Philippians 3:5-8
Thursday - John 8:28-29
Friday - Luke 22:39-43
Saturday - Luke 1:26-39
Sunday (Worship)

You may already have your own method of verse study but I will share one that I have found helpful for devotional study. It is simply, READ, REFLECT and RESPOND. Reading is of course the easiest part. Reflect, is where we ask ourselves the tough questions, "How does this verse speak to my life today? What truth can I draw on for my situation? What is God saying to me through this verse?" There are many reflection questions, choose the one you find most beneficial. Last, the word has no effect if we don't respond to it. So in light of this verse, decide what can you do today to make this verse come alive in your life.

I look forward to studying this week with you! Remember God is with us every step of the way. So, this week go on, wave the white flag and SURRENDER! God has great things in store for us!

Let's Grow!

Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson
Assistant Pastor

1Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline--The Path to Spiritual Growth. New York, NY: Harper San Francisco, 1988. Print.

March 5, 2014

 

Good Afternoon Allen Temple Family and Friends,

Today, millions of Christians will flock to churches and cathedrals throughout the world to attend masses and services of worship commemorating Ash Wednesday. They will emerge from these services with ashes on their foreheads as a sign of their repentance to God. Generally, Ash Wednesday is associated with the Catholic Church, but many Protestants observe the day as well because it also signifies the beginning of the Lenten season.

The Season of Lent is a 40 day period of fasting, prayer and reflection in preparation for the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The consistent practice of spiritual disciplines is a key component in strengthening and deepening our relationship with God and one another.

Some of you may already have Lenten practices or have made decisions as to how you will prepare and reflect. This Lenten Season, you are invited to join with us corporately on a 40 day "Journey To the Cross: Remembering Jesus". For the next forty days, we encourage your journey with us by:

1. Walking with us daily through the scriptures highlighting the disciplines Jesus practiced.
2. Selecting a food item, drink or practice you will abstain from.
3. Selecting a spiritual practice or activity you will adopt.

For example, I will abstain from my daily Starbucks drinks. (Pray Now!) I will spend 30 minutes in silence each day. I will read and reflect on the daily ATBC Lenten Scripture. The goal is to join together corporately, on one accord as we prepare our hearts, minds and spirits to experience anew the power of the resurrection not just on Easter Sunday but everyday as we live as witnesses to that power in the world.

Blessings to you!

Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson
Assistant Pastor

 

March 30, 2015

 

Dear Allen Temple Family and Friends,

      

Thank you so much for the kind words, prayers and support extended by so many of you this past week. It is greatly appreciated!

 

It's Holy Week, also known as Passion Week! It is marked by The Triumphant Entry of Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem to celebratory cries of "Hosanna" and palm branches being laid in the road for the Passover Feast knowing that by the end of the week, he will be killed. Those cries of "Hosanna" will be replaced by demands to "Crucify Him".

 

I am on the flight returning from Palm Sunday services with the great people of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York where the Reverend Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood is the Senior Pastor. This year, Palm Sunday happened to coincide with the close of their Women's Month. Every Palm Sunday, the Mount Pisgah Church family marches throughout their Brooklyn community handing out palms to the community and in their way serving as a visible witness to the coming of Christ. This year they commemorated the Black Lives Matter Movement by wearing BLM shirts and carrying banners that showed the last words of 7 murdered African Americans including Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Renesha McBride. It was a moving and powerful display. It was also hauntingly ironic.

 

Jesus also found himself falsely accused, betrayed, subjected to a system of "justice," institutionally structured to preserve the status quo at all costs and killed for his identity. Let's be intentional this week as we take the daily journey to the cross with him this week.

• Monday: Matthew 21:12-22
• Tuesday: Luke 20:1-21:36
• Wednesday: The Gospels are silent. Let us make time for intentional silence as well.
• Thursday: Mark 14:12-72
• Friday: John 18:28-19:37
• Saturday: Matthew 27:62-66

In our own lives, many of us can identify with what it feels like to be falsely accused, betrayed, even victimization by unjust systems, but scripture admonishes us that...

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:1-11, New International Version).

 

The Lenten Sermon Series will conclude with the final "I AM" saying of Jesus. Join us at one our three services at 6, 8 or 11:15am as we celebrate the RESURRECTION! I hope this week as you Stop and Be Still that you will be filled with joy in Knowing that this week ends with more than Easter bunnies, Baskets, Easter dresses, Easter Suits and Easter Eggs.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26, New International Version).

Be still and know,