Pastor Bruce’s blog

I really don’t like Christmas.  Yeah, I know, I’m a pastor and I’m supposed to like Christmas!  But if I’m going to be honest with you and let you know what’s on my heart, I’ve got to tell you that the period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not my favorite!  Oh don’t get me completely wrong.  I love that Jesus was born and it’s right to celebrate His birth, that’s a no brainer!  And I love my family, natural and church family, that we spend more time with.  But all the expectations, the commercialization of the season, the disappointments many folks feel around the holidays and the way that many valuable pursuits get put on hold, just drag me down.  Do any of you feel that way too?  What can we do to change all of this?

Well, I think the first thing we can do is to focus on the Lord Himself.  So that’s going to call for some honest to goodness prayer time.  Time where we refuse to allow the busyness to pull us away from Him personally.  And the next thing we can do is to simplify.  I’m actually going to attempt to refuse some of the expectations of the season, especially the unspoken ones, and just do what’s meaningful in a Kingdom and family way.  And next, I’m going to laugh a little more and celebrate what the Lord has done all year long.  Our enemy wants to take away from us the taste of victory, the thrill of knowing that God has been and is working with us.  Like this weekend, for instance.  I’m hoping that we all are totally thrilled over the 11 water baptisms this weekend, young and older alike.  For another, we’ve got the Extravaganza next weekend and I’m believing that we’ll see the Lord change some lives through that production.  Bottom line?  We can’t let the enemy take away our joys over what the Lord has done and is doing.  Hey, I’m feeling better already!

So yeah, Christmas isn’t my biggest thrill.  But seeing Jesus work in lives is.  I think that I’ll try to get my eyes and heart in the right place this year and look to see a difference.  Join me?   Forget the cookies and let’s take His Presence in our world as our preoccupation.  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This is a great holiday.  It always brings good emotions to the surface in me and I just can’t stop being, well, grateful.  The fact that Jesus would have a relationship with me.  My sweet wife Robin.  Our kids and now we have a daughter-in-law, Chelsea, who is such a perfect addition to our family.  The church and the growing family that’s constantly impressing me and encouraging me to go on.  My partner in ministry, Mark DuPre. 

Isn’t the Lord good to us?  We have so much!  A few years ago Robin and I found a decoarative plate while vacationing in Indiana.  It simply says “Gratitude.”  Gratitude to Whom?  To the Lord Himself, the Source of all life.  No, the Pilgrims didn’t give thanks to the Indians, primarily.  They and we give thanks to the Lord.  For everything.  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Robin and I are home!  And we had a great time, albeit exhausting, with brethren in Washington, DC and in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The picture here is of the trees on the mountains outside of Vancouver. 

The bottom line is that God is faithful!  We shared our hearts out with all these wonderful folks and the Lord moved.  There were precious times with leadership and significant times with everyone.  Robin and I were able to give out some of what the Lord has given us and it really felt good to do that.  Rob and I tag teamed in Vancouver to share some of the principles regarding male/female relationships with a group of young folks in their church.  That was especially gratifying, as we have a passion in that area of life. 

We’re so glad to be home, however!  We were so happy to see the kids and to be with our friends here.  Rob and I took the girls out for breakfast the morning after we arrived home and let them go to school late so that we could catch them up on our adventures.  Thank you Lord for speaking to our hearts that we should go in the first place, for going with us and for taking us home, having made a difference in precious lives in other parts of the continent!  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m sitting here in the Charlotte, NC airport just waiting for the next plane.  I planned this visit to see our friends the Arendas’ before I knew the challenges that lay before me. I’m really glad that I could pray with Larry and Carole and have the Lord speak to me through them.   You see, I have two ministry opportunities the next two weekends and well, frankly, I’m a little nervous.  I love ministering in our own church.  I know our folks and I love them and anyone who comes in the door who is new is at least a friend in the making.  It’s home.  But now I’m being asked by the Lord to go to 2 other cities and give them what He gives me for them, not really knowing them or how they will receive what Robin and I say.  That’s a bit nerve wracking! And I know I can’t do it on my own!  Hey, I don’t have what it takes at home, let alone somewhere else with people who are culturally different than I am.  It’s beyond me.  But isn’t that good?  Shouldn’t we consider that we don’t really have it so all together in life and turn to the Lord for His supply?  Yes, I think so.  So uncomfortable as life’s opportunities can be sometimes, we can be successful in what we do if we seek the Lord for the supply we need at the right time.  His grace is sufficient for the ordinary or the extraordinary.  I won’t be sufficient in myself, but He gives His great sufficiency to those who rely on Him.  And I can be comfortable with relying on Him.  As long as He’s with us, we can do anything any one of us is called to do.  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve been thinking about outreach and that “E” word, evangelism.  I know, it conjures up all kinds of thoughts, mostly fearful ones, and include an image of guys standing on the street corner with bullhorns, shouting at passerbys.  Is that really what we should be thinking about when it comes to reaching beyond ourselves to those who don’t know Him?  Do we fall into the same category as the folks who knock on your door and try to engage you in religious conversation with no relationship?  No, but we do cringe at the thought of becoming like that.  And rightly so, I think.

Jesus told us to go and tell the world about Him, beginning with those closest to us geographically.  But how do we do that?  By being real.  And by honestly caring about someone else, anyone else, enough that we would just ”cross the room” as Bill Hybels puts it, and say hello.  Jesus cared with compassion that few of us have.  His compassion drove Him to obedience on the Cross.  Is is possible that with a measure of His compassion that we could care enough about others to the point that we would temporarily leave our friends and find a way to establish a friendship that could lead to that person’s changed eternity?  How I would love for that to be all of our lifestyles.  PB 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Fall’s here and finally, after a long and beautiful summer, we’ve got our clouds and cool weather back.  The seasons have changed, even though they changed on the calendar before this point.  I used to work outdoors in the tree care industry before my ministry days and I had a vested interest in those seasonal changes, much more than I do now.  I knew what was around the corner when the weather got cooler…

But now I’m more concerned with people changes.  And do people change!  Especially these days.  We’ve just sent the Zagata family to South Carolina for a new job situation, after John had searched for 2 and a half years for a job here in New York.  Honest?  I don’t like that kind of change.  The kind where people you love have to move away and move out of your everyday sphere.  It feels, well, kind of bittersweet. 

And yet the Lord has promised us all something.  He said in Romans 8.28 that He sees to it that “all things” work out for the good for believers, if we just simply hold out for His final say.  Have you lost someone?  Have you had people situations, situations themselves, change in some way that you don’t like?  The promise is this: He will work out (even) seeming losses so that in the end you’ll have to say, yes, that was good.  Can we trust Him?  Absolutely!  So place that change squarely in His lap and breathe a sigh of relief.  Change will be good.  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I received an email today from a friend of ours in Romania, Pastor Stefi Micliuc.  He has been someone we have supported for many years and leads a great local church in Tirgu Mores.  I realize that doesn’t mean a lot to many of you, but take it from those of us who know him, Stefi is a sincere Christian leader and a good guy, a husband and father.  Stefi wrote to let me know that their oldest son, Luci, was taken to a local hospital with a congenital problem with the blood vessels in his brain.  Luci is having a hard time seeing, is feeling weak and sick and the prognosis is unknown.  Please pray for this young man and his family!

But really, doesn’t it make you think twice when you see Christian people run into difficult problems?  I mean afterall, shouldn’t knowing God result in His protection from all that?  A woman that Robin and I know has had tragedy and difficulty in her life as of late.  She asked us the same kind of question: does God really protect us?  Actually, the answer is a resounding “yes!”.  It’s not that God prevents difficulty.  We generally bring that upon ourselves while exercising whatever free will He has given us as a race.  God overcomes difficulty.  He restrains evil and difficulty so that it’s never what it could be.  And then to His people He promises to work it all out so that in the end it becomes good.  For us and for His purposes. 

So back to Luci and Stefi and their family.  Will God work this painful difficulty out so that in the end it becomes good?  Absolutely.  I don’t know how, and neither do they, but it will work out for good.  God is the One Who will make sure of that.  Pray for those in the middle of difficulties and watch what He will do when He writes the end of the story.  PB 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s hard not to remember where I was on that day in 2001.  I had just gotten to the church office and Ellen called me in to listen to the radio regarding reports that a commercial airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center.  What followed was what followed for all of us.  We turned on a television to see the second crash.  Then the fires.  Then the collapse.  Our hearts sunk.  And for the first time in a while we all knew we had real enemies that hated our country and our way of life.  It was dark and frightening and we wanted to get our kids home and talk among our closest friends and watch the unfolding aftermath, even if we felt we could watch no longer. 

A lot has happened since then.  War in the Middle East, troops sent but not all come home, sorrowful families and determined Americans.  And the amazing thing; we’ve forgotten to some degree.  Forgotten that many innocent Americans died in an attack from a foreign force bent on ruining something of our freedoms.  And that this enemy still is at large.  How important it was to remember on Monday, at least, and to pay our respects to those who have given to the point of not being able to give any longer.  And to remember that there are those that hurt from their direct losses associated with that enemy attack….

And then we have to remember that as Christians, we’re always at war.  We have an enemy that wants so badly to ruin our way of life and see us taken out.  Wants to separate us in any way he can from our Lord’s calling, His nearness, His image in our lives and homes.  We ought to remember that each day our needed response is to resist him, having put on our armor and taken up our sword.  And defend our families, our community from his lies and trickery. 

Fight well and don’t let your defenses down.  The Lord has already beaten him, but he’s still around, seeking whom he may devour.  PB

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Just sitting here in sunny Indiana, drinking a smoothie with my buddy Paul King and enjoying a few minutes on the internet.  We’ve been swimming, playing and just plain catching up with our friends here.  You know, God is definitely a “fan” of rest.  It’s been so good to get away, even though our hearts are always connected to home in good old Brockport.  We’re refueling, refreshing and getting ready for a busy Fall season.  Looking forward to seeing everyone next week! 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I was thinking about it this morning as I was reading through John chapter 10.  He is the Great Shepherd of the sheep and it says that we hear His voice and follow Him.  So much of the time, we as humans don’t even consider that God might have a different plan for us than we have for ourselves.  So we plan our day, our calendar, and ask the Lord to bless it.  Then we go and live out our lives without too much thought about Him being there; until there’s trouble.  Then we cry out to Him and wonder how God could let such things happen to us!  We really need to be God followers.  We need to ask the Lord about His thoughts and plans, His priorities, and then follow whatever He indicates to us.  Our thoughts during the day should be, “Lord, what do you want me to do here?” and we should be ready to change our plans to accomodate.  I had a dead car battery this morning, shortly after my devotions and before I hit the office.  I had just prayed and told the Lord that I wanted to follow His plan for the day, even though mine was highly scheduled.  I managed to get the car going with Tim’s help, and got it to the auto parts store where they confirmed it was the battery and got me going with a new one.  I had a great conversation with the man who installed the new battery; one I wouldn’t have had if the car hadn’t died when it did.  Was that the Lord’s plan?  Absolutely!  Yet not mine.  I’m determined: Lord don’t let me live the life I plan out with my PDA, let me have the privilege of living alongside You and what You’re doing.  Blessings on your day! PB

PS; tell me what’s wrong with the photo I’ve included here, as far as sheep and shepherds…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!