Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Along the Path

We have reached a neat little fork in the road for our blogging journey. Leigh and I have decided to continue this blog, "The Wilks Family in Medicine Hat," but it will only be on what is happening in our family. I have started a new blog titled Along The Path, that is about the journey of Pathway as we seek to glorify God in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada and the ends of the earth. I think you will find today's post very interesting. I want to thank all of you who have journeyed with us through this blog. We have readers from every continent except South America. I want to thank you for letting us somehow be part of your lives. Please continue to read this blog, but also take a look at Along The Path.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

First Mission Trip

The main part of our vision at Pathway is that each home group will do one in town mission trip per month. These mission trips are community service projects where we volunteer in the city in order to bless it. Our first mission trip will be at the Monarch Theatre on Monday night from 7-9 pm. We as a church will be volunteering our time to help renovate this awesome building built almost 100 years ago.

I got a phone call from a guy in our church today, and he told me that there is a pre-Believer coming to our place tonight. Saturday nights are reserved for Bible Study, but tonight we are having an American Thanksgiving. She told our church member that she wants to help out in our mission trip.

I am so pumped over this! We have non Christians already wanting to join us in Bible Study and Mission! This is Celtic Evangelism in action! People are seeing Jesus in us and wanting to be around Jesus!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I Don't Believe Jesus is God

Now that I have your attention from the title, please note that I base my life on the fact that JESUS IS GOD. But as I was teaching one of my guys in the college ministry how to write a Bible study, we began to talk with Lola in the student lounge. Lola is 18 and was sitting with In Sook, one of our Korean Believers who attends Medicine Hat College. In Sook missed our Bible study today, and asked how it was, I told her it was good, and asked Lola (who I've met before) when she is going to come to Bible Study. "When I believe in God," was her answer. Lola is from the far east Asian part of Russia, and she has read the Torah. She wears the star of David, does not classify herself as a Jew, and does not believe that Jesus is God. We had a great discussion today and she let me pray with her. Just as I was about to pray, another girl shows up and sits down with us.

"Oh, man!" I thought, "Isn't this just like the enemy!" We are about to pray with a non-Believer and the enemy shoves somebody in there to not let this happen. Boy, was I wrong! It turns out this girl has a father who is on faculty at the college. As a matter of fact, her father is a Christian. Not only is her father a Christian, but I was at her parent's house on Monday night, praying with the Christian Faculty for the students at MHC!

This young lady prayed with us and Lola, for Jesus to reveal Himself to her. I think we will have some great discussions with Lola and pray that salvation will come to her. I pray that one day she will say, "I do believe that Jesus is the Son of God and I love Him with all my heart!" Will you pray for Lola also?

Saturday, November 15, 2008

The Monarch

I had lunch with a good friend of mine whose organization bought the Monarch Theatre in Medicine Hat today. My friend, George, showed me all of this theatre. This theatre is in a state of disrepair, but as he showed me all over the theatre, I felt like I was walking into the Phantom of the Opera. The theatre was built in 1911, and there are hidden crown molding that are the original moldings and plaster cornice still there almost 100 years later. We went to the "dungeon" where the original orchestra pit was. We saw the boiler room, found the old well and the original gas lights that operated 100 years ago. It was like a took a trip in Delorian at 88 miles per hour.

George asked me if our church could help him fix up the Monarch. He wants to turn it back into an operating theatre. For somebody who is not a Christian yet, to ask a church to help fix up something that will not benefit the church itself is a huge statement. You see, most churches are like ingrown toenails. They are ingrown, and they don't want to grow numerically, they want to grow deep.

George has seen how we are all about serving the city. And he has seen in us that we love our city and has the confidence to ask us to help him. What else can we say except yes? Our biggest thing in the church is serving the city, and this is a great way to serve, and for a community leader to ask us, a church that has not even had their first Sunday service yet to do this is quite amazing.

STASIS

Last night I had the awesome privilege of speaking to some high school students and young adults at a brand new ministry called STASIS. This ministry was created to help keep the young people out of the bars. Here in Alberta the legal drinking age is 18, and as most of you know, booze does way more harm than good. I have never seen alcohol bring something good into the life of a person or a family.

So I was asked to speak on the Armor of God. The armor of God is found in the 6th chapter of the book of Ephesians. Ephesians only has six chapters, so I explained to the young people that if we jumped right into studying the armor of God, it would be like picking up a novel and reading the last page. Sure you understand how the book ends, but you don't have any clue on how that ending ties into the book, and you may get the wrong idea about the ending because you don't even know the theme of the book.

So we looked at the theme of Ephesians and that is Unity. Unity in Christ and Unity in the church. It told them that Ephesians has two parts. Chapters 1-3 is all theology, chapters 4-6 is the application of that theology. We also looked at a very important phrase in Ephesians and that is the phrase, "In The Heavenly Realms" This phrase happens 5 times in the whole book.

1:3 God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.
1:20 God seated Christ at His right hand in the heavenly realms (to be at the right hand of God means to have the most powerful seat. It shows ultimate authority next to God)
2:6 God has seated us with Christ in the Heavenly realms (where is Christ seated ?)
3:10 the church will show the manifold wisdom of God to the demonic forces in the heavenly realms

The demonic forces once knew what is was like to be in the presence of God. They were angels who decided to follow the Liar, Satan, and they left heaven and every spiritual blessing they knew. Now we as Christians have all of this above, and we as the Church are showing them the wisdom of God. Do you think they are happy with that? Do you think that like it that we have something better than they once had? The answer is no, and they hate us for that. So that brings us to the last phrase:

6:12 - Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and powers and authorities in this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

So now that we have an understanding of what is going on in Ephesians, we can now take a look at the Armor of God.

The Belt of Truth
The Roman soldiers would put the belt on first because it connected the upper and lower armor. It brought unity to the armor.
We saw that Truth is not a concept. Truth is a person (John 14:6) We are to know Truth, live Truth and speak Truth (John 18:37, Jeremiah 9:23-24)

Breastplate of Righteousness
The Roman Soldiers would wear a breast plate to prevent spears and swords from penetrating the vital organs. We need to put on the breastplate of righteousness to prevent the enemy from destroying us from the inside.

We are given Christ's righteousness when we begin a relationship with Him (2 Corinthians 5:27) We need to be pure (1 John 1:9, Isaiah 1:18) Righteousness means to be right before God.

Shod your feet with the shoes of the Gospel of peace.
We looked at the idea of shoes in in the Bible. God told Moses to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground, Boaz took off his shoe and gave it to the other Kinsmen Redeemer, and now Paul is talking about shoes in Ephesians. Shoes in the Bible represented freedom. You could travel much farther with shoes on than without shoes. Shoes to the ancients were very much like a drivers license to a teenager today. It brings freedom, and that is exactly what the Gospel does, it brings freedom to your life.

We saw that we are to be prepared to share the Gospel at all times (Isaiah 52:7, Romans 10:15, 1 Peter 3:15) We need to be prepared daily to do this.

The Shield of Faith
Faith is the assurance of all things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Brian Lloyd, one of the host parents last night, is a Mac man and everybody there knows it. He is an advocate for the wonderful machine known as the Mac. I asked him in front of everybody if he had a conviction that Mac is better than PC? Of course the answer is yes, and so I posed the question, would we believe your conviction if you said that Mac is better than PC, but you owned a PC instead of a Mac? Of course the answer is no. So I posed the question, "How many Macs do you own?" "In this house we have 3 macs, I have one at work, and I facilitate the Mac lab at Medicine Hat College."
We can see that faith is the application of our beliefs. If we aren't applying to our lives what we say we believe, we lie to ourselves and to God and our faith is dead. (James 2:26) A dead faith means that it doesn't exist and you are still dead in your sins. Just because you say you're a Christian and go to church doesn't mean that you are a Christian because without faith it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews 11:6)

The Helmet of Salvation is the knowledge of the Gospel and my hope in Jesus Christ (1 Thessolonians 5:8, Philemon 6). The biggest spiritual battle will always be in my head. (Romans 12:2)

The Sword of the Spirit.

This is the only weapon in the Armor of God. The sword was actually a type of dagger that was meant to be used in close, hand to hand combat. The dagger was between 18 and 24 inches long. The Sword of the Spirit is both the Bible and Prayer. (Ephesians 6:17-18) We need to be training daily in the use of our swords. (Joshua 1:8-9)

I finished the Bible study with these four questions; please take the time to answer them for yourself.

1. How am I doing in these areas?
2. What do I need to stop doing?
3. What do I need to start doing?
4. When am I going to do this?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

My Wife

I love my wife very much, and I am very proud of her. As I am confined to my hobbit hole downstairs, she is upstairs having a scrapbooking party. She invited 6 ladies, and one of the ladies invited another lady. That brings the total to seven ladies. Three of them that were invited are Christians, the other four are not. As circumstances would have it, none of the Christian ladies could make it tonight. Here's the cool part. One of the ladies that came is part of our Bible Study, she is not yet a Believer, and she brought a friend who is not a Believer either. Another one of the ladies is a good friend of ours that is not yet a Believer but wants to come to church as soon as we launch. The other one owns the Scrap Booking Store that Leigh goes to once per month to scrapbook with other ladies and build relationships.

I am so proud of my wife for building trust relationships and networking with non Christians. It will be cool to see all of these ladies come to Christ one day.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

College Ministry At MHC

Today we had our prayer meeting/Bible study at Medicine Hat College. It's really cool to see what God is doing there. We had a new girl named Marina come today. Her coming today showed us just how much God is at work in the lives of the students at the college. The first thing out of her mouth after we prayed was, "What about outreach? Prayer and Bible study are good, but what about doing what we have been called to do?"

That was a very interesting question because last week we started my condensed version of the Bible study, Experiencing God, by Henry Blackaby and Claude V. King. Before we started our Bible Study last week, everybody was talking about missions, and being on mission, and the huge mission field in Canada, and other countries.

Last week we looked at the first 4 ideas in Experiencing God. Those are:
1. God is always at work
2. God pursues a continuous love relationship with you (me).
3. God invites you (me) to join Him in His work.
4. God Speaks
a. Through the Bible
b. Through prayer
c. Through the church (other Christians)
d. Through circumstances.

Today we looked at the fifth idea in Experiencing God and that is God's invitation to us (me) will lead us (me) into a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.

We got to hear stories today from how God was using the students in the College Ministry, and how God was glorified through it. So needless to say, we have a group of students who are not about playing "Christian" or playing "Church" but want to be authentic in their relationship with Christ and want to earnestly live that out in front of people.

So that being said, I asked the students at the end of prayer/bible study meeting if they would like to pray one week and do a Bible study the next week. They said how about we get together on Mondays and pray and on Wednesdays we can do Bible Study. Talk about students on fire for Christ!

Just think, all of this started from people like our mission teams and other faculty members praying on campus, and off campus for the students of Medicine Hat College. This all started with prayer. Never underestimate the power of prayer.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Another Milestone

Today Clayton, one of our church members, and I have almost reached a milestone in the progression of the church. We have found a location to have our services. I am just putting the carrot out there for you guys, and you won't be able to find out where we are going to be having services until we discuss it with the church first. All I can say is that it is a great location at an excellent price. I hope and pray we will outgrow it quickly. So if you would like to know where we are holding services, you will need to be at our place for Bible study on Saturday night or you will have to wait until we discuss it with the church first. Have a great day!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Bible Study

Bible study went really well last night. I love watching God move in the lives of people who just accepted Christ or are on the brink of doing so. Last night, community really began to happen. I facilitated the Bible study, but the Holy Spirit really took over. On top of that, it looks like we will have a worship leader ready for January. She used to live in the Hat, but moved back to Newfoundland a while ago. She told me last night that she will be here for January even if she has to live in a cardboard box. Talk about a passion to see a church start! Keep praying for us, it is exciting to see how God is moving.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Blogging From The iphone

This has been one of the busiest weeks of my life. Last Wednsday I wrote my math midterm. Since I haven't done this type of math for 15 years, I spent a lot of time preparing for it. It was a mentally draining week on top of that I did 4 Bible studies and a LOT of counseling. The highlight of the week is that Bryan, one of the coolest plumbers I've ever met, became a follower of Jesus Christ this week!

God has has been showing me a lot this week, especially with the majority of the people in town who do not know Jesus yet. A friend of mine who is searching for God came to church a few weeks ago with some other friends of mine, and he later told me that he has never been so scared in his life because he thought everybody was looking at him and judging him because he didn't know what to do. If this happened to my friend, how often does this happen to the average person, and is the one of the major contributing factors to them not starting a relationship with Christ?

So, we will be totally redisigning the website to make it attractive to a 25 year old male who could care less about church and church service will make a contemporary worship service seem ultra-traditional. We are learning that in Medicine Hat it is hard to start a church with home groups, but people who don't attend church would feel more comfortable going to a church service than a home group, mostly because for the non Christian a home group seems cultish. So we will be doing church services that will be attract the 20 something male who has no interest in going to church, but will give him the desire to follow Christ.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Halloween 2008



Riley and Sawyer both had busy days at school yesterday. They both got to wear their costumes to school and they had a parade and of course parties. Sawyer came home a tired two year old and on top of having a Halloween party Riley's class went skating and Jason said that in a couple of weeks Riley will not have to hold on to a sled while he is skating.

When Riley got home he crashed and had a good nap before we went trick or treating. At about 6:00 we went out and by seven Riley and Sawyers bags were both full of candy. Needless to say we stayed out until 9:00 when Riley the elephant decided that he was tired. The boys ended up with a pillowcase and a half full of candy. We had a fun night