We are currently in the registration process for our summer trips to Guatemala! We have two trips scheduled in August, a trip through our Elevate High School ministry and a family trip. For more information, you can visit our Guatemala page by clicking here, or attend the family trip meeting this Sunday at 12:30pm in the Fellowship Hall.

If you were near death, what would you ask someone to bring to you?

Paul wanted books so he could study about his God that he would meet face to face very soon. What Paul especially wanted were the parchments. And the text says, “above all the parchments.” Vines Expository Dictionary says that a parchment [Gr. membrane] denotes a skin. The writing material was prepared from the skin of a sheep or goat. The skins were first soaked in lime for the purpose of removing the hair, and then shaved, washed, dried, stretched and ground or smoothed with fine chalk or lime and pumice stone. The finest kind is called “vellum” and is made from the skins of calves or kids.” Pg.458

Paul’s request was most likely for portions of the Old Testament that were written on animal skin or vellum that he cherished.

In this same letter Paul wrote in chapter 2 – “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV). Paul’s request for the books and the parchments were characteristic of his lifelong pursuit of getting know his God better!

We are currently developing a wonderful collection of study tools and curriculum for our small group leaders. If you have any training as a librarian or would be interested in learning & serving in this area please contact Pastor Rick at rickl@asbc.net  or 757-479-1133 ext.152.

If you are a parent of a child in this age group, make sure you are reminding your kids to spend their time with God. They each go home on Sundays with a great devotional tool – their “God Time” cards. This weekly devotional provides 4 days of God time. Assist your kids with developing this very important habit. It’s one of the best life-long habits you can create in your child. Hopefully, it will be a set part of their daily routine for life, and won’t be something they’ll have to add to their resolution list each New Year.

Jesus taught that just loving and greeting those who love and greet you only qualifies you to be an unbeliever. There is nothing exceptional about this kind of behavior. Jesus said, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same” (Matthew 5:46,47)?

Christians ought to be easily identified by their quickness to greet those who haven’t greeted them. Let’s be a welcoming person outside the four walls of the church. A winsome & warm personality is a magnet in a culture where people’s love is growing cold.

“Greet one another”
2 Corinthians 13:12

To read more on this “One Another Command” go to: http://atlanticshores.org/greet.

If you’re familiar with Facebook, think of Twitter as a status update that is limited to 140 characters. If you’re new to both, think of it as a headline.

So here’s how it works:

You can sign up for free at www.twitter.com.  When you sign up, you can choose your twitter username, which is how people can find you or reply to your tweets.  One of the first things you will want to do is to start following accounts. Twitter has some great search resources to help you find feeds that will be interesting to you.  Here’s an easy way to start:  follow @ShoresChurch!

So what does it mean to follow? When you follow an account, every time something is posted, it will show up on your Twitter homepage. You can favorite tweets, reply to tweets or re-tweet them. When you re-tweet, you send the tweet out on your account, with a note that it was originated elsewhere.

You are able to make your account a private account (click here for directions), so only people you personally approve can see anything you post.

Common Questions

@ – The @ symbol precedes account names and allows you to link to other accounts. If you include @ShoresChurch in your tweet, it becomes a link to the ASBC twitter account.

# – Hashtags allow you to more easily categorize or add a keyword to your tweets. These are great to create a buzz for an event or campaign; for example, if a lot of people tweeted #aShoresChristmas, those tweets would be more likely to show up in searches and on local twitter accounts.

You can visit Twitter’s FAQ by clicking here.

You can get started by following ASBC’s main twitter account, or Pastor Kyle, Pastor Ira, or Pastor Roger. Many of our ministries have their own accounts. To see which ministries you can follow, click here.

Challenge Accepted!

It was one of the most amazing trips EVER!  19 people from Atlantic Shores and 2 people from World Help of Lynchburg joined together to work through Hope of Life to meet the needs in El Jurgallon and the surrounding communities.

The best way for me to describe it is in simple bullet points.

What we saw: 
Starving men, women, boys and girls
Poverty, helplessness and sickness
A different culture
People living IN a trash dump
A great ministry opportunity
An incredible partner ministry helping fight the devastation
A village, OUR village, with special needs
Survival on minimal food and NO electronics
Believers, local and non-local
God show up in the most unlikely places

What we did:
Feed the hungry on 3 different days
Gave out clothes in El Jurgallon, our village
Met medical needs
Held abandoned and helpless babies and elementary aged children
Played games with kids who only spoke Spanish
Various jobs for Hope of Life to help them be able to continue to fight the devastation
Held 2 church services complete with people, dogs, and motorcycles.
Laughed, cried, sang, prayed, and left our hearts with a people who are easy to love and hard to leave

You have no idea what you missed until you go there yourself and meet the people, carry their burdens and fall in love with them.  It truly is an indescribable experience to go and see what God is doing through our church down there.

Want to join us on one of our August Trips?
If you are interested in either our Elevate High school trip or our Family trip,  click here to visit our “Guatemala Initiative” page and download the trip applications from the column on the right.

If you missed our Kid’s Thang Family Production on January 8, you missed an awesome morning with God in the theater. After worshipping God through song and dance with the praise team (a little exercise was a necessary when we sang “Get Down”), the Hosts put everyone at ease and brought the first ripples of laughter from parents and kids alike!

We learned about the virtue of Self-Control and what God has to say about “doing what you know to do and not what you want to do.”  In the Clubhouse, nature-loving Sam beat Vinny, our resident athlete and gamer extraordinaire, at his new skateboarding video game.  He became so angry and frustrated he called Sam names and tried to put her down, and she yelled right back at him before she took his game controller and ran away.

Mrs. Ann, the Storyteller, with help from the audience, gave Sam and Vinny ways they could have handled their situation differently.  Sam and Vinny learned through Proverbs 12:18 that “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”  God knows how powerful our tongues are and how hard it can be to control them!  He wants to give us His power to be able to practice Self-Control.  All we need to do is ask God for His help.  The Bottom Line was “God can give you the power to control yourself.”

One of our new songs this month was ”Think It Through,” which reminded the kids to slow down and think through what they are about to say and do, and then make a wise choice and practice self-control!  It was so fun to watch the audience respond to the words of the song and see parents joining in and doing the motions to the songs too!  At the end of the day everyone was smiling and talking about the things that made them laugh, and what they learned about Self-Control.

Next month we will do it all again!  Come to church with your children for Kids Thang Family Sunday.  The next date is Sunday, February 5, at 9:30 and 11:00am in the Kid’s Thang theater.  Don’t miss out on sharing this day with your children.  You will laugh together, sing and dance, learn what God says about our new virtue, and leave church talking about what you experienced together!

No, I’m not suggesting turning the TV off during halftime so you can stand up on a chair to preach the gospel. I am suggesting that we consider how to include a few unchurched friends at your Super Bowl party.

Salvation happens in a moment of time when we repent of our sins and transfer our trust on Christ alone. Evangelism on the other hand is a process. We need to cultivate the soil, plant the seed and reap the soul. Evangelism starts by cultivating the soil. This involves building relationships through common ground activities. A common ground activity is a shared area of interest, background, experiences, abilities or life situations that serve as a basis for developing redemptive relationships with our lost friends. In other words, you like football and they like football. Many people need to trust the messenger before they will trust our message. This starts with them spending some time in our living room. One unbeliever told his Christian neighbor, “I don’t get it, you want me spend an eternity in heaven with you but you haven’t even invited me into your living room. What’s up with that?”

This coming Sunday is a great opportunity to cultivate relationships and build trust! A simple invite, a few bottles of soda and some chips and dip will do it. Have lots of fun!!

Okay, a Super Bowl Party is not your thing!

Perhaps you need weeks to plan something like a Super Bowl Party or you just don’t like football. Well, what is the next seasonal common ground activity that you can leverage to get together with your lost friends? Remember, common ground activities are those shared areas of interest, background, experiences, abilities or life situations that serve as a basis for developing redemptive relationships with our lost friends.

If you are married, most of your married friends will celebrate Valentine’s Day. A “shared interest” that Christians have with their unbelieving friends is that we both want our marriages to last a lifetime.

Why not consider hosting a Food for Thought Party. Here is what is involved: 1) invite several non-christian couples to your home for a Valentine’s Day Party; 2) tell them that you will provide the refreshments; 3) ask them to bring a picture of their wedding day, a story from their wedding, reception or honeymoon; and one thing that they are doing to make their marriage last a lifetime. Tell them it will last 59 minutes.

My wife Betsy and I have held this kind of party. I remember the first time we held it we were wondering if anyone would come. Several couples came. Everyone enjoyed my wife’s dessert and we laughed and cried as we told stories on ourselves. We were shocked by how transparent they were about their marriages. We honored their time by stopping at 59 minutes. We told them that we realized that some needed to leave because they had babysitters but others were welcome to stay for more dessert and coffee. Once again to our surprise they stayed and expressed their longing to have a good marriage. This led to a spiritual discussion and a launch of a seeker small group. If we had just had them in our living room it would have been a win in cultivating the soil! Give it a try, you will be amazed!

If you would like a detailed sheet on how to host a Food For Thought Party please email Pastor Rick at rickl@asbc.net.

What a word… It would have never been in my top 10 for a 2011 theme. My first response to the word was: “how wimpy, why would you ever surrender? Keep fighting and WIN!” Another response was that this word really scares me; what was God asking me to LOSE? Last winter, I really wanted to make sure that this was the word God wanted me to adopt. But it was the word that God gave me. And like always, my Heavenly Father knows best.

“Surrender” entered my life last year in many forms from my Heavenly Father. Reminders came in worship: “I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, in awe of the one who gave it all, I’ll stand my soul Lord to you surrendered, all I am is yours.” Those words I wrote and hung on the wall in my office. My morning devotion from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers, would provide a reminder just about every month. In my life, surrender came in many forms, some subtle and some very obvious.

I have now fallen in love with the word. Surrender. It has provided me a whole new way of life. It has provided me a freedom that I have never experienced. It didn’t cost me a thing, yet proved to be a word full of power and definitely not one of fear. Even in the area of motherhood where control is just part of the job description, I am a “newly surrendered for 2012 and beyond” Mom of two teenagers. God just recently revealed that my surrendering has allowed Him to draw them closer and reveal their walk with Him… Just to experience that as a parent has made this journey so worth it! Surrender provided me a fresh relationship with my Heavenly Father who did surrender His all for me.

2011 was all about “Surrender”!  I want to continue to have an attitude of unrestrained abandon and total surrender. What has God asked of you in 2012?

…that I may know Him… Philippians 3:10

In my last post we saw that we worship a God who speaks.  God is not silent.

As we move to chapter two the writer tells us what our responsibility is to a verbal God.  Because He has spoken to us (1:1), we are not to drift away (2:1).    We are to take the spoken words of Jesus Christ and live them out.  Some of the Hebrews were walking away from Christianity and turning back toward Judaism.  A lifestyle and practice that was familiar to them.  How easy it is for us as well to forget the spoken words of our savior and go back to what is familiar.  Today there are many things that cause us to drift away.  I believe three of the biggest reasons are:

1. Friends – Next to our families our close friends are the most influential people in our life.  If we are walking in close fellowship to those in darkness, the odds are that our light will start to go dim.
2. A Slow Bleeding Sin – In the Bible belt we are really good at not breaking any of the big sins such as drugs, adultery, murder.  However, I believe we have a far more pervasive problem that I call the slow bleed.  These are things that people don’t see.  Maybe a pornography addiction, covetous heart, or vanity.  While nobody may notice, these sins slowly start to pull life out of us.  It’s doesn’t happen over night, but slowly when we indulge in these behaviors the heart becomes callous to the voice and love of God.
3. A Tragic Event – You don’t have to live in this world very long to realize its brokenness.  The effects of sin not only reach to the depths of our soul, but to our bodies and our planet.   Just about everyone no matter how young or old has experienced the loss of a loved one to sickness, war, or an accident.  Many have experienced abuse by loved ones and neighbors.  These events often raise the question, “Where was God?”

Even though we are guilty of sin and have knowledge of sin because of the law, God has given us “a great salvation” through Christ (2:2-3).   We should never take this salvation for granted and live as if we are unsaved.  Not only do the redeemed get to enjoy eternal bliss, but they also have a savior that understands what they are going through on this earth.

Hebrews 2:14-18

The power of the blood of Christ gives us power over the devil in this life (2:14), not just in the life to come.  No matter what temptation we are experiencing we have a savior who knows what we are going through.  And if the Son of God himself was not exempt from pain and suffering, why do we think we should be?  Jesus knows what it’s like to have a friend betray him, he experienced separation from the Father because of sin upon his death, and he experienced rejection and abuse at the hands of those who were suppose to love him.  I don’t know anyone who would say that the Father was not with Jesus through his earthly life.  We can be assured that He is with us even in the midst of our suffering.  We should follow the example of Jesus.  When we are suffering or hurting our first reaction should be to pray.  We have a High Priest in Jesus Christ who can help us because he has been through it himself.