Life Made Whole

In the last few weeks, I’ve been speaking about the ways we scramble our lives and how we can make things better in a right relationship with God.

It’s my belief, there’s no habit, sin, or lack in our lives we can’t overcome if we correct our wrong thinking, now. We all need to seek the Lord for a fresh and re-newed way of thinking.

I believe it’s His ultimate desire to see us transformed. But it has to come through a process of learning to be in His presence and to love people.

As a church, our goal is to take people through that process every day to help them find significant living in Him.

It all starts with a commitment to Connect. The leaders at Bixby Community Church are committed to helping you connect with God and encounter Him in a real and meaningful way. By connecting we learn to love.

When we connect with God we will be lead by Him to connect with His people. We encourage you to connect with other people who are connected to God.

The next step in the process is to help you Grow. Through our Wednesday and Sunday services, Business Fellowship, leadership training, children’s classes, adult Sunday school classes, youth gatherings, prayer meetings, social media and Daily Bible Reading, we want to help you grow in your relationship with the Lord Jesus. Growing in Him helps us to be renewed in our minds and hearts.

How do we develop right thinking and better beliefs? By training! Through classes and Bible study, more light will appear in your life to help your beliefs line-up with what is true.

The final step in our process is to Serve. In fact, that’s the reason we connect and grow …to serve God and to serve the needs of others. By serving God and serving others we will have the greatest opportunity to impact the fourth generation.

Life is made whole by connecting, growing and serving.

I’m very blessed to connect with you as your Pastor, to grow together, so that we can serve and impact Gen 4.

Don’t miss our July 4, Sunday morning service. I will be preaching a powerful lesson on freedom. We are all in a form of bondage to ourselves. Let’s make this 4th of July Celebration, a life changing weekend as we learn to celebrate freedom from our limiting beliefs.

Please help us Feed Families on the Fourth. Visit our website if you would like more information. BCC will bless 100 families with a great basket of food on this holiday weekend. Be a part of the giving!

Love,

Pastor Steve

Calm or Confusion

Confusion was a way of life for the people of Corinth, and to no surprise…it’s a problem we still experience in the Church today.

Much of our confusion and most of the storms we go through are not the result of some outside influence in our life or some other spiritual force. Confusion enters in because of a belief, which leads to a decision and an ultimate outcome that leaves us confused, hurt, and afraid.

Think of what could be different if we rejected confusion in our thoughts. What would happen in our lives if we began to seek God for clarity and use Him and His Word as a compass in our life?

God meant for His Word to be a compass in our lives. He gave it to us so we could find peace in the midst of confusion and hope in the place of despair. Consider if you were stranded in the middle of a forest, what tool would you want in order to help guide you to civilization? Would you want your cell phone or day planner? All you need is a compass to give you direction, to show you where true north is. The problem is, we often use our cell phones or day planners to guide our day when we should be using God's Word instead.

Corinth became confused because they began to do things man's way instead of God's way. They put the needs of their day planner above the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you're feeling confused, lonely, or like nothing you can do will make a difference to your circumstances. Maybe you feel like you're just trudging through life. Well it doesn't have to be that way! God is not the author of confusion but of peace!

Saints of Bixby Community Church, even at your lowest point, God is ready and willing to pour blessings into your life. In fact, there’s no better time for Him to speak to you to help you regain your focus and purpose. Sometimes all we have to do to get rid of confusion in our life is to allow God's presence to settle over us and calm us down.

Whatever you do, enter His presence. Go to church, listen to podcasts, pray, participate in the Daily Bible Reading and honor God with a sacrifice of praise.

I believe you’ll begin to experience a calm and peace like never before. You’ll learn how to shut off all the noise and confusion in your life…plus, you’ll instantly recognize the whisper of God’s voice even in the midst of a storm.

Love,

Pastor Steve

Multiplication or Division…

It sounds funny, but every time I've ever heard a message on Corinthians, my immediate thought has always been “Oh no, someone must be fighting in the Church… here comes a another message on unity.”

But that's not what inspired our latest series at Bixby Community Church. Our purpose in looking at the books of First and Second Corinthians isn't to focus on what we’re doing wrong, but to focus on what we’re doing right. Our aim is to get better, so we can come up higher and learn how to respond to life. The six week goal is to understand the connection between Corinth and Bixby.

This last week, we looked at the spiritual concepts of multiplication and division. It’s curious how anytime we multiply in numbers as a church or grow in maturity, there’s always a test of division put before you.

In the beginning, when Paul first went to Corinth, Paul faced that same test. But, the Lord had a Word for him and I believe it’s the same Word He has for us today: "Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city” (Acts 18).

Saints, there are countless people in Bixby who need to hear this message...and it is our call to keep on speaking to these people and compelling them to come into this Sanctuary to be restored!

Paul wasn’t afraid to speak out against the church. In fact when he was writing to them in Corinth he wrote about the good, bad and ugly. Take a look at his first comments in 1 Corinthians 3. He wastes no time in chastising them for becoming too worldly. Sounds like the Church today, doesn’t it? People who confess the Lord Jesus as Savior and who claim to live in the kingdom of God, conforming to the ways of the world.

The bad and the ugly in Corinth were found in the hearts of a stubborn people. They didn't need God, and they certainly did not care about His vision for their lives. All they could focus on were trivial issues and preferences. These people became corrupt and started to manipulate others only to benefit themselves and divide the church.

How could they help people when all their focus was on themselves? The simple answer is, they couldn’t! That's why Paul reprimanded them and reminded them of who they were in God…His temple, created to do good works of service.

By building others up, we multiply… by building ourselves up, we divide. It’s that simple. Division ultimately leads to destruction. Multiplication leads to the fulfillment of the vision God has for our community: The vision of marriages being restored, teenagers obeying their parents and making Godly decisions for their life, the vision of helping single mothers, and teaching people how to have an abundant life!

It's really not that hard to multiply and fulfill this vision. If we just multiply love at home, at work, and at church ...things will change.

There’s no simpler rule than that to multiply love across this community.

The secret is to get our eyes off ourselves and onto Jesus. We need to ask God to help us think right so we can be a witness of His life-saving grace in Bixby and in our own home.

Above all else, we must learn to multiply our love,

Pastor Steve

Protecting the Church…

What do you think would happen if we really understood the fact that we are the church?

Can you imagine the possibilities that would unfold in our lives, business or school if we really understood that fact? I personally believe we would experience a new sense of God’s power and grace in our lives, we’ve never felt before.

The truth is, God’s move in our lives can be limited if we don’t know our role as His chosen. We don’t want to have any doubts about why we do what we do. That’s why I am encouraging you today to think of our church a little differently today…we are not a social club, organization, or even a building. Yes, we have been blessed by God with a new building, but it’s the changes we make in people’s lives that will be noted in heaven.

We have a powerful vision set before us. But, for us to fulfill it…we have to protect the sanctity of the church as a whole. That means keeping our dukes up and protecting the church. We are here to help people…plain and simple. God sent Jesus to earth to give us abundant life now and eternal life after that. Bixby Community Church is a church of refuge, restoring people to live God’s best now.

We have to remain effective. And, there’s no way we can do that unless we as a people protect the church’s reputation. Be careful who you walk, stand and sit with. Think about some of the things we say, the jokes we laugh at, the things we do. We have to be accountable to God and each other for our thoughts and actions.

We also have to protect the people. The currency in the Kingdom of God is relationships. We need each other and the only way we can carry out the vision of Bixby Community Church is through people.

Remember, God wants to increase His power in our lives, but first He needs to know we’ve fully awakened as His people. The promise of what God can do through us and for us, will be fulfilled by protecting the vision and reputation of the church in this community, and by bringing in those who desperately need His hope.

You see, the awakening occurs in our lives because we purpose to wake up. Awakening doesn’t happen just because we attend services. Awakening occurs when we purpose it to happen in our church, our families and in our lives.

Saints of our Lord Jesus ...Awaken to Abundant living!

Love,

Pastor Steve