We invite you to gather with us Sundays at 9 & 11 AM as we experience the love, joy and power of God.
GIVE TODAY
PASTORS SHAUN & AMY GUSTAFSON
JOIN US LIVE
Sundays at 9:00am CST
CHRISTMAS EVE
CANDLELIGHT SERVICES
DEC. 24 | 9 & 11 AM
THE DREAM
HPC CHRISTMAS PRODUCTION
DEC. 9 | 4 & 6 PM
NIGHT OF WORSHIP
JAN. 3 | 6:30 PM
POINTMEN’S BREAKFAST
DEC. 2 | 9:00 AM
LADIES CONNECT
JAN. 6 | 9 AM
OUR PURPOSE
Where God is leading us
FROM THE BLOG
Insight and wisdom from High Point Leadership
Salt & Light
When we invite Jesus into our life, God’s grace comes on the scene to help us at a whole new level. Our desires begin to change. We set our “…mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). I remember when I asked Jesus into my heart at age fourteen. I suddenly had an unusual desire to start getting up fifteen minutes early each morning to read the Bible before getting ready for school. No one ever taught me to do this. God just put the desire in me, and I responded.
When I learned new things from God’s Word, I started doing them. Over time, I started to see God’s hand on my life in ways I never expected. I remember one day in my early twenties. I had a business appointment scheduled with a young woman. When I met with her, we began talking about the business as planned. Then right in the middle of the conversation, the young woman looked at me with wide eyes and blurted out, “I need to get my life right with God!”
It turned out the young lady had become distracted from her relationship with God years earlier and even used to attend the same church as us. God was able to reach her heart through this meeting together and the young woman got her life reconnected with Him.
Jesus told us as believers, we are to be the salt and light of the world. (See Matthew 5:13-14.) He instructed us to, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). I never even mentioned God to the young lady, but when we keep an open heart to serve Him in whatever opportunity may arise, He’s able to work through us!
REIGNITING THE FLAME
You may be thinking to yourself right now, “I used to be excited about God, but somewhere along the road I just lost my enthusiasm. I still call myself a Christian, but quite frankly, worldly things are more exciting to me than following God.” Well, friend, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can be more excited about your relationship with God, thirty years after making this commitment than you were the day you gave your life to Him. This applies to marriage as well.
People often think when they’ve been married for many years it won’t be as exciting, and the honeymoon eventually goes out the window for everyone. This doesn’t have to be true for you! We know couples married twenty, thirty, and forty years who are more excited about their marriage now than they were on their honeymoon. They have better communication, better physical intimacy, more fun together, more affection, and an overall greater bond than when they first married. God never intends for us to backslide in our relationship with Him, and He also doesn’t intend for us to backslide in our enjoyment of the marriage relationship He created between husband and wife.
What can you do if you’ve fallen into a lack of desire for the things of God? This can often be traced back to a time when we disobeyed God’s direction or didn’t follow doing what we knew in our hearts was the right thing to do. The Bible says in 1 John 3:20-21 that our own heart condemns us. When our heart condemns us, it’s not God being mad at us. It’s basically our heart convicting us after we’ve done something to step back from close relationship with our loving Father. All we need to do is apologize to God for not following His love, then our heart will become confident in His presence again.
When someone chooses to ignore His Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit, they dull themselves to the voice of God on the inside. Then the next time the Holy Spirit says something, it becomes a little bit harder to hear with our spiritual ears. As a person disobeys more and more, they eventually come to a place where the things of God just aren’t exciting to them anymore. They feel like they never hear from God, and it’s often because they have tuned Him out through ignoring Him.
We cannot selectively choose what we are going to obey or not obey with God’s Word if we want to walk in His blessing and receive His direction. If this has been true for you, you can simply ask God to forgive you for not listening and choose to have a yielded heart to Him from now on. Then turn to His Word again, and you will receive direction and guidance.
I pray this blessed you,
Pastor Amy
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From the Bleachers to the Team
Scripture actually says Jesus is in heaven right now preparing a place for those who will receive Him. It even says He’s building mansions for us and the streets are paved with gold! (See John 14:2 and Revelation 21:21.) He knows all of the desires in your heart, so whatever you like, He will make sure you get it in your home up there! If you prefer a log cabin style, I’m guessing He’s got amazing cabin mansions up there. If you like beach homes, you’ll have the most stunning one you’ve ever seen. God desires to lavish His love on you for eternity! You are his heart’s desire!
If you have never asked Jesus into your heart, all you do is ask Him to forgive your sins, and invite Him into your life. He will help you to love yourself and love others. Romans 10:13 says, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” You can even pray this right now:
Dear God, I believe in my heart that Jesus is Your Son. He died on the cross for me, and You raised Him from the dead. Jesus, please forgive me. I invite You into my heart to be my Lord and Savior. Please make Yourself real to me and help me live for You. Amen.
If you prayed this from your heart, your name has now been written as a citizen of heaven according to the Bible. Scripture says angels are rejoicing over your soul. When you pass on from this earth someday, you now have the promise of eternity in Heaven with Jesus and all of God’s family!
It’s up to us to make the choice to receive Jesus and to be a vessel of God’s honor. According to 2 Timothy 2:20-22,
In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
God’s holiness comes to live in us when we invite Jesus into our heart. (See 1 Corinthians 6:19.) Since we as believers have been made a temple (a house) for God’s Holy Spirit, we can now live through His strength. Instead of conforming to the way everyone else acts, we can transform our heart and mind each day through His Word.
We have a friend who is a great example of this! We will call her Jane. She grew up in a home where she and her siblings were continually devalued through deep criticism from their father. Then her mother passed on when she was eighteen.
Jane told us she used to suffer from depression and anxiety so intense that she would get huge welts all over her body. Doctors prescribed medications, and psychiatrists tried to help her resolve her pain, but nothing helped.
Then one day a friend gave her a magazine which talked about the love and power of Jesus like nothing she had ever heard before. She committed to make Jesus the leader of her life, rather than just an acquaintance on Sunday mornings. Or you could say, she moved from the bleachers to actually being on the team. She dug into His Word and began applying what it said. She chose to stop believing the lies she had been told all of her life, saying she wasn’t good enough. Instead, she came to believe in who God says she is.
When she chose to believe God’s love, she started having breakthroughs! She stopped believing she was a failure and started believing she had a new life in Christ. The depression left when she refused to entertain those old thoughts, the welts on her body disappeared, and her relationships improved immensely!
Jane has become the woman God called her to be and is now fulfilling her God-given destiny. She is a great wife, mother, and friend who is uplifting, confident, and trustworthy. Through the help of God, she changed what she believed about herself in her heart. King Solomon stated it perfectly when he said, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). When we allow God to heal our own heart, we can then be a minister of His healing to those around us.
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Fully Restored
I remember when one of my Bible college professors opened our first class of the year with a glass jar in his hands. He told the class that the jar was symbolic of the glory of God. He began to describe in great detail how perfect things were in the Garden of Eden. The class was completely quiet as we heard him elaborate on the glorious serenity Adam and Eve experienced daily.
Suddenly, he picked up a hammer and shattered the glass. Shards flew everywhere! He then expressed with deep compassion how the glory of God was shattered from mankind. He asked, “Have you ever met someone who is a little rough around the edge?” as he pointed to the sharp glass fragment still in his hand. Then he picked up more pieces off the floor and remarked, “Have you ever met someone who is edgy and impatient with people? Have you known someone who cuts others down with their words, always finding fault?”
Since sin entered the world with the fall of man, it doesn’t take long to look and see what this professor was illustrating. The more someone has experienced sin, the more they typically develop a sharpness and anger toward people. Whether a person is watching sin through media or experiencing it personally, it is like someone is taking the person’s heart each time and pouring sludge into it. The more sludge the heart is filled with, the more the enemy is able to work through a person to try to destroy them and those around them.
Even though God’s glory and perfection were all shattered in the life of man through sin, Jesus came and made a way for God’s glory to be fully restored in us when we choose to receive and walk with Him. Since we still live in a fallen world, how can we love others from a pure heart like Jesus loves us?
This is a question many people have had. Occasionally when we share the love of God with someone and invite him or her to accept Jesus, they may say, “Oh, I can’t do that! I’m too big of a sinner. I could never live my life right, the way I would have to in order to be a Christian.” Or they may say, “I think God is mad at me. He wouldn’t want me after all I’ve done.” What these people are really saying is, “I know God is holy and I also know in my own strength and ability I have major imperfections, so I don’t think He would want anything to do with me.”
The reality is, God gets great pleasure in taking someone the world considers a failure and making them into a great success! He enjoys showing Himself strong in the life of anyone who will look to Him for help. God loves people! It makes no difference to Him who we are or how bad we are failing. But remember, God is a true gentleman. He doesn’t force His love or ways on anyone. He patiently waits for us to give Him an invitation to our party. When He gets an invitation, watch out! He shows up quickly and He always brings presents! He’s always ready and waiting to freely impart His grace, love, and wisdom into anyone’s life who will call on Him.
Let’s look at how we can simply receive His goodness or you could say His “holiness” in our own heart. When we looked up holiness, one description we found says, “The holy people of God are called to holy living precisely because they have been made holy in Christ. Not as a means to that holiness.”Therefore, holiness is not something we earn, but rather something we receive. The Bible tells us that God alone is holy. (See Revelation 15:4.) Therefore, we can only be holy as He is holy through having a relationship with Him and receiving this by faith. It sounds deep, but it really is simple.
When we enter into this relationship by repenting of our sins and asking Jesus to be the leader of our life, we freely become partakers of His goodness. In other words, His holiness is a gift when we invite Jesus into our heart. As a result of His holiness living in us, we have the power to daily make the choice to live our life for Him.
I pray God reveals His goodness to you in a fresh new way,
Pastor Shaun
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