Second Stage Ministries

This past month, but mostly this past weekend, we looked at the following verse with the 4th and 5th graders at my church: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  - 1 Thessalonians 5:18 NIV When we look at Paul's life, we see this verse in a different light. Paul is not just telling the Thessalonians to be thankful because it's a good thing to do. Paul is writing these words after going through some rough times. At the beginning of his ministry he wasn't very well received. Paul, known as Saul at the time, was killing and persecuting followers of Jesus trying to eradicate the last bits of the ministry of Jesus. Then one day he was on his way to get more people and he met Jesus on the way there. A light blinded him and he had to be escorted to town. Paul then began to preach the gospel and the people were shocked. But they couldn't believe that he had changed. So they ran him out of town. [1] Paul would then

Why Don't We Say Thank You? I presented this question this past weekend at church to the 4th and 5th grade students that I was teaching. Here are some of the answers that they came up with: Fear Excitement Forget to Don't want to Ashamed Don't think they deserve it Thank you is understand I want you to read a story from Bible that I saw in a little different light over the last few weeks and I want to show you what God showed me. The story is found in Luke 17: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, 'Jesus, Master, have pity on us!' When he saw them, he said, 'Go, show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked

In this series of posts, we have seen God speak the universe into existence. We have seen how He formed and made us unique. We are His masterpieces! Then, we saw how God set a rhythm for rest by taking a rest after He created everything. Next, we took a look at the paradise that Adam and Eve were given to take care of and live in. They walked with God! But then we saw that all change with one choice that Adam and Eve made. They chose to take and eat from the tree that God had told them not to eat from. This caused evil to be brought to light. They were kicked out of the Garden for the choice that they had made. We looked at the punishments that were handed out. Lastly, we looked at Cain and Able and how the bad choices continued as we witnessed the first murder. But in all of this God still loved and protected Adam, Eve and Cain. But their actions set off a change that sent the world into a downward spiral and we see God say these words in Genesis 6: “The Lord saw how great th

We are on to chapter 4 - where the story takes another big turn. At the beginning of chapter 4 we meet to brothers - Cain and Able. One of the first things I noticed in this story is that Eve praised the Lord for blessing of a son - Cain. “Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” - Genesis 4:1 NIV Even though God had to punish them and kick them out of the Garden, Eve was still aware of where her blessing of having children came from. But that is really not the focus of this chapter. The focus is her sons. The Bible tells us a little bit about Cain and Able. “Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.” - Genesis 4:2b NIV So I get picture of Cain being this muscular and rugged type of man. He was out in the fields working planting crops and weeding the fields. Able on the other hand was a shepherd. He watched over the flocks and made sure they had wha

This was such a good imagine I had to share it with all of you. This past weekend I shared a difficult story with some of friends at church. After I shared with them, we had one more service that followed. I was teaching the 4th and 5th graders, which I absolutely LOVE to do, so I was staying for that service. After the service, one of the people came back and wanted to share an image with me that she saw during a worship song. This is what she told me: ---------------- There is a line in one of the songs that says "Your love so deep is washing over me." I saw this picture of you and you were standing, face to the sky, and arms spread wide being drenched with water. ---------------- I cannot even begin to express what that meant to me. The love of God just washing over me. The image that it gave me is something that will never go away. No matter what we are facing. No matter how hard life is - God's love just pours out of the skies and washes over us. You

We are continuing our walk through the book of Genesis and we have finally gotten to chapter 3! So I thought it would be fun to use 3 different words (all starting with 'C') to look at this chapter. The first word is: 1. Choice In an earlier post, I mentioned how God didn't have to give Adam and Eve the option to choose, but He wanted it too. He wanted them and us to have the ability to choose Him. Adam and Eve had many other trees in the Garden to eat from. There was just this one tree they weren't supposed to touch. But they did. But I also feel like it didn't happen overnight. I think it happened as they got bored and tired of the same old things. They had been everywhere in the Garden and done everything they could do. The tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil began to look fun and good to them and before they knew it they were standing right next to it. They were standing right where the Serpent wanted them to be standing. The Bible says this about