U is for Undeterred by Bob Jones

Are you in a place where the unexpected has set you back on your heels? Panicked because life threw up a roadblock to your dreams? You’re uncertain about finding a way through. You wonder what God was thinking to allow this to happen.

 

God will make a way.

 

My story is about a detour not a diagnosis, a building not a body. While not life-threatening, the experience with God galvanized our faith to face future threats. In 2006 our newly planted church was situated at the western end of the most northerly avenue in Edmonton. Ours was the only building. Isolated, adjacent to farmers’ fields, with deer and coyotes as our near neighbours. It was a perfect site for growth on 15 acres, with traffic access from a new ring road. Within two years our average Sunday attendance grew from 495 to 900. Three years later we had added a second service and were considering a third. We had momentum. January 2011 was to be a celebration of God’s favour.  

 

The Christmas decorations had just been stored away when a letter arrived from the city of Edmonton. It was a notification of the closure of our avenue during expansion work. The closure would be for one year.

 

What?

 

What were they thinking? How do they expect people to get to church? A hurried meeting with city developers informed us of an error. They had forgotten about our building in their plans. The avenue would be shut down for a year. To help us, the city would pay for signs to direct people through convoluted detours and pay for a temporary road to be built near railroad tracks and through a ditch to access our property. Thank you very much. Subsequent to that, CN informed us they would close the railway crossing at the same time for upgrades. Now we had no access again.

 

Panic.

 

TRUST GOD'S HEART

The city may have forgotten us, but God had not. We discovered that for every setback, God has a greater comeback. God's faithfulness is hope for many detoured by crisis in life. Don Moen’s song, “God Will Make a Way,” became our theme.

 

God will make a way
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me

He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way.

 

People were praying. CN decided to delay the railway crossing upgrade. We purchased billboard ads in high traffic areas to inform the community we existed and were open. Our leadership determined to at least have some fun with this setback. I crafted a sermon series entitled, “Undeterred.”  We asked the city for orange roadwork barriers, detour signs, and construction equipment and placed those outside our facility entrances, in our lobby, and on our platform. Remarkably, the congregation took this detour in stride and grew in faith and in numbers.

Thirteen years later, people still talk about being undeterred.

 

In the bad news, the good news was the expanded avenue was to accommodate a potential of 450-550 housing starts. Within a couple of years, 4,000 people were living in the new neighbourhood next door. The community now boasts close to 8,000 residents in walking distance of the church. North Pointe was first to the frontier and an anchor point for the community.

 

When I can't trace God's hand I must trust his heart. 

God is too loving to hurt me.

God is too wise to make a mistake.

God's power makes all things possible.

 

My prayer for you is to be undeterred. To embrace God’s love and to know his wisdom. To be comforted so you have the strength to take the next step forward with your faith intact and your eyes on heaven.

 

If I can be of any help or support in your journey, please reach out. Bob.pb.jones@gmail.com or 780-707-5569

O is for Onward! by Bob Jones

 

     Photo by Jon Tyson, Unsplash
 

I’ve been waiting fifteen months for March 2024, the Inscribe Writers month of O and O is for onward! It’s a one-word mantra for creatives. The six-letter word that I use half a dozen times a week.

Feel like quitting? Onward!

Discouraged? Onward!

Opened another rejection email? Onward!

Pages of prose that will never survive the final edit? Onward!

The Hebrews chapter twelve great cloud of witnesses employ a one-word cheer for the struggling. Onward!

Moving onward requires dedication and a habit of refusing to give up. Challenges are always a reminder of the promise of growth and improvement.

Just as one moment can bring despair, a moment can also be a new beginning. Onward!

The world was built to develop character. We can learn from the setbacks. Onward!

Instead of trying to make life perfect, make it an adventure. Onward!

Outside your comfort zone? Onward!

When we love something, emotion often drives our actions. This is the gift, and the challenge writers face every day. The content we dream of and craft from scratch is part of us and intensely personal. Our writing is our babies. Our lives. The highs are high, and the rewards can be thrilling. But the lows can break your heart. Writers must love what they do to such a degree that writing is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable. Onward!

When you start to think that things should be better this year, remember the valleys of the shadow of death you walked through to get you where you are. Onward!

When the going gets tough, put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Onward!

Own your moment.

Never give up.

Write your goals.

Act your way into feeling.

Reward your successes.

Determine to repeat.

Need a word for your day, month or year?

Onward!

Thank you for reading. I write at REVwords where I move onward every day.
 

Setbacks and Comebacks by Bob Jones

For every setback God will give you a greater comeback.

Our church leadership learned this lesson the hard way.

We cornered the market on setbacks. Or at least it felt that way in 2001. The process of relocating Central Tabernacle from an urban location in an iconic facility with a rich history of ministry, to a farmer’s field in Edmonton’s northwest frontier was rich with setbacks.

What was envisioned to last no longer than three years took over six.

We faced setback after setback after setback.

No money. No land. Negative momentum. Three strikes and you know what they say.

But, instead of being called “out” we found out about God’s provision in a way that only adversity and obstacles can reveal.

For each setback God gave us comeback. And the comeback was usually greater than the setback.

We found land at just the right time. We were able to purchase more than we needed and sold some to pay for what we kept. So, we got our land for free.

Now, 18 years later, North Pointe is a thriving come-as-you are community of 3,700 that exists to offer real hope, new life and lasting purpose.

Our setbacks taught us tenacious truths. Truths that we need now as we are facing a fresh set of setbacks. But that’s life.

Facing a setback? Here are somethings we learned that may help you.

14 Lessons We Learned

1. It’s always too soon to quit.

2. Never, ever, ever, ever quit.

3. The worst moments in our lives make us who we are.

 “…my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12

4. God’s delays are not denials.

5. When all hope seems lost hold on one day longer.

6. Following God’s will is a marathon not a sprint. You need endurance, stamina and perseverance. It’s a marathon of hope.

7. Perseverance is a long obedience in the same direction.

8. God has great things for us in all seasons of our lives.

9. God leads us in ways that we could never imagine as we follow him.

10. Stay gentle. Stay soft. Fight cynicism with curiosity. The curious are seldom cynical.

11. Faith is wavering between belief and unbelief, doubt and assurance, hope and despair, and finally, hesitantly, with your heart in your hands, acting on the belief part. 

12. There are three stages in most great tasks undertaken for God: Impossible…Difficult…Done.

13. Whenever you start to do anything for the Lord. It won’t be as easy as you think. The fact that you are doing it for the Lord seems to make no difference at all. 

14. God lets us struggle and sweat so that we learn to trust in Him at a deeper level than ever before.

God bless you in persevering and trusting Him to see you through. You will get through this.

I am a recovering perfectionist, who collects Coca-Cola memorabilia and drinks Iced Tea. My office walls are adorned with our sons’ framed football jerseys, and my library shelves, with soul food. I write to grow hope, inspire people to be real, forge an authentic faith in Jesus, and discover their life purpose.

Please follow my writing at Pointes Of View.

A Second Edition, by Bryan Norford

Editing an earlier work is a harrowing and humbling project. Daily, it serves up amazement at the odd flash of brilliance, but embarrassment at verbose and turgid prose. Ann and I have been editing our first book authored together six years ago, Happy Together: Daily Insight for Families from Scripture. The book. written in a daily devotional format, reviews examples of marriage, family, and relationships from Genesis to Revelation.

Why edit? It’s a mammoth task with over 350 pages of text. But feedback over the years has led us to condense the material to a page-a-day format; reduce the daily readings from 300 or 350 words to about 250, but still retain the basic message of each one. As you can imagine, a useful exercise to sharpen and produce concise writing.

In addition, we have added a text from each day’s reading, and a responsive prayer. Each page is reformatted to camera ready and paragraphs reduced to newspaper style for easier reading. Now to add the front and back ends, build indexes listing Scriptures used and subjects reviewed, check references for accuracy and consider cover redesign.

It has also given us the opportunity to incorporate ideas from reading and conferences we’ve taken in the interim. As always, our purpose is to produce a worthwhile legacy for our family and others; if it sells, that’s an added bonus!

Looking back is a reminder of the frailty of our work. I’m sure you get the feeling a work is never finished; there’s always some improvement we could make. Editing is an opportunity to catch up on some of those improvements, but accept the fact is still comes up short and we depend on Him to complete it in the hearts and minds of our readers.

Here is a sample page.