Dear Friend of FPC,  

 I have been working through an older daily devotional called "The Way" by E.Stanley Jones, long time missionary to India.  In this devotional, Dr. Jones explores in some detail what it means to follow God's way.  He shares with us what scripture has long taught that there is a way that most people follow and that way leads to death and loss.  And then there is The Way, The Truth and The Life as seen in the person of Jesus.  When we try to live our own way, life breaks us down and leads us further away from God.  When we discover God's Way of living, of understanding and of being then we discover real truth and real life.  This discovery about The Way is not just to be understood or become another piece of knowledge but is meant to be pondered, lived and experienced at every level of life.  Dr. Jones shares 5 stages that we pass through in getting from our ways to The Way:  1. Contact - we come into contact with God's way and experience a new revelation about how life can work...we discover God's plan for our life. 2. Conflict - we discover that our way always conflicts with The Way of God; they are always incompatible.  We sense the disconnects and struggle with breaking away from our way to follow His Way.  God's Way reveals to us the disconnects in our way and the consequences of following and insisting on our way.  3. Conversion -  God helps us through and live in His Way.  God begins to change us both in an instant and through a process that helps transform our habits and character so that we both desire His Way and begin to live into His Way. 4. Cultivation - In agriculture and gardening there is process  that results in harvest.  Physically, that process requires pruning, weeding, feeding and nourishing the plant.  And spiritually the same is true; God cultivates in us His way and helping us to grow spiritually.  As we find ourselves aligned with His Way we discover The Way to grow spiritually and to please God.  5. Contribution - As we grow spiritually in The Way, we discover that God's Way produces spiritual fruit.  Jesus said that if we would learn the secret to abide in Him we would bear much fruit, spiritually.  In the early book of Acts, the Church grew because they were in tune with The Way, God's Way.  Over the years, churches begin to slip back into the pattern of this world and try and do things their own way and the end is always decline in church attendance, membership, living for Christ, and victory over temptation in our lives.  So throughout Church History, God calls His people back to His Way, the Way, The Truth, and The Life; when the people of God re-connect with His Way, they experience life and the Church grows again.  We were made for God's Way.  We sometimes prefer our own way.  When we do things in our lives, our families or even in our churches a way that seems so good, but is not The Way we learn that God will allow us to follow our own way but not without consequences.  Real Life and Real Truth are only to be found in The Real Way.  God shows us this in a variety of ways and calls us to it.  I pray that the Church Universal will re-discover The Way and begin to live it.  Blessings in the House.

Pastor Steve