oasisCHURCH

The Glory of Christ and Baby Aiden

The past 12 hours have been a haze of panic stricken worry coupled with odd senses of relief. As many of you already know, our new addition Aiden Dodson has been diagnosed with a rather common condition known as "pneumothorax". Essentially what has happened is this: When a child's lungs are developing they are thin and fragile, not unlike tissue paper. Sometimes small tears can develop in the lungs which causes air to escape into the chest cavity. This "air pocket" presses against the lung(s) making it difficult for the baby to breathe normally. Generally speaking the antidote to this condition is to simply immerse the baby in an oxygen rich environment. For Aiden this has meant that this head has been in an oxygen hood since about 4 or 5 this morning. Placing the baby in an oxygen rich environment tends to flush the "air pocket" out of the chest cavity. If that were to fail the next step would be to place a tube into Aiden's chest cavity to literally syphon the air out of his chest cavity. At this moment the prognosis is very good. Aiden has been steadily improving throughout the day. At the moment the doctors seem to have strong reason to believe that the chest tube will be unessescary. However, we won't know that for sure until they take the next chest x-ray. That exray will not be until Sunday morning. With any luck, we'll be able to hold our baby again some time tomorrow. When Aiden was born just a few days ago Jamitha and I changed forever. They do not make words in any language to properly describe what it is like to finally "see" your baby for the first time. It's like your eyes are reborn. I don't know quite how else to say it. Nothing in the world looks or feels the same once your child enters into that world. The wonder and awe you feel is completely unique. When Aiden opened his eyes for the first time and saw the outside world his tired eyes were filled with this great sense of...I'm not sure how to say it...it was like if he could have said a word that word would have been "WOW"! You would never think that you would love someone that fast with that much depth but that's exactly how you love your child from the very first time you lay your eyes on them. Conversely, when you sense that your child is in danger your protective instinct becomes almost maniacal. It's as though there is nothing you wouldn't do, no amount of torture that you wouldn't suffer, just to make their pain and suffering disappear. When I realized that Aiden's life might be in danger I began to come unglued. I prayed and prayed and prayed. Others joined in our chorus of prayers and those prayers continue still. At first my mind didn't jump directly to the place it needed to jump. I was consumed only with the dreadful fear that I could lose my child. As the day has worn on that feeling of dread has been replaced with something very tangible. Something that wasn't always strong in my heart and mind. The sovereingty of God began to resound strongly. My panic had temporarily led me away from the greatest truth of all the world. That God's sovereignty rules over all things. God's sovereignty rules over my sons current condition. In all matters of life and death, God's sovereignty is the fundamental truth that must never be exchanged for anything else. So often we exchange the truth about God for a lie and we turn our backs on the infinite glory of God that is revealed in the righteousness of Christ. But no matter what, no matter what we suffer, we must never exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. As I sat with my son in my arms on the very first night I said this to him...it was his first bedtime story: A long time ago there was a great dark. Someone named God stepped into that great blackness and with a word he brought light into something he was creating. We call it the universe. God made everything that we see and a whole bunch of things that we will never see. He made us. But we didn't always love God. We didn't always do what God told us to do. This is called sin. This kept us from God in so many ways but God brought another light into the world. This light was a man named Jesus. He was born and he was a lot like you when he was first born Aiden. He was just a baby. Even though he was God he was also fully a baby, later fully a boy, and later fully a man. When he got older he did something that would be hard for you to understand now. One day I'll explain it to you the best that I can. But Jesus saved us in every way that people can be saved. I believe that God loves you Aiden. I promise you that of all the stories I'll ever tell you, this one will always be the most important. One day I hope you love God like I love him. One day I hope you can tell your friends about Jesus. One day I hope your heart loves him even more than you love mommy and daddy. Until that day I will promise to keep telling you about all the things that God has done to make known how great his glory truly is. When I looked down at my son he was fast asleep. I know that he didn't understand a word that I'd just said but I wanted some of the first words in his ears to be about God and the gift of grace that is given by God in Christ. How often in these last few days God has reminded me of the glory that is in Christ. He has shown me through my son and through my son's suffering how great a God he truly is. So tomorrow, all you Oasis people, remember to praise God first. Bring him praise, glory and honor. That is one of the greatest things you could do for my son right now...simply praise God and honor God as God. I love you all. Remember the words to that new song we've been doing... All that is within me cries For you alone be glorified Emmanuel...God with us My heart sings a brand new song My debt is paid these chains are gone Emmanuel...God with us

OASIS Q&A - "What is 'Church' Supposed To Look Like?"

Below are some notes on the question we recieved in the "question box" for anyone to ask a question related to God, the bible, the church and anything in it. Or maybe just about anything. If you have a question, submit it in the back of the gym at the small group station or send it to questions@bethechurch.com. We talked about this in part one last wedneday and will finish tonight with church leadership.

What a great question to kick off the Q&A series. By no means was the response drawn up for this question comprehensive. There are so many different possible intended directions with this question. I went ahead and tried to briefly hit the main three (the magic number) possibilities: Church Service, Church Body, Church Leadership.

There are plenty more granular pieces to this within service, like worship, communion, and also women in leadership, megachurch vs. small church issues and methods. When looking at the way church is narrated in the bible, we must keep our focus on the principals set forth as the precedent for "doing" church rather than methods. If we get too wrapped up in methodology, we're going to find that methods do not translate into our current cultural context and are throughout history a vehicle for divisiveness within the church. Further, methods aren't touched on in particular detail in the bible and therefore irrelevent in most cases. For instance, communion wasn't a liturgical ritual that we see today in most traditional church settings. It was a toast and a celebration of believers in the grace of God as well as the sacrificial remembrance. Their was an intimacy in communion in the bible that brought them together in a REAL meal together that transcended our cookie cutter notion of getting out of your pew, walking toward the "communion table" (a sad approach to a real meal table--no one's reclining together there) to individually pick up a cracker and a shot of juice or wine and reuturn inidivudally and somberly remember Christ's sacrifice. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that a lot of American traditional churches are missing the "method" drawn out in the bible. Their method is simply not biblical. But of course, their principal is biblical, at least in part. (leaving out the celebration aspect in most cases of Jesus purpose of rising from the dead).

So, with such an introduction where I spew my own thoughts, here's an outline of

what we talked about where the Bible speaks about what church should look like.

Church Service (Order in worship and attributes of) - 1 Corinthians 14:21-33
Church Body - Acts 2:42
A building? A body? - Acts 7:48-53

Corporate Worship
Preaching God's Word (1 Cor 14/1 Tim 4)
Public Reading of Scripture (1 Tim 4)
Public Prayer (Acts 2/ 1 Cor 14)
Worship (all throughout)
Offering (Acts 2, etc.)

Caution of the trappings of ritualized corporate worship gatherings: complacency,

and a hardened heart at the alter of God. (Amos 5, etc.)

Church Leadership -

Elders (1 Tim, Phil 1:1, Acts 14:23, Titus 1:6-9, 1 Thess 5:12, Hebrews 13:7)
Deacons (1 Tim, Acts 6, Col 4:7, Col 1:7, Eph 6:21, Rom 16:1, Phil 1:1)

We all should be deacons at heart if we truly are the church.

I won't summarize here what the scriptures mean--You'll need to come to small group tonight! If you do want more info on what these scriptures mean or how eldership/deacons are reconciled through scripture here at Oasis and cannot make it tonight, please leave a comment on the post, or e-mail "questions@bethechurch.com" and Chad, Chris, or I can try to answer your questions.

Josh

Family Story

At the last 'He Reigns" event, Chris shared an amazing story with us. I have it seperated into two parts.

Part 1

Part 2