The Most Powerful Force in the Universe!

Dear Crosswalkers,

Last Sunday we kicked off our 40 Days in the Wordspiritual growth journey, and I praise God that this week we will have 190 Crosswalkers in small groups studying what the Bible says about itself! Last night three small groups met on our campus, and tonight we launch three more! Other groups are meeting in homes.

Tonight we will also be returning to our Wednesday evening dinners and children's program. Dinner is served between 5:30 - 6:10 p.m., and the DVD for tonight's study will be shown in the worship center beginning at 6:20.  You are invited to come even if you haven't signed up for a small group! We will find a place for you! I hope to see many of you at dinner!

This Sunday our message will feature a look at the most powerful force in the universe! What is that "most powerful force?" I know the right answer is "God." But let's move beyond the obvious. I'm not talking about someone but something. What is that something? This Sunday we will look at the answer together!

Also, last Lord's Day I mentioned that evangelical leader and founder of Prison Fellowship, Chuck Colson, went to be with the Lord. His life is a sterling example of a man who had been transformed by the grace of our Lord Jesus. He was a former Marine who was sent to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal way back in the Nixon Administration. He promised the prisoners he would never forget them and he never did. Prison Fellowship is now in more than 100 countries worldwide. Someone is quoted as saying about this about Colson's death: “I have to believe Mr. Colson just heard a Galilean voice say ‘I was in prison and you visited me.’”. 

Chuck was a great thinker who championed the Biblical Worldview through his many books. Just recently at Crosswalk, we featured his DVD study series entitled, "Doing the Right Thing." CNN had a wonderful tribute written by Bill Bennett, which you can read by clicking HERE.

Lastly, I have to share a great story about love and marriage. Lloyd Ford, 102, and Eunice Ford, 100, recently celebrated their 83rd wedding anniversary! At ages 17 and 19, the young lovers were married in secret late one night by a Baptist preacher in Paris, Texas.That was the night of April 9, 1929.

Just so you know, 1929 was the year of the famous St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the Stock Market Crash that ushered in the Great Depression. Bobby Jones won the US Open, Green Bay Packers won the NFL Championship, the Philadelphia A's won the World Series, and the price of gasoline was pushing 10 cents a gallon! That was a long time ago!!

Lloyd Ford was asked the secret of their 83 years together. He said this: “The first thing is they’ve got to love one another,” Lloyd said. “If there ain’t no love, there ain’t no marriage.” Yer darn tootin!!

Eunice claims they never had a quarrel in 83 years!  Amazing!  What was the secret for the way they handled disagreements and anger? Well, you'll have to read the article by clickingHERE.

I praise God for you all! Have a blessed week!

Pastor John

Answers to an Acoustic Conundrum

Dear Crosswalkers,

Here's something for those of you who believe that silence is golden. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the quietest place on earth is the "anechoic chamber" at the Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis, MN. The room is 99.99 percent sound absorbent. Most people cannot handle the silence. It literally drives them mad. The company’s founder and president, Steven Orfield, says this: ‘We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark... When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You'll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly. In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.’

And this is a very disorientating experience. We can't handle the quiet. We can't handle hearing ourselves alone. Apparently, the longest anyone has stayed inside was a reporter who lasted 45 minutes! You can read the full article by clicking HERE.

WHY CAN'T WE HANDLE THE SILENCE? It's an acoustic conundrum!  Here's the answer: We need to hear the voices of others because we were made for relationships. More than anything else, we need to hear the voice of God, because we were made to be in a relationship with our Creator!

This is why we are engaged in a spiritual journey called 40 DAYS IN THE WORD at Crosswalk Community Church! Above all else, these studies are designed to help us hear the voice of God speaking to us through the Bible!

Will you please join us? We have 170 people signed up to participate in the study. If you haven't joined a group, you can do so by emailing Pastor Linda Jackson at this address:ljackson@crosswalkchurch.com or by signing up after services this Sunday! The group study kicks off next week!

Faithfully yours,

Pastor John Christie

Who Can Tell What God Can Do?

Dear Crosswalkers,

This is a very exciting time at Crosswalk Community Church!  Beginning this Sunday we will launch a brand new spiritual growth journey called 40 DAYS IN THE WORD! We will be honored to have Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church delivering the message to get it all started. The following Sunday will be our first challenge of the 40 Day journey, and our small groups will begin meeting the week of April 22. It’s amazing how many significant events in the Bible center on the time period of 40 days! Here are some examples:

Exodus 34:28 (NLT) - Moses remained there on the mountain with the LORD forty days and forty nights. In all that time he ate no bread and drank no water. And the LORD wrote the terms of the covenant—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets.

Numbers 13:25 (ESV) - At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land.

Deuteronomy 10:10 (ESV) - “I myself stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights, and the LORD listened to me that time also…”

1 Samuel 17:16 (NLT) - For forty days, every morning and evening, the Philistine champion strutted in front of the Israelite army.

Jonah 3:4 (ESV) - Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Mark 1:13 (ESV) - And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Acts 1:3 (NLT) - During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.

When we survey these verses, it is clear that the time frame of 40 days is often used in the Bible as a time to undergo spiritual transformation and to get closer to God.  Let me isolate just one of the instances above. In response to Jonah’s eight word sermon to the people of Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” the king of Nineveh told his people to turn from their evil ways and give themselves to God. Then in Jonah 3:9 we read his rationale.  The king says, “Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.” This is a great attitude to have during our 40 DAYS IN THE WORD journey: Who can tell what God can do in your life and mine? 

According to my calculations, in an average lifespan 40 days represents .001% of our life! Here’s what God wants us to do:  Give him these 40 days, totally and unreservedly.  Let’s devote ourselves wholeheartedly to the time the Bible says it takes for us to be spiritually transformed, and see what God will do. 

Here’s what I’m praying for:

1. God will knit together the people of the Crosswalk Community into one heart and mind about being “a people of the Book (the Bible).”  

2. God will show us how to understand the Bible for ourselves.

3. God will utterly convince us of the truth of his Word.

4. God will help us develop new habits for reading and memorizing the Scriptures.

5. God will draw people to faith in Jesus Christ, and some will experience the loving forgiveness of God for the first time. 

6. God will lead more Crosswalkers into small groups than ever before, and as a result, many will be led out of sinful and/or destructive habits, and many more will make a new commitment to holiness in heart and life. 

7. God will teach us to Love the Word, Learn the Word, and Live the Word.

I strongly encourage you to join the adventure with us! You can start by signing up to be in a small group THIS SUNDAY! 

Who can tell what God may do in your life during our 40 Days in the Word?

Faithfully yours,

Pastor John Christie

Easter: Welcome Home!

Dear Crosswalkers,

Recently, a guy named Bob Goff wrote about his sailboat race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. As a young boy, Bob had a dream to sail from LA to Hawaii. As an adult, he fulfilled that dream. Bob and four of his friends entered the Transpac Race, which is a semi-annual sailboat race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. In spite of his rudimentary sailing skills, the men filled their thirty-five foot sailboat with supplies and set sail.  Bob writes:

There's a tradition in the Transpac Race no matter when you finish the race, even if it's two in the morning. When you pull into the Ala Moana Marina in Oahu, there's a guy who announces the name of the boat and every crew member who made the trip …. It's the same guy, and he's been announcing each boat's arrival at the end of every Transpac Race for decades.

Just when we came to the end of our supplies, we sailed across the finish line just off Diamond Head and into the marina. It was a few hours before dawn. It had been sixteen days since we set out from Los Angeles in our little boat knowing very little about navigation. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a booming voice over a loudspeaker announcing the name of our tiny boat …. Then he started announcing the names of our ragtag crew like he was introducing heads of state. One by one he announced all of our names with obvious pride in his voice, and it became a really emotional moment for each of us onboard.

When he came to my name, he didn't talk about how few navigation skills I had or the zigzag course I'd led us in to get there. He didn't tell everyone I didn't even know which way north was or about all my other mess-ups. Instead, he just welcomed me in from the adventure like a proud father would. When he was done, there was a pause and then in a sincere voice his last words to the entire crew were these: "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home." Because of the way he said it, we all welled up and fought back tears. I wiped my eyes as I reflected in that moment about all the uncertainty that had come with the journey, all the sloppy sailing and how little I knew. But none of that mattered now because we had completed the race.

I've always thought that heaven might be kind of a similar experience …. After we each cross the finish line in our lives, I imagine it will be like floating into the Hawaiian marina when our names were announced, one by one. At the end of our lives, after our many mistakes and midcourse corrections, our loving Heavenly Father will simply say, "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home."

AMEN! Easter makes possible a warm welcome into our heavenly Father's home after our convoluted journey through life. This is our faith, our hope and our joy. And it's what we want to share with others this Easter. Here again is our EASTER schedule:

THIS THURSDAY, April 5, HOLY THURSDAY COMMUNION SERVICE @ 7:00 p.m.This is the most devotional and worshipful service of the year! Please plan to join us as we celebrate our Lord's death on the cross for us. The devotional is called, "Behold the Man!"During our one hour service, child care will be provided for nursery and preschool aged kids.

April 6, GOOD FRIDAY SERVICE, 11:00 a.m. to Noon. Sunnyvale Christian School hosts this service for the students and their families, but of course everyone is welcome to attend!

April 7, COMMUNITY EASTER EGG HUNT @ Washington Park! Check in at 9:45 a.m., hunt begins at 10:15 a.m. In addition to the hunt, we will feature face painting, a raffle, a special craft where the gospel is shared, and a few carnival like games for kids. Please pray for this event and help us invite people to Easter Services!

April 8 EASTER SUNDAY! This will be a grand celebration of the Good News. The message is "What Easter Means Today." It will be a practical message that you can freely invite friends and family to attend. People are very open to visiting a church on Easter! Please invite them to Crosswalk!!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie