Month: September 2025

We are in the middle of a relatively small capital campaign to replace three roof-top HVAC units.  We are committed to waiting for all of the funds to come in and to trusting God that they will come in soon.  The process has made me remember other campaigns and other discussions, sometimes on church boards and sometimes in congregational meetings about whether or not God wants us to step out in faith or whether or not He wants us to wait in faith.  I remember one protracted argument in a church plant in CO where we just about formed up into two “camps.”  One camp said, definitively, that faith was “waiting on the Lord” (Isaiah 40:31), while the other camp said that trusting the Lord meant following Him, even into debt if He so led (Esther 4:16).  It got a little uncomfortable, and we ended up moving here, before God solved it by allowing that plant to merge with a financially solvent church (i.e. a church with a paid for building).  But even if you take the financial piece out of the question, the question still remains, when do we step out in faith as in Joshua 3? 

It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap.”  (Joshua 3:13, emphasis added)

And when do we wait in faith as in Exodus 14?

But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever.  (Exodus 14:13 Emphasis added)

I’m not sure I can give a single answer that suits all situations, but one answer that a study of Scripture suggests is that if I’m prompted to do something for another person, such as an act of compassion, an act of love, or a rendering of assistance, I would submit no waiting is necessary (1 John 3:13-22).   Whereas, if I want to do something that benefits myself alone, it might be entirely appropriate to wait (Matthew 6:33).  Ironically, sometimes only slowing down and waiting on God will allow us to have time to discern the difference between the two!

Blessings!

Pastor Scott

P.S.  I will state again, it’s the conviction of the WOGF board that at this time in our church’s life we are very debt adverse.  I merely had this thought on the way in to work this morning because our current capital campaign reminded me of one from long ago.  🙂

This past Sunday we hosted a professor from Calvary University who spoke about Replacement Theology and differing views about the future of the nation of Israel as prophesied in the Bible.  Most of the authors that were quoted, who hold different views, were still very much men of faith.  Which, of course, begged the question: how far can we push doctrine before we fall right off the edge (eg. Hymenaeus and Alexander – 1 Timothy 1:20)?

For some reason it reminded me of a story I used to tell at Awana Grand Prix (soap box derby) races, both here and in my CO days.  A king was looking to hire a driver to take his only daughter to and from school.  As he got down to the final interview he asked each driver how close he could get to the edge of the hairpin turn at the top of the mountain pass on the way to his daughter’s school.  Two of the drivers bragged about how close they could get to the edge.  The driver, he ultimately hired, assured the King that with his one and only daughter in the car, he would stay as far from the edge as possible.  Then I would relate that to Joseph fleeing Potiphar’s wife rather than hanging in and trying to resist.

How worldly can a church get before it’s too worldly?  How legalistic can a church get before it’s too legalistic?  How extra biblical can a church get before it’s too extra biblical?  I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that I need to stay as close to the truth as I possibly can!  And let God take care of the rest!  Amen?

YBIC,

Pastor Scott

The online dictionary defines it as:

• 1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
  2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished.
  to preserve the integrity of the empire.
• 3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition.
  the integrity of a ship’s hull.

In the church we might remind ourselves that we have an audience of One (Colossians 3:23) for Whom we ultimately do all of our work.  But it wasn’t that long ago that integrity was even part of our culture.

I’ve told the story before of my neighbor, Mr. Andorf, who fixed my wagon when I was a boy.  He welded the pull-bar back on my Red Ryder wagon.  I remember watching him using his grinder to smooth out the weld on the under-side and asking why he bothered given that nobody would ever know? His answer has stayed with me for over 50 years, “Scotty, every time I see you pulling your wagon, I’d know that I left a dirty weld on the under-side.”  That, beloved, is integrity.  I tell you that because I ran across a similar story today. 

Oscar Hammerstein II observed that the top of the Statue of Liberty’s head was sculpted with painstaking detail, even though the artist, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, must have believed it would never be seen by human eyes. 

Hammerstein wrote about this in his book, Lyrics. His observation came after seeing a photograph of the statue taken from a helicopter for the New York Herald Tribune Sunday magazine. 

Hammerstein’s point was that Bartholdi, as a true artist, finished his work perfectly, even in places that were not intended for public view. He used this as an inspiring metaphor for integrity in one’s own work, stating, “You never know when a helicopter, or some other instrument not at the moment invented, may come along and find you out”. 

Both of these stories point to an internal integrity, and perhaps we should care enough about ourselves to be this whole as we interact with the world.  But for us it’s exponentially more important because we are accountable not to ourselves but to the Holy God that made us and then bought us back!
Pastor Scott – “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” Colossians 3:23