First Baptist Church Cedar Vale

The NorthField Podcast Network · Eight Things Used By Government To Take Over a Population   I came across a sermon that shook me this week.  Here is a quote from this sermon here:   Back in 1932 a devout atheist by the name of Aldous Huxley wrote  Brave New World .  Brave New World  was a dystopian novel that looked at the future and assumed that it wouldn’t be very long before the West was completely captive to totalitarianism—that is rule by a dominant force, where you have only two classes: the ruling class and all the people who are subjected to them. In  Brave New World , he portrayed what life would be like. It was about seventeen years later that George Orwell, another devout atheist, wrote  1984 , another dystopian novel that looked at the future. And just examining those recently in my own thoughts, I drew out of those two pictures of totalitarianism in the future of the West, what are pretty amazing, prescient insights from a cou...

  Introduction Our impending cultural collision can be seen in what the Navy calls a “steady bearing rate.” If you see a ship off your starboard bow at 30 degrees, and then half an hour later, it is bigger, but still at that thirty degrees, that is called a steady bearing rate. If it keeps up, with the other ship always getting bigger and always at 30 degrees, you are eventually going to have yourself an incident at sea. The grasping overweening overreach of our would-be overlords is exactly like this. Their lusts are increasingly demanding, and every day they get bigger. Almost every day they are always right there, 30 degrees off the starboard bow. And every day they demand that we kowtow to some larger absurdity. If I were still in the Navy, the collision alarm would have already sounded by now, and all the watertight doors would be shut and cinched tight. In the meantime, an awful lot of Christian leaders who invested heavily in the  status quo ante  are very intere...

  Dear Campers and Student Pastors,   I know we are in the throws of camp right now and I’m excited for that fact.   But can I caution all of us?   The push to ‘rededicate your life’ is going to be real.   The push to rush to the alter and pray a prayer of rededication is going to be prevalent in your camp experience.     The doctrine or teaching of ‘rededication’ is not taught anywhere in the scriptures.   The idea of rededication was thought up by some well meaning person, I’m sure, but what it does is lesson the weight and gravity of sin and makes it easier for a person to ‘come forward’ which is one of the biggest measuring metrics a camp has.     Pastors and student Pastors I would encourage you NOT to pressure or even present this as a viable option for your students.   Rather, present what is biblical for young believers in their walk when they are convicted by a sermon.   REPENTANCE.    I know that the p...

  It’s easy to take our spouses for granted.  It’s easy to pick apart flaws in the person you married. For some reason, this inclination comes naturally to us.  It’s difficult to praise our spouses. For some reason, it’s hard for us to see the good and focus on that good over the bad. Bottom line, it’s because of sin, which has fractured everything in our world.  However, that is not an excuse that we should snuggle up to in hopes of being proven right. We have to make war on our sinful nature. We have to rise above what comes naturally to us. So I listed three different ways we can see the best in our spouses, three ways we can change our marriages. 1.  When your spouse messes up  (and they will) be ready to show the kind of Grace that has been extended to you by Jesus Christ. “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful”  (Luke 6:36). I want you to honestly think about this for a moment. How often does Jesus forgive you?...

  Football season is over after the BIG GAME tomorrow. Men all over the country are in mourning. The thing that really just blows my mind is how we as men take this thing called football so seriously.  I know men who know every stat and every ounce of information that they can possibly know about certain players or teams, and the sad thing is, they don’t really even know these players personally. If I knew everything there was to know about you and your job…like what time you took breaks and your title and how well you did your job, you’d be totally creeped out, right?   But yet we are OK with doing this with football players and sports guys in general. I think we need to take a hard look at how much time we spend focusing on these men. Look at these verses,  “ fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer, and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Co...

   I woke up with this verse on my heart. ‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!’ -2 Cor. 13:5 I grew up in the church. My dad is a pastor. I have been around the church world my entire life. I went to church camp; I went to youth retreats; I walked to the front of a church; I prayed prayers…I did all that stuff. It was not until the summer of 1998 that it truly connected, and made sense.  The pastor  was preaching out of this text: ‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!’ -2 Cor. 13:5 ‘TEST YOURSELF.’ Then he went to the following text…. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are fu...

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates  – Deut. 6:5-9. We live in a “Christian parent culture” that, by process of elimination, is teaching by example. In and of itself, this is what we are called to do. We are to lead our kids. We are to show them what it looks like to love Jesus. We are to show them what it looks like to love the church and to truly be committed to the body local of Christ. But there is a problem. The stats are showing something different. More than 80 percent of students are walking away from...