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Nov 2 2009

The Lord’s Supper, Brokeness for Brokeness


People around the world today participated in The Lord’s Supper. A bit of bread of some sort was eaten and a small portion of wine or grape juice was drunk as together followers of Jesus Christ remembered Him.

This morning I shared the bread and cup with perhaps 750 or more saints. I was reminded as the others were served that one commonality we share locally and around the world is brokenness. Then at the invitation the announcement of a girl who had been baptized, a man joining our fellowship who works with our prison ministry, a couple placing membership who are transparent about their marriage difficulties and solicit our prayers, a well-loved lady with concerns about a health issue was prayed for, and finally a ministry leader tearfully confessed his failure to be what he knows God wants him to be.

Each of us comes to the Lord’s table bringing our brokenness. Unique we are yet each of us brings broken lives. We share a history of sinful passions, hard to restrain egos, and psyches embedded with the popular culture that is against God. We everyone either are or have been broken, badly off kilter compared to God’s ideal.

Thus we come and hear the Lord’s voice saying “This is my body” and “This is the New Covenant in my blood” and we know his broken body and shed blood was for us. Because He was broken we are invited to come as we are with our brokenness surely to be helped and healed. Because of “His stripes” our broken lives are made new.

In view of what God has accomplished for us in the perfect living and dying and living again of Jesus we bow to His majesty and choose to be broken again. Now we gladly choose brokenness so that Christ might be all in all in us and for us and through us for others.

God’s mighty power is best displayed in the life of the meek, the poor in spirit, the broken. It seems that God does His best work when He has nothing to work with. Read your Bible. Don’t you know that men who accomplished great things for God were all alike marked with brokenness?

Brokenness for brokenness? Yes, I bring mine and His makes mine OK.

Oct 27 2009

Where have the statesmen gone?


barack-obama-oath-of-office-012009-by-reuters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since 1864 men and women elected to the United States congress have taken the “oath of office” with their left hand on the Bible and their right hand raised saying,

    “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
The oath for President and Vice President, in regard to the Constitution adds the word “protect”. How different would our country be if each person who gave such a solemn oath actually meant it? It has become a formal, public lie.
Constitutional abuse is as common in Washington, D C as cocktail parties and tall tales. Once in office the overwhelming majority of our elected officials only give allegiance to themselves and their quest for keeping the power, fame, and fortune their offices affords. I seriously wonder how many Senators and Congressmen have even read the document? If they have read it they forgot what they read.
We must never forget that our great country is not a democracy but rather a constitutional republic. The United States Constitution is the bedrock foundation of what was once the greatest country in world history. We have been the freest people afforded with the most opportunity of any people on earth. Although now only a shadow of our greatness, still people from every country on earth desire to come to the United States. It is still head and shoulders above any other country in almost any way a country is measured.
I wonder how much thought President Obama is giving to defending, protecting, and defending the United States Constitution? It is apparent that he and others from both sides of the aisle only focus on various ways to subvert the Constitution. They have the same attitude toward the Constitution that most business men do toward the IRS code. They pay attorneys big bucks to find loop holes and ways to get around it.
I am astonished that no prominent Senator or Congressman is screaming foul at the Constitutional abuse of this administration. In my view they would be but for the fact that they are not “statesmen” but political whores. They want to be reelected and keep the power and prestige that accompanies the office.
One glaring example of Constitutional abuse is the Obama administration telling companies how much they can pay their employees. I am not arguing that there is no excess in the  pay of many top executives of large corporations. What I am saying is the federal government has no jurisdiction, according to the U.S. Constitution, over private business practices in regard to pay.
When our country falls, and in my view it will, it will be precisely because those men and women we entrusted with defending and supporting the United States Constitution lied when they took the oath of office.
Where have the statesmen gone? There was a time when people went to Washington whose sole goal was to protect the republic and defend the Constitution and by so doing protect the states and their people. Many decades of legislators with the morals of dogs has eroded states rights so that most young people are not even aware the several states should have any rights.
Republicans are just a guilty as Democrats. It is sad that in a country founded by the blood of patriots and built upon perhaps the greatest document in human history other than the sacred Scriptures, that the wacky congressman from Texas, Ron Paul, is often the lone voice appealing to the U.S. Constitution.
I am sick of men and women whose greed and desire for approval far outweighs their personal ethics and innate morality. Unless the common tax paying, law-abiding citizens revolt and demand that our nation return to its roots we will continue to swirl around the drain of demise. Our days as a free people are numbered. Will we sit on our hands and do nothing? It appears that is our course of inaction.
May God have mercy on us all.
Royce Ogle
Sep 25 2009

WORLD RADIO


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For almost a half century the good news has been going to the far reaches of the globe from West Monroe, Louisiana through the ministry of World Radio, a missions ministry of the Whites Ferry Road Church of Christ. In 1963 some great men of God took seriously Christ’s command to preach the good news to every people group. My friends Bill Smith, Alton Howard (presently in heaven), and others, were men of vision who dared to dream they could get the story of Jesus to people literally everywhere! Now forty six years later tens of thousands have claimed Christ as Savour and Lord and thousands of local churches have been established in far away places by people who learned the story of Jesus and God’s redemption while listening to a radio broadcast.

World Radio is a local church ministry with a world wide vision. Presently WR is beaming the gospel into 89 countries. 155 radio speakers are preaching across the air waves in 49 different languages. World Radio in the early days produced broadcasts from studios in the church building in West Monroe, LA but as technology grew the methods changed and for many years WR provides radio time for indigenous preachers to share Christ in the languages of the people who listen. People are hearing the good news in their native tongue in Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Croatia, Dominican Republic and many, many more countries all around the world. And, they are coming to Christ.

World Radio speakers working with others are able to offer free Bible correspondence courses and to connect people with other believers in their communities where they can be loved and discipled. One of the most recent, and for me one of the most exciting, new broadcasts is a Spanish language broadcast in a very needy place, metropolitan Dallas/Ft Worth. A wonderful Mexican brother and gifted servant, Sixto Rivera is reaching the huge Latino audience with the message that sets men free. The response has been awesome with listeners requesting CD’s of the broadcasts to send to relatives in Mexico and countries in South America. Many listeners are being connected with DFW congregations who are equipped to minister to them the grace of God in Christ Jesus. There is no match for gospel radio! How better to reach the hopeless masses than in their cars and homes and work places?

I invite you to visit the World Radio offices in West Monroe, Louisiana if you are in our area. Or click on World Radio’s weblink and learn more about this wonderful open door for the gospel of Jesus. I am proud to say that our own Ben Adkins was recently appointed by the WFR elders as World Radio Team Leader. Ben is uniquely gifted and equipped to lead such an international ministry. He is a great husband and father, preacher and teacher, and humble servant. Open doors abound and are only limited by the funds coming in as Ben, his team, and our elders and church wait upon the Lord in faith.

Will you prayerfully consider World Radio for some of your mission giving? There is no better way on earth to get the gospel to so many people for the dollars spent. WR can literally blanket the world with the good news if God touches enough hearts to partner with this ministry in the gospel. At a minimum, please pray for Ben Adkins and his team at World Radio.

I am humbled that God has allowed me to worship with the most wonderful people I know for the last 9 years. I have never known a local church with such world vision, and such unconditional love for the down and out and the up and out. In addition to World Radio the global relief ministry WFR Relief also calls Whites Ferry Road Church home. We Care, Mexico Medical Missions, church planting, Celebrate Recovery, Grief Share, Divorce Care, and perhaps a dozen other local and international ministries are undertaken by our people. There is but one way to get men fit for heaven and eternal life, Jesus Christ our Lord. We preach Him!

for Jesus,
Royce

 

Sep 16 2009

Riding into the sunset


This past June I had my 64th birthday. Whoop to do! For some reason I don’t understand, I am looking forward to being 65, sort of in the way I looked forward to being 18 and 21. I’m not sure why, I already get $.27 coffee and a discounted fishing license, but I like the idea of finally being old. Or, I might raise the bar to 70 just to defy everyone who talks down pork grease like it was liquid anthrax.

Do I eat healthy foods? Yes, three times a day or more. If it grows on a tree, a vine, or a stem, walks, crawl, swims, or flies I’ll eat it. Do I run? Not since I earned enough money to buy a car. Exercise? If you just have to know I just exercised my right arm and hand about 30 times eating a huge bowl of ice cream with so much sugar most people would go comatose. I know that one day someone will discover that what I have suspected is really true, that pork grease is the natural lubricant for the human body. Yes, I know the kind of eating I do kills folks. Some of my uncles were almost 90 when it finally got them. When they died they had enough grease in them to lube a freight train.

Have you ever wondered why old people are grouchy? Maybe it’s because they are sick of hearing young people whine about a slow computer or an unwanted noise at 75 in their Hummer. It’s because they know that almost everyone much younger than them don’t have a clue what a real problem is. Your opening in your built in cabinet in the family room is too small for a flat screen TV the size of the right side of a JB Hunt trailer? Boo hoo.

My body is literally wearing out from too many miles and low maintenance and some gal at McDonald’s looks like I have just banished her to a concentration camp because I want to order a Big ‘n Nasty meal deal. Pain is my constant companion of late so for some unknown reason I am not too sympathetic that a cashier at Office Depot broke a nail. I am so old school that I expect sales people to at least act like they appreciate it when I buy their goods and services. Why can’t people smile? Is it asking too much to expect someone, anyone, to appreciate that I am giving them my business?

One more pain in my back for good measure. Most people are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Some nerdy dude graduates from college with razor thin margin above dismal failure and thinks he is a mental giant superior to the peasants. I learned some things in school but it was bumping up against reality that taught me what is really important. One of the flaws of being young is that you think you know too much to learn from some older person’s mistakes. You just have to make a fool of yourself to get it. I guess thats the way it’s always been.

If you have reached the place in life where a vehicle is a tool to get your butt from point A to point B, and is not a status symbol, you are probably getting older. It seems that the younger a fellow is the more fragile his ego. That is a truth of life and a sad one because is costs lots of cash and broken hearts to keep an ego polished. I am quite content with the scars on mine. I am satisfied just being Royce Ogle.

I’m about to go to bed and sleep like a puppy. I have a great wife, good kids and grand kids, and if I don’t wake up I’ll have an even better deal than you. For almost 50 years of stumbling along, sometimes falling, going the wrong way, missing turns in the road, and most of the time having sweet fellowship, I have been following Jesus. The one area of my life of which I am most sure is that I belong to God, that He keeps His promises and that some day I’ll see Jesus face to face. My confidence is not in Royce but wholly in the God who promised.

Over six decades of living says to this old man what really matters is how you answer this question day by day, “What about Jesus?”

Royce