the living word of the Lord – Page 5

Does Jesus know you?

Anyone who takes the time to read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John will see Jesus calling people out to authenticity. Realness, legitimacy, being genuine… these are often way undervalued in our lives.

Jesus was and is controversial! He is revolutionary and life altering. Dealing with him will change you at the deepest levels. The good news is that the transformation is actually a metamorphosis. The real you will emerge.

What happens when you encounter Jesus? You may not want to be aware of it, but the Holy Spirit is constantly drawing you to meet up with Jesus in a million different ways in your everyday life. He is where you least expect him to be.

When I encounter Jesus I can’t pretend. All of my “Imposter” ways are exposed and I am struck by the fact that He only wants the real me. In fact Jesus sees all of my pretending as evil and dangerous. He invites me to grow up into full maturity as the man I was created to be by putting my trust in Him.

There is a key teaching from Jesus recorded in Matt 7:

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

When I encounter Jesus today I want Him to be able to say, “I know you”. He does in fact complete know me. But I have learned that he isn’t going to allow me to fake it. The “Imposter” me won’t survive in the glory of who Jesus is. He is going to draw authenticity to the surface of my life every time! And I know that He will use whatever means needed to shape my identity through His knowledge of me.

May you be blessed today by Jesus full awareness and knowledge of you and may you have the courage by His grace to surrender to it!

Awesome Kings Valley Weekend Plans!

This weekend is going to be exciting in the life of Kings Valley!

Awesome creative worship gatherings will be happening at both campuses.

Sunday morning (Cineplex SJ, 10:30) we will be throwing a party for our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY as a church community! God has done amazing things in and through KV East this year! Pastor Josiah will be back and leading worship. He and his wife, Jamie were married just two weeks ago and we are stoked to have them back home with us. I am super excited to be preaching “live”. Jeremy Lamos will be painting. AND we are having a One Year Anniversary CAKE! Come on out & bring some friends! Don’t forget we will be drawing for a prize from all of those who have filled out a connection card.

On Saturday, 6:00 PM at KV’s Valley Campus (332 Hampton Road, Quispamsis) KV Worship & Pastor Greg Hanson will be hosting a creative night of worship for Thanksgiving including live worship band, creative media, awesome teaching & sharing in communion together. It would awesome to make a weekend of it and be part of Saturday night in the Valley and Sunday morning at the East Campus (Cineplex SJ)

God is good all the time! I feel like He has beenu his love & awesomeness on us and we are overflowing with it. So glad you are part of KV East! Can’t wait to see you and your friends this weekend.

Dan Lamos

KV East Campus Pastor/650-2600/twitter: @papabearlamos

Happy ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY KV East!!

OCTOBER 2014 is our One Year Anniversary month!

God has done huge things for us in only our first year of existence. God is good all the time and ALL the time God is good!!

3 quick things that I would LOVE for you to plug into this month:

ONE:

Please provide your name & best contact info (phone & email) as part our growing church community. My personal goal for October is to gather at least 100 names & solid contact info for my own use in getting to know & serve you better. I am at 32 right now! You can email me at danclamos@gmail.com, text or call me at 506-650-2600 or fill out a contact card at church on Sunday. We will be entering all of the contact cards completed on the Sundays in October in a weekly draw for a cool prize!

TWO:

INVITE ALL (our as many as you can) of your friends to join us for church on Sunday, October 12, 10:30 am Cineplex SJ for our One year Celebration Sunday (click here for event details) . I will be preaching live about “LOVE”, Jeremy Lamos will be painting, we will worship with live band Pastor Josiah & KV Worship, & we will have CAKE!

THREE:

Join us for a POTLUCK Lunch right after church on Sunday, October 26 @ Glen Falls Elementary School on Rothesay Ave (click here to confirm). Bring your friends & a dish to share! It’s gonna be a blast!! & We will take our FIRST ANNUAL group picture! We DON’T want you to miss being in that shot!

SEE YOU THERE!!

What happens when God looks at East Saint John?

What do you believe happens when God looks at East Saint John? What does He see? KV East Saint John is a church community bringing glory to God and making disciples of Jesus. We know that we can’t do either of those things without God being with us through the Holy Spirit. In all of our relationships, strategic planning, teaching, initiatives, all of it, we know it is about His vision not ours.

God has called us into being as a church community. I am in awe of the way The Father has blessed us in our first year of existence! But it’s not just for us to enjoy. He has called us to partner with Him in blessing the Saint John region for the glory of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt in my mind that God’s burning passion is for us to make Jesus Name bigger than anything else in the life of our city. What does that mean for us? Here is the link to my message from Vision Sunday : click on this title to listen to:

“Letting God’s Vision Shape KV East“ .

In this teaching time, I share what I believe God wants to do through us.

As we grow as a family partnering with God in East Saint John our hearts will burn to see:

directionless families & individuals become followers of Jesus

people running free from darkness into the light of God’s kingdom family

a growing church family receiving and living a fresh expression of God’s kingdom here where we live

Stoked for the future! Visit kingsvalley.ca/east to discover more about us.

Stoked about our growing KV Church Community!

On October 20, 2013 KV Church launched our first multi-site campus. On that day, KV East was born! The vision for KV East is to be part of one church meeting in more than one location. So, every Sunday morning @ 10:30 we host a worship gathering for all ages. We meet at Cineplex in East Saint John.

I love serving as the overseeing pastor of this growing community of Jesus followers committed to worshiping.serving.multiplying.connecting! On Sunday we join for coffee, friendship, worship with a young & alive worship band & hear from our lead pastor Brent Ingersoll on the theatre screen. We are discovering that our worship incense is the smell of buttered popcorn!!

Last week we launched into our summer sermon series: “JOSHUA:The Occupy Movement”! Through it God challenged me that “This is the moment when KV East takes possession of what God has promised”!

I am stoked about two things:

– seeing WHO God brings together to accomplish the mission we are designed to accomplish

– discovering together in community HOW God is going to accomplish that mission

with us!

HOME #14 – laying down our lives

I grew up in a pastor’s home. I had a front row seat in watching what it means to lay down your life for your friends. My dad & mom pastored an urban church of 100-200 people while my dad also taught school full time. Though he loved his life, it never really seemed “fair” to me! Although there was something about my dad that drove him, from my perspective as his son I never felt any bitterness or resentment in him.

What I do remember was a resolve… something lived with him that held him, animated him, brought him to life. It was a life of ministry. Somewhere along the way in his life he had given himself over to friendship with Jesus to a place where it consumed him. I don’t know if he ever directly invited that to happen. I assume he did but I never really knew. But, regardless his way of life vibrated with service to others and it was always because Jesus had loved him first.

There are people you would lay down your life for. I have them too. But it is rare to find someone who has been so consumed in friendship with Jesus that they have laid down their life for him. How can you tell? One of Jesus best friends, John (kind of fitting to me that my dad had the same name as one of Jesus best friends) wrote “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” I John 3:16. It is also poetic that the reference is “3:16” as John 3:16 references the sacrifice God the Father & Son gave so that we can have eternal life!

You know that someone is being consumed in friendship with Jesus because they express it by laying down their life in whatever they do just like Him. But it is never a bitter or resentful sacrifice. It is one that honors Jesus & brings others to life!

HOME #13 – Dare to be a ___________

Yes it’s true! I actually found the song “Dare to Be a Daniel” on youtube! Can you believe it? Whenever we would sing it in “Children’s Church” in that musty lower level of our granite church on White Street in Springfield, Ma I would feel a little funny. Even though my proper name was “Dana”, my family & my church friends called me “Danny” and once in a while “Daniel”. So, in my active boy imagination I would dream & pretend that I was named “Daniel” and I dreamed that it was because I had the courage of this Hebrew hero prophet and would some day earn the honor.

“Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone

Dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known.”

I also remember those “tween-ager” years from 10-12 years old when I began to feel the heat of a community outside of my church and even in some close friendships who didn’t share my faith in Jesus, the Bible or heroes like “Daniel”. It was during those years that the sea of my secure little world started to get a little rough and I felt for the first time what it was like to fold under the pressure of fear. “Standing alone” or “Making anything known” that might cause somebody to disagree with me definitely wasn’t on my agenda.

I can see now that I was being dared to be myself. There are very few people who lay down their lives for their God designed mission. I missed something in those foundational years that I have been rediscovering: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” And so are you! Our creator God is also the One who has made a promise… who has put a His own name on the line through a covenant that if I will trust Him, I will become His artwork, His poetry.

To be honest I can’t remember a time in my life that I wasn’t being taught about this. But, what I missed was that I would have to be brave because the odds were stacked against me and I would have to learn to fight along with God’s Spirit in order to have the life of my dreams. I guess it was actually God who was daring me. I am glad to say that these days I am not as surprised when I have to fight for who God has called me to be in Jesus Christ. More and more I find myself praying that our eyes would be opened to actually see each other and be willing once again to surrender to Jesus & dare to be ourselves in Him.

HOME #12 (My Story)

In the past several days I have been revisiting a conversation with God that I haven’t had for while. It involves asking Him to come and make His Presence known in and around my life. It has taken me back to read Exodus 32 & 33. I love the sense about Moses that success or failure weren’t the most important issues to him… He loved God’s Presence and would not budge until God promised to go with him and the tribes of Israel.

In the midst of this conversation I came across a video and a poem that I want to share with you. I shared a link below to the vid; “Lost Generation” and “The Vision” by Wendell Berry. Hope they stir you up!

There is a hunger rising in many hearts to cry out to God with the same heart… “More than anything, God show us your glory and don’t send us any where unless your Presence goes with us.” If there is a fire in you for God’s presence, fan it into a blaze! You are needed in this time!! There is hope!

Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed http://youtu.be/42E2fAWM6rA

“A Vision”

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility

HOME #11 (My Story)

This morning I found myself tweeting this message, “Friendship with Jesus Christ is the key to unlock every prison”. Then I went back to the task in front of me which was getting dressed and ready for the day.

I began to think that if friendship with Jesus is the key that unlocks all of my prison doors then friendship with me is the key to do the same for people who connect with me today and every day.

When I look at the story of my life, I can see that living as a person who can’t be held under lock and key anymore has been quite a learning process. I can’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t believe in God and all that my church taught about Jesus.

My struggle has always been with the pressure to behave in certain ways and to say or not say certain things in the course of relating to my world and my Christian community. And it wasn’t just about my conversation. There were things that a Christian shouldn’t and/or couldn’t do or places I couldn’t go because I was a Christian.

From an early age I took on a ton of guilt and shame because my heart and the real me didn’t match up with the behaviour that was expected of me by my church. So, like most of the kids in our church youth group I learned to hide who I really was in religious situations. Tragically I had no real grasp on the reality that I had an original voice that God had woven into the fabric of who I was… even as a child.

I had an incredibly supportive family and a great school system to explore and make the most of… but I hated myself because I couldn’t seem to find whatever it took on the inside of myself to measure up to my religion. The saddest part of those years is that I pretty much completely missed the amazing life I could have been enjoying. What if I could have found my real voice and been activated into a life of reflecting His image into my world by just being myself before my Creator?

So, I lived a lie. My high school experience was lived as two different people. One of them was a well behaved church (religious) kid and the other was what I understood to be the real me.

It wasn’t until I landed at a Christian college that I got real with God and myself. There are two things that I remember saying to God as I left home as a 17 year old to enroll in Bible College. The first was “God, I know this might just land me in hell, but if I can’t discover something real for me in following Jesus during this school year, then I am done with the Church and Christianity for good. I’m sure hell will be awful. But, if all there is to being a Christian is what I have been part of so far, forget it!”

And, the second conversation came about half way through that school year as I cried out to God through tears and from my heart, “God, whether you are glad about this or not, you are stuck with me, failures and everything, because of how much you have loved me and set me from through Jesus, you are gonna have to reject me to get rid of me!” And, he hasn’t sent me away yet 🙂

He has set me free from prisons in my emotions, my sense of self and my life purpose. I want to offer up this prayer:

Jesus, knowing you is the key to unlocking the door to every prison I might find myself in whether it’s one of my own making or imposed by someone else. Words can never express how grateful I am for what you have done by setting me free to actually live. But, I pray that you will fill me and express your heart through me so that people will find that knowing your Spirit through me is the key that unlocks the chains and the bars that hold them captive. Use me to help them find the key for themselves. Amen

“Home” (formerly ‘My Story’)

I have decided to change the name of the series I have been posting called “My Story” to “Home”. It will continue to be dedicated to telling of my journey of living as a Jesus follower. My desire in sharing it is to inspire you to “really” live & to be activated in the purpose God has for your life.

One of Jesus followers named Luke describes a story Jesus told in Luke 15. Most people refer to the story is as “The Prodigal Son”. You likely know the story & could tell it yourself. I love that story especially because it reveals a picture of our eternal Father & his love for each of us. He is the father who runs to us, hugs us, kisses us & knows how to throw a party to celebrate His sons & daughters whether or not we think we deserve it!

A few months ago I was praying and listening for God’s heart in this story when the most intriguing thought landed… I felt the Lord saying to me; “I want you to love my home more than you love being worthy!”. It occurred to me that both sons in the story were focused on their worthiness… what they deserved. The younger son felt outside the family because he was “unworthy to be a son” and the older son was bitter because he deserved (was worthy of) a party but never had one. In his anger he left his Father’s house and refused to go in and party with the family.

As I continue to share my story in hopes that you will start telling yours, I am going to call it “Home”. Maybe you will join me as I learn to love God’s home more than I love being worthy!