End Of Days Timelines
This weekend we talked through the last days as they are outlined in Revelation. Here are the timelines we used this week:
Bring Your Bible To Church
A few weeks ago I shared some thoughts after my message about bringing your Bibles to church with you. Here is the video:
Development
One of the things I’ve learned as a Pastor is that I’m responsible for my own development in my relationship with Christ and ministry skills. It’s an important lesson; one that many Pastors fail to learn. This is why there’s such an epidemic of Pastors leaving the ministry, either from burnout or moral failure. I don’t want to join their ranks!
One of the ways I grow, and help our staff Pastors develop, is to attend conferences together. Each year we choose about 3 conferences to take portions of our team to. I love attending conferences for a number of reasons…
1) I get to worship — when i’m speaking at Palm Valley, I love to worship with our church, but I’ve still got my mind focused on teaching Conference are a great chance for me to simply worship with other believers and spend time reflecting on my love for Jesus.
2) I get fed — Years ago I chose conferences that revolved around ministry skills, church growth, etc… Now I choose conferences based on their capacity to nurture spiritual growth. As a pastor, when I go to church, I’m doing the feeding. It’s nice to sit and be fed.
3) I have fun — At conferences I get to hang out with our staff and laugh. Tonight at dinner Sean and Brent had a hot pepper eating contest (video coming soon); I laughed so hard I cried. I love the team I work with, and it’s refreshing to be able to just have fun together.
4) I network — I’ve developed great friendships over the years with Pastors who have become friends, mentors, and encouragers. It’s a great chance to exchange ideas, hear what God’s doing in other churches, and be reminded that the Kingdom of God is being built around the world.
So this week I, and many of our Pastoral team are at the Creative Church Conference. Last year at this conference I had an encounter with God like I’ve never experienced before. I knew His presence so strongly that I began to weep, and weep, and weep (for about an hour). He spoke some things into my heart, encouraged me, and challenged me in ways I still can’t verbalize.
Tonight I’m in Dallas with great expectation for what God is going to do in my heart this week, as well as our other Pastors. Quite honestly, I need Him to refresh me and encourage me. I’m tired this week. The past few months at PVC have been incredibly rewarding, but greuling: I’ve been teaching my heart out, we’ve experienced incredible growth, this past month I had to make some incredibly tough, painful decisions that were for the best of Palm Valley and honored the Lord, but came at a personal cost. In short, as always, I need Him to minister to me. I’m hoping to experience God in a fresh way, to know Him better so I might love Him more. I’m praying the same for our team.
Weekend Reflections
Man, what a great weekend…
- All 3 of my boys teams won their basketball games Saturday. I coach an 8-10 year old team, the Suns, and we won 6-5. Exciting stuff!
- Loving the end times series; keeping it simple though: when God makes a promise, He will keep it!
- Loved seeing so many people bringing their Bibles. I’ll post video of the talk I gave last week about this.
- Talked about the rapture of the church this week, the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) of believers.
- The rapture reminds us to “pack our bags” and be ready to go.
- How?…live in purity, live with urgency!
- Next weekend we’re covering the tribulation through the second coming of Christ. It’s going to be awesome!
- This has been one of my favorite teaching series I’ve done, really enjoying making a subject so simple we can all understand it.
- Had an awesome talk on the way to church with my oldest son, Jake. He feels called to be a leader, and he’s trying to figure out what that means in his life. Yes, I’m a proud dad
- My youngest son gave me a “thank you” card yesterday, telling me I’m the best dad ever. He also gave me a dollar from his savings. I told him I was going to use it to buy him ice cream. He was very happy, so was I. It’s a win-win!
- Love the development of our “Community Pastors”. These are men in are church who volunteer 10-20 hours a week to connect, care for and shepherd the flock at Palm Valley. They are strengthening the body in incredible ways!
- Met a family who was hear with their jr high son. Told me they asked around, and everyone they asked in the community told them “if you’re looking for a youth group, you HAVE to go to Palm Valley”. Love hearing that Huge “shout-out” to Darius, Jeremiah, Christina and the army of volunteers in Student Ministries! Over 300 students per week are beginning a revolution in our community!
- Can’t wait to move our children’s ministry into permanent space in the new building, it’s going to be “off the hook”. Over 750 kids each week in a portable setting, what’s God going to do through this new tool? I’m excited to see!
- PVC’ers, let’s fulfill the Great Commission in our lives, making the name and love of Jesus known to all!
- I love our church, love being a part of it, love leading it, and can’t wait to be with you again this weekend
Amazing Grace
Sitting here at nearly 1:00 am, blown away by the amazing grace of God. I’ve been reading and studying tonight more about the tribulation/second coming/millenial kingdom/new heaven and earth, and it’s like I’m reading it with a whole new understanding. I see that Revelation is simply God completing His work in “human history”, redeeming mankind back to His original intent.
I’m struck by the grace of God…
…that He’s patient, not wanting any to perish;
…that He’s forgiving, even though I sin so often;
…that He loves me, even when I fail to love Him in return;
…that He chose me, way before I chose Him;
…that He remembers every tear I’ve shed, and promises to heal all hurts;
…that He called me to serve Him, even though I often feel like a failure.
God’s grace really is amazing! My desire is to live as a child of the King today, to make an impact on the world with HIs love, and to help His Kingdom come!
Study Bibles
I mentioned this weekend that I would post some examples of Study Bibles, here are a few examples of good study resources.
Haiti Team Pictures
It has been a difficult but incredible day for us here in Haiti. We visited the church in Valu where we met with Pastor Emmanuel and distributed some food, we visited Julienne and spent time with pastor Lezianou and distributed more food. We also spent time visiting some of the areas most affected by the earthquake. Pictures cannot even begin to tell the story of what we have seen, but they are a start.
This first picture was taken in November when we were here. It shows the building we stayed in during that trip. The next picture shows that same building today.
Study Help for “The End of the World”
If you want to study more on the timing/events of Daniel’s 70 weeks, here’s a great explanation of the subject that you can download.
End OF The World Timelines
This weekend we looked at a couple of timelines. You can view copies of the timelines here:
Update on the new building
Greg Rohlinger is the Senior Pastor of Palm Valley Church in Goodyear, Arizona. These are his thoughts on faith and leadership, as well as being a husband, father and pastor.