The Shepherd's Blog
Keven Brownfield Preaching!!!!!
by Craig HoustonChurch family we have the great privilege to have Evangelist Keven Brownfield preaching this Sunday evening and all week at Family Camp. Brother Keven preached for us one Sunday last year and God used him and the message in a powerful way. I know that tomorrow and throughout the week will be no different, so come with your heart and mind ready to receive all that God has for us.
Calling All Hands on Deck!
by Craig HoustonThis Thursday afternoon through Saturday afternoon until completion we need all hands on deck for the removal of the old front patio and the pouring of a new one. Please contact the church office if you can help on any or all of these days.
Together as One,
Pastor Craig
The Sleep of a Labouring Man is Sweet
by Jason Saling“The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.” Ecclesiastes 5:12
Praise the Lord for the many laborers for the Church Workday! It’s amazing what can be accomplished in four hours when the church body bands together to take care of the property the Lord has entrusted to us to use for his glory! Westside Baptist Church is a place that we get to meet together to worship the Lord, be stirred by his word, a place the broken could hear about the forgiveness of sins through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and what a blessing it is when his children take care of the property and facilities. What a blessing it was to see children working alongside their parents serving the Lord! Through your efforts, we were able to get lots of landscaping done (fresh bark will be poured on Wednesday), the shed and barn cleaned out and organized, a fresh layer of stain on the shingles, handrails put up in the baptistery area, hauled junk to the dump, much miscellaneous stuff, and spruced up Pastor Craig and Emily’s property before he returns from Uganda. Thanks to everyone that came out and had a mind to work! Special thanks also to Nick and Dee Vegkley for the great BBQ lunch!
Have a great Memorial Day weekend! Remember to take some time Monday to reflect on those who have labored vigorously and lost their lives in defending our country, that we may have the liberty that we have in the United States of America!
Africa Needs God
by Jason SalingThis morning I dropped Pastor and Anna off at the Sea-Tac Airport, as they are 
headed for Uganda Africa to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. In some parts of Uganda, civilization is becoming more modern, cities are being built, internationally known companies are establishing places of business there, and various avenues of entertainment are becoming common place. Yet, none of these things will bring joy to people that are in darkness. Sexual immorality has brought a high rate of HIV/AIDS into the country, witchcraft is common and is causing a rise in ritual child sacrifices in an attempt to win favor with evil spirits, and thereby Satan has kept people in bondage to sin and it’s darkness.
Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ came to be the light to the world, to seek and to save that which was lost, bringing people out of darkness. He has commissioned us to do the same in preaching the gospel to every creature. The purpose of the gospel and the reason Pastor went to Africa is found in Acts 26:18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me (Christ). We didn’t send pastor to Uganda to change them to be more like America, but for the glory of God that people may have life more abundantly and life eternal. With that being said, the power of the gospel does change the culture. Sometimes there is too much emphasis on “contextualizing” the gospel, when the focus should be on the transformation of the culture by the gospel. Culture is “a way of life,” and the gospel of Jesus Christ will change our “way of life” if we repent and place our faith in him. If Uganda simply became a place in which witch-doctors acknowledged a Cross and that Jesus could help them better their lives, yet they remained involved in demonic activity and human sacrifice, then we have not properly confronted the culture with the Gospel (or it has not been properly received). The gospel received brings a radical change to lives and shows fruits of repentance, “ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” I Thess 1:8. Thank God that he brings us out of darkness by the gospel!
Remember to pray and fast for Pastor and Anna as they are going into a place of darkness to bring the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Also, don’t forget that there are countless multitudes of people we see every day in our own community who yet abide in darkness without hope, and you are the one to give them the good news that we can become children of God by faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26).
View the following link to read a very interesting news article titled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem
Revelation 5:9-10 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.
Thank You Westside!
by Craig HoustonJust a quick note to the Westside family to say thank you for being such an awesome church! As your pastor it is hard to express the joy that I felt after hearing how you showed up in force approximately 50 to attend the charter service for Lighthouse Baptist Church of Port Townsend. Having been in the same shoes as Pastor Jason Savage over 11 years ago in St.Helens, Oregon planting Riverside Baptist Church I know it was a huge encouragement. Many things are needed when planting a church, money, prayer, people, but I can say with certainty that more than anything church planters need encouragement.
The MacDonald family also shared with me how encouraged and cared for they feel after experiencing the love of the church family this past few weeks as their daughter in law was in the hospital. Mary passed away on Friday night after a very difficult season in the hospital. Dr. Green and the nursing team worked tirelessly to save her but ultimately God had other plans. Please continue to pray for and support Jason as he has suffered the loss of his wife. For those able to make it the memorial service is being held at 1 PM on Friday March 12, 2010 at the church.
Pray for Haiti!
by Craig HoustonIn the last few days I have been seeking to find out how we can best help the people of Haiti following the 7.0 earthquake last week. Thousands of people have perished with untold numbers of people still unaccounted for. There are also now thousands of new orphans added to an already huge population of parentless children in this very impoverished nation. Food, water, clothing and shelter are in very short supply.
What can we do?
Pray for the people of Haiti!
Give to the church, so that together we can help with the needs of the people of Haiti in a substantial way through a trusted source on the ground already!
Possibly Go! I am currently working to find out if there is a way that we can send a small team of people to go and help care for children that are being moved to Orphanages located outside of the epicenter of the quake. These Orphanages are in desperate need of funds, as well as volunteers to care for the large influx of children. Maybe God would have you prepare to go for a week or two to help minister the grace of God to children who have just lost everything.
The people of Haiti need one thing more than any other and that is the Hope of Jesus Christ!
Sunday!!! Back in the Pulpit
by Craig HoustonJust a quick post to say I am so excited to be back in the pulpit preaching on Sunday!
Though we didn’t get to go to Bend, Oregon as originally planned (hopefully a little later) we did get to visit family for a few days in Astoria. We spent most of our time at home accomplishing several household cleaning projects, organizing bedrooms, the living room, kitchen and even cleaning out the basement. We are now on a first name basis at Goodwill and the dump!
I was also able to get my study almost totally back in order thanks to Anton’s help these past couple of weeks. My floor has been repainted, around 2000 books that have been in boxes since being cataloged in a software program back in June are finally back on the shelves. (Thanks to Dan Savage who was able to lend a hand with data entry before he got his new job.) I am looking forward to a new productivity as it has been hard at times to focus with my study in boxes.
In my spare time Anton and I also launched my new website SoundPulpit.com which will host a blog along with an archive of all of my preaching searchable by date, text, series, service and topic. It is up and running but will require a lot of work getting all of my sermons loaded up. When it’s finished I hope it will be a great resource to the saints whom I have the privilege to serve and the two or three people who may read this. 
2010 Ten years after Y2K and some of you still have rice left!
by Craig HoustonCan you believe that it has been ten years since the Y2K scare? It is truly amazing how fast the time goes by. James 4:14 says … For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away.
So here it is already January 3rd, 2010 and I am still trying to figure out if we are supposed to say Twenty Ten or Two Thousand Ten. I guess in the end it really does not matter, but a lot about the new year and the new decade ahead does matter. My prayer for 2010 is that personally and as a church body we will desire to do all to the Glory of God, to make more of Jesus Christ, seek to focus more on others and less on ourselves.
If thinking about the year ahead or even the decade ahead causes you to be filled fear, may I share a couple of verses that my wife Emily and I have been meditating on as of late, recognizing what a huge impact they have made on our lives this past decade.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
We are so prone to want to lean on our own understanding and only trust God with some of our ways, but God desires us to trust Him in ALL of our ways and when we do He will direct our paths in a far greater way than we ever could in our own understanding and planning.
May the Lord richly bless you in the year 2010 and the decade to follow if the Lord wills.
P.S. Please give the rice away!
Larry Chappell Cancer Surgery Today
by Craig HoustonPlease pray as Larry Chappell is in surgery today in L.A. to remove cancer from his body. This surgery is vital and we must pray for God’s miracle working power to intervene on Larry’s behalf.
James 5:16 …the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
Pray for Larry Chappell
by Craig HoustonDear Westside Family,
I want to ask each one of you to pray for one of my friends in the ministry named Larry Chappell. I first met Larry in 1998 when I attended the Spiritual Leadership Conference in Lancaster, California where his father Paul Chappell is the Pastor. He was just about 14 at the time and was very involved in the ministry with his father. Today Larry is married to Ashley and serves as an Assistant Pastor at Lancaster Baptist Church.
Larry recently had an emergency surgery in which a cancerous tumor was found. He is now scheduled for a second surgery on Monday, December 28, 2009 in L.A. Please join me in prayer for Larry to be healed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is the great physician. Also please pray for the peace of God to be upon he, Ashley and the entire Chappell family.
Fathers Man Up Part III
by Craig HoustonFathers Bring Up vs. 4
In the first post under the title of “Fathers Man Up”, we looked at the importance of fathers taking responsibility for raising their sons and daughters in the ways of the Lord. In the second post, I wrote about how the scripture admonishes us as fathers to not provoke our children unto wrath.
In this third post, I want to look at the rest of the admonition found in Ephesians 6:4. God’s call for fathers is to be proactive in your efforts to bring your children up in the ways of the Lord. This is no small “weekend investment”, as many fathers may think, but will require you to invest your life into your children which will produce great returns.
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go and when there are old they will not depart from it.
First, God has called upon us to nurture our sons and daughters.
The dictionary defines nurture as 1. to care for a young thing: to give tender care and protection to a child, a young animal, or a plant helping it grow and develop. 2. Encourage to flourish to encourage somebody or something to grow develop, thrive and to be successful. 3. To keep a feeling in the mind for a long time.
Every child whether a boy or girl needs and longs for a nurturing relationship with their father. They want to flourish in life and yet they just don’t know how on their own. They need tender care and protection to grow into men and women who honor God and succeed in life. The Bible gives several specific areas that will help us nurture our children so that they may thrive.
Nurturing your children begins with family discipleship. Please understand I am not simply speaking of daily family devotions, though that must play a vital role in the process. Family discipleship is truly a way of life in which God’s will is desired in all that you say and do in the home, at work, and in the community. What you teach your son in the wood shop and on the soccer field. In all things God must be at the center. His Word must guide everything that you do. Deut 6:1-9 gives this picture of loving God first and living for God when you rise up, when you walk in the way and when you lie down. The point is that nurturing your children is not a 30 minute a night program. It takes all of life to train them up in the ways of the Lord. (This is where many parents have falsely claimed Proverbs 22:6 expecting God to keep His promise that their wayward children will return to Christ because of the fact they brought them to church when they were young. The problem with this is the verse says they needed to be trained up in the ways of the Lord and it is speaking about all of life not just Sunday.)
You also need to nurture in your children a deep love for the Word of God. This is not done simply by telling them over and over that the Bible is God’s Word, but rather by living it out before them and showing them how it answers life’s greatest questions. If you don’t love the Word of God and seek to obey what it teaches, than neither will your children. On the other hand, if you love the Word and live by the Word it will change their lives. Deut 11:18-19, 2 Tim 3:14-17
One of the greatest needs of our children’s lives is for you to give them your Heart and seek to win theirs. Mal 4:6; Prov 23:26. This will only take place through a genuine investment into your sons’ and daughter’s lives which will require both quality and quantity time as well as genuine emotional investment. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO BE AFFECTIONATE WITH YOUR CHILDREN!!!! You may not have experienced much affection from your own father but that is no excuse for holding back from your children what you know they desperately desire. Hugging, snuggling and just feeling safe in daddy’s arms are vitally important to your children. (This includes your daughters when they start becoming young women and you begin feeling a little bit uncomfortable. This is the time in life when they need Dad to step up, not to step back in the area of counsel, affection and protection.)
FATHERS NURTURE YOUR CHILDREN!!!!
Blackberries
by Jason Saling
Romans 6:6-23, I Timothy 6:6-11
Everyone loves homegrown blackberries! Blackberries are very pleasant to the taste, but some places are just not so convenient to have blackberry bushes growing. A few years ago in order to make improvements to our church’s landscaping, we needed to get rid of the unsightly blackberry bushes. Long vines were all around us seeming to want to choke and trap us. Along with the vines were sharp thorns that scratched and tore us. Using blackberries to illustrate a scripture truth, let’s liken blackberries to sin. The berries taste so delicious, just as sin is pleasurable for a season. We are enticed to pick the berries, but along also come the overpowering vines and thorns. Comparably, sin is consuming and destructive to our life.
When we were working on improving the landscaping of the church, we cut back all of the blackberry bushes, by the next Summer they were fully grown again. I thought of methods to try to kill these bushes that next Summer. Trimming them just helped them grow back abundantly. On hot sunny days the sun would burn and wither the vines, but after a few cool days and nights the vines would revive. I’ve seen widespread burns before, but the bushes would also rejuvenate over time. I tried using poison, but after a rainy evening it would deem ineffective.
Often we try to trim or cutback on our sin to a “moderation” that we think we can handle, only to have it flourish abundantly in it’s dominion over us. We’ll gain a fire and zeal for the Lord, but only when the wind blows our way. We’ll draw nigh unto the Sun of righteousness, but we soon slip back into darkness when offenses come. The Holy Spirit will fill our life with joy, howbeit when we get self centered we choose to follow the lusts of our flesh. The only sure way to get rid of the blackberry bushes was to dig out the roots. The only way we’ll conquer sin in our life is if we’ll go beyond the surface and dig out the root of our sin crucifying the old man in us. Resist the temptation of sin when it comes your way, and when possible, avoid the very presence of temptation (Proverbs 4:14-15). We can only have this victory over sin with a Spirit-filled life through the power of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Fathers Man Up Part 2
by Craig HoustonFathers Provoke Not
Ephesians 6:4 And, ye fathers provoke not your children unto wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
First, through sins of commission, which include sins that a father commits against his children. These may be things such as provoking through an angry spirit when James 1 says the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God, or neglect of their physical needs when Scripture teaches us that those who don’t provide for their own are worse than infidels. Also, cruelty and abuse physically, sexually or emotionally of which the Scripture teaches that if one offends a little one it were better for him to tie a millstone about his neck and jump into the sea. Other sins committed could be listed such as sarcasm, ridicule, and favoritism which can be very destructive to any child.
Secondly, we can provoke through sins of omission. These are not things that we do to our sons and daughters but the things that we should do and don’t. Neglect through not being involved even though we live with them in the same house and they are craving our attention. Living as hypocrites in our homes pretending to be one person in front of other Christians and someone different in our homes. Another big way that we provoke our children to wrath is through broken promises of simple things like, reading a book, playing a game, going on a date or going on a walk. The Bible says hope deferred maketh the heart sick.
Brothers, we do not provoke our children through a lack of perfection in our lives, but rather through a lack of integrity. Your children will love you more if you acknowledge to them your faults and seek forgiveness right away when you have responded to them wrongly. They desire to be close with you and they know that you are not perfect because neither are they.
May we seek to not provoke the wonderful children that God has given to us so that we do not discourage them in their walk with the Lord, their obedience toward their parents and their effectiveness in the World.
Colossians 3:21 Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
Joseph a Picture of Christ
by Jason SalingThis past Sunday morning (July 12th), we looked at the life of Joseph. In the circumstances that surrounded Joseph’s life we see the depravity of man in his brother’s anger and hatred toward him, the selling of him into slavery, deceiving their father about Joseph’s status, and we see Joseph suffering imprisonment due to false accusations. None of us deserve anything better than the wrath and judgment of Almighty God due to our sin. Despite the hardships Joseph faced because of the wickedness of his brothers, we saw that the Lord was with Joseph during the whole ordeal and that God’s Sovereign hand was giving a beautiful picture to illustrate the Shiloh that would come out of the tribe of Judah. Shiloh, meaning the peacemaker, was a prophesy spoken through Jacob regarding Jesus Christ around 1600+ years before he was even incarnated in the flesh (Genesis 49:8-10). Jesus Christ is the peacemaker, the Prince of Peace, being the mediator between God and man, to those that repent and place their faith in Jesus Christ. Sunday we went over a few of the ways that Shiloh was pictured through life of Joseph, but time would not have permitted to go over all of the examples. So click here to see some more fascinating examples of how Christ was foreshadowed from the beginning of time. If you have not yet heard the message, you can do so by going to our sermons page.
New Website Update
by Craig HoustonFor those of you who have been trying to download sermons or check out content on the new website www.bibledirectionforlife.com I want to apologize for the troubles you have been experiencing. We were not able to upload new content due to some outside hackers who tried to corrupt the new site. We should have all the bugs worked out soon and hope that the new site will be a blessing. Thank you for your patience!