As I said last night, these insights are taken from a sermon by Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan preacher in London.  While the sermon was given hundreds of years ago in 1644, the helpfulness and truth of these insights rings as true as ever today.  Here is Mr. Burroughs first suggestion for how we can keep our heart soft before the Lord…

1. Search much into the riches of God’s grace in the covenant.  

Labor much to understand the glorious riches of the covenant of grace.  There’s nothing that works tenderness more, nor preserves tenderness more, than the glorious mercy of God in Jesus Christ… 

The more any man or woman converses in the meditation of those mercies, in laboring to dive into those mercies, the more they will get and preserve the tenderness of their heart.

We keep our hearts soft before God by continually remembering how amazing His grace truly is.  We preach the gospel to ourselves every day, reminding ourselves that we are more sinful and weak than we ever dared to admit and we are more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared to hope.  

Take some time this week to reflect on how great the mercy of God is.  Think about your sin - the sin of your past and the sin you are currently struggling with.  Meditate on the fact that this sin was laid on Jesus - He bore the punishment and weight of our sin.  He endured the unthinkable punishment of God’s wrath so that you and I could be forgiven and made clean.  And he did it all because of LOVE for us!  

For so many of us, we have allowed our hearts to grow calloused towards these glorious truths.  My prayer is that this week, as we reflect on the great mercy of God, we would overflow with the joy of these words penned by Charles Wesley:

And can it be that I should gain 
an interest in the Savior’s blood! 
Died he for me? who caused his pain! 
For me? who him to death pursued? 
Amazing love! How can it be 
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? 

This morning, we started a new series at Kaleo called The Approach, and for the next three weeks we’ll be talking about how we approach (hence the name) the Word of God.  This is such and important area for us to examine - too often we grow numb and apathetic to the miracle that is the Bible - God Himself revealing his nature and heart to us!  If you missed this morning’s message, be sure to listen to the audio.

One of the key elements of what we talked about today is couched in a little phrase about Josiah - “…because your heart was penitent…”  Now, older translations used  the word “tender” instead of penitent, and I think I like that.  It gives a picture of how our hearts are to be before God as we read His word - soft, moldable, sensitive.  One of the greatest helps for me this week came from a sermon on this text preached by a Puritan pastor named Jeremiah Burroughs in 1644.  In it, he shares some really practical advice on how we can keep our heart soft towards God - I’ll be sharing little pieces of that each day here in the blog, so be sure to check back throughout the week.

For tonight, I’ll leave us with this quote - it struck me as to how true this has been in my life, and imagine in many of yours as well. 

Oh, labor to maintain your tenderness, for know that, though the Lord works tenderness in our hearts, unless we are careful, we are in a great deal of danger of growing hard again.  Have you never experienced this?  Have you never had your hearts yield and melt before God for a time, and yet within a little time you have felt your hearts more hardened?  Certainly, if you are acquainted with your own hearts you will feel this.  And therefore, while you feel God working tenderness, labor to maintain this, and desire the Lord to preserve this in your hearts.

I love you all, and I am praying for us this week that as a church family we would have a love for God’s Word and a heart that is tender and open towards how God wants to change us through the Scriptures. 

Pastor Bill

I came across a quote this week that I think goes hand in hand with what we’ve just finished talking about in our series in Galatians.  This is from a book called The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges.  

To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life.

Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day reminds us that we are indeed sinners in need of God’s grace….It helps us to consciously renounce any confidence in our own goodness as a means of meriting God’s blessing on our lives. Perhaps more importantly, though, preaching the gospel to ourselves every day gives us hope, joy, and courage. The good news that our sins are forgiven because of Christ’s death fills our hearts with joy, gives us courage to face the day, and offers us hope that God’s favor will rest upon us, not because we are good, but because we are in Christ.

How can we encourage each other to make this a regular aspect of our lives?

So like I mentioned in the church-wide email yesterday, we’ve got these things around Kaleo called “common groups”… they’re really an invaluable tool in building a strong community in our church. The basic premise behind them is that we’ve probably got people in our church who eat at the same places, enjoy the same hobbies, or have the same interests but are doing all those things by themselves (or maybe with just a couple others). All a Common Group does is give us a way to communicate those interests across the spectrum of Kaleo, hopefully connecting people in areas that could easily be overlooked as “routine”.

All that to say: there is nothing “routine” about the idea Rustin R. came up with for a new group… it’s genius. Houston is blessed with an abundance of quality tex-mex cuisine, and I can actually recall 4 separate conversations I’ve had in the past 2 months that centered entirely around “where do you think the best ________ food can be found?” (guys like to talk about who makes good food). So what’s better than getting a group of guys together to hit up several of the best tex-mex joints in town, rate each place in a variety of categories, and get to hang out in the process? Not much.

So it’s all going to start on August 8th, and we’ll do at least 5 restaurants, but the good news is that Rustin has created a FANtastic blog to share specific info on how he’s organizing it, share a bit of humor along the way, and share our results after grading each place. Sharing is caring, or something like that, right? Anyways, check it out: http://houstontexmexjourney.blogspot.com/

Nothing like a little blog-to-blog promotion.

Peace,
Kyle 

It’s been a little slow on the blog lately.  Let’s try this…

This past Sunday, we talked about serving others in the church out of love - going out of our way, giving up our comfort and rights, for the benefit of others at Kaleo.  Has anyone done that this week? 

Leave a comment and brag on someone else - what did they do to reach out to you, serve you, include you, help you, etc?  Let’s tell some stories about how we are putting what God is teaching us into action…

Pastor Bill

Just for clarity’s sake… the title I just put on this post IS a reference to the 1989 smash hit by the Beastie Boys. Not an abrasive yell directed towards the lovely women of Kaleo. I promise, I’m not a huge jerk.

Alright, now that I got that out of the way, I did want to take a few minutes and share a few thoughts on why we’re so excited about the upcoming women’s retreat. The bulletin on Sunday morning is great and all, but it’s kind of limiting and doesn’t lend itself well to anything outside basic details. The weekly email helps a little bit, but blog posts… oh, sweet blog posts… they let you ramble on (errr, “share information”) as long as you wish.

Ok, so why a women’s retreat? First of all, it’s so important to be able to take extended breaks “away from it all”. Rest is part of the natural rhythm God has built into us since the beginning of time. Where did the idea of resting on the Sabbath come from? I’m pretty sure God didn’t get tired after the 6 days of creation. In fact, God takes our rest so seriously that in some places He says “you will rest and party or I will kill you” (loosely paraphrased). Or look at the world around us: plants produce for a season, animals hunt and gather just to lay down and sleep, but for some reason we tend to think that if we’re not constantly moving we’re just being lazy. So opportunities like this one, for you to just take a break and slow yourself down, are so very important. And, we believe, a reflection of the natural rhythm God created in our world.

But this isn’t just an opportunity to find solitude and rest, it’s also a chance to build a strong, genuine community among the women in our church. Romans 12 contains quite possibly my favorite passage on what our community of Jesus-followers should look like (verses 9-21). It starts with the phrase “let love be genuine”, another way it could be translated is “let your love be without hypocrisy”. Paul then goes on to list out one thing after another that we should be about, but that first phrase sets the tone. So if we’re going to love each other genuinely (without hypocrisy), we MUST at the very least know each other and be unified together. And that’s what the main topic of conversation will be at the upcoming retreat: how to build unity and create a place where people are known and loved.

So there’s my soapbox for the week, I hope that you found something or other of value as you read it. Here’s all the details for the retreat in nice summary-form:

What: Kaleo Women’s Retreat
When: August 8-9
Where: The Streger’s lakehouse in Navasota (about an hour outside Houston via 290)
What to bring: $10 for food, a Bible
RSVP: email Meagan Galbraith at
meagan.galbraith@gmail.com in order to help her plan sleeping/driving arrangements

Peace,
Kyle Mathis 

How do you measure how we are doing as a church? For many, the first answer that comes to mind is summed up in a funny phrase that pastors joke about - “nickels and noses”. In other words, many people look at the church’s budget and Sunday morning attendance as the bottom line for how healthy a church is. Now, don’t get me wrong - both of those are important, and Kaleo has grown recently and is doing better in both of those categories than every before. Praise God for that!

But to stop there is a mistake. We believe that Kaleo is so much more than an event on Sundays, but instead is who we are - a family of God’s people living our lives together on a mission. As a church family, we want to continually be growing together in three areas of our life: Intimacy with God, Community with Believers, and Influence with Others. For us, how we are doing goes beyond simply attendance and budget and gets into the day-to-day rhythms and practices of our lives. Is the Gospel being reflected in how we live each and every day?

One of the ways that the pastoral team is trying to keep watch over our life as a congregation is through getting an honest sense of where we are currently at, so that we might prayerfully consider where the Holy Spirit is leading us to develop and grow in the coming months. Two weeks ago, we had a brief survey for you to complete on Sunday morning. Being the middle of summer, however, we understand that a number of you were not present that week and didn’t get a chance to take the survery. So that we can get a complete and accurate picture, if you have not completed a paper copy of the survey, would you please click the link below and complete the short survey. It should only take about five minutes, and you have the option of remaining completely anonymous - so please be as honest as possible.

Click here to take the survey!

Thanks in advance for your help - it’s an honor to serve you!

Pastor Bill

Hello everyone!  Each Monday, we open the floor for discussion about what happened in our community yesterday as we gathered for worship.  It’s a great place to leave a comment and thank someone for their service, ask a question, or share something that was encouraging or challenging from that week’s message.

This week, I wanted to include something that really went hand in hand with the message yesterday - freedom is born of God’s promise, not of anything we do.  We are forgive, tranformed, and set free beacause of the finished work of Jesus on our behalf.  No matter how many times we hear that, it never ceases to amaze me - God’s grace is absolutely incredible.  Below I’ve included a section from the Heidelberg Catechism, a great summation of the Christian faith.  I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 60 

How are you right with God?
Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned or been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept this gift with a believing heart.