Pastor Hurst

Awake or Awoke: Does It Matter?

Awakened or awoke. Which is it? Does it matter? I have noticed in past decades that awoke is getting the most usage, surpassing awakened. Is there any difference? Perhaps, not, but enough to bother me. I don’t always speak grammatically correctly, but having taught grammar and composition for years, I generally know what is correct. Enough to find wrong usage an irritant. For example, I heard this week a renowned philosopher speaking of people who are lazily “laying around on beds.” Of course, they are not laying on beds. Unless he was referring to chickens who lay eggs. They were lying on beds. Awakened and awoke are like lay and lie. Each pair consists of two different words. There is a dissimilarity: Lay and lie have distinctly different meanings: To lay is to set or put down. To lie is to recline, assume a horizontal position, etc. Awakened and awoke developed as two different words, but they have almost the same meaning. Almost. There is a nuance of difference. Awakened often was used transitively. Bill awakened his children. Awoke was more intransitive. Bill awoke. Awakened and awoke should be easier than lay and lie to distinguish while using. In order of present, past, and past participle forms, lay’s are lay, laid, laid. Lie’s are lie, lay, lain. And there’s the confusion. The past form of lie is lay just like the present form of lay. There is a similar difficulty with awakened and awoke. Their forms are awaken, awakened, awakened and awake, awoke, awoken. Each’s present form is the same. Awakened or awoke? We may have trouble distinguishing between those two like we do with lay and lie. There may not be enough difference that it matters that we do. But there is a difference that does matter. The difference between the Great Awakening in America and the Great Awokening in America. OF those, we must know the difference. Their impacts are drastically different. Great Awakening or Great Awokening? Does it matter? In the 1730’s – 1740’s. America was in spiritual decline. Christians had little fervor. Churches were dead. Society was becoming debauched. God sent a Great Awakening. Dead churches came alive. The youth turned to the church, were born again, and became spiritually enthusiastic. The Word of God was spread with a passion and power that was infectious to all. Society was mightily impacted, prepared for the rigors of the Revolutionary Way. The Great Awakening was the first of several awakenings that God has graciously sent the people of America throughout the years since. These have arrested and slowed America’s slide into ruin and decay. They have brought her people back from the brink. The Great Awokening is something else. Although its seeds and shoots had been present for years, the Great Awokening has burgeoned and boomed since the turn of this century. It was doused with satanic miracle growth during the COVID years. Whereas the Great Awakening was birthed from the promulgation of Truth, the Great Awokening was birthed from the promotion of lies. It begins with the lie is that there exists only one binary—the oppressed and oppressor. The oppressed is always right and the oppressor is always wrong. This interface is overlaid upon every circumstance, issue, situation, and facet of human existence. Applied with prevailing lies that there is no absolute truth, no objective truth, that each has his own truth, the Great Awokening has brought us the craziness of an unlimited number of genders, the idiocy of not knowing what a woman is, the tragedy of children being allowed to be mutilated in an impossible attempt to become a gender opposite of what they are born, the imagination of implicit racism in any not a minority, the hatred of ever-splintering tribalism, the perversion of sexual expression, the travesty of calling terrorists the good guys and the good guys terrorists—and on and on goes the deterioration, destruction, division, and debauchery that the Great Awokening has awakened. Awakened or awoke? Probably using the wrong one is inconsequential. Great Awakening or Great Awokening? Which we have is exponentially consequential. To America. To society. To family. To souls. Enough of this Great Awokening. We need another Great Awakening. We need the Truth proclaimed, the people of God to be passionate about their faith, and the Church to be revived not just politicized. We need prayer meetings not protests. We need the transformation of souls not the transitioning of bodies. We need to fight the spiritual battle and not just rail about the social one. Great Awakening or Great Awokening? Does it matter? Absolutely. Completely. May we believers cry out, “Give us a Great Awakening.” Oh, how we need it. We must have it. If we have not awoken on our own to our need, we need to be awakened by God. It matters! --Pastor Clifford Hurst

Issue 1: The Choice God Would Have Us Choose

On November 7, we Ohioans have a choice to make. Yes or No on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that in essence, legalizes abortion at any stage. Proponents say abortion is all about choice. I would agree. But the question is, "Whose choice?" The mother's? The child's? The leftists’. The ethicists’? The government's. Or God's? In attempted support of Issue 1, horrible scenarios are created and hypotheticals constructed, to try to justify abortion. Two things should be kept in mind about such arguments: 1. There are some truly drastic situations involving incest, pregnant children, rape victims, critical health for mother. Those tragic cases should never be minimized. 2. Neither should they be used to try to justify abortion. Those are a minuscule fraction of those who actually choose to have abortions. Most abortions happen simply because a baby doesn't fit with what the woman wants. That is not my assessment; it is the proponents: They call their whole movement "Woman's Choice." What the woman chooses, what the woman wants. I don't find it as easy as some to simply say that there is never a circumstance where a choice has to be made about a pregnancy. But that is the point. Who or what ultimately makes that choice? And what about Baby's choice? In potentiality, what would Baby's choice be? Baby indicates its choice by striving to live in the drawing back in pain from instruments that would extract and kill it. Choices are often made like this for adults in a brain-dead coma. If a decision has to be made to end life support, the family considers: "What would she (the one in the coma) choose?" They don’t consider just what they would choose for the incapacitated. In the extreme cases above, the decision wouldn't be a choice a mother would have to or want to make. Whatever the medical urgencies or life exigencies, a mother with concern for her baby would not want to make a choice to end her child’s life. She would be saying, “I don't want to make this choice.” This is the point. Pro-choice is about the choice women want to make not about the choice they don’t want to make. Recent protestors have shown this by boasting since abortion is a woman’s right, they would gleefully choose to have an abortion. Fierce proponents of pro-choice continually chant the mantra “autonomy.” A woman should have autonomy over her body. Autonomy literally means self-law. A woman is the final authority over her body. She decides. She chooses. She chooses what she wants. As in so much of life, choices, tough choices must be made. But, for those who believe in Yahweh, the true God, they not only see they must make a choice, but they also desire to leave the choice to Him, the Creator God. Yes, humans have free agency. They can and do have to make choices. But from the beginning, when God put two trees in the Garden, we see that God sets up the choice. God gives the freedom to make a choice. But always, God makes clear which choice He would have humans make. God gave humans a choice. But not a choice of what is right and wrong. He gave a choice to choose between right and wrong. God gives what the choices are. Then, God makes clear what He would have us choose. As He told people again and again. “I set before you life and death. Choose life.” There are some really, really tough circumstances. But one does not have to be governed by those and choose with the desire to choose death. She can be governed by the desire to choose, as God would have her, life. In the end, Issue 1 is about whether a woman should be able to choose what she wants to choose or what God would have her choose. Issue 1 is about choosing life or death. A vote, No, is a choice for life. A choice God would have us choose. Choose life! --Pastor Clifford Hurst

“No!” IS GOD’S ANSWER TOO

Frankly, the little boy’s voice behind us moved me more than the preacher’s booming voice coming across the pulpit in front of us. The child’s one word was weighted more than the many words--not that the many words were not poignant and powerful. That boy’s one word was “No!” The auditorium was crowded. The preacher was concluding a moving message. To bring it home, the man of God boomed a penetrating question to the congregation: “Do you want people to die and go to hell because you weren’t faithful?” As the preacher drew a breath for his next statement and the congregation sat in quiet contemplative conviction, a young boy a few rows behind us cried out a clarion clear, “No!” Children of that age, during the preaching, are normally busy doing something rather than appearing like they are listening—drawing or coloring pictures, playing with a hot-wheel, etc. But I have discovered as a parent, grandparent, and preacher, they are listening and catching far more than one would imagine. Also, children that age don’t recognize a rhetorical question--a question asked to make a point and cause reflection, with no expected verbal response from the listeners. That child was listening and answered as if the minister were in a dialogue with only him. Preacher: “Do you want people to die and go to hell?” Boy: “No!” “No!” as in “Of course not!” “No!” as in “That’s too horrible to even think of it’s happening.” “No!” as in “who could wish anyone go to hell.” “No!” as in “We can’t let that happen without trying to stop it.” It may seem odd, but, though I was hearing the voice of a young boy, probably not much past a toddler’s age, it was as if I heard the voice of God answer the first part of the preacher’s question, “Do you want people to die and go to hell?” In the child’s voice, I heard God’s voice too, “No!” I heard God’s heart behind the voice, “The Lord is not …willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2Pe 3:9). The stark reality is people without Christ do die and go to hell. No amount of new atheism, post-modernism, pluralism, or watered-down, progressive Gospel can change that. But does God desire for folks to go to hell? Ask Him. “God, do you want people to die and go to hell?” He will answer with one Word, “Jesus.” “Jesus” is God’s “No!” to the question of whether God wants people to die and go to hell.” “Jesus” is God’s answer to the question as certainly as “No!” was the boy’s answer. Let’s listen to the dialogue again: Preacher: “Do you want people to die and go to hell?” God: “Jesus.” Because of Jesus, the Word made human, none have to go to hell. His death paid the penalty for our sins. His resurrection assured our subsequent pardon. All who accept Him through faith and repentance are rescued from the destiny of hell. By sending Jesus to die for us, God said, “No! I don’t want people to go to hell.” I just rewound the memory tape in my mind and listened again. Preacher: “Do you want people to die and go to hell …?” Boy: “No!” And there it was. I rewound the memory and listened again to make sure. I was not mistaken. In that boy’s voice was the voice of God. God answered “No!” too.* God answered, “Jesus.” --Pastor Clifford Hurst *”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (Joh 3:16).

A SUNBEAM IN THE SANCTUARY

It was a mixture of wonder and joy, the pure delight of discovery, that I saw on the young girl’s face. It happened in church: I was at a day service of a special meeting. The congregation was standing and worshipping. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see this girl, her face absorbed with full attention, her eyes riveted on her hand which she was rotating in this direction and that, raising it a little and lowering it back. Involuntarily, I turned to see more clearly and thought, “What is she doing?” As children that age sometimes do, she was standing with her feet on the top of the back of the seat in front of her while her mother, arms wrapped around her, held her there. The girl, probably four or five, had had her hand stretched upward and was singing and praising, following the modeling of those older folk around her. It was while doing so that she suddenly noticed that her hand from fingertips to halfway to her elbow was awash with brilliant light. The sanctuary was relatively darkened with no visible windows anywhere. I was puzzled, thinking, “From where is that light coming? I looked ceilingward at the large LED fixtures. No. They were flood lights. They would not be producing the beam on her hand. Only a spotlight would do that. A very bright one. Or the sun. It was then I looked at the wall behind us. High up, about 15-20 feet, there was a window! From that window, a narrow beam of light at an angle extended to the girl’s hand before passing further down to the floor. The girl continued to marvel at the brightness on her hand, examining it closely as she kept rotating it. With the hand opened upward, she was moving her fingers as if the light were water running between them and onto her palm. I am not sure she ever concluded why her hand was lit. Or, ever followed that beam’s path to the window and realized that it was the sun. I do know that with a smile on her face, she just closed her eyes and began to visibly worship Jesus all the while still moving her hand as if she were feeling and bathing it in the light from above. This is why I believe in coming to and worshiping in church. It is in worship that we so often discover that God has focused a beam of light upon some part of our mind, heart, and soul. Light that is unexpected. That is brilliant. That fills us with wonder and joy. When that happens, we know the delight of discovering the warmth of His love, the illumination of His wisdom, and the glow of His grace. It is doubtful if the girl would have noticed the same sunbeam on her hand had she been outside. No. It was in a place of worship that she did. She was in church worshipping and, there it was. A sunbeam from 93 million miles away focused with laser accuracy on her hand raised in worship to God. Wonderful! Yet, from further away, all the way from heaven, God will send forth His beam of light right to that dark place of your heart, your mind, and your life. Lift your hand and see. Better yet, lift your heart. There IS a sunbeam in the sanctuary. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

THE MESSAGE OF THE TREE AND THE RIVER

While in Bible School, I would often hike the railroad tracks out in the country to a clear, swift-moving stream to a place where there was, growing on its edge, a large tree with a root like a chair’s seat and a slanted trunk like its back. There I would sit in the peace and quiet, far removed from the noisy dorm and town, to study my Greek or just to contemplate and muse. I never failed to leave refreshed and renewed. My spot of refreshing was created and made appealing by two features—a tree and a “river.” Those two, Tree and River, figure prominently in the Revelation’s description of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City. Why? Well, for one, they were the features of the original Garden, Eden--the Garden humanity lost and was banished from, because of their sin. Ever since, humanity has been trying to get back to the Garden, to the River and the Tree. Most will never make it. But those who trust in Christ, the saved, the redeemed, are on their way back. One day they will make it to the Tree and the River. Why is making it to the Tree and River so important? What underlies their significance? Both are described with the phrase “of life.” Both give life. But more specifically, a river refreshes and a tree restores. A river provides water for drinking and bathing; it refreshes. A tree provides fruit for food and leaves for healing. This description of the New Jerusalem with Tree and River was first written to a people of God who were harassed, pursued, persecuted, and many times martyred. This beleaguered band of pilgrims, under the constant duress of resisting the pressure to capitulate their faith, had to have been drained, depleted, and beaten up. Oh, they were promised victory. And, yes, they would be overcomers. They would make it to heaven—and by now, have. But here is the reality: The Redeemed will make it to heaven completely victorious, yet, that does not mean they make it unscathed. The promise is that nothing can destroy their soul. But that does not mean that their body, minds, emotions, and hearts have not suffered from the cares of life, attacks of the enemy, wounds of supposed friends, or personal afflictions of body and brain. The reality is that one can be not defeated yet depleted. One can have won yet be wounded. One can overcome but be overfatigued. Think of the soldier who has fought a great battle with a formidable foe. It’s over. He is victorious. He stands with a foot on the vanquished enemy, sword raised high, shouting, “Victory!” Yet, he is exhausted. Blood streams from multiple gashes. He aches in every joint. He carries the grief of comrades who deserted to or were slain by the enemy. However victorious he is, he needs refreshing. He needs healing—restoration. These the Tree and River provide. Upon resurrection or rapture, the refreshing and restoration of the saved one’s glorified body and being will be immediate and comprehensive. At that very nano-moment, he will be finally and completely perfected! Everything healed. All that’s wrong, made right. All that’s corrupted, made uncorrupted. Yet, the Tree and the River symbolize that to arrive at Heaven is to arrive to the refreshing and restoring from the battles passed through, the suffering endured, the exhaustion experienced, the wounds collected, and the hurts inflicted. Much can be said, that here must be left unsaid, about the Revelation’s description of that Tree and River. Something that must be said of the River is that it flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. God is the source. It flows from the Lamb. Significantly, the Lamb is the origin. The River is made possible, coming to the River is made possible, and drinking from the River is made possible, only because Jesus laid down His life as the sacrificial Lamb, paying the penalty for our sins and making eternal life possible. Because of the Lamb, those who believe with make it back to the Garden. They will see the Tree and the River. They will eat of the fruit of the Tree and drink of the River and, consequently, be restored and refreshed. But, though the River flows from the Lamb in heaven and the Tree grows on its banks there, can we not believe that the River flows past the parameters of Heaven just as the original Eden’s river flowed beyond its boundary? And can we not believe that the limbs of the Tree, laden with fruit for the picking, have grown over and beyond the walls of that City? If so, the water of the River flows close by you today and the fruit-laden limbs of the tree droop somewhere near to you at this moment. Because of the Lamb, you can, not having to wait until heaven, today drink and be refreshed, and eat and be restored. That’s the message of the Tree and the River. Pastor Clifford Hurst

AND THAT'S THE HOLY SPIRIT

My older son and I were moving what were to us some large piles of dirt from, in turn, both our places. Using my small pickup truck and a 5’ x 8’ utility trailer, we loaded both, shovel full by shovel full. We made two trips to a rock and dirt dump. There, we had to unload the same way we loaded. Shovel full by shovel full. We worked non-stop and as quickly as we could, but it was still a long, laborious task. As we drudged away at the dirt, many much larger vehicles--dump trucks and dump trailers--backed up next to us and quickly offloaded tremendously larger deposits of much heavier stone and concrete in a fraction of the time we were taking. When one would in seconds rid itself of its load and pull away, I would say tongue in cheek to my son in reference to them, “Show off!” as we continued to shovel. Although we had been working for some time, the much smaller pile of dirt we were leaving on the ground was dwarfed beside the loads they had disgorged. Our pile looked pitiful. How could it look so large in the trailer and so small on the ground? About the time I was thinking that, a worker at the dump drove up in a frontend loader. First, on one side of us then on the other, he lowered his bucket and with ease in one effortless thrust drove forward and pushed a pile over the side of the incline. As we watched the speed and ease with which the frontend loader dispatched the heavy and large deposits of stone and concrete, I pointed first to our sweat-drenched bodies and then to the comparatively tiny pile of dirt and said, “Us in our own efforts trying to do things in our “flesh.” Then I pointed to the frontend loader effortlessly dispatching another dumped deposit, “And that’s the Holy Spirit.” Though I do not believe I spoke them that day, it was the words of the ancient prophet that informed my remark: “…Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Zec 4:6).