Author Archives: thistletownbaptist

These guys led the service at our church yesterday and they did a bang up job. Our guest preacher was Brett McBride, Executive Director of Urban Promise Toronto and he preached a message that exalted the Saviour through an explanation of the biblical Gospel. It is such a great blessing to hear the Gospel truly explained by someone who truly understands what grace is about.

Urban Promise has been working out of our facilities for eleven years and we are glad that they are with us. They are a crucial part of the ministries of our church. Some of our own youth work for them and several of our own children and youth are part of the program.Many good contacts into the community have been made because of their efforts.

This video is old. It is from the summer of 2011. Colin McCartney is no longer the director and some of the workers interviewed in this video no longer work for them. But it does give an idea about what Urban Promise does at our church.

Happy Mother’s Day. To help celebrate here is Proverbs 31. The most important thing to note about this set of instructions is that they come from a mother to a son. So often this text gets treated like some unreachable standard set down by men. It is neither unreachable nor set down by men. It is the God inspired instruction of a mother to her son. This is an “oracle that his mother taught him”.

The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him:

The Woman Who Fears the Lord

From time to time I go to the mall near our church to sit in the food court, watch people, walk around and get to know the merchants and greet people whom I already know. On the way to the mall I usually pray “Lord, put someone in my path today with whom I can talk about spiritual things and get to the Gospel. You know that I do not meet people easily and it is unlikely that I will push into a stranger’s day”. (It almost reminds me of the prayer “O Lord, make me right. You now I’m not going to change my mind”.) And He answers (the first prayer, not the second). He puts people in my path. I have given the Gospel to several people, counselled others, chatted up still more, talked to spiritual drifters about why they no longer come to church. I have met the security guards, people who practically live in the mall and people who recognize me and who think that I remember them. It is one of my favourite activities, which is a miracle in itself because I do not meet people easily, less so if there is no one to introduce me and even less if it is up to me to come up cold turkey to strangers. But God answers the prayer and I am very grateful.Part of what makes it so enjoyable is seeing people laughing together, enjoying one another’s company, playing with their children.

It is also one of the most heartbreaking activities I do. I see people arguing with their mates, parents berating their children, and tears. I see people sitting alone and I wonder if it is by choice or if they come to the mall just to be with others because there is no one at home anymore. Many of the conversations deal with someone else that the speaker has an issue with. The language coming out of some people’s mouths would peel paint.It does not take great insight to see pain and anger and frustration and hardship. I makes me wonder what Jesus, with His insights and understanding of people, must have felt when He watched and listened to people.

On the days that I do not actually get into conversations with people, I might read or better yet, take notes in my notebook about what I am observing.

Here are my notes from my last visit.
- There are Muslim prayer beads everywhere.
- There is a field trip in the mall today of people from a home for mentally disabled adults. What is their life like? What special considerations do they get at the judgement? They are getting precious little from their care giver. She is ignoring them and showing next to no care. They ask her questions and get no answer. They point to things but she shows no response. Not a care giver today. What is going on in her life to make her so snarly with these poor people? Did she start out working for them with genuine care and just grew weary? Does the constant need now not register with her? Has care for the needy turned into a job?
- A Rastafarian in an animated discussion two tables over regarding the sins of the established church. I want to eavesdrop but it is far too noisy in here. At least he raises his voice enough from time to time for me to hear a little bit. Should I go and insert myself into the conversation? He would probably welcome the opportunity to debate. I wouldn’t. Not today.
- A simply huge man in a motorized chair. He is not dressed well. He is eating. Need and loneliness ooze out of his pores. What has happened to him to cause him to eat himself into this condition? How do we get so big? Note to self: don’t ever be the reason for anyone to ask this question.
- The lottery booth is not overcrowded today. No draw tonight I guess. The business there is constant though. People going through their prayer beads as they approach the booth. What a fascinating juxtaposition of philosophies.
- A woman pushing a baby in a stroller and obliviously mining the contents out of her nose. O Lord, make me so unaffected by the eyes and opinions of others. O Lord never let me be that unaffected by the eyes and opinions of others.
- Coffee finished. Time to go.

FEBToronto Annual Rally
It’s Our Time
www.FEBToronto.com

Our churches are planted in Toronto. The joys and
challenges of serving in this great city require that we
come together to remind ourselves of our calling, to
rejoice together in what God is doing, and to draw
strength from God and each other as we meet the
challenges of ministry.

Join us as we come to worship, pray, and renew our
commitment to serve Him here.
Wednesday, May 9 – 7 pm to 9 pm
Willowdale Baptist Church
Guest Speaker:
Tom Haines, Church Planting Director

Our Vision
As an Association of Fellowship churches in Toronto, we believe
God is calling us to seek the peace and prosperity of our city
(Jeremiah 29:7).
In order to do this, we will, with God’s help:
1. Recruit and train workers for urban ministry
a) Invest in new leaders for urban ministry (internships,
scholarships, partnering with seminaries for urban
training)
b) Enhance existing leaders through leadership
development in urban ministry
c) Assist search committees in recruiting workers for an
urban setting
2. Renew existing churches
a) Share resources and pulpit supply
b) Provide pastoral accountability and encouragement
c) Develop a strategy for churches in decline
3. Reach our city
a) Develop a vision for church planting within Toronto
b) Establish new urban ministries
c) Partner as an Association in specific projects
4. Partner with the Fellowship
a) Participate in regional and national councils, and in the
Fellowship urban ministry initiative
b) Raise the importance of urban ministry within the Fellowship

The Toronto Association’s greatest desire is to pursue God’s
purpose for our Association for His glory and the good of Toronto.
This may in turn lead to structural change, especially where
greater resources and personnel will be needed in the future.
With God’s help, we look forward to the time when the Toronto
Association is comprised of churches that understand their calling
to Toronto and are serving their communities with faithful gospel
ministry, training workers for urban ministry, partnering with other
churches, sharing resources, and planting churches within
Toronto

Toronto. You love it or you hate it. We love it. We
believe that we have been called to this great city, a city
that God loves too.
It’s not easy serving in Toronto. It’s expensive. Parking
and buildings are hard to come by. Church attendance
is in decline. This is not the most fertile soil.
But it’s exciting to minister in Toronto. Its diversity, its
growth, and its needs call for courage and faith. We
cannot reach Toronto on our own. We need God’s help.
We need to band together. We need to pray that Jesus’
name would be renowned in this city like never before.
We hope that you will renew your passion for ministry in
Toronto tonight as we sing, pray, and hear from God’s
Word.

Please Pray
• Pray for a renewed commitment to this city.
• Pray for Barry Duguid, our new Association Director.
• Pray for our new pastors and churches.
• Pray for church planting in Toronto.
• Pray for the renewal and ministry of our existing
churches.
Thank You
Thank you to Willowdale Baptist for hosting us; for
Morningstar Fellowship for leading us in worship; and to
Tom Haines for speaking.
Offering
Please make out checks to FEBToronto.

Rally Order of Service

Call to Worship
Heart of Praise – “Speak Your Name” (Eb/F)!…Dave Hunt
Worship!…………………………………………………..Dave Hunt
Jesus’s Name (Medley)
I Stand in Awe (G)
Welcome!……………………………………………………Ka Wong
Welcome of New Churches and Pastors!….Barry Duguid
Update on Vision!…………………………………..Barry Duguid
Prayer of Commissioning!………………………..Arc Da Silva
Prayer and Offering
Heart of Praise – “Broken Hallelujah”!……………Dave Hunt
Worship
Sustaining Grace Medley
Scripture – Luke 19:11-27!…………………………..Todd Riley
Introduction of “Tom Haines”!…………………….Darryl Dash
Message “It’s Our Time”!…………………………..Tom Haines
Time of Prayer!…………………………………………..Ken Davis
Closing Song – Be unto Your Name (C/D)
Benediction

Psalm 46:4-5 -
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.

Grab on to this. Psalm 46:4-5 is talking about the church, the people of God. The church is the temple of God. The church is the dwelling place of God. The church is the city of God. The church is the people where God is found. It is to be a people of  peace and safety and help and forgiveness and repentance. The church is the people in whom the healing waters flow – for the good of others. We are to be a place of refuge from a cold unfeeling world. We are meant to be a people and place where we find welcome and hope and help and understanding and love. We are meant to be who God performs His work of lifting and healing and restoring of soul. The people of God are not meant to be a place where we fight and argue and form little teams and cheer on ours while working for the other to fail. There are no teams here. There are no animosities. There is rescue from the mountains falling into the midst of the sea and the waters raging. For this is the place where God is doing His work of refuge and strength. It is the place where Jesus lives and does His work of healing and growing us more into His image. This church, dear people. My church, your church, are to be described by Psalm 46: 4 – 5. Oh what the church in the world has made the church. Let’s make sure that our churches do not fall for it. Let’s each one of us make sure that we are what God is using to bring refuge and strength to others, and that we are not what they need refuge from and strength for.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵  God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶  The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷  The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

I preached from Psalm 46 yesterday and focussed on God’s command to us in verse 10 to “be still and know that I am God”. While studying the Psalm I came across a couple of good quotes regarding being still. The first one  is from Matthew Henry and and his comment that we can be depressed and not dejected is a real jewel. The second is from John Gill. Great stuff. Relevant, pithy, biblical. I hope you find them helpful, as I did.

Henry:

Let his own people be still; let them be calm and sedate, and tremble no more, but know, to their comfort, that the Lord is God, he is God alone, and will be exalted above the heathen; let him alone to maintain his honour, to fulfil his own counsels and to support his own interest in the world. Though we be depressed, yet let us not be dejected, for we are sure that God will be exalted, and that may satisfy us; he will work for his great name, and then no matter what becomes of our little names. When we pray, Father, glorify thy name, we ought to exercise faith upon the answer given to that prayer when Christ himself prayed it, I have both glorified it and I will glorify it yet again. Amen, Lord, so be it.

Gill:

“be still”; not that they should be like sticks and stones, stupid, indolent, and unconcerned at the commotions that were in the earth, and be unaffected with the judgments of God, and be wholly silent and inactive; but that they should not be fearful, nor fretful and impatient, or restless and tumultuous; but be quiet and easy, resigned to the will of God, and live in an assured expectation of the appearance of divine Providence in their layout. And “know”; own and acknowledge that he is God, a sovereign Being that does whatsoever he pleases; that he is unchangeable in his nature, purposes, promises, and covenant; that he is omnipotent, able to help them and deliver them at the last extremity; that he is omniscient, knows their persons, cases, and troubles, and how and where to hide them till the storm is over; that he is the all wise God, and does all things after the counsel of his own will, and makes all things work together for good to them; and that he is faithful to his word and promise, and will not suffer them to be overpressed and bore down with troubles

Ephesians 2:4-7 – But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,  [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Why has God lavished His grace on me? Ephesians 2:7 tells me why. So that He can show me the magnitude of His immeasurable grace in the ages to come. There may be much that is amazing about the grace of God that we are able to glean from the Scriptures and from our experiences on this side of glory. But there is so much more that we shall not, because we cannot, ever come to understand about what God, in Christ, has done for us, until we pass into the next life. God shows His love to us in His desire and plan to demonstrate to us in the ages to come the most glorious truth in all the created order. God plans to show us wonders beyond our imagining.

What would you think you were going to be shown if you were told that God was going to show you wonders beyond your wildest dreams? Stars being formed. Planets exploding. Strange acts of “nature” brought into being by God. The mind cannot comprehend the wonders that exist in a universe this immense. I think that for eternity we will be discovering things that right now we simply cannot handle and can’t begin to imagine. But do you know what God is going to show us that is more spectacular than that? He is going to show us the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. He is going to show us Himself at work in us in grace.

Maybe He is going to show us just how sinful we really were in thought and word and deed and then maybe He’ll ask us what someone who has transgressed that much should get from the God who was transgressed against. And we, with our faces in our hands and with tears in our eyes, will answer that such rebellion should get wrath poured out without mercy. And He will then show us the cross and say that that is exactly what He did. Maybe He will show us just how dirty and rotten our sins made us and then show us how He saw us after we had put our faith in Jesus – as pure and as holy as Jesus Himself. Maybe He’ll take us to the heavenly movie theatre and replay the times we knew to do the good yet chose to do evil instead. And maybe He’ll show us just what our hearts really looked like while such decisions were being made. And then he’ll show us the heart he replaced it with – and it will look exactly like Christ’s. And seeing all this will make us bow and cry and worship and thank Him for the wonder of grace. And then maybe He’ll show us what we will be for eternity now that we have been permanently rescued from the power and bent to sin. We cannot rightly imagine it now because all our imaginings are happening from a mind and heart still stained by the fruit of the fall (pun completely intended).

If I were to tell you that I had marvelous and stunning things to show you and then proceeded to show you something I had made or written and kept on babbling on about how wonderful it was, you could be excused for thinking that I had a bit of a problem with pride. But that is not true of God. It is not true of Him because nothing can be as great or as magnificent as anything that He does. Nothing can come close to being as glorious as He is. For God to be really kind to us and truly show us wonders beyond our wildest dreams, He must demonstrate Himself. And the greatest thing He can demonstrate about Himself to us will be the cross. It currently stuns angels. It ought to stun us and as much as we are amazed by grace now, one day it will make our hearts explode. God saved us to do the greatest thing He could possibly do – explain grace to us. And that is an indescribably great thing to look forward to.

Here’s a snippet from a Ligonier conference that I picked up from Challies recently. Alistair Begg and RC Sproul answer the question, “Why don’t Christians Care That They Sin?” It’s good, especially Begg’s comments about union with Christ and Sproul’s about our own ignorance of sin. Sproul’s answer in particular sparks several questions in my mind about knowing what our sins are and how much of our sinfulness we do know that is simply because of the cultural setting in which we find ourselves.  Sproul speaks about his own heart and sin and that is very refreshing.

Enjoy the video.

Psalm 56:9 – “But this I know, that God is for me.”

And the question that arises in one’s heart is “Why”? Why is God for me? And the upshot of the answer is, “Because He chose to love me.” It cannot be me. It cannot be my stellar performance. It cannot be my flawless obedience. It cannot be my insightful understandings of the Scriptures. It cannot be my wisdom that puts to silence all those who oppose me. I know it cannot be any of those things because I do not have any of those things. But God is for me. He is for me because I am His child. I am His child because He adopted me into it and made me His son. He adopted me because He chose me and He chose me because He loved me. And He loved me because He is love. When a person comes to grips with these great truths the heart sores, there is a desire  for obedience that such great grace creates in the heart (Titus 2:11-14).

How much of our angst, depression, pessimism and inner turmoil is due to not believing, or feeling, that God is for all He has saved? How often do we question his care and love because of the troubles we are enduring? David, in this Psalm, talks about being trampled (verse 1), afraid (verse 3), injured (verse 5), and opposed (verse 6). And yet he affirms that God is for him. He knows it.

How does he know it, given all that he is enduring? Because God remembers his tossings (verse 8), preserves all his tears and remembers them (verse 8), will turn back his enemies (verse 9). He knows God is for him because he knows that ultimately people can only do what God will allow to be done (verse 11).

These great sustaining truths about God’s care for him bring him to worship. David, because of God being for him even as he is greatly troubled, gladly does what we are all created to do (verse 12). He knows his soul is safe and that nothing that has happened to him can detract him from living in holiness (verse 13).

This text is over 3000 years old. It is amazing how real and up top date it is in its assessment of what it means to travel through life assaulted by all kinds of difficulties; what it means to live for God, be kept by God, worship God and find great consolation in God . Thank you Lord, for this text today.

Exodus 6:9 – “They did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

What an insight into the frail mind of human kind. The people are so crushed by their slavery and the new rule for gathering straw that was initiated in response to Moses’ first encounter with Pharaoh, that they will not listen and are more demoralized than they were before Moses hit the scene. Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their response to Moses, the fact remains that a broken spirit is a powerful obstacle to doing what should be done. It effects the psyche, the body, the heart, the soul. It hinders from getting necessary tasks done. It makes people cynical and hard of hearing. It makes them love the misery they are in more than the hope of deliverance that could be theirs if only they would get up and do something. They need to see that hope really does exist and that the help they have spurned is serious. In dealing with people whose spirits are broken a great deal of patience is needed and a great deal of love for them, a great deal of work needs to be committed to and a great deal of failure needs to be expected. Moses will experience all of this and more but God is on a mission to rescue His people and a broken spirit will not be the thing that will stop Him from getting His mission accomplished. Of course, Moses does not know what God is up to and his response is so very human, hardly like the hero of faith that we normally portray him as being

Exodus 5:22-23 – Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me?  [23] For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

The first thing that God does when the people refuse to join in with Moses is simply tell Moses to continue on in the job he has been given. He reminds Moses that Moses is not God, He is. Things are going according to plan, even when things seem to be heading from bad to worse. God is not asleep, not surprised, and not inactive.

Exodus 6:1 – But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”

This will not be the last time that despondent, grumbling, unfaithful people will cause Moses to complain to God. Moses is reminded to look up more than around, to not let the despondency of these broken spirited people stop him. They will not join in right away. They want to get better and they want better circumstances, but they do not know everything and when we are dispirited, patience is not our most prominent feature. They have been given promises before and things got worse. They have had saviours parachute into their lives before only to see them depart rather quickly when those they were endeavouring to save did not welcome them immediately with open arms and good wishes. Broken spirit people can be helped. But the first task will be convincing them that the offer is genuine, that it will not make things worse, that their new helpers are in it for the long haul and that they really are valuable to and worth saving in the eyes of those seeking to help them. They need to know that God is not asleep at the wheel.

Finally, what an act of grace and faithfulness this whole rescue mission out of Egypt is. It is easy for us, 3500 years after the event to only see this in light of the whole salvation plan of God, which of course it is. But it is also the salvation of a grumbling, faithless, selfish, hard headed, hard hearted group of people. God demonstrates great patience, love and resolve in dealing with them. Kind of like the way He deals with me, and probably with you.