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Unfashionable

Posted on June 11th, 2011 by Pastor Craig Houston

The great guide of the world is fashion and its god is respectability- two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around on society to know what to do? You watch the general current and then float upon it! You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so! You ask, “Is it fashionable? If it is fashionable, it must be done.” Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than common consent of fools.   Charles Spurgeon

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Rest a while!

Posted on May 31st, 2011 by Pastor Craig Houston

“And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” Mark 6:31

I thought of these words of Jesus to His disciples while enjoying a much needed vacation with my family. Jesus desires to restore our strength physically, spiritually, and emotionally. We just need to trust Him enough to come apart and rest a while and let Him handle everything while we are gone.

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Reflections

Posted on April 26th, 2011 by Pastor Craig Houston

Reflections on 9 years pastoring Westside Baptist Church in Bremerton, Washington.

This past Sunday marked nine years since I was called to be the pastor of Westside Baptist Church. This time of year always causes me to pause and reflect on what the Lord has done through these years of my family being privileged to be in the ministry, let alone having had the opportunity to minister here at Westside.

My relationship with the church began in December of 2000, when I called to get directions from “Bro. Bill” Wambsganss to attend a pastors fellowship meeting that the church was hosting. Before the phone call ended, “Bro. Bill” had asked me if I would be willing to preach, which I gladly excepted with fear knowing that I would be preaching to several seasoned pastors. The meeting was a great blessing and something unique began to take place in my heart. I shared with my wife something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be great to pastor here one day” to which she brushed off as we were busy about the work of church planting. You need to understand that at this season in our lives we regularly traveled to churches throughout the Northwest to report as missionaries and it was not my custom to say things like that about places that I went.

About a month later “Bro. Bill” called and asked if I would come and preach for a week long 35th Anniversary Conference being held at the church. During that week, ten years ago, the Lord solidified in my heart and mind that someday I would pastor in Bremerton as he gave me a heart for the people and the city. One other thing began to happen…. this time Emily began to sense that indeed the Spirit of God seemed to be at work.

Fifty one weeks later, nine years ago this Sunday, I was affirmed by the church as the new pastor. Now to be fair, I left out a lot of details of God’s testing, trials of life, and temptations, faced during that season that God was using to prepare us for the work that would be ahead. Much of the hard times I am now thankful for, though during that season of our lives, it seemed like we were being slowly crushed for an eternity.

The past nine years have been the most wonderful years of our lives though they have not been without heart ache and tribulation. I think I can say for our entire family that we wouldn’t want to trade them for anything else. We have been privileged to see many people come to faith in Christ, follow in believers baptism, and truly grow in the grace of Christ. We have also seen Christians being helped in seeing the need to follow truly Biblical practices in relation to raising Godly families.

We have seen hundreds of people come and go due to the fact that we live in a military community (which is something you never get use to as it rips your heart out to constantly have to say goodbye). We have experienced seasons of great revival and seasons of difficulty but through it all, God has been faithful.

Most days pastoring Westside have been a little bit of heaven on earth, and on a few others it has quite honestly been an emotionally crushing experience. But everyday serving Jesus is a high and holy calling and is ALWAYS a great privilege and honor no matter what each day may bring.

The Lord has allowed me to work with great men on staff including RJ Broxton, Chuck Morris, Jason Saling, Paul Gentry, Phillip Browning, John Goetsch JR. and John Moss. All men I love and am thankful for having been privileged to labor with and pray for God’s richest blessing’s in their respective ministries.

Our family has also grown in the past nine years. We came with Naomi, Anna-Renee’, Samuel, Daniel, Nathanael, and Michael and have since seen the addition of Julia, Lydia, Abigail, and Ezekiel to our happy crew.

What the future holds for the Houston family and Westside Baptist Church, only God knows. It’s hard to believe how fast time has gone by, and we are constantly reminded that life is a vapor that appears for a little while and then is gone. I hope that my vapor will not be wasted.

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God’s Word for the World

Posted on March 14th, 2011 by Pastor Craig Houston

What a wonderful Sunday at Westside Baptist Church. Dan McDonald’s presentation on the priority of publishing and distributing the Word of God to the Nations was excellent. Then we had the prilvelege to hear Tom Tracht from Uganda, Africa share what God is doing in the multifaceted work their family and ours is involved in. What a blessing to raise funds this year for Bibles for this vital need.

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How to Help Children Love Bible Study

Posted on February 28th, 2011 by Pastor Craig Houston

How to Teach Your Children to Study the Bible
Deuteronomy 31:12-13

When our small group Bible Study began a few years ago, I asked those in attendance what topics they were interested in studying and one that came up in several different ways was the subject of How to study the Bible.

One of the lessons I taught was on the need to teach your children how to study the Bible. So these are the slightly edited notes from that Bible Study.

Parents Must Model Personal Bible Study
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Some things are better caught then taught. In other words, if we say to our children read your Bible but we do not train them by modeling faithful Bible study in our own lives, our children will most likely be provoked to wrath (Eph 6:4) because they see our testimony as fake. Dads and moms, you need to know that being authentic is important in raising your children. They will most often do what you really do, which we all know is sometimes a tough pill to swallow.

If you are a single mother trying to raise a son or daughter who loves Jesus, don’t lose hope because the situation isn’t God’s best. Strive to by like Eunice, Timothy’s mother, who passed on, with the help of her mother Lois, an unfeigned (sincere, not fake) faith to her son Timothy. 2 Timothy 1:1-7

Parents Must Lead in Family Bible Study (family altar)
The key with family Bible study is to keep it simple, real, regular, and involve the children.

Read and teach the Bible to your family 2 Tim 3:14-15
Have each child share what they have learned and apply it to life.
Pray together

Other things can be added to family altar/Bible study, such as:
Praise the Lord in Song and thanksgiving
Bible memory
Working together on their Bible study lessons from church
Bible Trivia game etc.

Parents Must Disciple the Family with the Bible
Deuteronomy 6:1-10

We must raise our children with God at the center of all of life not just the spiritual part because all of life should be spiritual. That is the principle of Deuteronomy 6 which is the Hebrew discipleship passage that all children would be raised to know. This is why it not just important to model personal Bible study or to have family Bible study, but to live out your life Biblically with pleasing Christ as the number one objective in everything that you do. That way your children see not just church life, but family finances, business practices, political ideology, education, social life, and even recreation as things that must been done to the Glory of God and there is no way to do that we without studying what God’s word says about every topic. 1 Corinthians 10:31

Do you want your children to love Jesus? Then love Jesus!

Do you want your children to love people who need Jesus?
Then love people who need Jesus!

To often children raised in Christian homes (maybe better put church going homes) do not desire to follow Christ because their parents said they loved Jesus and went to church faithfully, but otherwise lived their lives like everyone else. Their passion was not for Jesus and the people of the World who needed to know Him. Their passion was for the World.

May we live our lives in such a way that our children know that even though we sin and are in constant need of the mercy and grace of God that our love for Christ and our love for people is real. Which when you boil it all down the point of the Bible especially Deuteronomy 6 and the greatest commandment that Jesus gave us in Matthew 22:34-40 is what really matters anyway.

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