Jay StClair

What If God Wanted to Use You Right Where You Are?

Paul, Priscilla and Aquila were  a tent makers. Luke was a doctor.  Lydia was a business woman who dealt in expensive clothes, Dorcas was a homemaker whose abilities allowed her to make clothes for the poor,  Peter, Andrew, James and John ran family fishing businesses, Cornelius was in the military and Zacchaeus worked in government.  All were called by God and he used their gifts, talents and abilities to impact and influence people.  You might call it a Ministry of Presence, God’s Presence in us wherever we live and work.

God is awakening in us a renewed realization that  we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  We are where He lives.  Where we go, God goes!  What an AWESOME thought and privilege!!  He introduces Jesus at His birth as Emanuel, God With Us!  Whether we are with our families, co-workers, friends or neighbors, God’s Presence through us can touch our world! This thought itself turns nominal Christianity upside down.  Jesus in us is EXCITING and POWERFUL!   Jesus said, “YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.  A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on  its stand, and it give light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven.” (Matt. 5:13-16)

So where does your light shine?  Eugene Peterson in the Message says this from Romans 12:1-2

 “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

The Holy Spirit helps us have  that quick and seamless unity of believing and doing that is described in James 2.  God has a calling on each of our lives that can literally change our region, every family, neighborhood, business, school, government- EVERYTHING! 

You see God has a calling on all of our lives. Os Guiness in his book, “The Call” says this about God’s calling.  It is way beyond the very limited view that God calls some people into full-time “ministry”.  God is calling EVERYONE of us so “to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service.”   We are called to Someone (God) to do something which is secondary to Him.  He will use our something as we focus on His Presence in our lives. He leverages everything for His glory when my eyes on are Jesus!

Michael and Cathy Banes are long-time believers who have responded to the Call of God in their own lives as a Fireman at Redding Mill Fire Department and Nurse Practitioner at Freeman Hospital.  Every day they see how God has prepared good things for them to do through His Presence in their lives.  Michael’s thoughts on this subject have been a great encouragement and help in expressing this Call of God.

These are thoughts a lot of us are having…and they are going to change the world!  That is the business of God and He is very good.  What’s your business?

God's Heart for the Poor is Our Heart Too!

This is a letter I sent to Randy about a year ago as we were just beginning our work at Life House. I so appreciated Randy's sermon this past Sunday and as  I was going over my files stumbled onto this letter and it just fit so well with the heart of God Randy was sharing, I wanted to share it with you...

Dear Randy,

I appreciate your heart and leadership.  I writing to give you of some of the fresh  God stories that I am convinced are literally everywhere as people catch the heart of Christ in our own community for the hurting.  In my Bible reading today I was in Matt. 25 and struck again with the simple powerful teaching of “who Jesus is” in our world.  He is the orphan, the naked, poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the desperate, the hopeless, the addicted, the marginalized.  I think you heard the prof. from David Lipscomb U.  speak at the P&T  on the poor in spirit.  His understanding  of the people Jesus was talking to at the Sermon on the Mount were “the left out”.  Thus another confirmation that his self introduction in Luke 4 “I have come to preach good news to the poor.’  Of course, we are all poor when it comes down to it. But he really was talking about the poor.   I am sure you have read through Luke and underlined every time Jesus says something about the poor.  It really is amazing to see his consistent focus.  If Jesus’ words about himself and the poor are true, no wonder the prophet Jeremiah cried out, ~Jer 22:16~  He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD.”  I am grateful for the day you came to me and asked me to pray about starting an Outreach ministry.  I was literally scared spitless at the thought but that is where God wanted me.  I have prayed like I have never prayed before and God has opened doors and He has done things beyond what I ever asked or imagined according to his power at work in me.  I have taken seriously the elder’s admonition to seek the heart of God and His heart burns in my chest deeper and more profound it seems every day.  What God is doing in Joplin at  God’s Resort and Life House, Watered Gardens, Life Choices… and in countless other ways is nothing less than amazing and is being replicated in unique and powerful moves of the Spirit and the heart of God for the lost and hurting all across the nation and world.

Why is his heart so in tune with the poor, why give them so much ink in Scripture?  They are the most vivid picture of us.  They are helpless, so are we.  They are hopeless, so are we. They are captive, so are we.  They are disgusting and smelly and messy and frustrating and ..so are we.  We actually get to see ourselves as we really are without Christ.  It is humbling to take the feet of a drunk, who has worn ill fitting shoes, living on the street and wash those putrid, gross, disease infected feet.  And yet the day I did that for Ed Ambrose (you remember him from mine and Julie’s days years ago at the park downtown with our little girls, feeding the homeless guys who gathered there each night.).  I may have never done anything more significant to the heart of Christ than that day I humbled myself to do that for him.  I loved him in ways I can never explain (Think of him as HIM).  I think I may have understood God’s grace for me better than I ever did before.  The funny thing is Ed never changed.  I did.  When Jesus died on the Cross, He literally took the sins of the whole world and all the pain that went with it.  O so much pain.  With the poor there is no polite, clean way to deal with pain.  There are no acceptable artificial life preservers to hold on to like we in the middle and upper classes have, no nice cars, homes, boats, $.  Nothing to distract them from the pain that defines them, often for generations.  So they prostitute themselves to drugs, alcohol, sex in ways that make even the most vile wealthy heathen shake their head in disgust.  I think that is why Jesus is so attracted to them.    What we are finding out as we walk the streets and pray with people is they are blessed, for theirs really is the Kingdom of God, just like Jesus said.  He has just been waiting for us to leave the four walls of comfort and walk where He walks.  Kerry Cravens told me today at Life House that yesterday she went to Tasha, the widow of the suicide man John.  She went with a new Bible and a heart that burns with the love of Christ for Tasha and her kids, Story, Jillian, ‘Waylon and Lacey.  She told me this was so far outside of her comfort zone all she wanted to do is stay in her house with her four kids and stay away from the “sick and scary” world.  But the sick and scary world is right where Jesus is. Isn’t it strange to think in Jesus own words, the sick and scary world – IS Jesus.  So she went, by faith, because He called her out of the safety of the boat to the winds and waves where Tasha lives and drowns in her sin and sorrow.  So acquainted with grief and sorrow is our Lord.  Remember who He is.  Kerry said she was so afraid she was sick to her stomach and wanted to vomit but she “walked out where Jesus was” -at Tasha’s.  Kerry, her eyes ablaze in the Spirit said it was a God moment!  Tasha was so receptive to the Love and Word of Jesus.  As she walked away from Tasha’s home yesterday she thought of the joy and peace and pleasure of the Lord she experienced and thought came to her mind, “So this is what obedience feels like.”  On the other side of faith is where God wants to take us.  It is in a constant move to the other side of faith, past the fear, intimidation, self-limitations and flat out lies of the evil one that God does his greatest work in us and our world! 

Like the lady who was prayer walking last October in Jeremy Cupp’s neighborhood.  Just walking with Jesus and listening… Jeremy was at the end of his rope.  His hope in life was quickly “going down the toilet” as he said to me Sunday.  Not knowing if God was there but like many of the desperate, hoping against hope He is, he prayed, not really expecting an answer, not really.  He prayed, “God if you are there, let me know, because I am hurting and I need help.”  The words had barely escaped his lips when that prayer walking lady waves from  the end of his driveway.  With a smile she approaches him and begins friendly conversation but finally says, “The real reason I came to talk with you is that God told me you were hurting and needed prayer.  May I pray with you?”  They bowed there heads and  right there, in front of God and all the neighbors they prayed as hot tears of awe and relief came running down Jeremy’s cheeks and dropping on the pavement with the sudden reality that there really is a God who exists who is close to broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Soon he met Eric Gonzales at work and Eric invited him to church at College Heights. He joined the church last Sunday.  “I want to be involved in the mission of this church,” he told me.

Chris Williams is known for hanging with the “left outs”.  I love his heart.  It is the heart of Christ.  There is NOTHING that is rotting our community more than the sin  of drug abuse and the greater sin of dealing it. Chris has met and befriended a former drug dealer named Corby. Corby is a new Christian and attends College Heights now.  Corby invited Christ (I mean Chris but I will let the misspelling stand since they are synonymous in that Chris no longer lives but Christ live in Him and the life he lives he lives by faith in the Son of God who loves him and gave his life for him) to come with him to talk to a room full of desperate drug dealers.  Corby had been telling them how Jesus rescued him and all that Jesus has done to give him real life.  Chris was in the presence of Jesus and Jesus/the drug dealers want him to come back and talk with them some more about this JESUS!  This is how a city and region infamously  known for its drug addiction is and will be delivered!  It is nothing less than a miracle of God, the greater things Jesus promised He would do in we who make ourselves available.

I am humbled to be in the company of such  people in the service of the Lord as the board members and volunteers at God’s Resort and Life House.  I am seeing a holy zeal and boldness for God that is challenging my faith and I love it!  We have seen mountains move and we will see more cast themselves into the sea of God’s amazing grace!  They are pioneers of the kind of love and faith, I am not sure Joplin has ever seen and they know they are completely dependent on prayer and the grace of God’s faithfulness.  How much our world needs  people like them!

Sunday, Cory, a faithful nursery worker at College Heights and UPS driver in Joplin was at my son’s Jack’s birthday party at the Flip Shop with his son Tyler and we sere standing around talking and watching the kids play.  He said, “Jay, I am so glad for what we are doing at N. Joplin.  I can’t tell you how bad that neighborhood is!”  Knowing he was right, I asked him what he had seen.  He told me there was so much drug dealing going on in the open as he drives his truck through the streets and prostitution is rampant.  Women will flash drivers and stop them to proposition them.  The he said this, “BUT, God’s Resort, you wouldn’t believe how much that area has changed.  It really is the difference between darkness and light.!”

Dave lives in the north Joplin area.  He goes to College Heights and he is a next door neighbor to Tasha.  In fact, the day of the suicide was really the first day I had officially met Dave or his wonderful wife, Jana.  When it became apparent God was calling us to clean up the suicide scene for the family, Jana ran to the store to get cleaning supplies and Dave joined the small group of us who cleaned the room.  Dave told his friend, Doug Youngblood, another CH member, “Watching those people clean that room and being there with them has forever changed my life.”  Love and service is some of the most powerful weapons the church possesses.  Especially the “TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME” kind of love and service.  It clears the muddy waters of Christendom so that the world can more clearly see who Jesus really is and what Jesus really is about.  How the world needs to see Jesus more clearly!!!

My last story came today. Katie Strawn and John Blankenship, both wonderful teachers at CHCS and faithful long time members at CH are leading a pioneering team of teens in a service project at Life House for CHCS’s missions week.  They work on the building during the day and in late afternoon open the doors of LH to the Children of the community.  Today over 30 showed up to be loved on, fed supper (which some would not have gotten tonight otherwise), taught the Word.  “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these”   Randy, I really cannot tell you or describe what I saw today.  It was the Kingdom in one of it’s simplest most powerful examples.  Austin and Gabe, two African American boys who are still full of life and hope.  Austin raises his hand to answer questions the teacher, Lindsay had just taught about the Gospel.  Gabe, raised his hands and helped lead the group in “Jesus Loves Me.”  “…this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to HIM BELONG.  They are weak but He is strong. Yes!  Jesus Loves me!  Yes!  Jesus loves me…”   More stories, Amber, she will break your heart, Austin…Cheyenne…

I told Katie, as she poured out the joy and strength of the Lord to me, even as some of the most desperate kids in Joplin played, laughed, prayed and may be even…hoped around us.  “Be ready to share the heart of what God is doing here!”  She, John and those teens inspired me.

Just as few stories.  So many more and why not.  God so loved the whole world that he gave his only Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.”  All we need to do is make ourselves available and SHOW UP!

I could go on and on.  My heart is full.  I never really get to share my heart with you like this and since you will be sharing God’s heart for this community Sunday, I wanted to share my heart with you.

~Psa 71:18-19~  Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come. {19} Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God, you who have done great things. Who, O God, is like you?  AMEN!!

Thank you for your prayers.  I do love you and pray for you and this church that His KINGDOM would COME and His WILL would be DONE here in JOPLIN as it is in HEAVEN,

Your humble servant,

Jay

Glory to God Everywhere and Here!

As we drove through the N. African countryside in the wee hours of the morning on our way to the airport after a “glorious” reunion and stay with our kids and grandkids, I was the only one awake.  I stared into the inky darkness and I kept seeing rounded hills of light and Jesus words spoke quietly to my heart.  "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. {15} Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. {16} In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise (glory to) your Father in heaven.”  ~Mat 5:14-16~ 

We had just spent two weeks in a land of oppressive darkness but the truth remains, light will always penetrate darkness.  It will be seen no matter how deep the darkness!  I want to shout “Glory!” We don’t use that word much but the Bible sure does over 290 times. It means joy, to rejoice, boast about and in the New Testament is almost always associated with JESUS!

How do we get the glorious light into the darkness?  Love in the name of Jesus!  When you can speak, speak but always “speak” through your deeds! In one of our favorite memories,  a North African woman and friend of Robbie and Jody invited us to her home for tea. Her whole family graciously welcomed us into their home and treated us as if we were the Lord Himself.  In reality that is exactly who we were to that family and the reason HE (we) was invited into their home was because of all the love our kids had demonstrated to them.  Jesus steps His way into people’s lives through our love!

I came back with a new appreciation for being able to speak freely but more than that I came back with a new conviction and excitement to love people!!

 Imagine with me a “city on a hill” called College Heights as God steps His way all through our neighborhoods, places of work, school and in the places of greatest darkness and pain- SHINING!  May the world invite us into their homes and lives because of love! When that day comes, there won’t be a worship center big enough to hold us, this city will be full of True Worship and GLORY!!!!!!

Until that Day,

Love and prayer,
Jay

Happy Thanksgiving! The Great Day of Service goes on!

 I am so thankful for this church and the power of the Holy Spirit as He moves us to love our city! The following is an email I got from a Home Group that worked together at the GDS this last fall.   You will be BLESSED, INSPIRED and EXCITED ABOUT WHAT GOD IS DOING AND WILL DO! 

Love and Prayer,
Jay

"Good morning gentlemen (and ladies)! 

I just wanted to give a “shout out” to the members of the Allen/Tash Home Group at CHCC! 

As you may or may not know, the house that the Allens and Tashes were assigned to for Great Day of Service was a bit more work than 4 hours could handle.  When we arrived, the grass was almost three feet high (which had to be conquered before any painting could take place - - and took a good portion of the 4 hours allotted) and the house was a nasty brown color (which had to be scraped before any painting could take place) and the paint we were given was a bit watery (which had to be replaced before any real painting could take place).  The group assigned to our task did what we could, but the very old siding was literally drinking in the paint and we ended up only getting about three-fourths of the house primered - - not painted. 

Through the efforts of Linda Coop, Amanda Thompson, and John Giles we were able to secure the paint and supplies needed, and our home group went there yesterday after church to finish the task.  Our team consisted of 14 adults and 7 children (only 6/3 of which were in the original group).  Donny Allen and Mike Tash spent several hours there on Saturday doing the prep work - - caulking, taping, etc.  Our team then arrived about 2:00 Sunday afternoon and I’m proud to say finished painting the entire house by sundown.  (The underneath of the eaves are still unfinished, but Donny and Mike will finish those at a later date.)  It looks great and the homeowner was so pleased.  She said “I hope I don’t drive on by my house tomorrow because it looks so good I won’t know it’s mine.”

One thing that struck me yesterday - - no one tried to be “chief”, no one complained, no one argued, no one wanted to “do it their way” - - EVERYONE worked together and had a good time in the process.  In fact, once the lower part of the house was done, a lot of us had to stand around and watch because there were only 3 ladders that would reach the upper part of the home - - but no one wanted to leave the project. 

I am so pleased and proud to be a part of this group!  It is a new home group, and one that has jelled together in an unexplainable way - - well I guess it is explainable - - it’s a God thing!

One more thing bears mentioning:  It came to our attention that the family living in the home probably had not had much to eat, including an 18-month-old baby.  We took up a collection amongst our group, and we were able to buy them $20 in groceries to get them by (they won’t have electricity until today) and gave them a $150 gift card to Dillons.  Not only were we able to serve them by painting the home, but we were able to feed them as well!  One of our group members said “You know, if we had finished the project the first time we wouldn’t have come back - - and we wouldn’t have known they were hungry”.  The discouragement of not finishing the task the first time melted away with those words!

One final note:  Several of our members were able to talk to the family about the Lord throughout the day and the homeowner wants to come to church!  If you know of someone who drives people to church from the God’s Resort area, please let us know so we can hook them up.  Otherwise we’ll try to coordinate something ourselves.

TRUTH (sharing God’s word with her), RELATIONSHIP (working together as a great team), and SERVICE (a great paint job) - - what a great way to start the holiday season!

May your holidays be as truly blessed as ours!"

Sherri Tash for the Allen/Tash Home Group

What Would It Take?

What would it take to double the size of College Heights in one year or two...What would have to change about our culture, practices, habits, lifestyles, beliefs and faith?  My first thought is we would have to become immersed in prayer and fasting because it would seem to be impossible but with God all things are possible and on this subject, with God this is even desirable!    My second thought is a radical love  would come from the fire of that kind of prayer immersion into the heart of God for our city!   Christ's love would compell us and His Spirit would empower us  to love like we have never loved before.  We would see an explosion of boldness that we see as the mark of the early church that was also immersed in prayer. Paul encouraged the early church to pray continually, no wonder! 

Every year, thanks to 25+ mature trees in our yard we have a growing pile of limbs on my "burn pile".  The potential for a huge fire lays there most of the year waiting for a match.  When the time is right and I light the pile you can't miss the sight if you are driving along Newman Rd.  Jesus said, "let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to the Father in  Heaven."  That's how I see this God blessed church, so full of the Word of God and ready to burn, just waiting to be lit!

If you are interested in praying about this and other outreach opportunities here and around the world come and pray at the FUEL Prayer Meeting at Life House 7 pm!