View pictures and Read about the difference we made last year.

This year NLC our parent church is hoping to service over 200 cars on Dec. 12th.  So here is how we can help this year.

1. We can donate our time on Dec. 12th. We will need people who can vacuum cars, check tire pressure, wash windshield, top off antifreeze, do crafts and play with children while they wait with their parents, or just hang out and talk with those who we are serving.  You don’t need to be a mechanic to help. Just show up, be willing and we will put you to work.

2. Money. It costs $20 to sponsor a car this year.  Engage has certificates you can purchase to “adopt” a vehicle and ensure that those in need in our community will be able to get to work, take their kids to school, and have reliable transportation this year. This year we are trying to raise 10K so we can give a used car to those who absolutely need it. Last year we met several whose vehicles were on their last legs. This year we hope to give them the gift of reliable transportation to alleviate a little bit of the stress involved in raising kids and working jobs to provide for their families.  Most of the people we serve at the Car Winterization are hard working people who simply can’t make ends meet. If you would like to sponsor a car please give $20 per car. Place the money in a giving envelop, write your name and address on the envelop and place in the Generosity box at Engage. You can also send money to Engage Community Church 320 E. Louther Street, Carlisle PA.  Please memo any checks “Car Winterization”

3. Distribute vouchers to people who may need this service. Click here to download a voucher, print it off, and give it to someone who may need it. voucher-20091

Learn the personal stories behind Car Winterization:
Last year I had a conversation with Norma. Norma is a single mom with 5 kids. She works two jobs and her family lives with her father in the area.  With pride in her heart and tears in her eyes Norma told me about her daughter.  Norma’s daughter is a senior this year at a local high school.  At one point in the conversation Norma paused, looked me square in the eyes and with a mother’s pride told me how her daughter has just received a scholarship to college.  Norma’s daughter will be the first person in her family to attend college. All I could do is smile and feel the great transfer of pride from her heart to mine.

Click here to read the rest of Norma’s Story

Stay tuned for more info at Engage as to how you can sign up and be a part of Engaging our community with love.

Listen to Sermon: We Crave Love

Go Deeper: Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters - Tim Keller

This book is all about what we as humans crave deep down. We crave security, peace, approval, our time, productivity, or success. You name it. We crave it. These cravings are mostly good. What’s bad is when we make these desires the ultimate reason for why we do what we do. The bible calls this idolatry. Idolatry is when we make a good thing the ultimate thing in our lives that gives us meaning, happiness, security, peace, joy, or happiness. Keller calls these counterfeit gods. Keller says, “The counterfeit gods always leave you frustrated and empty.” This book is a call to identify our human cravings, reflect on what we are doing to satisfy those desires, and replace our counterfeit gods by trusting in a God whose love and beauty exposes our most precious idols as the fake substitutes they are.

Click the header on this blog post to see comments or add a comment:

Right now I’m reading a book called Counterfeit Gods by a pastor named Tim Keller.  The book is based on the idea that we all have something or someone we hang out hopes on in this life to give us peace, security, hope, happiness, and relief.  We all feel restless and anxious and churn at times because we long for more from this life, but can’t seem to find it. Keller’s premise is that God is the only one who can fill the ache in our soul but we don’t always start there. So we fabricate meaning and hope or security and happiness in other things. Things he deems counterfeit gods.  We’ve always done this. Read your history, study the ancients. Deep in our collective human experience lies, well, lies.  Lies that we can find rest in almost any other place except in knowing and being known by our Creator.  So for the next several weeks or when it hits me, I will share some nuggets I’m collecting from the book. Maybe it will entice you to read it for yourself. I bought 12 copies of this book and will be giving it to key influencers and leaders at Engage. My hope is to spread this book like an idea virus through our community….if we take it to heart it will mean that Engage will continue to be a place that celebrates honesty about these parts of ourselves that go searching for life or salvation in everything else but God….I would love to have you comment and start some dialogue.  Check out the video teaser for the book. http://www.counterfeitgods.com/

page 39 - Speaking about our tendency to look for fulfilment in romance. No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs. pg 40  The failure of romantic love as a solution to human problems is so much a part of modern man’s frustration…No human relationships can bear the burden of godhood….However much we may idealize or idolize him (or her, the love partner), he / she inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection….After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults, of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know our existence has not been in vain. We want redemption–nothing less. Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.

Keller at one point quotes C.S. Lewis about our human longings which nothing can satisfy:
Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. . . There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry maybe a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

U2 was right. We still haven’t found what we are looking for….

jon

Listen to Sermon: We Crave Hope

Look, part of being human beings means we have longings and cravings and desires that if filled we think make life worth living. These longings are good, but they can have a dark side when we try and satisfy those desires on things that ultimately leave us empty. Engage is starting a series called CRAVE. We crave experiences and meaning and value and hope yet we don’t always find fulfillment of those cravings in the one source or person who satisfies our soul. So how do we deal with the stuff and disappointments of life in light of our cravings? We are spending the month of November actually going through the book of Philippians. The book reveals that things aren’t going too well for Paul. In fact, he writes the book while incarcerated in a disease infested sewer system known as Mamertine Prison in ancient Rome. Yet somehow, even though life is not what he expected it to be, there is something to look forward to. Rotting in jail, Paul finds hope in someone beyond his circumstances. His hope stems from the promise of another world beyond this life that is better than we expect. The promise of hope gives us motivation to be a different kind of person even in circumstances we don’t want to be in.

We try earning hope.
Most of what we hope in fades with time.
Ultimately, lasting hope can only be found in knowing God.

Books: In a Pitt with A Lion on A Snowy Day: How To Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars - Mark Batterson. The hardest part of your life in the present or the most painful part of your past are opportunities that can become the most hopeful part of your future. This book will help you understand how to see the painful events of your present or past as crowning glories of hope for your future when we find ourselves pursuing Christ who turns pain into opportunities of hope. Read this book.

Listen to Sermon: Stuck: Past and Future

Books: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life - Donald Miller.

Donald Miller wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz and it helped a lot of people rediscover the revolutionary and compelling nature of the message of Christ. Miller finished his first book and his life lost momentum. He just stalled out and went into a deep depression. Donald Miller’s life floundered. Slowly his past and his story began to make sense as he poked deeper into his life’s story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details Miller’s journey as he turned a corner finding clarity on who he is and what story he and God are writing with his life. Miller writes in a compelling way about our lives and how our stories are being written by us and by God. Facing our past, living in the present, and looking into the future with God always means there is more. There’s always more.

Really, thought, this article hits the reason why we started Engage and why we think it matters.  Last Sunday we interviewed some new friends to Engage. It was incredible to hear two very professional and seemingly self-sufficient people share how they are finding meaning, real joy, and contentment because of their new relationship with Christ. My friend (we will call him Jason) at one point choked up as he began to describe how confused or lost he felt on an existential level before beginning to explore faith in Jesus at Engage.  He said, “It’s like we were looking for something but didn’t know what it was or how to find it.” Jason and his wife were looking for what they could not find and are starting to find it in Jesus.  Again, I go back to my little blurb in the article. Unless people are becoming connected to healthy Christian community they simply will not be able to experience a real, life-changing, world-altering relationship with Christ.  Just doesn’t happen.  I am proud to be a part of this kind of imperfect community of faith.

cm09-booklet

Secular people tend to think he’s a great guy who made the world a better place, but he’s not God.

Religious people often think he’s God so he’s there to meet our expectations.

Jesus takes a very different angle from the other two perspectives. See Mark 8:34-36

Listen to Sermon: Who do you say that I am?

Listen to Music: Music by Stephen Santos

Tucker Brown, MDiv is good friends with our pastor Jon Hand. Tucker and Jon met in theological school and were known for secretly watching funny internet videos on their laptops on nights when the prof was a little boring. The professor always liked Jon and Tucker because they would always laugh hilariously when he cracked jokes….little did he know

Listen to Sermon: Stuck: Joy and Happiness

Listen to Music: Stuck: Joy and Happiness by Stephen Santos

“But wait, if you call now we will send you not one but two Shamwows. . . “  Ever seen that one on late night infomercial t.v.?  It’s not just a shammy it’s a way for your wildest kitchen dreams to come true…well maybe not all of them, but you get my point.  Look, everywhere we go we are sold happiness. We are told we can buy it, drive it, build it, store it, eat it, lose it, pop it. You name it.  We are sold pills that make us skinny, pills that keep us sexy, and promised that we can feel better about ourselves.  A huge industry has grown in the last 15 years on helping us be, become, and find happiness.  I don’t think it’s all bad. I’ve got three kids so I could use a 2 or 3 Shamwows myself.  But if we take the teachings and the gospel of Jesus seriously we soon learn that the harder we look for happiness the more elusive it becomes.  So this week at Engage we are talking about happy  v.s. trying to find happiness.  I’m convinced that knowing Jesus is the way to find true happiness but it’s funny. If you really listen to what God is saying you soon discover that the only way to find it is when we stop trying to be happy….Sound like a bummer? No, it’s just another example of when we know God He soaks up our conventional wisdom and wrings out something altogether different and better.

Hope to see you on Sunday as we continue the conversation. . .

Over the last few weeks we have been talking about Stuck on Sundays at Engage. We’ve been looking at different situations we face in life where we feel like there are no easy answers or no easy ways out.  We often feel stuck between what we hope for or the ways we want life go to and the aspects of how the world really seems to work.  So far we have talked about being stuck between Career and Family, Saving and being Generous.  Last week we talked about stuck between Loving Others and doing what’s Safe or comfortable for us.  This Sunday the 11th we will be talking about happiness.

Want to grow your marriage? Ever wish you had people in your lives who have exceptional marriages who want to teach you everything they know?  Well, Engage is starting a Marriage Mentoring group that will meet for a series of weeks to explore and learn how to invest in having better marriages and exceptional relationships with your spouse.  If you have interest please email us at mailto:info@engagecommunitychurch.com