Pastor's Note: Love Does Not Envy; or, “Annie Don’t Get Your Gun”: Love delights in whatever good comes to or from our loved ones.  This February let’s evaluate our relationships, especially our marriages, and “put our guns away.”  Let’s stop ungodly competition and simply rejoice at how God has gifted and blessed one another.
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January Pastor’s Note:A Timely Lesson from Sharks: January always brings an opportunity to choose a new (or a renewed!) direction in life.  This year let’s choose forward.  As our dear friends Joni and Judy are fond of saying, let’s make 2011 be a year of “onwards and upwards!”  We must press on and strain forward!  And, as Peter says, we must “crave pure spiritual milk so that we may grow up in our salvation.”  (1 Peter 2:2).  Like sharks, we too must be committed to moving forwards with our mouths open!
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December Pastor's Note: How Many Gifts Is Enough?: or many of us, this year is a "Dursley" kind of year. There will be fewer gifts under the trees in many of our homes. So as a pastoral word that will, I hope, be both memorable enough and portable enough to carry us through both shopping and unwrapping, I want to think about counting presents to the glory of God. Any of us can do this. All it requires is the ability to count to one.
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American Pickers vs. the Divine Chooser: In some respects, the American Pickers wandering search for American treasure is not unlike God’s search for broken down souls in the darkest secular haunts we can lose ourselves in.  But in other ways, God’s work is entirely different. 
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New Testament Mathematics: Thinking About What Counts!: This month as we watch our kids returning to school and perhaps are beginning classes ourselves, let's consider some good old fashioned arithmetic! There are three passages in the New Testament in which the Apostle Paul tells us "what counts." 
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Pastor's Note: A 36 Pontiac and Proverbs 13:12: We all know the question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  But I think we don’t ponder its corollary often enough: “Why don’t some good things happen to good people?”  Why didn’t a good friend ever get married?  Why couldn’t my sister have children?  Why don’t I have a job yet?  We all have questions like this, and to some extent they all affect our hearts: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Proverbs 13:12.
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Pastor's Note: Emancipation Blues or Freedom Dance?: Often you and I have the idea of freedom and all the rights to it, but we either do not or cannot exercise that freedom as it was intended and therefore have no joy – we too have the "blues."... Won't you join me in freely dancing before God as we "run in the path of His commands?" Even in tough times of oppression and affliction? For we truly have been set free – we are free indeed.
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Pastor’s Note: Blessing Your Family at Home: Sometimes we might think that our families were blessed by the pastor at church and that is sufficient.  Yes, the service ends with a benediction, a “blessing.”  But in 1 Chronicles 16 we see what happens next.  We return to our homes and we, like David, must echo and affirm that blessing to the families God has entrusted to us.
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Pastor’s Note: Perseverance or Insanity?: Sometimes we as adults try something, at first it doesn’t succeed, and therefore we assume that we would be crazy to do that again.  And maybe in “sanely” quitting rather than sticking with the old proverb’s “try, try again,” we are missing the point.
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Pastor’s Note: A Kind Word: Too often the world’s wisdom, and even much of the church’s advice, focuses on the anxious person and what they can do to resolve their anxiety.  The Bible’s treatment for anxiety involves more than just the anxious person doing the right things, saying the right prayers, following a proper diet and getting the right amount of sleep.  It also involves friends.  Proverbs 12:25 says, “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up.”
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Pastor’s Note: Out with the lions, in with the Lamb: I invite you to consider whether or not valid fears of truly terrible possibilities actually keep us from life in all of its God-ordained possibilities and fullness.
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Pastor’s Note: “Love is Kind”: As you shop for Valentine cards this month you will see that love is passionate, it is pure, it is constant in faithfulness, it is liberal with praise…  But the very splendor of such things might make it more difficult for us to see the Christian’s love for what it should be: love is kind.
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Church in the Canyon Hosting FIREPROOF the Movie, January 22! The Community Is Invited!: According the website Outreach.com "when it opened in theaters nationwide, FIREPROOF touched the hearts and impacted the marriages of millions of moviegoers.  Learn more about this exciting CITC community event.
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Pastor’s Note: Begin This Year Well!: Many of you may keep journals as a personal discipline.  This year I want to challenge all of you, who are “seated with princes” (Psalm 113:8) to write a different kind of journal.  Recount for yourself, in your own hand, the word of God. 
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Pastor’s Note: God’s First Gift: As I sit in my office writing this devotional thought for the December Newsletter, November is drawing to a close.  It is the day before Thanksgiving – and I am thinking about eating.  And in December, our thoughts turn again, among other things, to gifts and food.  The trouble is, as Christians, I think we rarely connect the two ideas properly.  Too rarely, I think, do we truly rejoice with gratitude to God for food.
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Pastor’s Note: “…with a Grateful Heart!”: Somehow it is easier to be thankful when you have a couple of days off, the meals are sumptuous, and friends and family come in from out of town.  At least it seems easier for me to be thankful at those times.  It isn’t quite so easy to be truly thankful when the work is heavy, the cares are many, and the lunches rushed…  But at times like those, we still thank Him.
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Pastor’s Note: No More Costume Parties!:
I think churches in America have lots of costume parties.  I am afraid that every Sunday grown ups show up in sanctuaries from here to Maine dressed up as happily married, content in illness, faithful in obedience, pure in thought…  I have no favorite costumes for this kind of party.  All these costumes do is prevent us from dealing with real problems as true friends.
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Pastor’s Note: Thoughts for the Harvest: In a very real sense, churches should be combines.  This is a thought I have often had when I used to see combines more regularly or would look at pictures in Modern Farmer with my young children.  We are mobile harvesters covering the acreage of souls in the fields surrounding us.
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Church in the Canyon in Calabasas Hosting 2nd Annual Community Movie in the Park on August 1st!: Join us for our second annual "Daycation", movie in the park, an event  for the whole community.   MOVIE IN THE PARK will start at 6 PM and end at 10 PM Saturday, August 1st.
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Pastor’s Note: “Knee High by the Fourth of July”: This summer I want to invite you to consider your role in the cultivation and harvest of souls.  Jesus said in Luke 10:2-3 that “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.  Go!  I am sending you…” 
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Pastor’s Note: Draw a Hippopotamus: This month the pastor challenges us to spend time daily in reflecting on the scriptures and the clear picture of Jesus and his great saving work that springs from the sacred page. 
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Pastor’s Note: God’s Motherly Comfort: This May celebrate God’s goodness to you in giving you a mother.  But remember too to rejoice with gratitude for the motherly comfort that God himself showers directly upon you.  You are his child and the comforts he holds out to you are more than sufficient for the needs of each day.
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Pastor’s Note: Have a Whale of a Time!: God has sent his Spirit to renew us.  We have been given new life.  And we are called to “rejoice, I say it again, rejoice.”  “In every circumstance, rejoice.”  Dear Christian, whatever waves sweep over you, may you yet find it in your heart to celebrate God’s eternal promise to keep you forever and bless you always.
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Pastor’s Note: Hope Must be Humble: Pastor Bierkaas strengthens our hope as he reminds us, "We live in a world destitute of many things.  Hope is one of them.  Let us pray that we can intrigue a lost world by our still and quiet hope."
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Pastor’s Note: A Valentine’s Challenge!: In his Valentine's Day message to the church Pastor Bjerkaas call us to resolve to love our spouses, parents, children, siblings as Christ loves us..  with patience!
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Pastor’s Note: A New Year's Wish: Pastor Bob Bjerkaas challenges us... "may we commit ourselves to the joyful pursuit of becoming an ever stranger orchard – one that is full of trees that are bearing even more fruit while growing even taller at the same time!"  
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