Paul Stewart

The Sustantivo (Partnership) Trailer

In March a team of eleven people from Gateway traveled to Anemona, El Salvador to begin an unlikely partnership between two churches. The team worked with ENLACE to help this impoverished community build tilapia fish tanks and home gardens to help improve nutrition and the local economy, but from the very beginning the team was just as focused on building relationships and connecting with the local church and community.

The stories coming out of this trip have been nothing short of remarkable and it just so happens that the people on the team are some amazing storytellers! We are currently producing a 20 - 30 minute short-film documenting our work - you can view the trailer below. We plan on showing the full-length film on Sunday, June 3rd during our worship services.

We believe this trip is only the beginning of a long-term partnership between Gateway, ENLACE and Palabra de Poder and the kingdom of God advancing in Des Moines, El Salvador and around the world.

Art Has Its Own Validity

"Handel with his Messiah, Bach with his Matthew Passion, Rembrandt with his Denial of St. Peter, and the architects of those Cistercian churches were not evangelizing, nor making tools for evangelism; they worked to the glory of God. They did not compromise their art. They were not devising tools for religious propaganda or holy advertisement. And precisely because of that they were deep and important. Their works were not the means to an end, the winning of souls, but they were meaningful and an end in themselves, to God’s glory, and showing forth something of the love that makes things warm and real. Art has too often become insincere and second-rate in its very effort to speak to all people, and to communicate a message that art was not meant to communicate. In short, art has its own validity and meaning, certainly in the Christian framework."

-  Hans Rookmaaker, Art Needs No Justification. (via The Search)

 

Eggs, Eggs Everywhere!

This Spring, in an effort to bring the downtown community together and share the good news of Easter we are putting on the second annual Eggs Eggs Everywhere! event! A unique Easter Egg Hunt located in the heart of our city and open to everyone in the neighborhood. We'll hide over 12,000 candy & prize-filled eggs throughout Western Gateway Park!

Beyond the hunt, family activities will include:

• Kids’ Art Station
• 6 Giant inflatables for jumping play
• Face Painting Station
• Free Family Photos
• Free coffee for the adults

At Gateway our vision is to become a part of the fabric of the city of Des Moines; to join God in the renewal of the city. We can do that through ministry to the homeless, the widow and the orphan, the refugee and the outcasts... and we can do that by organizing a massive, free Easter Egg Hunt in the heart of our city! 

If you are in Des Moines over Easter please join us! Find out more at http://eggseggseverywhere.com

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

This is the last in a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer based on a message I preached at Gateway a couple of weeks ago. You can listen to my message here.

You can’t pray like this every day, you can’t beg for the restoration of the world, for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the Hallowing of God’s name on earth and not expect to be opposed by the ruler of this present age.

We live in contested space. This world is not neutral.There are competing political regimes and economic regimes and cultural regimes and spiritual regimes. Every inch of this planet is claimed and counter-claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed.

If you begin to take prayer seriously you will find the spiritual intensity of your life rise up and you will certainly face opposition. So Jesus tells us to pray. To pray for deliverance and protection from, not just evil in general, but from the evil one. Namely Satan. Who has his own rule and reign and authority in earth and is not super exited about giving that up to anyone. As we begin to pray, Jesus teaches that we need to also pray for protection because this will get spiritually intense. 

If you are not on your guard, you could be taken out. One lustful look from a coworker. One word from your boss. One lie you choose to hold on to. We live in contested space.

But the good news is this: We are not fighting for victory, we are fighting from victory.

We are implementing the victory of God that Christ has already won on the cross. Way back in Genesis, right after the Fall, God promises that His son would one day crush the serpent's head!

The starting point of the story of renewal is the victory of God over Satan’s system - sin, hell, death, all of these things. And so we know there will be opposition. We expect it. We prepare for it. We suit up for it. We take it very, very seriously. But we know that ultimately the battle has already been one. The victory is already ours in Christ. 

Which is why we can pray, "For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen!"

Fight Through The Gap

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

What does this mean? Are we are forgiven only as we forgive?

Interestingly this is the only part of the prayer that Jesus feels compelled to amplify upon.

Matthew 6v14
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

We know that the gospel is a free gift - nothing that we could have earned on our own. So this can not mean we have to demonstrate to God how good we are at forgiving other people before he will forgive us.

Jesus is simply describing the very nature of created order - we must give in order to receive. For example, I cannot receive love if I do not give love. Augustine said, “God gives where He finds empty hands”

If our hearts are such that we can only see how others have hurt and offended us, we cannot see how we have offended God and so we find no need to seek forgiveness. If we are always calculating how much this person or that person has violated our rights then we will not, by the very nature of things, be able to pray this prayer.

Forgiveness is the only thing that breaks the cycle of retribution and releases the grace of heaven among human beings. Karl Barth said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” When we get before God and come to grips with the pain and the tension and the angst of our fallen world and the sinful nature of our own hearts, when we to clasp our hands before our heavenly Father and ask Him to bring it all back into alignment, this is truly the beginning of an uprising!

Give Us This Day

Last week I started writing a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway a couple of weeks ago. You can listen to my message here. This prayer is the foundation of all Christian prayer. It provides shape and meaning to our faith. It was taught by Jesus, in part, to show us what the point of Christian spirituality is and how to get to the point in our prayers.

Jesus shows us that point of prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a broken and fallen world. The first half of the pryaer is towards God and the second part is towards the earth. The first half is concerned with God’s honor, kingdom, and purpose, and only after that do our own needs find a place.

When Jesus says, “Give us this day our daily bread” that is simply saying “Father I want to be dependent upon you... I know everything I have is coming from your hand.”

This is reminiscent of the way that God provided manna for the  children of Israel as they wandered through the desert. Yet in our world, with all of our stuff, it is difficult to remain dependent on God. We look to therapists and medication and money and vacations.

But God says, “Would you rely on me for your daily rations? Would you remain dependent upon me for the very sustenance of your life? For your daily piece of bread? And would you remember to pray and give to those who do not even have that? For in my Kingdom everyone has just enough to get them through each new day and it all comes from me."

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

This week I am writing a series of posts on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

When we pray for God's Kingdom to come we are aligning our hearts and lives around his just and righteous rule and reign in the universe and his authority in our lives. When the Old Testament prophets spoke about this they described God's rule in seven primary ways:

Deliverance
Righteousness & Justice
Peace
Joy
God’s Manifest Presence
Healing
Return from Exile

Jesus is saying, "I want you to pray for the rule and the reign of God to break out into the world around you. In your neighborhoods. In your homes. In your relationships. In all your situations!" And when it does you will see people being set free from that which is enslaving them. You will see righteousness and justice being established. You will see the ceasing of conflict and the restoration of peace. You will see a sense of great joy in life. There will be a sense of God’s manifest presence. You will see healing - souls, emotions, physical bodies. And there will be sense that the people of God have come home. They have finally found their place as God’s people in the world.

These are the things that we are to be praying for and seeking in our world. These are the things that we are to be calling down into our situations

In other words, prayer is not only about conversing with God, prayer is about collaborating with His actions in the world.

The apostle Paul said we are “God’s fellow workers” We are co-laborers with Christ. So when we see poverty and disease, the lack of justice, hostility and hatred we are to bring these things to God and ask that all of these situations would be transformed. That the rule and reign of God would break in.

Prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a fallen world. 

Hallowed Be Your Name

Yesterday I began a series on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

We are to pray that God's name is “hallowed” in the world. This is to pray that people may recognize and acknowledge God's holiness give Him the reverence which He is due. This is not because God has some selfish desire to become famous on earth, but flows out of His desire to restore the brokenness of the world.

Consider this: where did the universe begin to unravel? In the garden when humanity decided to "hallow" something other than God and their relationship with Him. In that moment sin enters the world and we can no longer figure out our relationship with Him, with each other, with ourselves and with all created order.

We all “hallow” something in the world. We take something or someone (other than God) and elevate it to first place in our lives and as a result our lives spin out of control.

Jesus knows that when we cry out to our Father we return in some sense to the purity of Eden. That connection is restored, and we are beginning to undo all of the things that disorder the world. When we "hallow" God we are religning our hearts and when we rightly order our hearts, when we let lesser things go, we can then begin to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Our Father in Heaven

Yesterday I began a series on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.

This first time in the Scriptures that a Jewish person cried out to God as a father in prayer. At this point all religion ceased to be equal. At this point, Christianity moves into a new path where it offers you the right to become God’s actual children in the world.

Many people pray to a distant god but here we have God calling us back into relationship. Yesterday I said that prayer is seeking to weave the Kingdom of God into a fallen world, and this is the first step.

Consider the Garden of Eden. What was our relationship like with God in the Garden? In Genesis it says humans walked with God in the cool of the day - without shame or distance.

That is ultimately the greatest longing of our soul. In this prayer, Jesus is saying that through Him you can be reconnected with your Creator. That in your room, on your own it is possible to return back to Eden in your heart.

This is God’s invitation to you in this prayer. He is your Father. You are his son. You are his daughter. He wants to welcome you back home.

The Kingdom of God advances as our hearts find our true home with the Father.