In the Nursery we provide a safe, clean environment and loving care for infants to 17 months by Background checked Volunteers during the Church Service.
We also provide childcare for the Toddlers, age 18 months to 3 year olds during the Church service.
Karrie Harmer – Children’s Director
Karrie has been married to her husband of forty some years, Rick. They have two children and five grandchildren. Karrie has attended Westminster with her family for many years, she became a member in 1996. She has been serving as the Children’s Director since 2017.
Karrie has always had a passion for teaching and caring for children. She had worked with Infants to Elementary age for many years. She has been employed as a Nanny twice and has worked in Daycares and Preschools. Since attending Westminster she has taught Sunday School for the 5 year old class and many years as the Toddler Sunday School teacher. She has also worked many years in the Nursery. She also has taught Pioneers and directed VBS’.
Currently, she has the responsibility of Nursery schedules and securing background checked volunteers, also helping the Sunday School Teachers. She helps maintain COVID guidelines and ensuring other safety guidelines are maintained. She teaches the Toddler Sunday School Class and works in the Nursery also. During certain times of the year she prepares special events.
In Matthew 10:16–20, Jesus is essentially giving His disciples His manual of spiritual warfare for the mission of God.
Jesus used four metaphors to prepare their minds for opposition. He said, “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” One of the metaphors relates to the malicious men and women of the unbelieving world. The other three regard some aspect of the lives and ministries of the disciples.
In his commentary on Matthew, John Calvin explained the meaning behind each of Christ’s animal metaphors. Calvin first explained what Jesus meant when He likened His disciples to sheep:
“He does not refer to the sweetness and mildness of their manners, or to the gentleness of their mind, but only means, that they will have no greater strength or fitness for repelling the violence of enemies than sheep have against the rage of wolves. Christ requires, no doubt, from his disciples that they shall resemble sheep in their dispositions, by their patience in contending against the malice of wicked men, and by the meekness with which they endure injuries: but the simple meaning of this passage is, that many powerful and cruel enemies are arrayed against the apostles, while they, on their part, are furnished with no means of defense.”
Regarding Jesus’ allusion to wolves, Calvin wrote,
“The Lord, by calling the enemies of the gospel wolves, expressed their power rather than their desire to do injury; yet, as no man is known to be a wolf but by his rage against the gospel, Christ has joined these two things together, the fierce cruelty which impels them to shed blood, and the power with which they are armed.”2
After explaining the opposition that the disciples should anticipate when going out into the world with the gospel under the figure of sheep and wolves, Jesus employed two further animal metaphors in order to instruct His disciples about their strategy and demeanor when engaged in the mission of God. He said, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Calvin explained what our Lord was intimating when he wrote,
“Serpents, being aware that they are hated, carefully avoid and shrink from everything that is hostile to them. In this manner, he enjoins believers to take care of their life, so as not to rush heedlessly into danger, or lay themselves open to any kind of injury. Doves, on the other hand, though naturally timid, and liable to innumerable attacks, fly in their simplicity, imagine themselves safe till they are struck, and in most cases place themselves within the reach of the fowler’s snares. To such simplicity, Christ exhorts his disciples, that no excess of terror may hinder them from pursuing their course. There are some who carry their ingenious reasonings still farther as to the nature of the serpent and of the dove, but this is the utmost extent of the resemblance.”
No one knows how intense the opposition to biblical Christianity will get in our country in the days, weeks, months, or years to come. Nevertheless, we should have great confidence that Christ sends His people out in the midst of persecuting wolves to bring the everlasting gospel to bear on a lost and perishing world. Christ does not call us to retreat, to compromise in the name of caution, or to devise other methods and strategies that will counter the preaching of the gospel. He does not call us to worldly sophistication or political maneuvering. Rather, He calls us to learn about our enemies and about ourselves–and to spread the aroma of Christ through the world by the ministry of the word for the salvation of the elect. To this end, He bids us understand that we are like sheep in the midst of wolves so that we will seek to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
Nick Batzig
Christians walk in faith. We are ‘faith-full’. We live with active, vital faith in God. But what does that mean?
There are many misunderstandings of faith. Some feel, and I use that word deliberately, that faith is a strong belief in the impossible, or what is against the odds, or not strictly speaking logical. Faith is wishful thinking, a guess that gullible people make. A false crutch to lean upon. Like, I believe my March Madness bracket will be perfect; or this lottery ticket will pay off my debts; or Braves will win the pennant; or Gramma will survive even though she is in hospice. Faith here is a subjective commitment to the irrational; a leap into the dark.
Others think of faith as strong encouragement intended to prop up the wavering strength or will of someone else. “I know it is the bottom of the ninth and we are down 3 runs, but I have faith in this team.” Faith is hoping against hope. By this understanding, the more intense your faith the better it works.
Still others think that faith is what we believe without facts and contrary to knowledge or science. The secular mind exclusively sees faith in this way, faith is contrary to truth that can be known.
If those are misunderstandings, what is true faith? Faith is taking God at his Word. Believing God; his Word, his Character, his promises. It is walking in the knowledge of God and loving the truth about God and his character and will.
Reformation theologians dissected three elements to true faith; knowledge, assent, and trust. In their thinking, faith involves the whole man – his mind, his heart and his will – knowledge (notitia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia). True faith says, “I have heard about God, I believe that it is true, and I will commit myself to acting on it.” “I know what God says, I trust what God says, and I act on what God says.”
The Christian faith does not repudiate knowledge, it is based on knowledge. John Calvin defined faith as “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Louis Berkof, a follower of Calvin, defines saving faith as “a certain conviction, wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, as to the truth of the gospel, and a hearty reliance (trust) on the promises of God in Christ.”
So, faith starts with the knowledge of God, His Word or His promise. Then faith embraces, or trusts that knowledge, Word, or promise. Finally, knowing and believing that promise to be true, you act on it, commit to it, stand upon it.
What does this look like in my everyday life? You take a Biblical promise from God, you labor to rightly understand that promise, you believe that promise to be true and then, bringing faith to completion, you act on that promise. For example; God says lying is a sin, I believe it, so I tell the truth. God promises he will forgive those who confess their sin, I believe it, so I seek His cleansing through confession. God says that children are a blessing from the Lord, I consent to it, and I receive children as a blessing. God promises eternal life to believers, I believe it, and I don’t fear death. I could go on and on and on. In fact, we all should. This is living in faith. God says that I am made in his image and that I should go forth and multiply that image, subdue the earth and have dominion over it for the glory of God. So I honor God, I image God, I have a family, and I unearth creation’s potential at work, and even in my garden!
I would like to challenge you to live, self-consciously, by faith. Find the promises of the Word of God, understand them, embrace them, and act upon them. Mine the Word of God for promises and commands, write them down, and act upon them. That is the life of faith.
“That may be true for you, but it is not my truth.” “There are absolutely no absolutes.” How can otherwise intelligent people say such contradictory things? Where did this perversion of thinking originate? Today, mankind knows more facts than ever before, but he cannot, apparently, tell right from wrong. We have access to vast knowledge on the internet and yet have no settled standard for ethics. Mankind has conquered the natural world, untangling its secrets, and utilizes that knowledge to improve physical life for so many, and yet we corrode spiritual life by denying any meaning, purpose, or fulfillment in life. Science has taught us many things but science cannot lead us into all truth. Science cannot tell right from wrong. The white lab coat crowd can teach us what is, but not what ought to be. Science is ethically ignorant.
Once upon a time, there was a general consensus in the Western World. Christianity provided a whole, integrated view of life. Man is body and soul; a physical and spiritual being made in the image of God. We believed, in sum, that God was the creator; that he provided an owner’s manual to human life, and His law provided our ethics. His order gave us meaning, purpose, and direction; that man was made in his image to rule over the created order and to unpack its secrets. Early scientists worked within this framework and were pursuing the wisdom of their creator in all their scientific pursuits. This is known to Christians as the Creation Mandate. (Genesis 1:26-28) Commitment to these basic biblical principles fueled the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions and which has ushered in the Modern world. While early scientist sought after their creator the modern scientists assume an order, structure and purpose that they cannot explain. They borrow from a Christian Worldview, without attribution, in order to do science at all. The daughter has despised her mother. The Western World has rejected the Christian foundation that has given her all of her victories and successes.
Secular culture has become so enamored with reason and science that they expected unaided human wisdom to teach us everything, even create a rational foundation for ethics and religion. Modern man is so committed to human reason they even assume that if an idea does not have a scientific basis, or if it could not be defended by reason alone, then it wasn’t true. We had moved from a world at liberty within the bounds of revelation to a much narrower world caged within the bounds of reason. But reason and science cannot explain human life nor even construct a comprehensive, satisfying worldview. Our contemporaries don’t know who they are (male? female?), why they were created, or what is the right thing to do? They have no meaning or purpose. ““Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) Unaided human reason cannot offer us what is right and what is wrong; but only what is – what is testable, repeatable within the lab. Ethics, however, requires a transcendent foundation that reason and science cannot provide.
The Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment caused a disconnect in our thinking. Meaning, value, religion, and ethics were real and necessary to the human condition, but they were not true; they were not scientific. They were not based on reason. Ethics were considered subjective, optional, alterable and for many, unnecessary. Anyone could choose what they wanted to believe in these areas because they were not really true. We divided our minds into two halves; we separated sacred and secular, value and fact, public and private life. Many philosophers and artists accepted and even promoted the compromise in exchange for the continuing existence of religion, ethics, beauty, and love. They just had to concede that religion, meaning, purpose, were not really true. Beauty, virtue, faith were comforting crutches for weak-willed men who could not face the truth that only science could provide. Christianity, although she fueled the victories of the modern world, has become the barely tolerated, woefully misguided, mentally challenged, younger brother and the black sheep of the family.
Too many Christians have accepted this divided thinking. (Science is true fact, faith is believing what you think isn’t real). Science is based on truth and is applicable to all, but the Christian faith is based on subjective feelings and is only helpful to some. Yet, Christian truth and its Biblical foundation is true Truth. It is a fact, like taxes! Right will always be right and wrong, wrong, even if many deny it. Ethics do not change because God never changes. What is true, is true for everyone. There are absolutely, absolutes. Therefore let us defend the true truth of Christianity and our creator God as the source of all truth and not be content with the Enlightenment-Romantic compromise.
If ever death appeared to be triumphant, it was when Jesus of Nazareth, disowned by His nation, abandoned by His disciples, executed by the might of imperial Rome, breathed His last on the cross. Why, some had actually recognized in His cry of pain and desolation the complaint that even God had forsaken Him. His faithful followers had confidently expected that He was the destined liberator of Israel; but He had died – not, like Judas of Galilee or Judas Maccabaeus, in the forefront of the struggle against the Gentile oppressors of Israel, but in evident weakness and disgrace – and their hopes died with Him. If ever a cause was lost, it was His; if ever the power of evil were victorious, it was then.
And yet – within a generation His followers were exultingly proclaiming the crucified Jesus to be the conquerer of death and asserting … that by dying He had reduced the erstwhile lord of death to impotence. The keys of death and Hades were henceforth held firmly in Jesus’ powerful hand, for He, in the language of His own parable, had invaded the strongman’s fortress, disarmed him, bound him fast and robbed him of his spoil This is the unanimous witness of the New Testament writers; this was the assurance which nerved martyrs to face death boldly in His name. This sudden change from disillusionment to triumph can only be explained by the account which the apostles gave – that the Master rose from the dead and imparted to them the power of His risen life. FF Bruce. NICOT, Hebrews, p. 49.
Our view of the world around us and the world about us bas been so greasy enhanced that it would seem that we have been catapulted into a majestic theater that gives daily displays of remarkable glory. Yet our view of the world is perhaps more earthbound and nearsighted than ever before. Ours is the age of myopia, an age in which we declare that the sum total of reality is th here and now. this is an unprecedented kind of secularism. In our quest for liberation from the sacred and creaturely independence, we have succeeded only in cutting ourselves off from the sacred. We live in a smaller cave than Plato envisioned, and the shadows we behold are cast not by a roaring fire but by rapidly cooling, smoldering embers….
We refuse to turn (our) gaze to the obvious. We put blindfolds on ourselves, and then we stumble along, cursing the darkness…
We are creatures who prefer life in the cave to the full light of the blazing sun. The glory of God is all around us. We cannot miss it. However, we not only fail to stop and smell the flowers, but we also fail to notice the glory of the flowers’ Maker.
RC Sproul, The Holiness of God
Doubt Assured and Faith Strengthened
So what do you do when those questions about God’s goodness and trustworthiness press in on you, as they inevitably will in this fallen world? You look again to the cross, the ultimate sign, where Jesus Christ proved once and for all God’s undying love for you, and where he paid in full the price of all your sins. Even you sinful doubts and questionings about God’s goodness were covered there, and the perfect faith and trust in Jesus Christ, which never wavered from his Father even fo an instant, in now credited to you as if it were your faith. That is why we have been given the Lord’s Supper as a precious fit – a sign and seal of God’s faithful commitment to his covenant promise. Each time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the fact that the sign of Genesis 15 became a reality in Christ: that God in human form was broken for us and for our transgressions, so that our relationship with him, broken by our sin, might be restored. In this way, God feeds your faith and strengthens your assurance that, at the end of this life’s long journey, he stands ready to welcome you into the fullness of your heavenly inheritance. This is how he stills your questions and fills you with hope and new strength for your challenging journey of faith.
Iain Duguid, Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality, p. 60-61.
The meaning of this passage is this, that we shall be truly happy when God is propitious to us; for He not only pours upon us the abundance of His kindness, but offers Himself to us, that we may enjoy Him. Now what is there more, which men can desire, when they really enjoy God?
For whosoever shall be fully persuaded that his life is protected by the hand of god, and that he never can be miserable while God is gracious to him; and who consequently resorts to this haven in all his cares and troubles, will find the best remedy for all evils.”
John Calvin
Heidelberg Catechism
Q and A 1
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own,1but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—2 to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.3 He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,4 and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.5 He also watches over me in such a way6 that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven;7 in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.8 Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life9 and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.10
4 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 2:2
5 John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11
6 John 6:39-40; 10:27-30; 2 Thess. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:5
7 Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 21:16-18
9 Rom. 8:15-16; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14
10 Rom. 8:1-17
“Faith is more than knowledge, but it is, nevertheless, also knowledge; and without the knowledge of faith, the confidence of faith is impossible. You cannot make a Christian by instruction, but the Christian can be indoctrinated, and by growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ may increase in the conscious possession of the true comfort in life and death…
What is comfort?
We think of a fluffy pillow, a good movie, and a ice cold drink after a hard day’s work. Comfort is ease, rest, self-indulgence. But that is not what it means here.
Comfort comes from two Latin words that mean “with strength.” What comforts is what gives strength, or fortifies. It is the courage to life by grace in this fallen world.
“Comfort is that which results from a certain process of reasoning, in which we oppose something good to something evil, that by a proper consideration of this good, we may mitigate our grief, and patiently endure the evil. The good, therefore, which we oppose to the evil, must necessarily be great, and certain, in proportion to the magnitude of the evil with which it is contrasted.” Zacharias Ursinus
This comfort is equal to anything that life or death can throw at us.
“Faith is more than knowledge, but it is, nevertheless, also knowledge; and without the knowledge of faith the confidence of faith is impossible. You cannot make a Christian by instruction, but the Christian can be indoctrinated, and by growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ may increase in the conscious possession of the true comfort in life and death…
Assurance of Salvation – It is one thing to have sufficient strength to do something and another to actually do it. To have comfort, fortification, given to you, you still must know that it is yours, and you still must use it. To be assured that we belong to God means that we can draw on his all-sufficient bank account. We can sign the check and draw it from his account.account.ations in this world in opposition to God. I am no longer a slave to sin. I can walk in newness of life. hold upon the promise of God, is certain of that promise, contemplates that promise so that the believing heart embraces the thing promised and esteems it so great and gracious, that the sufferings of this present times are not worthy to be compared with it.” Herman Hoeksema
Only comfort. This is not one way of coping with the difficulties of life, but the only way. It is the only comfort that is equal to the task. There is only one comfort in a fallen world. The promised grace of God embraced by a living faith.
This is a personal comfort. What is your comfort? Everyone tries something to cope with a fallen world. Drink to deaden the pain, the exercise of power to try to control something, the diversion of entertainment. We do need to ask ourselves what is our comfort? How are we trying to cope with the evil of human life?
The answer is that I belong to Jesus Christ, and I am not my own. We have been told to be true to ourselves, to listen to the voice within, to be authentically yourself and to do what you think is best. The secular answer is to go deeper into yourself for your define your own morality, and you shape your own identity. This is Friedrich Nietzsche Ubermensch, “an overman is someone who can establish his own values as the world in which others live their lives, often unaware that they are not pre-given.”
The Bible, and the Catechism which summarizes its teaching points away from self, to God in Christ. We belong to a faithful savior. This savior, saves. Saves us from our fallen condition, our fallen world, and saves us from ourselves. Jesus, the savior, Christ, the anointed promised messiah is my certain and only comfort.
We are redeemed by God the Son
He is faithful. True to his word. He will do what he has said. Most of the promised given in the Bible have already been realized, especially those promising the coming of the seed of the woman that would crush the head of the serpent and deliver us from our fallen world. He is faithful. His word is our comfort, our strength in this broken world.
What is the source of all my discomfort? If you trace your dis-eases back to their source, it is sin. The underlying issue is always sin. Sin is our biggest problem.
What does this faithful God and Savior do for me that provides such unshakable comfort? Three things. He forgives my sins, he protects me in this fallen world and he leads me home, to a prefect place.
Forgiveness. Jesus pays for my sins with his precious blood. The Son of God has taken away my guilt and shame. He hasn’t merely overlooked my sins, but he has paid for them in full.
We are preserved by God the Father
Protection. The tyranny of the devil. The devil has hidden himself in our day. So much so that many think of the devil in the same category as the tooth faerie, mother nature, and Santa Clause. It is a pleasing fiction. But, the devil is real and his tyranny and destruction can be seen everywhere. My faithful savior shields me from the evil that is in the world, the temptations in this world in opposition to God. I am no longer a slave to sin. I can walk in newness of life.
Not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my heavenly father. God is near. Everything that happens is preparing me for glory, for perfection. God promises that all things work together for the good of those who love him.
We are Renewed by God the Holy Spirit
Assurance of Salvation – It is one thing to have sufficient strength to do something and another to actually do it. To have comfort, fortification, given to you, you still must know that it is yours, and you still must use it. To be assured that we belong to God means that we can draw on his all-sufficient bank account. We can sign check and draw from his account.
The Holy Spirit grants us the well-founded certainty that we belong to God. He gives us assurance of salvation. This is confidence that we have eternal life and that we are heading into life eternal. We are living the heavenly life, in some sense, now. The future blessing is also assured. This provides comfort in life and in death.
Wholeheartedly Willing to live for Him – We do not live for ourselves, for that is a leaky, unstable bucket to invest in. We live for the glory of God. We seek to make his name great in all the earth, not our own. We are willing, with all that we are, to live for him.
If this is not your conviction you really don’t understand your only comfort.
Ready, equipped, to live for Him. The Holy Spirit makes us ready to live for him. Equips, enables and empowers us to walk with God in this life and to follow the path he weaves to glory.
Christian Doubt and the Source of Assurance
In a biblical view of knowledge, God’s word is the ultimate criterion of certainty. What God says must be true; for, as the letter to the Hebrews says, it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18; compare Titus 1:2 and 1st John 2:27). His Word is Truth (John 17:17; compare Psalms 33:4, 119:160). So God’s Word is the criterion by which we can measure all other sources of knowledge.
When God promised Abraham a multitude of descendants and an inheritance in the land of Canaan, many things might have caused him to doubt. He reached the age of one hundred without having any children, and his wife Sarah was far beyond the normal age of childbearing. And though he sojourned in the land of Canaan, he didn’t own title to any land there at all. But Paul says of Abraham that “no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:20-21). God’s Word, for Abraham, took precedence over all other evidence in forming his own belief. So important is this principle that Paul defines justifying faith in terms of it: “That is why [Abraham’s] faith was counted to him for righteousness” (verse 22).
Thus, Abraham stands in contrast to Eve, who (in Genesis 3:6) allowed the evidence of her eyes to take precedence over the command of God. Abraham is one of the heroes of the faith, who (according to Hebrews 11:13), “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar…” They had God’s promise, and that was enough to motivate them to endure terrible sufferings and deprivations through their earthly lives.
I would conclude that it is the responsibility of the Christian to regard God’s word as absolutely certain, and to make that word the criterion of all other sources of knowledge. Our certainty of the truth of God comes ultimately, not through rational demonstration or empirical verification, useful as these may often be, but from the authority of God’s own Word.
John Frame
