Dear friends,
What a great week to be able to be children of God in the world. This may be the week that someone turns their life over to Jesus, and God will have used you to be a part of that. Wouldn’t you like that to be true in your situation? The Lord is ready to amaze people with His presence. He waits for you and I to introduce our friends and families to Him. He wants to shine in and through our lives if we will surrender ourselves over to Him.
I have been memorizing the book of Ephesians over the summer and into the fall and I came across a beautiful couple of verses in chapter 4.
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
It doesn’t take much looking around our country these days to see how these verses are transformational. When someone does something that you disagree with, are you completely humble and gentle with them? Are you patient with them? Will you bear with them in love?
And if we were humble and gentle and patient, bearing with others in love, what might that do? What might that say? How might that be different from how our world is currently functioning?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t live this way all the time. I am much more interested in having my say and my way. I need the life of Jesus to fill me and change me. So, I pray that way all the time. I say, “Lord Jesus, please transform my life to look more like your life. Live in me today. Live through me today.”
I want all of us to pray a prayer similar to that one. I know that you want Christ to live in you. You long for His presence and His power. And He longs to fill you. So, stay surrendered to Him. Lean into surrender. Don’t let anything hold you back from being fully devoted to Jesus.
This weekend we will continue our series called “It’s not all about me”. We will be looking at the sentence in our mission statement that says that we will be passionately devoted to God. A good question to ask in preparation for this weekend is, “What is my passion level like for God these days?” If you answered that it was quite low, then follow up that question by trying to figure out why. Ask Jesus to reveal to you why your passion level might be low. Ask Him to help you grow in that area. I will be preaching from a few verses at the end of Romans 11.
As I am sure you have heard, there have been some new restrictions provincially. In order to work with these guidelines there are a few things that we are doing.
- There will be no kickoff celebrations like we had planned. I am super disappointed as this is a big deal to me. But alas, it has to go.
- We will need people to sign up for services again because we can only have 110 people in the room.
- We will have to wear masks when we are in the worship service together.
- We will need to exit the building when the service is over (visiting is allowed in the parking lot!)
- ALPHA will still be running but there will be no meal portion for the next little while.
Hope you have a great weekend. I love you guys and I love being your pastor. Thank you for being such a great church.
Pastor Tim
I have been memorizing the book of Ephesians over the summer and into the fall and I came across a beautiful couple of verses in chapter 4.
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
It doesn’t take much looking around our country these days to see how these verses are transformational. When someone does something that you disagree with, are you completely humble and gentle with them? Are you patient with them? Will you bear with them in love?
And if we were humble and gentle and patient, bearing with others in love, what might that do? What might that say? How might that be different from how our world is currently functioning?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t live this way all the time. I am much more interested in having my say and my way. I need the life of Jesus to fill me and change me. So, I pray that way all the time. I say, “Lord Jesus, please transform my life to look more like your life. Live in me today. Live through me today.”
I want all of us to pray a prayer similar to that one. I know that you want Christ to live in you. You long for His presence and His power. And He longs to fill you. So, stay surrendered to Him. Lean into surrender. Don’t let anything hold you back from being fully devoted to Jesus.
This weekend we will continue our series called “It’s not all about me”. We will be looking at the sentence in our mission statement that says that we will be passionately devoted to God. A good question to ask in preparation for this weekend is, “What is my passion level like for God these days?” If you answered that it was quite low, then follow up that question by trying to figure out why. Ask Jesus to reveal to you why your passion level might be low. Ask Him to help you grow in that area. I will be preaching from a few verses at the end of Romans 11.
As I am sure you have heard, there have been some new restrictions provincially. In order to work with these guidelines there are a few things that we are doing.
- There will be no kickoff celebrations like we had planned. I am super disappointed as this is a big deal to me. But alas, it has to go.
- We will need people to sign up for services again because we can only have 110 people in the room.
- We will have to wear masks when we are in the worship service together.
- We will need to exit the building when the service is over (visiting is allowed in the parking lot!)
- ALPHA will still be running but there will be no meal portion for the next little while.
Hope you have a great weekend. I love you guys and I love being your pastor. Thank you for being such a great church.
Pastor Tim