Good Sunday!

Well, we had a good Sunday. We started off by having two brand new visitors for Sunday School and morning worship. Then we had a lasagna/spaghetti dinner with Boston Creme Pie and Banana Cream Pie for dessert. We topped things off by having a baptism! All in all a good Sunday. Looking forward to youth convention next weekend.

We found out the grandma had a mini-stroke. She got to leave the hospital today. Please continue to pray for her and grandpa.

Pray for my grandmother

Please pray for my grandmother. Apparently, she had a stroke this morning. Please pray for the family as well.

I Love You Too Much! Part 2

As mentioned previously Anna has recently began saying "I love you too much!" When she says it, she says it in a singsong voice as if actually meaning to say, I love you very much. It has made me think about a few things.

The second thing that this statement made me think was the fact that some people begin to think that they in fact love Christ too much, thinking that they are too involved with church and His work. In trying to balance their affairs of this life, they begin to think that He is taking up too much time and start cutting back on their spiritual work. We can never love Him too much. We must never work less for Him. Sometimes, we get involved being "busy" without really working. Let us cut out the "busyness" and get on with the work.

Praise Report and prayer request

Praise the Lord! We thank that Lord that Joe's, here at church, dad got saved. We had been praying for him for a while and Joe received the call tonight telling him that he had given his heart to the Lord!

Please pray for Mary Smith. God knows this urgent need.

What a week!

Man, what a week. I had Monday off because of rain, but the rest of the week was packed. I didn't get home until 10:30 p.m. one night and 9:00 p.m. the next and then had to work Friday. That meant my day yesterday was crammed with trying to get everything done. It is incredible to think of the work load some in this world has and the things they are put through. I am blessed to live when and where I do. Just need the Lord to give me the strength to make it through some weeks. At least I had a productive day yesterday and was able to get quite a bit done. And I got to spend time with Jobi. I put her car seat in my truck and she rode around with me most of the day on the different little trips I took to get stuff. She loves riding in "Papa's Big Truck." I try to explain that it is not a big truck, but I guess to a two year old it is. She loves riding around in it though. Hopefully, I'll get the garden going the pretty good by the end of this month. Worked on various parts of the yard a bit throughout the day. It is nice to have yard big enough for trees again. So far we have a cherry tree and plum tree, along with some grapes vines and raspberries. I am hoping to get some blueberries planted before summer begins as well. Anyway, guess that is all for now.

I Love You Too Much! Part 1

Gotta make this quick cause someone is calling for me. But this is Anna's newest saying. I told her today that she couldn't love me too much. Then I thought about it and decided that she could love me too much. I told her that she could only love me too much if she loved me more than Jesus. I then asked her if she did and she promptly responded "No Way!" Then she said something to the effect of "I need/want Jesus."

Unfortunately, many people love many things in this world more than Jesus. We must strive to make sure that we love nothing too much, to the point that it gets in between us and Jesus. I love my family and friends, but must never let them be in the middle of Christ and I.

Courage for Christ

During our Sunday Morning Service, our mission leader shared deeply from her heart. What she shared took an amount of courage as it involved relating something personal and in the near past, to tie in with the point she was making. This is what we must have in our local church and in The Church of God across the world - courage. We must be determined to not be ashamed of what God has put on our heart, even if it may cause some uncomfortableness on our part. God has called us to reach out and win the lost to Christ. There will be times that God will call us out of our comfort zone and require us to be courageous for Him.

Ok!

Anna seems to provide endless analogies to what our relationship with Christ is supposed to be. Another one of her favorite things to say right now is, "OK". Quite often whenever we tell her to do something she responds promptly and says "OK" and then quit whatever she is doing! Now I would love if she would do this from now on, but I have this feeling it is just a phase she is going through. But this is how our heavenly Father wants us to respond to Him EVERY time that He tells us something. If you are a parent you can readily empathize with what I feel whenever Anna does this. That means you can also empathize with how Christ feels when we obey Him without question or hesitation. Let us all strive to respond with "OK" to our Saviour.

I Need You

One of Anna's favorite thing to say right now is "I need you". "I need you, momma" "I need you poppa". It is sweet to hear her say these things, but then I began to think of the spiritual application that this has in all of our lives. Most of the time when she says this, nothing highly critical is happening, she merely wants us to be there beside her. But the important thing is she views this as a need. We should feel this same way toward our Father. We should "need" Him at all times, even when nothing highly critical is happening. We should want Him near us so much it should become a need. Do you need Him, or do you merely want Him?

Politics and Christ

Many conservative Christians are either active in politics or vocal about their feelings in the political realm, especially the issues that they feel are the most prominent or important. The question is how involved we as Christians should be. Many who profess to be Christians will, without hesitation, attack political leaders and basically wage war on some issues, not thinking about the consequence of their actions. I myself have been guilty of this mindset in the past. However, the Bible compares those that attack leaders with those in Sodom and Gomorrha in Jude. Also, Paul in Acts 23 immediately apologizes for speaking harsh words after he finds out the man he was speaking to was the high priest. In this instance, Paul was correct in what he was addressing, namely the hypocrisy taking place. This speaks to me that we should be careful of what we say and think of our leaders.

Many people will be careful in what they say of their spiritual leaders, but not so in what they say of their political leaders. We should readily pray for any leader, spiritual or political that we feel are getting off track, rather than attack them. After all, the best that we could ever hope to do is influence them, while God can change them. If we can influence someone, somebody else can influence them as well. But when God changes them, that is different.

Another companion issue, is when people go to war(Figuratively) over various issues, i.e abortion, homosexual marriage. Those seem to be the two big ones. I have seen many rail against these, proclaiming God's wrath on these issues. I wonder though, what if we spent as much time in prayer for these issues, and on the politicians that make laws concerning them, as we doing railing against them. Would it not be time better spent? After all God can move much more mightily than us. Would we not be better in striving to win people to Christ, than in trying to get sinners to vote, or rule on issues God's way? Seems to me that the more people in a nation that are won to Christ, the more the civil laws are would closely resemble laws that God would approve of.

Let us, instead of complaining about the direction of our country, instead pray, that God would change hearts and help us to lead people to Him. It will be of much more effect.

Reaching people

Is what your doing going to reach the people that you want to reach for Christ?

It's Spring!

It's finally Spring around here, but the weather still can't decide what it wants to do. One day it is warm and the next day not quite cold but very chilly. It was almost 70 yesterday and I heard someone say that it might snow tomorrow. I am trying to get some yard work done as I can. We have gotten a cherry tree and plum tree. I am also working on getting our garden set up. Started several different vegetable seeds earlier this afternoon.

I have to say that I really do like having Fridays off. I always plan on getting a bunch done, but usually it seems that I just kind of rest and relax, while usually getting a little bit done. Oh well.

We are in the process of transitioning over to using a digital display for our songs in church instead of the songbooks and printed sheets. We use a number of different songs that are not in the songbook and the papers we are using definitely contribute to clutter and mess. Also, we are now able to add new songs much easier. We are still in the process of getting all of the hymns transferred over. We had a good district convention last week as well. We are looking to hopefully and prayerfully, have a good turn out for Easter. Which reminds me, I have some work to do out in the yard before the egg hunt.

Jobi is growing more all the time. Her vocabulary is expanding fairly rapidly as well. Hopefully, we will get some new pictures sometime soon.