Bulletin for 12-25-22

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Birthdays and Anniversaries

12-30 Besy Turcios

Prayer requests:

Rachel Prater, Dena’s cousin, Rodney’s, recovering at home. Prayers please.

Chloe Birdwell, relative of the Weeks’s, great improvement, in a program in Houston. Keep praying, please!

Paul Tyler has a bad sort Parkinson’s. Got stem cell treatments. Pray for their success.

Bill Grubbs, is home now and doing better

Tonita, Paul’s friend, heart valve replacement needed

J R Medellin, Tiffany’s (Chance) husband, still doing well. Vanessea is doing well after her surgery.

Shirley Weeks, Steve’s mom, continues to have trouble.

Sarah, Chris Girvin’s sister, on hospice care

Robert and Sue Waller, health issues

Darla Nitti, Wendi’s mom, not doing well.

Leta, has a recurring cancer, prayer request from her granddaughter via our website.

Tammy Jones, Weeks’ neighbor, kidney failure/dialysis

Article:

Steadfast love

“Let those who fear the Lord say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever’” (Psalm 118:4 ESV).

Time passes. Years come and go. We are at the end of another year which seems to have been much briefer and more fleeting than we expect. Yet one thing is unchanging. God’s love never fails! It is constant, enduring, steadfast.

The author of Psalm 118 declares that enduring reality in beautiful poetry and makes practical and pertinent application with which all believers can identify. First, he declares that God is our helper, who is on our side and hears and answers our prayers, especially when we are troubled (Verses 5-7). Because of him we gain victory over our enemies (8-11).

God is our savior, protecting us but also teaching and disciplining us as we have needs (14-18). He gives us access to salvation through his grace and power, providing whatever sacrifice or propitiation required (19-25).

The believer’s proper response to God’s love is gratitude, trust, and obedience (26-29). We recognize that we have done nothing to earn or deserve his love. He saves us because of his love and righteousness, not because of any obligation. The Psalm ends with the exhortation, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”

At this time of holiday celebration when we honor love, generosity, and thanksgiving, this beautiful Psalm reminds us that God is good, that he loves us always, and that he is unchanging and dependable. No matter what evils the next year may present, God is steadfast and enduring, always loving us. Let us trust in him.

Lee Parish, link to original article

Bulletin for 12-18-22

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Birthdays and Anniversaries

None this week

Prayer requests:

Rachel Prater, Dena’s cousin, Rodney’s, recovering at home. Prayers please.

Chloe Birdwell, relative of the Weeks’s, great improvement, in a program in Houston. Keep praying, please!

Paul Tyler has a bad sort Parkinson’s. Got stem cell treatments. Pray for their success.

Bill Grubbs, is home now and doing better

Tonita, Paul’s friend, heart valve replacement needed

J R Medellin, Tiffany’s (Chance) husband, still doing well. Vanessea is doing well after her surgery.

Shirley Weeks, Steve’s mom, continues to have trouble.

Sarah, Chris Girvin’s sister, on hospice care

Robert and Sue Waller, health issues

Darla Nitti, Wendi’s mom, not doing well.

Leta, has a recurring cancer, prayer request from her granddaughter via our website.

Tammy Jones, Weeks’ neighbor, kidney failure/dialysis

Article:

God cares for his people

Joseph made his brethren promise not to bury his bones in Egypt. He told them God would visit them and they could carry his bones out of that land. Joseph died, his body was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt (Genesis 50:22-26). Those bones suggest the story was not yet complete.

Moses began Exodus with a list of the sons of Jacob who entered Egypt with their father (Exodus 1:1-5). The population of the children of Israel grew to fill the land. A Pharaoh ascended to the throne who did not know Joseph. His fear of the rapidly multiplying Hebrews caused him to deal wisely, or craftily, with them by placing them in slavery. They built the supply cities of Pithom and Raamses. Pharaoh might have hoped hard work would decrease their numbers, but they grew (Exodus 1:6-14)!

The king approached the two women in charge of the Hebrew midwives and told them to kill all the boy babies at birth. Their fear of God caused them to refuse to be a part of such cruelty. The number of the people continued to grow, which they explained to Pharaoh as resulting from the Hebrew women being more sturdy than the Egyptian women. The children were born before midwives arrived on the scene. God blessed these women with homes and families (Exodus 1:15-21).

The failure of his first two plans caused Pharaoh to tell the Israelites to cast all male children into the river. Amram and Jochebed, of the tribe of Levi, had a son during this time. The beauty of this male child caused his parents to believe he was specially favored by God. They hid him for three months (1:22-2:2; Acts 7:19-20; Hebrews 11:23).

Jochebed placed her growing boy in a waterproofed ark of bulrushes in the reeds by the river bank with his sister set as a watch. Pharaoh’s daughter found the child during her morning bath. She adopted him and named him Moses, which means “drawn out,” because she had drawn him out of the water (Exodus 2:3-10). The child’s sister stepped up and asked if they would be needing a wet nurse, thus returning him to the care of his own mother. Moses thus came to know all about God and his people while being educated in all the Egyptians knew (Acts 7:21-22).

Moses “went out to his brethren” at the age of forty, apparently choosing to suffer with the people of God (Hebrews 11:24-26). He decided, without proper authority, to defend one of his brethren, who was being beaten, by killing the Egyptian. He looked both ways before killing him and buried the body in the sand. Stephen says Moses thought the people would recognize God had chosen him to deliver them from bondage. The fact that they did not is clear proof that they were “stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears!” The fathers resisted the directions of the Spirit (Acts 7:23-25, 51). The next day, he saw two Hebrew men fighting. When Moses tried to stop them, one of them made reference to the killing of the previous day. Moses fled to the land of Midian before Pharaoh could kill him (Exodus 3:11-15).

God’s hand can be seen throughout the beginning of Exodus. As surely as he did not forget his people in Egypt, he will not forget us. No wonder Peter says, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).

Gary Hampton, link to original article

Bulletin for 12-11-22

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Birthdays and Anniversaries

12-13 Jonathan Mendoza

12-15 Noa Best

Prayer requests:

Rachel Prater, Dena’s cousin, Rodney’s, recovering at home. Prayers please.

Chloe Birdwell, relative of the Weeks’s, great improvement, in a program in Houston. Keep praying, please!

Paul Tyler has a bad sort Parkinson’s. Got stem cell treatments. Pray for their success.

Bill Grubbs, in the VA hospital, sore throat, been unable to eat for several days.

Tonita, Paul’s friend, heart valve replacement needed

J R Medellin, Tiffany’s (Chance) husband, still doing well. Vanessea is doing well after her surgery.

Shirley Weeks, Steve’s mom, continues to have trouble.

Sarah, Chris Girvin’s sister, on hospice care

Robert and Sue Waller, health issues

Darla Nitti, Wendi’s mom, not doing well.

Leta, has a recurring cancer, prayer request from her granddaughter via our website.

Tammy Jones, Weeks’ neighbor, kidney failure/dialysis

Article:

Desire, numbness & goals

On the fortieth anniversary of her song “Physical,” Olivia Newton-John commented that back in 1981 this song was considered raunchy. Then she quipped that in comparison to the songs on the radio today it is like a lullaby. How can the salacious become tame? We know the answer.

The entertainment industry thrives on feeding fleshly desires. Will something tantalize? Is it a forbidden pleasure? Will it arouse desire, perhaps a private dark thrill? Then push the envelope! Offering the thrill generates money. Customers satisfying such desires only deepen their appetite for more.

Then it happens. The old stimulus does not excite as much as it first did. A certain numbness to the old stimuli begins to grow. To experience the same level of excitement requires pushing the envelope toward an ever more provocative, more salacious, or more forbidden pleasure.

The appetite creeps in from being a lark on the periphery toward becoming a  central life force; it seeks to become a relentless and demanding master. A pattern of decisions emerge seeking more. What feels like irresistible urges grow in intensity.

Paul aptly summed up this downward spiral where bad information has empowered pursuing the wrong goals. “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.  Having lost all feeling, they have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” Ephesians 4:18-19

The goal is not to feel excitement. However, there is nothing wrong in being excited. Pleasure is not the goal. Yet again, there is nothing wrong with pleasure. The goal is not acquisition. Yet, possessions are not evil. Failure to grasp what our Creator intended to drive our lives will result in hamstringing a life lived well.

If people will seek God and his righteousness not only will society be healthier but people can experience the life God intended. Joy, peace and contentment will replace emptiness, numbness and unfettered desire. Love replaces narcissism. And what was raunchy at one point of time will continue to be raunchy much later.

“Do not be deceived. God will not be made a fool. For a person will reap what he sows, because the person who sows to his own flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit” (Galatians 6:7-8).

Barry Newton Link to original article

Bulletin for 12-4-22

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Birthdays and Anniversaries

None this week

Prayer requests:

Rachel Prater, Dena’s cousin, Rodney’s, recovering at home. Prayers please.

Chloe Birdwell, relative of the Weeks’s, great improvement, in a program in Houston. Keep praying, please!

Paul Tyler has a bad sort Parkinson’s. Got stem cell treatments. Pray for their success.

Bill Grubbs, skin cancer.

Tonita, Paul’s friend, heart valve replacement needed

Preston Downey, friend of Steve’s, recovering at home

J R Medellin, Tiffany’s (Chance) husband, still doing well. Vanessea is doing well after her surgery.

Shirley Weeks, Steve’s mom, continues to have trouble.

Sarah, Chris Girvin’s sister, on hospice care

Robert and Sue Waller, health issues

Darla Nitti, Wendi’s mom, not doing well.

Leta, has a recurring cancer, prayer request from her granddaughter via our website.

Tammy Jones, Weeks’ neighbor, kidney failure/dialysis

Article:

The Incomparable Christ

My wife, my children, my parents and extended family, my Christian brothers and sisters, my work, and my health are a few of the many things for which I am thankful. You likely have a similar list.

But nothing compares to Christ and nothing should compare to Christ in your heart.

Contemplate the gift that he gave.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

This Word which became flesh, existed with God and existed as God in the beginning (John 1:1). He carried with him all the characteristics of Deity. He is eternal (existing prior to and outside of time – John 1:1), he is all-powerful (all things were made through him – John 1:3), he is holy (in him was life, and the life was the light of men – John1:4), he is truth (grace and truth came through him – John1:17).

God is Spirit not flesh and blood (John 4:24), yet this eternal, all-powerful, wholly other spirit being, chose to come to earth to become like us for us.

He was not forced by a superior being to come, he “gave himself for our sins” (Galatians 1:4). He was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). If Jesus is God, then it was according to his plan and his foreknowledge as much as it was the Father or the Holy Spirit.

He was not the Son in eternity past, but became the Son of God in his incarnation (see Luke 1:36).

He never ceased being God. He received worship on a number of occasions (see Matthew 14:33; 21:9) without rebuke. Thomas’ powerful statement — “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) — did not receive a condemnation, but rather agreement. Prior to his death on the cross, and after his resurrection, Jesus is God. Yet he subjected himself to the Father in all things.

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30).

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

He “emptied himself” by coming to earth as a man and “humbled himself” by dying for mankind (Philippians 2:6-8).

After his humility and shame upon the cross, his weary body was laid in a tomb separated from his spirit (Luke 23:46; James 2:26). On that glorious Sunday morning, his spirit returned and reanimated his body. His resurrection is used as a guarantee of ours (1 Corinthians 15:12-20). He went to heaven in this body — though certainly glorified.

We know that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:50). Our perishable body will put on the imperishable, our mortality swapped for immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53). We will be changed, and it is then that “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

Now here is something to rejoice in, be thankful for, and be awed by every day for the rest of your life.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (John 3:2).

When that great day arrives, and Jesus comes for his own, our spirits will reunite with our bodies, and will be changed to become like him. We will be (in some way) like him and with him for all eternity.

Thank God for our incomparable Christ!

Lee Parish, link to original article