It's Only 4 Days Away!

Children... bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4 NIV)

Vacation Bible School is only a few days away - the first week in August!  Have you registered your kids yet?  Or your grandkids?  Or your nephews and nieces?  Have you mentioned it to your co-workers who have kids?  Or to your neighbors?  Or to your sisters and brothers?

Registration is now open, and you can register either online (www.FriendshipBibleChurch.org) or by contacting the church office for a paper registration form.   You may also request free postcards to use in inviting friends and family members.  

One of the best things I have ever read

Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering

Let them come!

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them... (Matthew 19:14 ESV)


Vacation Bible School is only a few days away - the first week in August!  Have you registered your kids yet?  Or your grandkids?  Or your nephews and nieces?  Have you mentioned it to your co-workers who have kids?  Or to your neighbors?  Or to your sisters and brothers?

Registration is now open, and you can register either online (www.FriendshipBibleChurch.org) or by contacting the church office for a paper registration form.   You may also request free postcards to use in inviting friends and family members.  

'nuther great Prayer Breakfast!

Thanks, Trudy and Sandie for the wonderful breakfast. Thanks Phil for the word from Peter.  And thanks Ken for the insight into Wickliffe Bible Translator's Ministry.

Another gem from Spurgeon's pen

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

“Cleanses,” says the text—not “shall cleanse.” There are multitudes who think that as a dying hope they may look forward to pardon. Oh! how infinitely better to have cleansing now than to depend on the bare possibility of forgiveness when I come to die. Some imagine that a sense of pardon is an attainment only obtainable after many years of Christian experience. But forgiveness of sin is a present thing—a privilege for this day, a joy for this very hour. The moment a sinner trusts Jesus he is fully forgiven. The text, being written in the present tense, also indicates continuance; it was “cleanses” yesterday, it is “cleanses” today, it will be “cleanses” tomorrow: it will be always so with you, Christian, until you cross the river; every hour you may come to this fountain, for it cleanses still. Notice, likewise, the completeness of the cleansing, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”—not only from sin, but “from all sin.” Reader, I cannot tell you the exceeding sweetness of this word, but I pray God the Holy Ghost to give you a taste of it. Many are our sins against God. Whether the bill be little or great, the same receipt can discharge one as the other. The blood of Jesus Christ is as blessed and divine a payment for the transgressions of blaspheming Peter as for the shortcomings of loving John; our iniquity is gone, all gone at once, and all gone for ever. Blessed completeness! What a sweet theme to dwell upon!

“Sins against a holy God;
Sins against his righteous laws;
Sins against his love, his blood;
Sins against his name and cause;
Sins immense as is the sea-
From them all he cleanseth me.”

Remember VBS 2010?

Click here for a slideshow that might refresh your memory.

Not from our children!

We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the LORD, about his power and his mighty wonders. (Psalm 78:4 NLT)


What if you had access to a vast sum of wealth?  Wouldn't that be great?  And wouldn't it be doubly great to have such supply and to be able to pay for the very best medical care available for your sick child?  


But what if you had a vast sum of wealth, your child grew sick and near death, and you hid that supply so it couldn't be found... so that it was unavailable to help your sick child?  


The psalmist knew it well - the truths about God, which are contained in the Bible, are precious.  We must share them with all.  We must tell them to our children.


That's why we have VBS the first week in August!  Have you registered your kids yet?  Or your grandkids?  Or your nephews and nieces?  Have you mentioned it to your co-workers who have kids?  Or to your neighbors?  Or to your sisters and brothers?

Registration is now open, and you can register either online (www.FriendshipBibleChurch.org) or by contacting the church office for a paper registration form.   You may also request free postcards to use in inviting friends and family members.  

Weekend Forecast!

I just noticed the weather forecast for today - 97 and hot hot hot. Interestingly, that forecast could also describe the anticipated weekend at FBC.

Saturday morning, the heatwave begins with Men's Prayer Breakfast at 8:00, followed by "Men Serving Together" and a manly shopping trip to Fins Feathers and Fur. Hot!

Saturday evening, the second Campfire Fellowship of 2011 will push the mercury even higher. Bring your lawn chairs, corn hole games, and covered dishes to the Sizzling Spangler Spread! Hot hot!

Sunday morning, of course, we gather to worship our Lord and Savior on the Lord's Day. God said, Is not My word like a fire?” (Jeremiah 23:29 NKJV) Everytime we open it, it is hot, hot, hot. Sunday School meets at 9:30, followed by worship at 10:30.

Let's enjoy the heat wave together.

1524

That's a pretty big number.  In fact, we ought to let that sink in for a minute - one thousand, five hundred, and twenty four.  


What is the significance?  Well, that's how many verses contain the word "children" in the Bible!  


One of those verses is - Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. (Psalm 34:11 NKJV)


The author of that psalm understood - children are important to God, and we need to take every opportunity to raise them to love and serve Him.  While they are young, they are most easily reached for Christ.  Ask any parent of teenagers whether that is the time to start reaching them.  Or ask a parent who let their children grow to adulthood without teaching them the fear of the LORD - how easy is it to reach them once they are grown?   No... the time is now, while they are young.  There will never be a better time to ground them in the truth.  


That's why we have VBS the first week in August!  Have you registered your kids yet?  Or your grandkids?  Or your nephews and nieces?  Have you mentioned it to your co-workers who have kids?  Or to your neighbors?  Or to your sisters and brothers?


Registration is now open, and you can register either online (www.FriendshipBibleChurch.org) or by contacting the church office for a paper registration form.   You may also request free postcards to use in inviting friends and family members.  

As participating members...

Gene A. Getz, in "Elders and Leaders," shares a helpful thought:

Paul address the Corinthian believers as saints (2 Corinthians 1:1), even though most of them were living anything but godly lives (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). Yet, because of their faith in Jesus Christ and their true salvation experience, God viewed them through Christ's death and resurrection as perfectly HAGIOS, or holy.

This is the way God sees all of us in local churches who are truly saved. If he did not, no one could inherit eternal life. This is why the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith and not by works is so important. None of us by our own strength can live a perfect life, nor can anyone qualify on his own to gain entrance into God's eternal kingdom.

However, even though we cannot reach God's standard of holiness in this life, both individually and as a church body, it is still His will that all of us become holy, as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16). As participating members in local churches, we are to renew our minds – not to "conform any longer to the pattern of this world," but to "be transformed" (Romans 12:2). Put another way, as Christ's disciples and as brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ, reflecting the fruit of the Holy Spirit in all of our relationships with one another (Galatians 5:16-26).

Join the Experiment?

We will gather at 6:30 Wednesday evening for prayer, as is our custom every week. But we are experimenting with our format for that gathering, as it has become a bit stale of late. Perhaps you would join us in that experiment?

After all, every one of us is in need of being prayed for... And every one of us is in need of practicing praying for others... And every one of us is in need of praying with others. Prayer meeting is an opportunity for all of the above, and requires less than an hour of investment.

Try it. This Wednesday? 6:30?

In prayer, we find ourselves seeking a lost oneness with our old home, the heart of God. We have been wrenched from that home by sin and now know an urge that drives us to reunion. Prayer satisfies that urge, for now at least. It is a renaming of our current longing with the title of the old perfect one. It is recognition that God has renamed hopeless sin. It is now forgiven sin. He has renamed powerlessness: power. Weakness: strength. Despair: joy. We are living on dangerous, foreign ground. The only way to survive is to claim what we can for God, and for the rest seek the peace only prayer can bring. (Terry C. Muck, Liberating the Leader's Prayer Life)

When the winds of trial blow...

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out (Song of Solomon 4:16)

Sometimes God sends severe blasts of trial upon His children to develop their graces. Just as torches burn most brightly when swung violently to and fro; just as the juniper plant smells sweetest when flung into the flames; so the richest qualities of a Christian often come out under the north wind of suffering and adversity. Bruised hearts often emit the fragrance that God loveth to smell. Almost every true believer’s experience contains the record of trials which were sent for the purpose of shaking the spice tree. (Theodore Cuyler)

We cannot afford to be wiser than our Lord in this matter.

B.B. Warfield wrote:

If ever there was one who might justly plead that the common worship of the community had nothing to offer him it was the Lord Jesus Christ. But every Sabbath found him seated in his place among the worshipping people, and there was no act of stated worship which he felt himself entitled to discard.

Even in his most exalted moods, and after his most elevating experiences, he quietly took his place with the rest of God’s people, sharing with them in the common worship of the community. Returning from that great baptismal scene, when the heavens themselves were rent to bear him witness that he was well pleasing to God; from the searching trials of the wilderness, and from that first great tour in Galilee, prosecuted, as we are expressly told, “in the power of the Spirit”; he came back, as the record tells, “to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and” — so proceeds the amazing narrative — “he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue, on the Sabbath day.”

“As his custom was!”

Jesus Christ made it his habitual practice to be found in his place on the Sabbath day at the stated place of worship to which he belonged. “It is a reminder,” as Sir William Robertson Nicoll well insists, “of the truth which, in our fancied spirituality, we are apt to forget — that the holiest personal life can scarcely afford to dispense with stated forms of devotion, and that the regular public worship of the church, for all its local imperfections and dullness, is a divine provision for sustaining the individual soul.”

“We cannot afford to be wiser than our Lord in this matter. If any one could have pled that his spiritual experience was so lofty that it did no require public worship, if any one might have felt that the consecration and communion of is personal life exempted him from what ordinary mortals needed, it was Jesus. But he made no such plea. Sabbath after Sabbath even he was found in the place of worship, side by side with God’s people, not for the mere sake of setting a good example, but for deeper reasons. Is it reasonable, then, that any of us should think we can safely afford to dispense with the pious custom of regular participation with the common worship of our locality?”

Is it necessary for me to exhort those who would fain be like Christ, to see to it that they are imitators of him in this?

What a great reminder - "We cannot afford to be wiser than our Lord in this matter."