Fire it Up

New classes for the adults start this Lord's Day. Pick one and immerse yourself in it. Be molded by God's Word.

Phil Ross and Jim Moore will be teaching on the pastoral epistles, meeting in the sanctuary.

Mark Salisbury will be teaching on Jonah and the minor prophets, meeting in Fellowship Hall.

Ray Spangler will be restarting a series entitled "His Stories" and will meet in the conference room downstairs (just behind the coffee pot).

Sunday School is vital - for adults and for kids. Classes are available for every age group - preschool through teens. Parents, determine that your responsibility to "train up your children in the way they should go" is important. Determine that your role in "bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of The Lord" is more important than anything else you might do with them on that one hour every Sunday morning. For Sunday School will yield eternal results.

Will you join us for Sunday School at 9:30? Let's fire it up! Let's be molded by God's Word!

Matthew 25 Time

Join us at the Haven of Rest Saturday morning at 10:00.

Let's Go Bowling

It's here - the winter bowling party you've been waiting for.

When - Saturday March 1, 3-5 PM
Where - Kent Lanes on Rt. 43 in Kent

Join us for a great time of fun and fellowship and food!

Pray For One Another

Join us for prayer meeting this evening at 6:30.  

Make a difference.  Affect the future.  Intercede.

"History and the future belong to the intercessors." (Berkhof Hedrikus)

True gratitude is unstoppable.

Here is something I read this morning that made we want to say, "Thank You Father."

One of the great hymns of gratitude was written Martin Rinkart (1586–1649), a pastor in the city of Elenberg in Saxony, during the Thirty Years War. During that horrible time, all the other pastors in the city left, leaving him with 4,500 funerals to conduct, among them his wife’s. As the war drew to a close, the city was overrun by the Austrians once and the Swedes twice. The Swedish general levied a heavy tax on the beleaguered people. Rinkart and his congregation pleaded for the general to show mercy, but he refused. Rinkart then turned to his people and said, “Come, my children; we can find no mercy with man—let us take refuge in God.” There, before the general, they knelt in prayer. The general was so moved by what he saw that he relented and lowered the tax to one-twentieth of what it had been.

Martin Rinkart, the man who saw so much grief and endured so much loss, could still say gratitude’s defiant “nevertheless,” and write the great, “Now Thank We All Our God”:

Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mother’s arms,
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.
All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The Son and Holy Ghost,
Supreme in highest heaven;
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.

(Excerpted from "Deepening Your Relationship With God: The Life-changing Power of Prayer" by Ben Patterson)

Pray On - Power Lies That Way

Mary Slessor was a missionary to West Africa in the nineteenth century. Her work among orphans there was nothing short of remarkable. Single and an activist, her days were long and arduous and at times lonely. She did the work of ten “normal” people in her lifetime. But she named prayer, not mere “doing,” as the real dynamic of her accomplishments. In letters home to her friends she wrote:

My life is one long, daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for enmity to the gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything else that goes to make up life and my poor service.… I can testify with a full and often wonder-stricken awe that I … know God answers prayer.… Prayer is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service. Praying is harder work than doing … but the dynamic lies that way to advance the kingdom. I have no idea how and why God has carried me over so many hard places, and made these hordes submit to me … except in answer to prayer at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on—power lies that way.

(from "Deepening Your Conversation With a God: The Life-Changing Power of Prayer," by Ben Patterson and David Goetz)

A Daily Dose of Spurgeon

Written in the 1850's concerning the state of the church in England, yet it eerily fits the state of the church in America today!

Any man, who has his eyes open to the world at large, will acknowledge that there are many clouds brooding over England, and over the world. I received lately a letter from a gentleman at Hull, in which he tells me that he sympathizes with my views concerning the condition of the Church at large. I do not know whether Christendom was ever worse off than it is now. At any rate, I pray God it never may be. Read the account of the condition of the Suffolk churches, where the gospel is somewhat flourishing, and you will be surprised to learn that they have had hardly any increase at all in the year. So you may go from church to church, and find scarcely any that are growing. Here and there, a chapel is filled with people; here and there, you see an earnest minister; here and there, an increasing church; here and there, a good prayer- meeting; but these are only like green spots in a great desert. Wherever I have gone through England, I have always been grieved to see how the Church of Christ is under a cloud,-- how "the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, are esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter." It is not for me to set myself up as universal censor of the Church; but I must be honest, and say that spiritual life, and fire, and zeal, and piety seem to be absent in ten thousand instances. We have abundance of agencies, we have good mechanism, but the Church, nowadays, is very much like a large steam engine without any fire, and, therefore, without any steam. There is everything but steam, everything but life. England is veiled in clouds;-- not clouds of infidelity; I care not one fig for all the infidels in England, and I do not think it is worth Mr. Grant's trouble to go after them. Nor am I afraid of Popery for old England; I do not think she will go back to that, nay, I am sure she never will; but I am afraid of this deadness, this sloth, this indifference, that has come over our churches. The Church wants shaking, like the man on the mountain- top does when the cold benumbs him into a deadly slumber. The churches are gone to sleep for want of zeal, for want of fire. Even those that hold sound doctrine are beginning to slumber. Oh, may God stir the Church up! (from Spurgeon's Autobiography)

It's Breakfast Time

Don't forget prayer breakfast this Saturday men. Good food and good friends. Join your brothers in Fellowship Hall at 8:00 AM. Invite someone to come with you.

Have You Heard?

This coming Sunday is a special day at FBC!

RED HEART SUNDAY.  Wear something red (trust me on this), and join us for an uplifting morning of fun, fellowship and food.  Of course we're going to worship our Savior, too.  And we're going to sing and preach and pray and all the things we do every Lord's Day.  But this Sunday, we're going to brighten up the dreariness of February and paint the day RED.

Join us for Sunday School at 9:30 and Worship at 10:30.  Then hang around for a time of fellowship and great food at 11:30.

Don't miss Red Heart Sunday!

It Is Almost Here

Red Red Red

Heart Heart Heart

Sunday Sunday Sunday

Did I Mention?

Wear Something Red!

This Sunday!

Help Us Brighten Up Ugly February

Sunday, February 16

Sunday School at 9:30

Worship at 10:30

Fellowship at 11:30

Pray.  Plan.  Purpose.

Pray Today For

RED HEART SUNDAY
February 16

Prayer Meeting is CANCELLED This Evening

Due to the bad weather, and also due to the fact that many were at the church late last evening, we've decided to cancel this week's prayer meeting. Please pass the word along to any who might need to know about this cancellation.

And take a minute to pray for your brothers and sisters, even though we won't be meeting.