Hello, it has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote a devotional. Many things have come my way with Grandmother’s Congestive Heart Failure and her healing, my own health which requires prayer and the passing of my Step Mother and seeing the strain on my father’s face and my sisters too. This is the family items that happen one does not know of because my family does not go to the same church or no church at all. This leads me into sharing with you, my other family the one Jesus talks about, the Body of Christ.

 

 I have been reading a very good book by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson titled “Comeback Churches”. I like to share a quote with you “Too many churches never answer the hard questions: When is the last time I have led someone to Christ? What has been our attendance trend over the past five years? How many visitors have we had in the past year and the year before that? When is the last time this church baptized someone from outside the existing church family? Knowing the answers to these kinds of questions can help your church grasp whether or not it is truly growing.” (Stetzer, 81) Boy did this hit home and right in the gut. How can we do this if we are not doing it together? Not just on Sundays but every day of the week. Please take minute or two to mediate on this and the Scripture below. Let God work in you and though you. Have a great week doing God’s work.

 

Pastor Dan talked a couple of weeks ago about God’s unconditional love. My question is can we accept His love unconditionally?

 

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 “Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” (The Message)

 

Pastor Joe

 

 

Work Cited

 

Stetzer, Ed., Mike Dodson Comeback Churches: How 300 churches turned around and yours can too, Nashville: B and H Publishing Group, 2007

 

ChristianPhotos.Net - Free High Resolution Photos