Pastor's Point - April 2023
Dear Church Family,
I am so excited for the Easter season that is right upon us. We will be offering a full weekend of activities on Easter weekend! Good Friday Night of Worship service on Friday, a Saturday Easter Celebration which will include a twelve thousand Easter egg hunt, and on Sunday, we will have three Easter Sunday services where we’ll be celebrating the reality that we serve a Risen Savior!! Make sure to be inviting family and friends to these events so we can form friendships and share the truth of Easter with them.
Following Easter, I am going to begin a new sermon series entitled “Word of God Speak” which will be based out of Psalm 119. Many of you may know that Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in all of the Bible with 176 verses. In fact, this chapter is longer than seventeen books in the New Testament and longer than each of the Minor Prophets with the exceptions of Hosea and Zechariah.
Within Psalm 119 there are eight different terms, or synonyms, that are used in reference to the Word of God. Out of this series of messages, I pray that you will see that God’s Word is authoritative in life and it is sufficient for life. We need God’s Word in every area of our lives and for every situation in life.
We also need to understand that God’s Word is reliable. We can trust it. It is the truth we need for life. I am very aware that we live in times when people do not see God’s Word as authoritative, sufficient, or trustworthy. But it is. We must be convinced of this. John MacArthur states:
Contemporary evangelicalism has been beguiled and sabotaged by a ruinous lack of confidence in God’s Word. I’m not talking about the question of whether God gave us an inerrant Bible. Of course, He did. And the great majority of evangelicals accept that without question. But many who would never doubt the Bible’s authenticity as God’s Word or distrust its essential authority as a guide for righteous living have nevertheless accepted the notion that Scripture simply does not contain all we need to minister well in these complex and sophisticated modern times. So they turn to human expertise in the fields of psychology, business, government, politics, entertainment, or whatever else they think might supply some recipe for success that’s lacking in Scripture (Our Sufficiency in Christ [Word], p. 117, emphasis his).
I pray that on the backside of this series of messages we can be more convinced than ever of the truthfulness and sufficiency of God’s Word for our lives!!
In 2004 the group Mercy Me had a song entitled “Word of God Speak.” God used that song in my life at a strategic time, and as I was thinking about this new series, the lyrics to that song came back to me and reminded me how important God’s Word is to us and our lives. The first few lines of the song state:
“I’m finding myself at a loss for words
And the funny thing is it’s okay
The last thing I need is to be heard
But to hear what You would say.”
I pray we would all understand through this series that it is so much more important to know what God has said than anything that we would ever say.
I love you and I love being your pastor!