Pastor's Point - June 2022
Dear Church Family,
I just want to begin by sharing with you all how much I love our church family!! On May 22nd I celebrated being the pastor of our church for sixteen years. The time has flown by! I have seen my kids raised, married, and living on their own. I have seen God’s hand of blessing on our church as He has faithfully seen us through all kinds of seasons of life
together. I have watched children in our church grow up and start their families and serve faithfully here at Oakhill. These are just some of the things that really cause me to pause and think about the years of ministry together. Early on in my ministry I began signing all of my letters with, “I love you and I love being your pastor.” That is still true and will never change! From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know that as long as God leaves me here, I will serve and love with my whole heart!!
In my sixteenth year of ministry with you I must say that we are living in unique and strange times. Pandemics, supply chain shortages, runaway prices on food, electricity, and gas, strife, and turmoil in our country, and runaway confusion over things that once were not that hard to understand. We see all around us the devaluing of life, gender confusion, a lack of moral standards, and the death of absolute truth. In the middle of all of this we need to do a few things.
Pray
Instead of being overwhelmed with what is coming at us, we need to humble ourselves and pray.
Allister Begg states… “Prayer is an acknowledgment that our need of God’s help is not partial but total… Yet many of our church prayer meetings have dwindled in size and influence. Ultimately, the explanation can be traced to spiritual warfare. If, as the hymn writer says, “Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees,” then we may be sure that he and his minions will be working hard to discredit the value of united prayer. The Evil One has scored a great victory in getting sincere believers to waver in their conviction that prayer is necessary and powerful.”
I am more convinced than ever that we need to spend more time in concerted prayer. It is in praying to our great God that we can know His will, find direction, and live in God’s peace and rest. We need this like never before!! The second thing I believe we need to do is…
Prioritize
We must live in these unique and strange times by prioritizing our lives. We must live for God’s glory and have as our aim to glorify Him in every aspect of our lives. It matters how we live. There are choices that we must make. There are limited amounts of resources that God gives to each of us. And we are going to need His wisdom as we consider how we manage our time, talent, and treasure. As prices spiral upward, we need to consider how we use the money that God gives us. We will need to prioritize what we spend our money on. As life gets more hectic, busy, and confusing we need to consider how it is we will use our time and our talents. Randy Alcorn states… “If God was the owner, I was the manager. I needed to adopt a steward’s mentality toward the assets He had entrusted – not given – to me. A steward manages assets for the owner’s benefit. The steward carries no sense of entitlement to the assets he manages. It’s his job to find out what the owner wants done with his assets, then carry out his will.” We can best do this when we reference back to our first topic and make our whole life a matter or prayer, asking God to what He would have us Prioritize, and then carry out his will. And we do all of this for God’s glory and our good. Let’s pray and prioritize like never before and watch all that God is going to do!!
I love you and I love being your pastor!