January 12, 2024
If you've already received your letter in the mail about the congregational meeting on January 28, I hope you've had a chance to read it. Here it is in digital form if it's more convenient for you to read it online. There are some big things about to happen, and potentially about to happen depending on your vote, so I encourage you to be present during the Sunday School hour in two weeks.
As you'll see below, the Lord was faithful to provide generously through you His people for our ministry in 2023. I thank Him for your sacrificial giving to His work, and for our deacons and elders who work hard every year on the budget - and especially have done so this past budget cycle. Please be praying for the elders as we meet next week to finalize the 2024 budget.
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This Sunday we begin a four part topical sermon series on stewardship. When you hear that word, you probably think of money and financial resources. But God has entrusted much more to us than merely wealth. He has also given us time, relationships, and gifts - all of which we are called to use for His glory and the good of those around us. "It is required of stewards that they be found faithful" (I Corinthians 4:2). So for the next four weeks we will be thinking about what faithfulness looks like in each of these four areas. After that we'll have our Missions Festival (which I incorrectly wrote last week was February 4-11; it's actually February 11-18!), and then we will jump back into the book of Romans and finish it out to the end!
We confessed Westminster Larger Catechism #155 last Sunday night, and I was struck once more about how important and efficacious preaching is by the Spirit's power: "The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means
of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners;
of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ;
of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will;
of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions;
of building them up in grace,
and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation."
Please be praying for God to bear this fruit in our lives through the preaching of His word!
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Today is my 48th birthday, and it's also the memorial service for Mike Neiswinger. Elizabeth and I are driving to Dadeville, AL, this afternoon for my aunt's funeral service tomorrow, returning tomorrow evening. It is a sobering and good thing to be reminded of death as you remember your birth, for each birthday is one year closer to one's deathday. "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that [i.e., death] is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart" (Ecclesiastes 7:2). Wisdom consists in large part in numbering your days (Psalm 90:12), realizing that life is short (Psalm 39:4-5), that none of us are guaranteed another year (or day) of life, that one day we will die and stand before the judgment seat of Christ (Hebrews 9:27; II Corinthians 5:10). We have the strong comfort that "in God's book were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them" (Psalm 139:16). So we can live and serve with confident faith in His providence, celebrating His faithfulness year by year, knowing that we are here until He desires to take us home. As until He takes us home, we hear His encouragement to us: "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" (Ecclesiastes 2:2-25).
Be praying for the Neiswinger family, and for all the families in our congregation who have lost loved ones recently. Let us bear one another's burdens, weep with those who weep, and comfort one another with the comfort we have received from God.