The church is going well. Last week I was able to meet with Zecca ,who is the sort of youth leader, about various ministries and targets. This was important since still over half of our regular congregation are of the young adult age. So we discussed how things are going now, and how we can improve and be more effective. Last Sunday I had the grace to preach on Acts 6:1-7. This was an important passage. We saw the great mandate to serve, and how service is needed in the church. I preached through this passage and explained some principles of church leadership and the need for deacon type service. It went well and there was very good feedback. See, the church has been struggling with serving. Every sunday before the service starts we have to set up chairs and things. Well, past week people have started to come later and later to avoid helping set up. Then came Acts 6:1-7!!! This week people came and helped early to set up. It is a joy to see those that came to serve and to see the joy they had as they did it. This week pastor Laban came back from visiting the churches in the North, so I was back teaching the family bible hour. So I continued in our study through I Corinthians. I taught this week on I Cor. 6:9-11. I have been teaching that Paul has been giving reasons why we as a church should judge each other in the church. So this week I explained another reason was for the sake of the self-deceived. Paul shows that part of the responsibility of the church is to judge each other so that there are none deceiving themselves. Here is one of the points I made:
"The church must be honest about sin, and that ones life should not be marked by these sins paul lists in vs 9-10. We some times see people deceiving themselves into thinking that "as long as I prayed a "prayer" of salvation, then I am good". Those that think such things are deceived! In Eph. 1:3-14, we can see God active in all parts of our salvation. That there is no part that we can claim to do. This is evident also in Rom. 8:29-30. And we know that in Eph. 2:8-9, that "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." So if our salvation is grace alone, as in God is the one that gives salvation. Then how can we prove our salvation based upon something we do? We can't!!!! It must be based upon something God does. And as we can see in Rom. 6, one of the things God does is regenerate our lives! So it is our lives that can be a proof of our salvation. It is true that we need to pray for salvation as we confess that we are sinners and ask the Lord to save us as He is the only Saviour, but it is our regenerated lives that prove that we truly have excepted Him. I believe this is what James is saying in James 2:17-26(read)." It was a good sunday!
The house to house ministry continues to be a wonderful part of our week. Both last week and today went very well. We are now meeting at Tate Immanuel's house. We have been going through the book of Ephesians in our bible time. Last week we looked at Eph. 1:15-18a. In this we saw Pauls prayer that the church would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation. I explained that Paul prayed this for the purpose of them having a closer relationship with God. Vs 17, "in the knowledge of Him" shows this. Then today we were going to go through the rest of the verses of the chapter , but that did not happen. Some times when we meet, there are many questions or something someone is wanting to understand. We will take time and answer them. So this week one of our members shared how she had been struggling through wondering if she truly is saved and wether she really will go to heaven. We read through a few passages including Romans 8:29-30. Vs. 29 says, "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren". I explained like I had explained in the bible study yesterday that those God elects also will be conformed to be more like Jesus. Explaining to her that the fact that if our lives are regenerate that is evidence of that salvation. Also explaining to her that it is God that seals our salvation. There was obviously much more that we talked about and said, but that is a part. After this she shared how convicted she was after reading the passage in Rom 8:29. And how she can see that that she has no need to worry about her salvation. It was a good week.
The membership class continues to go well. We have now started a section on the local church. This will be one of the last sections of the class. After this we will look specifically at what Monte Christo is doing and how if these become members they can and should get involved in some way. I am looking forward to this friday to continue this.
Well...hope this update has been encouraging to you and gives you a little understanding to what is going on here. Please continue to pray for each of the ministries we are apart of and that God would open more doors so that we may share the gospel to many more. Also be in prayer that we sell our car very soon. We did look at what seems to be the perfect car for us today. We don't have enough money to buy it without selling our car. (about $2000USD short to buy it outright.). So be in prayer that God would send the right buyer or reveal to us that this is not the car for us. We will try to take some more pictures of these ministries soon and post them here.
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