Sunday Thoughts - 1/25/09

Worship was good yesterday. I preached:

Topic: Invest in Your Future
Text: Matthew 6:19-21

Thesis: The text is tailored to teach us that you can have possessions without being possessed. Rather than investing your time, energy, and money in gaining earthly possessions we should invest in heavenly things that last.

1. A Heavenly Investment is a Good Investment - v. 19
Point: You can't go wrong investing in the kingdom.

2. A Heavenly Investment is a Guaranteed Investment - v. 20
Point: Nothing in this life is guaranteed.

3. A Heavenly Investment is a Generous Investment - v. 21
Point: Invest until it hurts by giving God everything you have starting with your life.

God blessed us with this challenging message but it was something that we needed to hear as a congregation. God be praised for His word.

We resume our Walking through the Word Worship Service this week. I can't wait to get back to the teaching of James. We finished last year in chapter 3. So we'll resume our study in chapter 4. It's on and cracking.

I'm preaching a series of sermons in our Sunday morning worship entitled "The God of Our Trust" looking at the OT names of God. This is challenging because in some instances, like in the name Elohim, a one text selection just doesn't explain all there is to know about Our Creator. So, I have my work cut out for me on this one. But I heard someone say before; "Difficult text makes a strong preacher (or something like that). I hope so. Pray my strength in the Lord.

This year is turning out to be a busy one already. Last year, I purposely stayed home and did not fellowship much. I was very selective in who we fellowshipped with because we, First Goodwill Church, needed to spend some quality time together. Therefore, I limited our outings to few if not next to none. I'm glad I did. I got some news about some young pastors in the city that wasn't to good and these guys and I were in the process of a developing a relationship but it just didn't seem to click. After hearing the news and now reflecting back it was God keeping me from some stuff. I dare not try to judge our brothers because we all have our sinful issues whether we like to admit to it or not. And God in heaven knows, I'm not perfect and I'll be the first to admit it. But, I'll be praying for them in my daily prayer time. Our Women's ministry is off to a good start. Tracy is really putting the time in making sure everything organized and well-planned. I'm very proud of her. Keep up the good work.

I have so much studying to do and curriculum to write for new members class, leadership trainging, Wednesday night bible study, Sunday morning worship, and I'm thinking of getting more involved in our convention efforts here in the city. I'm really interested in the congress of Christian education. There is a class for teacher certification this week that I hope to attend to become a teacher in our congress of Christian Education. I've been attending this convention effort for the last 4 years and I thoroughly enjoy every moment. So, we'll see what happens.

We're still waiting for Edison to come out and install the transformer for our panel upgrade. It's going on 2 months and we don't have any heat. Thank God that the past two weekends have been warmer. I finally got this taken care of last week and hopefully they'll be out this week to install. My fingers are crossed.

I went to my mother's house after church yesterday to check up on her. She's doing good but has her moments. Tomorrow is Pop's b-day and they're wedding anniversary is Feb 14th. Please keep her as well as my entire family in your prayers.

Tonite is my basketball night. I play in league play with refs, clocks, crowd, and fouls. It's a lot of fun. The only problem is that our game is at 9 pm which means 10 pm and I won't get home until about 11:30 pm or 12 am depending on LA traffic. Where is people going at 12 am? Home, like me...lol

Until next time, be blessed this week.