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Join us this Sunday night, June 25th, at 5:00 PM for community outreach. This is an excellent opportunity for us to share the love of Christ with our community and invite them to join our church family.

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Don’t forget to
Pre-Register for VBS

July 24-26
Click Here

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Joyful Messengers

Several individuals have expressed interest in starting back up Joyful Messengers; however, we need someone to head it up.  If you would be interested, see Bro David or Jonathan.

Giving as of June 20, 2023

Budget for 2023 . . . . . . . .  $348,707.00
Tithes Needed to Date . . . . $167,648.65
Received to Date . . . . . . . . $116,296.03
Needed for weekly budget . . .  $6,705.91
Tithes Received this week . . . . $1,495.00

MID-WEEK DEVOTION

We will not have a Mid-week devotion this week. However, we always have past devotions and sermons on our website. Click the link below to view past messages.

From our Family and Music Minister

In work, school, or even a volunteer organization, we have most likely been a part of a group project whose success was based on other individuals. In high school, I was that member who would bring drinks and snacks. It was better to let the others do the academic work and not rely on me, especially since most of our projects included long reports and research.

However, I was in a group project for a worship leadership class in college. I was in a group of young teenagers the same age as I was working with at First Baptist, and we were assigned to plan and present an Advent Christmas service for a traditional Baptist Church. We set our group meeting to organize and plan. However, when I arrived, the members of our group had already met ahead of time, organized everything, and given me my assignment for the project. My only job was to get an advent wreath with candles to use while presenting our project to the class. The other three students had completely controlled the project and left me and another member out. I actually never got to talk with them face to face until the day of our assignment because they left a typed service for the rest of the group with our assignments. They didn’t want to leave their grade for the course to be dependent on anyone else.

Satan lies to us daily by telling us we should fear our limitations, boundaries, or lack of knowledge. That deception keeps us from giving God our complete trust. The temptation and fall of Adam and Eve give us a glimpse into why we all crave control and what it costs us. In Genesis 3, we read about the consequence that they faced by eating the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve had enjoyed perfect peace in the garden, but Satan tempted them with the only boundary God had put before them. Satan led them to believe God was trying to hold out on them and limit their knowledge.

Believing the lies of Satan, they took control into their own hands and ate the fruit. They immediately tried fixing the consequences of their actions by sewing fig leaves together. How often do we find ourselves in the same situation, trying to fix the consequences of our actions because we refused to give up control in the first place? Many of us try to take control of our circumstances when we begin to question God’s Word. We may know that we should trust God and walk by faith, but when unexpected things occur, we question what we know, just like Adam and Eve. The more we realize that God is in control, the less we will try to control our surroundings and the less anxious we will be. With God’s help, we can begin to make choices that lead us to trust God more, rather than the stress and anxiety of holding our lives in our own hands.

Unfortunately, the students who took control of our worship leadership project didn’t make a very good grade on our project. Even though they had a well-organized plan and picked out gorgeous music and scripture readings, they had done the assignment wrong. The advent service they planned followed a Catholic service rather than a traditional Baptist service. Fortunately for me, the students had their planning meeting outside the head of the music department’s office, who was also our instructor, and he saw that they left part of the group out. Until he gave them their final grade for the project, they never found out that I was a Baptist music minister who had planned many advent services. He put me with them because it was our first project, and the other people in my group came from a Catholic background. They never took the time to see what strengths the rest of the group had because they did not want to give up control.

We will all have times when we doubt God and hesitate to give up control. We must remind ourselves what the prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 55:9, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God knows what is best for us. We must be willing to relinquish control of our lives to Him. When we do that, we will truly live a fulfilled, joyful, and peaceful life.