Menu for Family Night

Baked Chicken
Hashbrown Potato Casserole
Green Beans
Apple Crisp with Ice Cream

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ALL LADIES ARE WELCOME TO JOIN OUR WMU GROUP.
MONDAY, April 15TH, 1:30 PM

MEET IN BILL HARDIN SS CLASSROOM

Giving as of April 2, 2024

Budget for 2024 . . . . . . . .  $329,423.00
Tithes Needed to Date . . . . . $82,356.26
Received to Date . . . . . . . . . $60,063.96
Needed for weekly budget . . .  $6,335.00
Tithes Received this week . . . . $4,355.00

MID-WEEK DEVOTION

Don’t forget to check out Brother David’s Mid-Week Devotion in the book of Psalms. They are uploaded each Wednesday on the sermon page.

From Our Pastor

Do you want revival?  I don’t mean a series of meetings.  By “revival”, I mean the experience of God cleansing us, reprioritizing us, renewing us, and drawing us close to Himself.  Yes, I hope you plan to attend and hear what God has to say to us in the services.  We are blessed to have Aaron preaching to us.  I am so thankful for him and excited about his coming.  But I pray that our desire is for God to move in us and among us.

What can we do to experience true revival?  We see some essential requirements in our Lord’s message to Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7.  In this passage, our Lord deals with a “good” church that was beginning to drift and needed to be revived before it was too late.

What lessons do we learn from our Lord’s dealings with Ephesus?  First, we must return God to His rightful place as first in our hearts and lives.  Our Lord told the Ephesian church, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (verse 4).

Would He say that about us?  Do we love God with all our heart, souls, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37)?  If our lives are wrong, only by returning God to first place can we begin to experience His work of revival.

We must also examine our spiritual condition.  Verse 5 begins, “Therefore, remember from where you have fallen…”  They could only do that if they had taken spiritual inventory of their lives.  While this was directly related to Christ having first place, it would obviously “spill over” to all parts of their lives.  They needed to examine their spiritual condition. 

It is the same for us.  How can we experience revival if we don’t allow God the opportunity to show us what is wrong in our lives?  We need to seek God’s guidance in prayerfully examining our lives so that we will know what needs to change.

Next, we need to deal with our sins.  Our Lord told the Ephesians to repent (verse 5).  Every sin that is revealed by the prayerful examination of our lives needs to be confessed and forsaken.  Sin in our lives grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) and quenches Him (1 Thessalonians 5:19).  Only when we deal with the sin will we experience God moving in our life again.

Last, all of this must be done in faith in God’s grace.  God will forgive, cleanse, renew, and revive us if we turn to Him.  He promised the Ephesian church that those who overcome would eat of the tree of life (verse 7).  1 John 5:5 says that it is by faith that we overcome.  We must believe that God wants us to revive us.  He wants to revive us even more than we want to be revived.  Even our desire to be revived is a work of His grace.  We can trust God’s grace to revive us if we turn to him.

I’m sure that we will have a good week.  I know Aaron will faithfully proclaim God’s Word.  But will we have real revival?  Only we can answer that question.  Will you follow the instructions He gave the church at Ephesus?