Wayne County Fair Time!

Oh Yes! The Wayne County Fair. Can you smell it in the air. The mix of donuts, french fries, elephant ears with goats, cows, and feathery animals. You can experience quite a plethora of smells, sounds, and sights. But none that will overcome the experience of the Fair Corndog! Yes, it's that time for me. Countdown to corndog!

Actually, I'm really excited about New Hope's direction with the fair this year. It's all about fun. We want to live out our value of Laughter at the fair this year by playing cornhole, giving away popsicles, and playing Minute to Win It games every night. See ya at the fair!!

Back to the Blog...

Hey everyone... I'm going to be getting back to blogging. Each week you'll find deeper thoughts from the weekend message help you take what you hear on Sundays into the rest of your week. I'll also post verses and devotionals from time to time... so check back often.

Not knowing, But Doing!

John 13:17 -
"If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them."

Question- What good is it to know something if you are not doing anything with what you know? Knowledge is pointless without doing. Just knowing something for knowledge sake just bloats our egos and gives us a sense of self-righteousness. But if we take what we know and put it to use in serving others or being proactive in our spirituality, knowledge becomes a source of power to change who we are.

Knowledge of truth (meaning Christ, God, Scripture) is a source of amazing power. But this knowledge cannot change our own lives unless we let it impact our heart. If it stays in our mind it again will only cause us to boast in ourselves. If we allow it to impact and mold our heart we will be able to do great things in Christ and only boast in the Cross. It is at this point, when knowledge hits our heart, that living in Obedience occurs. Then you can live up to the amazing spiritual potential God has for you.

I love the words the Owald Chambers uses:
"Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been." -My utmost for His Highest

So let the knowledge of an amazing God who is full of Grace for you everyday, humble your heart so that you may become obedient to His word and become more than you thought possible for His name's sake.

Useful or Useless

Am I useful or useless to the cause of Christ? A daily question I must ask myself. How do you define usefulness? Let's use this working definition: being useful means pointing ones abilities and ministry only towards Christ and forgetting your involvement in His work. I'll go a little deeper. If we are laboring for Christ and are constantly seeking approval and acknowledgement for what we are doing in ministry we are making ourselves useless, but if we in turn allow God to use us and not know or completely understand how we are being used we allow God to do what we cannot even see. It's an issue of focus. Oswald Chambers says it this way,"It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him." My job and life is in ministry and I need to make all the more sure that it is not about me or my doings but be humbled by what I cannot even see what Christ is doing. Lord help me be useful.

2 Timothy 2:20-21
20In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. 21If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.