Weekly Encouragement

Good Wednesday Everyone,

Weekly blessings to all.  Over the past few weeks Bethel Baptist has had excellent congregational attendance.  It is always an encouragement to see God’s house full.  If you haven’t been present you are missing what God is doing, teaching, and giving to each of us.  It will never be the goal at Bethel Baptist to have a certain number of people attend.  It will always be a goal to have God attend.  Of course, God is everywhere, but it is in church with your church family where God will most easily be found.  Do all you can to attend God’s church this coming Lord’s Day.  The worship will be in spirit and in truth.  The message will be from God’s Word.  And the fellowship will be from God’s love.  Missing church is always your option, but it is never your best option.     

This week we will meet for our Wednesday Night Fellowship.  The dedicated and loyal church members will provide us a wonderful meal.  The menu is Spaghetti, so as always if you can bring a dish or dessert to pass.  After our fellowship supper the adults and children will meet for Bible study and prayer.

As we continue in Romans: After each Sunday sermon, we are taking a deeper dive into the scripture and sermon notes on Wednesday nights.  This has been a great format of study as we can learn from and about each other.  Our Scriptures always says the same thing, but it reaches us in different way in life.  It is amazing how the study of Scripture always meets us exactly where we are.  Join us on Wednesday nights. 

This Lord’s Day, Paul explained how we experience God’s righteousness for ourselves.  Paul taught God’s righteousness is experienced when we LIVE as Jesus Christ preached, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”  Repenting is never easy.  The world puts up clear, cleaver, and convincing, barriers to repentance.  Paul warns of three barriers in Romans 2:12-3:20 that will prevent us from repenting and believing.  The first is family.  Your repentance is not affected by who you are, only by whose you are.  You must repent.  No one nor nothing can repent for you.  Second is symbols.  The world wants us to trust in something we did, something we can see, or something we can touch.  Symbols are important and very special to us and our faith, but the symbol tells the world what we believe in our hearts.  The cross doesn’t make you believe in Jesus Christ.  The cross tells others you believe in Jesus Christ.  The third barrier to repentance is works.  Paul explained that no one is good enough, and Paul explained how bad the heart of mankind is, and how mean-spirited mankind is to one another.  Therefore, just thinking you are good enough without the need to repent is evidence of present sin in your life.

As Christians, living a good and pleasing life while in the world, but at the same time not being of the world is tuff.  What will help our Christian walk greatly is knowing it was the same for Paul, for Peter, for James, for John, and every other follower of Jesus Christ.  This is what these men did: They experienced God’s righteousness through repentance for themselves.  They intentionally turned from the worldly beliefs and teachings and embraced God’s way of life.  Repentance is the immediate result of your salvation.  Following immediately behind repentance is faith.  Faith is the lifetime reward of salvation.  The greatest of us have not figured God out, and the least of us have achieved great victories in life, and most of us live somewhere in between.

We closed the sermon this Lord’s Day by telling you of the best available place to practice your faith.  The best place to learn about God is in God’s Church.  Bethel Baptist is God’s church.  Those of us at Bethel Baptist are committed to a lifetime of believing God’s revelations, obeying God’s convictions, recognizing God’s voice, and trusting in God’s Word.

Have you ever met or heard someone talk about a person who, “Doesn’t even know what they want in life!”  Well, this is the truth about the Christian life, “People really want what you have, they just don’t know it yet.”  As Christians, we cannot walk back across the bridge, that is Jesus Christ, to where unbelievers are, but we can invite them to come with us to Bethel Baptist, we can tell them about Bethel Baptist, and we can promote Bethel Baptist to those we meet every day.  Pray for opportunities to do so and pray for boldness to speak to others.  You could be the start to the rest of someone else’s life. 

In Christ,

Pastor Michael