Hello Church of the Way!
I hope you're having a great Thursday and enjoying this cool weather. Is this really Georgia? Just a reminder that today is the 15th, and I hope you'll participate in "15 on the 15th". It's a monthly commitment to take 15 minutes on the 15th of each month to pray for our church and community. Lift up our students and teachers back in school, pray for our ministry in the community, LIFE Groups starting up and ministries to students and children.
This Sunday, we're continuing the series "Coming Home" in which we're talking about what happens, how we feel and what the answer is when we make a big mistake and feel pretty far away from God. This Sunday is a great opportunity to invite friends who don't have a church home and may not even be believers. I think they'll find that a relationship with God might just be 'home.'
Thought for the Week
"Look, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction." Isaiah 48:10
I'm just about to finish up a book called Sifted. It's written by a couple of pastors for pastors, especially in difficult seasons, with the message that sometimes God's sifts us to prepare us for the next thing he has in store for us, to make us finer, to make us ready for the next season in life, to make us into his man or woman of God. It's the message no one wants to hear. We all want to say, "I'm good, God. I don't need to be sifted or purified or refined. Thanks for the offer." But God has such big plans for us, and we often don't know what they are. We have no idea the dreams God has for us just around the corner, but he does. So, sometimes there is a ready-ing period. God knows who He needs us to be to accomplish all He has planned for us. The key is to seek to gain understanding, wisdom, and humility in those seasons of refining. If you are going through a difficult season, or just got out of one, what can you learn from it? How did God change you through it? Where might the next step take you? How did it humble you and cause you to rely more heavily on God? How will you respond differently in the next period of sifting and refining (because there will be one)? Remember that God is making you into something, and He's not done with you yet. If we miss the lessons in the refining, we miss who he's making us to be.
In Christ,
Carter
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