WOW!

It's now Sunday evening and all I can say is Wow! What a day it has been.

This morning was an incredible service. The choir special was absolutely fantastic! The presence of the Holy Spirit was felt by everybody. The Bible says that God inhabits the praise of His people. It means that He lives in the praise of His people. We came expecting to meet with the Living God and He didn't disappoint us! As always, when you enter into the presence of God, He chooses to bless you--it is His nature to bless His children.

And bless us He did! When it came time for the invitation, a young boy and two teen aged girls came forward to profess Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Another family that has been out of church for some time came back this morning and the woman came to rededicate herself to serving God through Jesus.

In the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells three stories that have to do with something that is lost. In each of the stories, when whatever had been lost was found there was a celebration. I thought that it would be appropriate for us to have a celebration and invited everyone to come back for the evening service, our specially called business meeting and a celebration get together for those that were lost and now were found. I promised to bring the ice cream. Several of our ladies jumped right in a took charge of setting everything up. Sure, I bought the ice cream; they went home and baked cakes! By the time I arrived at the church with the ice cream, they had everything already set up and ready to go.

After the evening service, we had a short business meeting to vote to license one of our own to the Gospel ministry. Les surrendered to God's call to preach a short time ago. He has been serving as an interim pastor at a nearby church. Les has been called to pastor at this church. Licensing is a way of recognizing the evidence of God's call and is necessary for the state to recognize the marriages performed by the minister. It was an honor to vote to proceed. On March 30th, Les will preach at Hopedale's evening service and we will present him with his license.

By the time we finished and I made my way downstairs, there were servers taking care of everything. In reality, my bringing ice cream was the smallest part of our celebration. I think that everybody enjoyed the fellowship and the celebration. I didn't even have to help with the clean up! This is truly an incredible fellowship of believers.

Thanks be to God for a really great day!

John