Announcements
SYMPATHY: to Kenneth & Reba Burrier and David & Belinda Burrier at the passing of their grandson/nephew, Charles Orwig III, on Tuesday, December 23. Arrangements are pending.
SOUL-WINNER’S CLUB TRAINING: The next 12-week session for Winter/Spring will begin on Wednesday, January 7, downstairs in the Music Room at 7:00 p.m. Sign up today online through the Church website or at the Welcome Desk.
GRIEFSHARE: The next session begins on Tuesday, January 13, at 6:30 p.m. Come be part of our next session that helps individuals find comfort, healing, and hope after the loss of a loved one. Please sign up at the Welcome Desk or see Kathy Reed for more information.
From My Heart
“The God of Israel will be your reward.”
Isaiah 52:12
Security from Yesterday. “God requireth that which is past.” At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.
Security for Tomorrow. “For the Lord will go before you.” This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our rereward. God’s hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.
Security for Today. “For ye shall not go out with haste.” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight ofimpulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructivethoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.
Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.
Oswald Chambers