Treasured Truth

Preaching the gospel and making disciples should be the main priorities of the church.  We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by people with winsome personalities, who may try to persuade us to focus on other things. Because any time we get away from the priorities that God prescribes, we’re going to have issues and problems, because we have veered from God’s agenda for the church.

Cliques are groups of people who exclude others and often follow a leader who has a charismatic personality. We often encounter them at school, work, and maybe even sometimes at church. But Christians really shouldn’t live the like that.  When we look at the verses we’ll study today, we’ll understand that Christians must have unity centered on the person of Christ, and not on personalities.

The widow in Luke 7 was mourning her son’s death.  But when she encountered Jesus, He told her to stop crying.  But He had a reason to urge her to cease her mourning, because He knew His plan.  He was about to bring her son back to life.  To find out more about how Jesus miraculously worked in the life of this woman, join us for today’s Treasured Truth.

As we continue our study in Luke 7, we’ll see how Jesus responded to the faith of the widow in this passage and brought her son back to life.  Jesus had a purpose in this encounter, and that was to demonstrate God’s great power and in doing so, to honor the faith of this seemingly insignificant woman.

There is no such thing as coincidence with God.  Only providence.  Nothing is accidental.  Everything is Providential when it comes to the things that God allows to happen to His people. So, Pastor Ford will remind us today that it’s never too late to call on God to work through His providence on your behalf.

Pastor Ford wants us to consider how we can change our communities by following the example of Christ.  We can do this by imitating how He was actively involved in the lives of the people in His own community.

As we look further at the story of Esther, we’ll learn more about how God brought her to a specific time and place in order for her to fulfill her destiny.  Pastor Ford will encourage us to consider how God wants us to use the time He’s given us in our lives to fulfill our own destinies and to do great things for Him.

When we think about the time we spend living our lives for the Lord, we have a tendency to focus on duration. But God focuses on donation.  We focus on longevity, but God focuses on legacy.  We may hear someone say, “I’ve been saved for twenty years.”  And that may be true, but that person’s been out of God’s will for eighteen of those years.  So, Pastor Ford will explain that at the judgment seat of Christ, they’ll only get credit for the two years they were living in the will of God.

On most tombstones, there’s the day of one’s birth and the day of one’s death, and then a dash in the middle.  We don’t control the day we’re born or the day we die.  But we do control what we do with the dash in the middle. So, Pastor Ford will encourage us to use our time now to make that dash count for the Lord.

As we continue to look at the story of Isaac and Rebekah, Pastor Ford will show us how the story of how God brought them together in the Old Testament is a beautiful picture of salvation in the New Testament.