Happy Monday, July 23, 2018 church!

Sisters and brothers,

Happy Monday to all! We had a great day yesterday worshiping and thinking about Jesus coming again. It was wonderful to see so many guests and how you graciously welcomed them. It was amazing to me how God works the worship songs picked out by Pete with the message. Pete and I do not choreograph these things but oftentimes it seems God does! 2 Peter 3 reminds us that, yes, Jesus is coming again! We wait for Jesus’ coming as we remember God’s great acts in creating the world and in His act of bringing a worldwide just judgment on the world in the flood of Noah’s day. We wait for Jesus’ coming knowing He delays because the God of eternity does not view time as we view time. A day to Him is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. We wait for His coming knowing that Jesus delays His return to give people opportunity to repent and believe in Him and be saved. God has no pleasure in punishing sinners but desires to saves sinners if they will believe in Jesus. Because Jesus will come back, we are diligent to seek to live every moment in ways that honor our great God by spreading the gospel and serving others. And finally because Jesus will come back, we seek to continually grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ that we might always live in awe of His greatness. We seek to keep growing so we will not be carried away by the false teachings and false teachers who distort and twist His Word. Christ Jesus physically, bodily, literally and absolutely is coming again to make everything new! Live in that sure hope today! Though the world mocks this blessed hope we have, we stand on its certainty!

I am on the faculty and community engagement team at Kennedy School. They are having a meet-and-greet on August 13 at the Kingston Onyx Park at the end of Vernon Ave so that parents new to that neighborhood can meet the Kennedy teachers and faculty. They asked me if our folks would be willing to donate some snack food for this outreach and I assured them we would love to do that. Could you bring purchased snack foods (nothing homemade) like chips, cookies, trail mix, popcorn to the church by August 12th to help? We will then get it to the Kennedy team for that community outreach.

We will be having the Lord’s Supper next Sunday, July 29th. On August 5 we will have a pot luck following the morning worship.

Love being your pastor!

Bob Ray, Pastor, East Madison Baptist Church