Coming Soon At Oregon Trail Baptist Church

Resting In The Lord

On Sunday we had an older couple join us for our services. I had met them in the spring just after Elizabeth was out of the hospital. I had spent a good deal of time talking to them at the Guernsey Senior Center and they had promised that one day they would show up and sure enough they did.

Sunday night I preached at Douglas Baptist Church for Pastor Phillips while he was at his home church in Ohio. His wife Bessie had been admitted into the Hospital with chest pains so after the services we stopped by to see her. The doctors have ran many tests but have been unable to identify any problems. Please keep here in your prayers.

This last week has also been a bit trying. Things can’t go well for long without catching the Devils attention and I was forced to face an issue head on. I had been up many nights previous praying about how the Lord would have me approach the problem and then afterwards I spent much time praying for the Lord’s working in hearts and lives. Please pray for the Lord’s wisdom as I continue to address and handle some of the situations at hand. At the same time I am excited to meet with a young man on Tuesday this week to discuss his salvation and church membership.

In the Lives of Christians (John 14:14)

If the Son of God needed to pray, how much more do we? Jesus said that we “ought to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). He told us to ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7–8). And He warned that the spirit of man is willing, but the flesh of man is weak (Matthew 26:41). Prayer is where the real battle of the spiritual life exists, and the flesh would rather do anything except pray. In our casual, energetic culture, we have learned to pray while we jog, work out, or take walks for exercise. And that’s fine. But Jesus found it necessary to get away and do nothing but pray—probably the kind of example we should follow.

David Jeremiah, Signs of Life (Study Guide) (San Diego, CA: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007), 13.

Why God Responds to Faith

Houston pastor John Bisango describes a time when his daughter Melodye Jan, age five, came to him and asked for a doll house. John promptly nodded and promised to build her one, then he went back to reading his book. Soon he glanced out the study window and saw her arms filled with dishes, toys, and dolls, making trip after trip until she had a great pile of playthings in the yard. He asked his wife what Melodye Jan was doing.
“Oh, you promised to build her a doll house, and she believes you. She’s just getting ready for it.”
“You would have thought I’d been hit by an atom bomb,” John later said. “I threw aside that book, raced to the lumber yard for supplies, and quickly built that little girl a doll house. Now why did I respond? Because I wanted to? No. Because she deserved it? No. Her daddy had given his word, and she believed it and acted upon it. When I saw her faith, nothing could keep me from carrying out my word.”*

Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 285-86.

Ministry, Missions, Money, And More…

Outreach

National Hoops Ministries came to Douglas this last week to conduct a basketball tournament at which they would preach the Gospel. They came to Guernsey to recruit players at Guernsey Jr. High and High School. While at the school I was able to meet several of the local administrative staff and one even thought that I could get into the school and help out as a Pastor.

At the tournament I was able to talk with a Catholic family about the Gospel. They were spiritually sensitive but still seemed to be confused. After giving the gospel they thought that it was the same teaching that they were getting at the Catholic church. I was glad to get their information written down to pass along to a pastor in Casper where they were from.

Visitors

The last couple weeks we have had some new visitors. One young man has offered to help out around the church. On Tuesday he came to church and helped me complete some of the projects to get the church ready for winter. Simply lending a hand is a big blessing.

Missions

This Sunday we voted to take on our first missionaries. I guess technically it is not our first missionaries but at least the first missionaries since I became the pastor. All missionaries had been dropped before I showed up and I don’t have any record of who the dropped missionaries were. The people decided to take on Marlin Driskell who serves as the director of Camp Grace and has stepped in and taught many of the Wednesday night Bible studies when there was no pastor here.

Financial

The Lord has abundantly blessed our church in the last month. No effort has been made to solicit outside support for our church and yet God has seen fit to bring funds our way. All the bills are paid and with the giving of our people and the outside support that has come in we will be making a $2,000 mortgage payment this month instead of $500. Although we are making a large payment we will still have some money in the bank as a buffer in case something happens.