Saturday, February 27, 2016

Following a Vision



  Acts 12:10, 11
  When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him. And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.


What if Peter, sitting in prison, had said, “Wow, what a dream,” and then continued sitting there? He would have been dead before his time. You see, even though Peter wasn’t sure what he was seeing was reality, he acted on it as if it were.


Now, sometimes when we step out, we find it was only a vision after all. That’s okay. Proverbs says an empty stable stays clean, but an empty stable brings no profits (Proverbs 14:4). Some people say, “I’ve never messed up. I’ve never made the mistake of following a vision. Look how clean my barn is. The floor is spotless.” But the farmer who has some meadow muffins on the floor and a few flies swarming around is the one who is productive. Follow the Lord’s leading even if it seems like only a vision. The worst that could happen is that a pasture patty or two could appear in your barn. But the best that could happen is, like Peter, you could be set free!


Jon Courson, Jon Courson’s Application Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 712.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Ministry Update

February 2016

Business or Buffet

During January we had our annual business meeting where we covered several of the practical things of church business like the budget and voting on new officers. Our business meetings have always been Sundays after the morning service and as a result sometimes people are quite hungry by the time they go home. Over the last year through the suggestions of some of our members we have turned our business meeting into a carry in dinner. As we reviewed the finances for the year it was also exciting because we voted to increase the salary of our missionaries as well as we took on a new missionary.
On another note regarding the business meeting, we had a family sitting in who is considering joining our church. I’m not that great at running business meetings and sometimes as discussion moves forward I forget to call for motions or sometimes we have motions and I forgot they were made. As we conducted our meeting as orderly as possible the father of the family spoke up and expressed how he had never seen a meeting like this ever. One of our members responded by explaining that the reason for Robert’s Rules of Order was to keep order and control in a meeting but when the Lord is leading the body of Christ and there is unity within the body those types of rules are not needed. Truly, I have a wonderful group of people who attend our church and the Lord has given us a sweet spirit of unity.

Snow

We seem to have got a lot of snow here in January. This has kept me very busy because I shovel snow on the side for some extra income. When a storm blew in about 18” of snow I had several calls from new people asking for me to do their snow. For some this job may seem very meaningless but I praise God for the open doors it has created. I have been able to sit down with several elderly people around Guernsey and get to know them and share the Bible with them. I even had a 14 year old boy travel around with me to shovel and I w
as able to do a Bible study with him over lunch. Please pray that God would continue to open up doors of opportunity here in Guernsey.

To view/download our monthly updates from the past please use the link below.




Thanks so much for your prayers and support,

Jason, Becca, Elizabeth, Andrew, & John Miller