During our Thursday night open ministry, Brother Glen Smalling shared a word from 2 Kings 4 on the sufficiency of Christ, symbolized by the meal (flour) thrown into the poisoned pot to make it clean. Truly, what we need in the midst of our trying circumstances is Jesus and Jesus alone.
At Jesus’s baptism, the voice from heaven came, saying, “This is my Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.” Jesus received this commendation before entering the wilderness of His temptation. Now that we are in Christ, we can receive the same reminders that we are God’s child, that we are loved, and that we are acceptable to Him as we prepare to enter 2021.
Brother Collin Beckford offered these thoughts on Psalm 103 during our Lord’s Day meeting, encouraging us to live lives of praise to the Lord.
Brother Glen Smalling shared these thoughts on the love of the Father toward the Son. In every area, where man responded to the Lord in John 19 with rejection, the Father responds by glorifying and validating Him.
Brother Norris Clarke shares a word of encouragement from 2 Corinthians on the challenge from Paul to “examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.”
Ken Huebner and Luke Harriman reflect on the prophetic calling of Isaiah in chapter 6. Hidden within the ministry of Isaiah is the promise of One who will truly say, “Here I am, send Me.”
At the core of our faith is an impossible birth—the birth of the Lord Jesus to the virgin Mary. Clearly, as Gabriel told her when he announced the glorious news that she would bear the Son of God, nothing is impossible for God. This theme echoes the announcement to Sarah in Genesis 18, and it reemerges in Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 about the new birth. Truly, we can trust this God of the impossible to complete the good work in us and bring us safely into His presence in glory.
Although we continually confess the peerless nature of the Lord Jesus, there are times that we can be distracted from our undistracted focus on Him. In this Lord’s Day message, Luke Harriman looks at three people in the gospels who were distracted in the presence of Jesus. May we be encouraged to fix our eyes on Him!
After Brother Laurel Smalling shared a few thoughts on the blessings we receive from God—our justification and future glorification—Brother Glen Smalling spoke on the amazing truth of our identity as the Church. As we read in John 17 and elsewhere, the Church is a gift from God the Father to the Lord Jesus. What a thought to know we are His treasure!
Brother Laurel Smalling shared some thoughts this Lord’s Day on the Church as the Bride of Christ. Truly, this blessed identity can encourage us as we continue on in our walk with the Lord.
Brother Glen Smalling from Jamaica visited today and brought an encouraging message, asking us to search our hearts for the answer to this question: Why are you following the Lord? May we be like the women we see at the cross, who had followed the Lord from Galilee to Jerusalem in order to minister to Him.
The Lord Jesus is a refuge for all in a time of storm. One of our hymns we sang this morning says,
Then that closing scene of anguish;
All God’s waves and billows roll
Over Him, there left to languish
On the cross to save our souls.
Matchless love! How vast, how free,
Jesus gave Himself for me.
Like the ark Noah built to save his family from the flood, Jesus is our shelter from the terrible consequences of sin. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Brother Collin Beckford shared some thoughts during our Lord’s Day meeting on the connections between Genesis 22 and Isaiah 53; like a lamb that was led to the slaughter, so our Lord opened not His mouth. Hallelujah, what a Savior!
The final book of the Old Testament, Malachi, gives us a touching picture of a small group of God’s people who gathered together and spoke to one another about the Lord. As we reflect on the final verses of Chapter 3, we can see that this activity, of speaking about the Lord together in the midst of widespread trouble and decline, can have many beneficial effects on us.
The story of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib gives a powerful picture of the intimate relationship between Christ and His bride: the Church. May we be encouraged to live in light of this blessed position we have as members of His own body.
Reflecting on the desire of King David to build the Lord a house of cedar, Brother Laurel Smalling encouraged us to continue to wait on the Lord and submit our desires to Him regarding our regathering. Surely, the Lord’s timing is perfect.
Some thoughts of encouragement from the prayer of Jabez, one of the most famous (and often misunderstood) prayers of the Old Testament.
The Bible is constantly reminding us that God’s power and might are revealed when we are at our weakest. Indeed, this seems to be a central theme of 2 Corinthians, the book we are studying together on Thursday nights. And no Old Testament character embodies this truth more than Gideon.
We were challenged by the life and legacy of Enoch, drawing important lessons from his example for our own walk with the Lord.
The story of Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian eunuch in Jeremiah 38–39, provides a touching example of the godly love described in the “Love Chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13.