Well hello everyone and greetings in Jesus name,
Yes the team is back from the Solomon Islands and the time spent over there was fruitful and encouraging. The team was awesome and did everything asked of them and went beyond in some circumstances. I am so proud of them. We will be sharing many stories next week at Missions Sunday so I encourage you to come and hear the wonderful testimonies the team has.
I look forward to catching up with you soon as I understand many have been away with one commitment or another. I really appreciate all of you who gave Janitos a ring over the past two and a half weeks to see how she was going. It gladdens my heart to know there are people who will look out for others and not because she is my wife but I pray we have the same attitude for all people who are a part of this wonderful body of Christ. The thing about family is that it is always good to get back together and swap stories and share our experiences.
God is so good and so patient and so loving, forgiving, understanding and the list goes on. I am so in awe of him and I am so humbled to be called to this great cause which Jesus came to set in motion. It astounds me to think that we can and have a times placed him in a box, tried to make him subject to our own understanding and attitudes, dared to direct the script of what can and cannot be done in his name. I know my downfall in this area and if we are honest we would all own up to it as well. He said my yoke is easy and my burden is light so why do we see many believers in Jesus Christ weighed down under the expectations of ourselves and others. There is a fine line between living a disciplined Christ honouring life which is a shining example as his ambassador and a life that merely reflects an adherence to a set of rules and expectations imposed by those who would ‘guide us’. It is a line that is sometimes blurred by the anomaly of being set free yet living by the Spirit to be salt and light to this dead and dying world. Move one way to far and you have dictatorship and legalism; too far the other way and you have individualistic attitudes and a cry of ‘I will do whatever I like’ and justify it by saying God has given them permission to do so. There is a middle ground. Exactly where that is, I and we continue to search it out. The best thing about it is that we are all on a journey of faith, hope and love. Real people living real lives, trying our best to run our race with our eyes fixed on Jesus; the author and perfector of our faith.
God bless you my friends and thank you for sharing your journey with me as I hope I am able to share my journey with you. It continues to be a blast. Praise the Lord……
Just to finish off with some dates:
- This Sunday is Super Sunday so get to it and invite your friends, family, neighbours and work colleagues to the Sunday morning service.
- The week after is Missions Sunday. This is where we focus on missions and this time our team back from the Solomon’s will be sharing their testimonies and stories.
- Combined NSW and VIC State Conference is being held in Albury on Oct 17-19. I really encourage you to seriously consider it as a time where you can get to know your wider CRC family a bit better. Let me know if you want to come.
- We have 3 adult and 7 youth discounted tickets for next year’s giant International People Convention in Adelaide in September. See Jan for these quick and if you have put your name down but still haven’t paid for your tickets then we really need you to fix that up asap or even sooner as the church is carrying that debt till all tickets have been paid for.
That’s all folks so hopefully I will see you on the weekend.
Ps Rodney Bortolin
No comments:
Post a Comment