A Stone's Throw

Wow, what an awesome day at FP Carthage on Mother’s Day 2010!  We had two great services with two baptisms and four baby/child dedications.  Very cool stuff, indeed.  One of the baptisms was unplanned…the second in about a month.  We had another spur of the moment baptism on Easter Sunday and another yesterday! I think it is really cool to see God moving in the hearts of people so strongly that they disregard their own personal plans for the day, “what will people think of me,” etc., and simply respond to the moving of the Spirit of God.  Reminds me of a group of men that Jesus called out to be his first disciples early on in his ministry. The Bible talks of their reckless abandonment in Matthew 4:18-22

The Calling of the First Disciples

¹⁸As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” ²⁰At once they left their nets and followed him.

²¹Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, ²²and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Monday is for Missions. . .

I have talked previously about my friend from high school, Matt, that is works for Convoy of Hope in Springfield, MO.  He is currently in Haiti on a exploratory trip for his Convoy of Hope interns going to serve later this summer in July.  Check out this video of him talking about the “capital C” Church “getting it done” in Haiti after the devastating earthquake this spring.

Forest Park is also going to Haiti this summer. Check out more info. here on our website. You can also email our missions pastor, Brock Cummins-brock@fpbc.net for more information about our missions trips this year.

All I can say is “wow!”  What a great Easter Sunday to follow up an extremely crazy week!  God, you are truly amazing to us and we are so thankful!  Just a few things before I head to bed on this Resurrection Sunday…

• Still processing the death of my friend and co-laborer, Luke Grayson.  His funeral was an amazing celebration of God’s powerful resurrection.  He will be missed greatly.
• We saw many professions of faith at our presentation of “Bow the Knee” at our FP Joplin Campus.  There have been hours of rehearsals and 4 performances…all for the glory of God!  When you see professions of faith and get to hear faith stories of people after the performance, it makes all of the hard work worth it!
• Easter Sunday was a great day at FP Carthage!  We saw God move in a mighty way.  We had several decisions for Christ as well as 8 baptisms! We had planned on having 5 people baptized, but one dropped out and 3 added, which left 7 to be baptized in the 2nd service.  I offered the invitation to a new relationship with Christ and then also mentioned that the public profession of faith in Jesus is baptism.  I offered that there might be some here today that had not planned on getting wet today, but that the Holy Spirit was pulling them to go public with their faith.  As I was baptizing our 7 planned people, I noticed one of our teenage guys come down the aisle…he took off his shoes and his outer shirt…he was baptized right there in his jeans!!  I was tearing up like crazy!  Thank you Jesus for this dude’s faith and courage!
• I believe that we had 22  baptisms today in all of the Forest Park campuses!  I know that there will be several more in the coming weeks as well!  That stuff never gets old!
• Praying for some families and marriages right now.  My heart is very heavy for them!
• I am exhausted…Bow the Knee every night this week and twice on Saturday, Duathlon on Saturday, our first baseball practice yesterday, as well as all of the emotional stuff from this morning has really worn me out!
• Met a really cool guy tonight…Nikolai.  Praying God’s blessings on him and his future.  He has lived a lifetime of tragedy in his life in 22 short years.
• It is really cool to read FB and Twitter “tweets” from churches across the U.S. tonight.  God really moved in a might way…of course He always does that doesn’t He?

Have a great week!  Live this week in the power of the resurrection!  He is Risen!  He is Alive!  He lives in our hearts!

Each Sunday night I will be summing up the previous week’s events in a “numbered” list, along with the “sum total” of our attendance for the week…even though “I’m not very good with numbers.”