It's what time?

As usual for a Sunday evening, last night I laid down at 10:00 PM or so for a good night's rest.  As usual, it took me about 3 minutes to fall asleep.  Then the unusual happened.  At 1:30 AM (really late or really early, depending on your perspective), I was wide awake.  It took me a minute to figure out what time it was and that the alarm clock had not gone off. 

I lay in bed for a few moments and then all of a sudden, BAM!  No, Emeril was not in my bedroom.  I was attacked by doubts and fears and worries.  Just out of the blue, all these little voices in my head started screaming for my attention.  After tossing and turning for a while, I finally got out of bed and knelt down in the living room and began to pray. 

About 2:00 I got off my knees and went back to bed.  I was feeling quite drowsy at this time.  As I lay there waiting for slumber to overtake me, those pesky voices came right back.  Wouldn't you know it?  Worried about financial matters, worried about the upcoming tax return, worried about my wife (she's been sick for a while now, wonder what's wrong), worries, worries, worries.  After a few minutes of this mess, I got back up and went back to my spot in front of the couch.

Guess I wasn't done praying.

I prayed a while longer.  I had a sincere heart-to-heart with the Lord  I prayed for a long time.  I wept a bit.  I confessed a few things.  I gave some things over to the Lord.  At that point, I was wide awake.  I decided to go grab two things:  my Bible and my flashlight.  After getting them from my desk, I returned to the living room and sat on the couch. 

 I read a portion of scripture from Romans.  I read a portion of scripture from Genesis.  My soul still wasn't quite satisfied, so I followed some advice from a long time ago--I turned to the Psalms.  I read Psalm 27 for some reason.  Maybe because a bookmark was close by or maybe the Holy Spirit led me to this passage.  Verse 14 says this "Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD."  

As I pondered those words, I felt peace enter my heart and soul.  Those little voices?  They had gotten very quiet for some reason.  At this time, the clock showed 3:00 AM.  My alarm goes off at 4:00 so I can head to the gym.  At peace, I whispered another prayer, asking for an hour of sleep.  I went to my bed, I laid down, and I drifted off to sleep.  At 3:59 and some change, I awoke feeling so very refreshed.  Honestly, it felt as if I had slept the whole night without interruption. 

I'm going to preach this text Wednesday night, if the Lord will allow, so I won't go into too much detail here.  But take this with you:  trust the Lord and He will strengthen your heart.  When you're weak, rely on God's strength.  When your tired, rely on God's stamina.  When you hear the little voices in your head telling you everything's wrong, rely on God's Word to tell you why everything's going to be okay. 

Preaching on the Home

As much as I love the holiday season, I am thankful that the holidays have passed for another year.  Here we are in January!  Winter has finally decided to arrive in south central Kentucky and we have been enjoying freezing temperatures for several weeks now.  In typical Kentucky fashion, the weatherman is predicting that Wednesday's temperatures (January 10th) will be in the 60's!

Our church calendar is still very active, the next item on our agenda is our annual Purity Banquet.  This is a time we set aside each year for our young people to make a commitment to the Lord.  This commitment is that they would keep themselves pure until marriage.  It is always a special time at our church.

I believe that it is with this banquet in mind that the Lord has led me to begin preaching on the home and on prayer.  For the foreseeable future, I will be preaching on these two topics, one on Sunday morning and the other on Sunday night.

Last Sunday evening, I begin the series on the home.  We began with the foundation.  The psalmist tells us in Psalms 127:1 "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."  We spent our time examining the foundation of our homes.  We saw that in I Corinthians that there is no other foundation that can be laid except the Lord Jesus.  The home should be based on the Lord!

We finished the sermon by looking at eight warning signs of foundation failure.  I believe that this series of messages will be a help to those who are having family trouble as well as those who are interested in keeping trouble at bay.  I'm excited to see what the Lord will do with this series on the family.

On Sunday morning, we began our series on prayer.  If there is one thing that every Christian could absolutely work on, it's our prayer life.  It is so important that we know how to pray!  I'm probably the least qualified preacher to preach on prayer, but the Lord has led me to do so.  I am looking forward to learning and applying new things to help my prayer life.

Join us!  We would love to see you at any of our services!