Monday, September 29, 2008

Golf Tournament Was Great

Saturday, we had the Family Church Men's 4-man scramble golf tournament at Pine Bluff Country Club. It was a benefit tournament to help kids go to Camp Dry Gulch this next summer. We raised about $3,500 which will send about 16 kids to camp! We'll do something else this spring and hope to pay for about 30 kids to go to camp who cannot afford to go. We hope to take about 70 kids this summer.

My team didn't come in last place, thanks to some very gracious players (notice I didn't say graceful). Special awards were given out - THE GOLDEN SHOVEL (for most shots in sand), THE GOLDEN DIPNET - (for most shots in the water), and THE GOLDEN SAW (for most shots in the woods). Last place received a bobble headed trophy along with king size Snickers (they got Snickers because everyone else had had plenty of "snickers" all day long watching them play. Luckily, I took my team out of the winnings or we'd have racked up on the prizes!

On hole 15, we faced our biggest obstacle - a king snake. After prolonging a restroom break, I headed to the woods and there discovered a 4 ft snake about 4 ft from me! Thanks to my team (who resembled 5 year old kids when in contact with a snake) I was saved.

What a great time with the men of our church! We raised a lot of money too for kids!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The Spiritual Life

Do you think anyone ever asked the question to Jesus: "how is your spiritual life going? Are you spending time with God? Have you had your quiet time today?" Probably not.

Jesus understood that every part of his life was spiritual, not just sections of it. He, like others in the early Christian church as well as the Jewish people, understood that everything was spiritual. In fact, there is no Hebrew word for "spiritual". It was a foreign concept. If you defined something as "spiritual" then that would mean that other things would not be. It implied there was an nonspiritual part of life. They believed it was all or nothing.

Early Christians knew that all of life was spiritual - either all spiritually good or all spiritually bad. Either connected as a whole to Christ or not at all. There were not certain areas that were reserved for God and others for the world. That means you can't say, "God, you can have my heart, but not my finances. You can have my vocabulary, but not my thought life. You can have me on Sunday, but the rest of the week is mine."

There wasn't a difference between church life and other life. After all, you ARE the church. There wasn't a quiet time. It all was to be God's time. There wasn't a prayer time. It was an all day conversation. A good friend once told me that he didn't say "amen" in his prayers until he went to bed at night as a reminder that all day was to be a constant contact with Jesus.

How is your spiritual life? Maybe the question should be, "is your life spiritual or not?"

"And whatever you do, whether by speech or action, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17

First Night of Awana

We kicked off AWANA this week instead of last because we had no power. 126 kids the first night!!! The best is ahead of us.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Passion 08

Here are some pictures from our Easter drama this past year. Enjoy!