Opportunity To Serve

The Morse Thibeault home group (Brian, Nancy, Steve, Judy, Douglas, Leslie, Patrick, Mitch, Julie and others) will be bringing an Easter meal out to the homeless community in Isla Vista (Anisquoya Park) at 2pm on Saturday, April 7. We want to invite the church to come participate with us. If anyone would like to join us, please email Nancy and Brian (brian-nancy@verizon.net). We would like people to bring food, music, or just come to hang out. Let us know what you will be bringing so we can coordinate this. We usually do home-cooked stuff, to make it more special
for the people out there. Turkey, Ham, Lamb, all the fixings, etc. (However, Costco pies are also a staple).

We will get the word out to the community out there so that they all know we are coming.

With Love,
Brian

Help Needed: Surgery is Imminent

Perhaps you are already aware that Jerry has been in need of a full hip replacement for quite some time now. Well, the time is now just around the corner and the surgery is scheduled for Friday the 13^th of April. It will be a full Titanium Hip replacement surgery which will lay him up for some time.

Jerry will be needing a place to stay for his recovery which will be approximately 2-3 weeks. Can you or someone you know help out? Jerry has been faithfully attending our church for several years now and is always ready to help out where needed. It would be awesome if we could stand behind him as a family and give him a hand during this time.

Please call Janis at the office, 683-8783 if you or someone you know is able to help out. You can email Janis at: golvine@aol.com. Or Paul at: sniffys@gmail.com.

Make Us A Living Sacrifice

Thank you Lord for speaking this word through Diana. May you all be blessed as you seriously meditate on the following that the Lord showed her.

3. 14. 2007

To What Extent Will You Serve Him: A Kingdom Work Ethic

FORWARD: This little piece of encouragement came to me while folding laundry. I was folding up one of Joshua’s shirts and couldn’t get it to look nice so I just crumpled it up half-folded and threw it on the bed. Right at that moment the Lord spoke—“how many times do you have that attitude when you serve me?” Whoa! I thought, and all the sudden I found myself running into the kitchen for a pen and paper.

If we do everything as unto the Lord, we should give our very best in all that we do. If we respect some things we do as simple, exempt, or not unto the Lord, there poses itself a question—why do we do them? If I am habitually late to be somewhere I deem as “unimportant” am I really living as FULLY unto the Lord? By my actions am I indirectly telling Him, I don’t believe you’re going to be there, or do anything of great importance at this point in time?

We will miss out on the Lord’s heart and His desire to be a part of everything we do, if we simply “judge for ourselves” what is of importance in our lives, where our time, energy and finances should go. We will become less and less the servant of an omnipotent King and more the ruler of our own unsubmitted lives. Laziness and disregard for God’s perfect commands and statutes will flood our lives for we will daily begin to deny access to the Father to His rightful throne of rulership over us. We will, slowly at first, start to become respecters of persons and people who choose when to show mercy, give true devotion to Jesus, practice meekness, servanthood and all other characteristics that the true Bride of Christ should embody.

So with this small revelation what will I do? Regard it as small and insignificant in its nature. To do so, I’m afraid, would contradict the message in its entirety! So I will lay down the right to “judge for myself” and to choose when, where and with whom I will regard as “serving the Lord” or “building of His Kingdom”. Today, you and I have the choice to serve one of two kingdoms with every action, big or small, seemingly significant or insignificant—the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of myself and my own whim. The latter being only fodder and kindling wood to Satan’s firey plan to distract us. Will you serve the Lord in all things?

To serve Him in everything with all of our heart, does not mean we must wait for the perfect timing, the right circumstances, for a time when it doesn’t hurt, only when our service is welcomed or noticed, only when we don’t face opposition of the world, the enemy, or even brothers and sisters in Christ. True service to the Lord is a calling and a mandate we often won’t “feel” like doing. If we let Him, God will bring us into situations that we aren’t prepared for, that will make us sweat and want to run the other way for our lives—For the sake of building His Kingdom on His terms, on this earth as it is in Heaven!

It was no mistake that Jesus first prayed to His Father “Your Will” and “Your Kingdom come”. Jesus wants to show us His Lordship and His Might through our voluntary weakness, submission to Him and death to ourselves. To give to Him any less is not the sacrifice He is looking for. To reserve the right to choose the day, way or method we will serve Him puts a rift and a gap between us and the intimacy He wants to share with us in: constant communion, relationship and devotion to Him. It’s our calling! The pain and sacrifice of loosing our lives, our comfort in a human sense and our obsession with our reputation for His Namesake will be nothing when we realize in eternity who we really chose to serve. We are Jesus’ passion, “passion” means suffering. Who do you passionately serve?

Scriptures Breathed By Our God Who Wants Our Full Devotion, And Passion For Himself

(He is passionately devoted to giving Jesus His full reward which by the work of the cross we have been made co-heirs with Christ—That’s us guys!)

Joshua 22:5

5"Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul."

Dueteronomy 10:12

12"Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

1 Samuel 12:24

24"Only fear the LORD and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you.

Zephaniah 3:9

9"For then I will give to the peoples purified lips,
That all of them may call on the name of the LORD,
To serve Him shoulder to shoulder.

Matthew 4:10

10Then Jesus said to him, "Go, Satan! For it is written, 'YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'"

Ephesians 6:6-8

6Not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

7With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men,

8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.

For, it is my prayer, if we truly invite the passion of Jesus and the conviction of these scriptures into our lives we will start to feel the release of the steam trapped in our boiling kettles that bubble, screech, and say “who will clean up this hair in the bottom of the bathtub, whose mess is this, isn’t this the third time I’ve done this this week?” and we will start to begin the prophetic action of reaching down and wiping them up with an inexplicable joy—not because of the inherent excitement of the action itself, but because there’s been a change in the way we live, because we are conscious of who we serve. And I am quite confident to say, this inexplicable joy in serving the Living King will trickle into every area of our lives, the way we interact with and serve the Body- the Bride of Christ, those who don’t yet know the goodness of our God and our role as Gentile believers to live unto Jesus in such a way to incite the jealous pursuit of His firstborn, Israel, back to their King.

Romans 11:11-16

11Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!

13I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry 14in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? 16If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

MORE, by Jacob Reitzin

More than the sinking sands of this life,

More than the pain, the guilt, and the strife,

More than the colors that bleed through your soul,

More than the politicians who fake the role,

More than the fades, the fads, and the trends,

More than the snakes whose venom you defend,

More than the ways, the loops and the holes,

More than the teller tells to the fold,

More than the banker who breaks the ice,

More than the trapper who traps the mice,

More than the song that has been sung too much,

More than the swindlers bang for your buck,

More than the captive dares to tell, and the slips and then slides into a deep dirty hell,

More than the painter's swift smooth brush,

More than the shamrocks green good luck,

More than the wish and want of the air, and more than the fate of this world's false glare,

More than science and evolutions lie, More than the babies’ aborted to die,

More than the joker who jokes us all, More than the tattles who tells on the wall,

More than the jewel in the jewelers crown, More than the bullet that's worn them down,

More than the noblest of noblest men, More than the lost are willing to bend,

In all there is more, and in more all of this, the moral is there is more, more is less