Friday, March 26, 2010

A New Blog Home

My new blog home is http://christsdoulos.wordpress.com please check it out.

God bless,

Wes

Monday, March 15, 2010

Welcome Spring 2010


We have officially entered one of the best seasons of the year. The temperature continues to rise. The flowers are trying to show their colors. And the sun is staying out longer! This is truly a great time of year to enjoy God's creation.

I had the opportunity a few weekends ago to check off one of my goals I had when moving to Pennsylvania: go snow skiing. Several of the guys from church went one Saturday night and I had a blast. After 2 trips down the bunny trail I was ready to roll. I was very pleased with my overall performace for a 1st timer. I fell as anyone does their 1st time, but I did not wipe out any. I can see why so many people plan a ski trip yearly.

On to some more important things that have been happening.

Yesterday was a busy day. I taught class in the morning, afternoon, preached Sunday night, and thankfully got to enjoy some down time with some brothers and sisters.

As for Sunday morning class, 2 Sundays ago we began our new quarter and I began teaching a class called Bible Fundamentals. This class is designed to help new Christians learn some basic fundamentals, but it's also to help those of us who've been Christians for a while refresh our memories. In my estimation this class is going extremely well. I'm a little behind schedule, but I'd rather us be learning the information than having too much information that we'll never remember. We just finished up covering the 17 Periods of Bible History that Bob Waldron has laid out. We started with this foundation so that we could see the chronology of the Bible. At the end of the quarter I hope that we can identify every book in the Bible and place it in its appropriate time period. To say that I'm loving this class would be an understatement.

As for the Sunday afternoon class, this was a special class that won't happen very often. The class was on the Holy Spirit. You remember a few weeks back I posted about having to teach a class on the Trinity. Well, that class led to the college-aged adults with more questions and they wanted to meet again and talk about the Holy Spirit more. So we did that yesterday. Again from my perspective I thought things went well. But you never know exactly how your audience grabs it unless they tell you. But in a nutshell we covered these things: 1) Are there passages that show Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are God? 2) Are there passages that show that the Son is not the Father? 3) Are there passages that show the Son is not the Holy Spirit? 4) Are there passages that show the Holy Spirit isn't the Father? And the answer to all of those questions is yes. They are all God, but all are distinct from one another...a really mind boggling thing for me. But we looked at several other things as well. We looked at the main roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Which we said that the Holy Spirit's main role was to reveal God's message and confirm God's message...I could go on and on about what we talked about, but I'll not confuse you any further. But we covered a lot of ground and I think made some headway.

As for the sermon, I preached on the Holy Spirit. I had one very specific goal of the sermon: I want people to no longer ask "WHAT is the Holy Spirit?" but to ask "WHO is the Holy Spirit?" So we looked at John 14-16 and all the things that the Spirit would do: help, remind, guide, teach, bear witness, convict, etc. And then we also looked to what the Scriptures say we can do to the Holy Spirit. We can: blaspheme him, lie to him, insult/outrage, and grieve him. I hope that the lesson helped us to realize that the Spirit of God is not an it. The Holy Spirit is very integral to our salvation (Titus 3:8). Therefore, we need to try to understand him better than what we do now.

I'm thankful to be here in Gettysburg, but i do miss those of you in the South. It seems like over the past couple weeks I've received a lot of phone calls and e-mails from you southerners, and they've been great. I should also mention that I receive constant encouragement from the Yanks. You both help in more ways that you can imagine. I'm thankful that we are one in Christ.

Also I need to give a shoutout to my nephew Whitby. He's going to be 3 on Friday! So Happy Birthday Whitby!

God bless,