13 May Just Thinking is All
“And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; ” (1 Timothy 1:12)
The words “I thank,” given by Paul in 1 Timothy, are literally, “I have constant gratitude to.” It is not a mere statement of the fact of being grateful, but a revelation of Paul’s constant attitude of gratefulness. He was constantly grateful to God for his enabling strength and His putting him into the ministry.
As I write this article, I am sitting in the airport in Los Angeles awaiting my flight back to Seattle. I have just spent a couple of days in Lancaster, CA for West Coast Baptist College’s graduation services. We have several young people graduating from there, as well as a bunch of other students I know from other churches. As I participated in the services, watched students, pastors, their families mill around the campus, I was reminded of the wonderful privilege I have to pastor a New Testament Baptist Church.
I am grateful for this fact, as well as for Berean Baptist Church. I have so enjoyed my time here and look forward to all God is going to do in the future. I am grateful that I get to invest in the lives of people, my life, and to help them grow in the Lord, and for some of them, to go on into full time Christian service.
I am thankful for my church family, for the revival services of late, and for all of the opportunities that lie before us during the summer months. I am thankful for the chance to go minister to our missionaries in the Ukraine in a few weeks and to preach the wonderful Gospel of our Lord Jesus to those in a foreign land. I am thankful for the co-laborers I have in ministry at Berean, for the great teenagers that He has given us, and for their families as well. The list could go on and on for sure.
I love you all with all of my heart and it swells with joy every time I hear the words “pastor” or “preacher”, and will never take that for granted. Thank you for all of your love and care for me, and I pray that you will always be faithful to the Lord, as He has been so faithful to us. See you at church…
No Comments