The
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Love God. Love others.
onnection Fall 2016
Sunday Worship Services: 9:00 a.m. (Blended) 10:30 a.m. (Contemporary)
A Better Story by James C. Jones As many of you know, our family recently attended the North American Christian Convention, which was held in Anaheim, CA. The week with other Christian leaders was an encouragement and challenged me to think through lots of ministry issues. But as with other conventions, I looked over the schedule of speakers beforehand and identified several that I wanted to hear and others that I wasn’t excited about having to endure. As I went through the week, God showed me that I need to be careful in prejudging whether he can use a teacher to speak into my life, because each of the ones that I had identified as a no-go challenged me in some important way. The theme of the convention was “A Better Story,” and the messages focused on the idea that God has a better story in mind for us than we would write on our own. One of the last speakers made the point that sometimes the story God wants to write for us may not always be an easy one. God’s path may have obstacles and rough patches which will challenge our commitment and our faith and may generally be unpleasant for us. But the speaker challenged us to continue to give the pen to God to allow him to write a better story for us. We are called to surrender to what God wants for us rather than what we want for ourselves. For me, that’s one of the real challenges of the Christian life. I know what I like. I know how I want things to roll for me and my family. I know what is best for me and for the most important people in my life. I know what’s best for the church. At least, I think I know. But of course, I don’t. I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. I don’t know what resources I’m going to need in the next 24 hours to survive, to serve, and to love. I don’t know what is ahead for our culture and exactly how the church will need to adapt to share the message of Jesus in effective ways. I don’t know all of the challenges that our children are going to face as they attempt to live out their faith. I don’t even know how long I’ll be here to help them. Life is filled with uncertainty, and followers of Jesus need to do just that: follow. Many of us are learning to trust that God’s story is the best story. It may sometimes be a challenging road to walk. We may not always understand. The hard truth is that in this life, we may never fully understand what God is up to. But we do know that God is at work, and we know that in the end, God will restore all things and will all make sense, and we’ll see that when we gave over the pen, God always wrote a better story.
In This Issue:
Meet Shelby Smith Our Own Relationship Advice Think Orange Celebrating Summer 2016 Looking Forward to Fall
Celebration of Baptisms VCS Back to School Interview Upcoming Sermon Series Connecting with Others Dangers of Partisan Christianity