We Follow Jesus in All of Life
On Monday night our 2020 Money Management class begins. 9 sessions devoted to better stewarding the resources God provides.
Pray that God would grow them in both wisdom and generosity.
Deadline to Register is Tomorrow:
1/22/2020
Our every-other-year Men’s Retreat is just a few weeks away. The three Sovereign Grace churches of California are joining forces for another weekend of teaching, fellowship, food, and competitions. Our last one was fantastic.
Thu 2/6/2020 to Sat 2/8/2020
Idyllwild, CA
$150/guy
Ben Kreps, a pastor from our sister church in Harrisburg, PA, is our guest speaker. Our theme is “The Power of God: How the Gospel Conquers Men.” Young men ages 14 and up are welcome to join.
More details are available on the registration page.
Men, make this investment in your own growth and in our partnership. Ladies, make sure your man gets up there.
Scholarships and financial aid are available. Spots are limited, so secure yours ASAP.
I'm ready to register.
This past year, we challenged you to the 12 Bible Verses Every Californian Needs to Know bible memory challenge. Emily was one of a handful of church members who stuck it out and memorized all 12 verses. We asked her to share how the Lord met her as she memorized Scripture. Here’s her testimony from Sunday:
Bible memorization has been part of my life for a big part of my life. When I was 9, 10, and 11, my church participated in a program called Children’s Bible Drill, where kids memorized about 15 passages a year and went to competitions to test memorization and other Bible literacy skills. I will always be grateful for the women in my church who coached Bible Drill and gave an already-nerdy homeschooler a place to both be challenged and to lay the foundation for an important spiritual discipline.
My learning about Bible memorization took another leap when I started at a Christian law school that was unusually Christian, even for a Christian law school. If you look at the topic of law in the Bible, you’ll find that law, memory, and meditation pretty much always go hand in hand. Now, memorization is a huge part of surviving law school, and if you are at all interested in nerding out about memorization strategies, law students are your people. But we were encouraged to put studying, memorizing, and meditating on God’s Word ahead of the legal stuff. And we learned from professors who lived out these priorities in their lives and in their law practices. During this time I observed something: when people memorize God’s Word, it comes out in their conversation and in their prayers. Jesus told this parable in Matthew 13: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” What a privilege for us to be able to store up and then share God’s very words with each other by praying them for each other.
All this to say, I believe that Bible memorization is important. I have seen it bear fruit. But fast forward from kid Emily to law school Emily to mom Emily, and life was happening, but memorization was not.
So I was grateful last January to be given the gift of a Bible Memorization Challenge. The first verse we memorized was John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” When you spend time with God’s Word, the very Word of God comes to meet you. Not just words on a page, but Jesus himself. That happened for me this year in these twelve passages. I couldn’t recite them all for you right now, which for the perfectionist in me is pretty horrifying. But I know that over the last year twelve passages have had a chance to work on me, and hopefully to work themselves deeper into my heart and life.
Thank you to our pastors for making memorization a priority in 2019. Thank you for throwing a tired mom a lifeline in the form of a goal: work on memorization instead of just thinking about working on memorization.
Let’s be people who memorize God’s Word together. Let’s store that Word in our hearts so that it comes out in our everyday conversations—hopefully sometimes without us even noticing!—and in our prayers for each other. May we all become like the scribe in Jesus’ parable, sharing treasures new and old.
We Love Our Volunteer Leaders
Once every month, the Children’s Ministry Leadership Team (Tessica, Israel, and Bethany) gather to pray and discuss ways to better serve the volunteers, kids, and families that make up our children’s ministry each Sunday. They’re glad volunteers giving their lives to serve us.
Would you pause and pray for them as they meet tomorrow night?
We’re grateful to God for them.
Help Us Help You
Bright and early every Tuesday morning a group gathers at our church office to pray. Not everyone can make it, but if you can, we invite you to join us.
We know it’s challenging. You’re tired. You forget it’s happening until it’s too late.
But we want to help. That’s why we’ve set up a text message reminder that goes out on Mondays.
All you have to do is text AMPRAYER to 984-203-6255 and you’ll be added to the list. You can unsubscribe at anytime.
If you want to join us for the prayer meeting, sign up.
If you’re not sure you can join us, sign up.
Even if you know you can’t join us, sign up anyway. It’ll be a sweet reminder that your brothers and sisters are gathering to pray.
Living for God’s glory looks like living for the good of his people.
On Sunday Pastor Dustin preached from 1 Peter 4:7-11. He reminded us that a God-centered life is a church-centered life. God is using our everyday acts of love towards one another to show his glory and preserve the fellowship of his people. We are exiles in the world, but we need not be exiles in the church. In all that we do, may we glorify God by proving to one another that we belong.
“Christian freedom is not ‘I always do what I want.’ Nor is it ‘I always do whatever the other person wants.’ It is ‘I do what brings glory to God. I do what brings others under the influence of the gospel. I do what leads to peace in the church.’”
-Andy Naselli & J.D. Crowley
The quote above is from Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ, the book we’ll be studying in the Men’s Study this Spring.
Pastor Dustin will host and lead our study on the second Tuesday of the month from February through May. Spots are limited and you must be able to commit to the four meetings.
This is a place for men to talk like men about God. This is a place for men to grow.
Gentlemen, get yourselves registered.
*Deadline to register is February 5th.
We want to better serve you
We are a praying church. We pray as individuals. We pray on Sundays. We pray in small groups. We pray before, during, and after meetings.
And now, as you know, we hold a weekly morning prayer meeting. And you’re invited to join us.
We also would like to pray for you. To make it simple, we’ve added a place on our website where you can submit requests. We’ll pray for them on Tuesday mornings.