Deacon Dave and Anna were married this past Saturday. They’re making their way back to Orange County this week. Church members have organized a drive-by reception parade to congratulate them and welcome Anna to California. Bring out your signs, banners, and wedding attire. Get creative. This is worth celebrating!
All the details including the parade route are available on Facebook.
Three of our small groups host their meetings tonight. Even though we’re meeting online, God is still powerfully using our love, our counsel, and our prayers for one another to further establish and grow us. The coronavirus hasn’t stopped him or his church.
Join us in praying that God would bless these meetings. Pray for wise and skillful leadership by our small group leaders. Pray for joyful participation, gratitude for the gift of fellowship, and an abounding love for one another in Christ.
Pastor Dustin hosted his first weekly hymn sing earlier today. You can catch the replay here. He sang a couple of our favorite songs and shared a new kids’ song. A big thanks to Eli for helping out!
Pastor Dustin will be hosting these for the foreseeable future. Head to the church Facebook page on Fridays and let these truth-saturated songs refresh your heart.
SInging the truths of the gospel strengthens our hearts. When the joy of our salvation grows dim, we need a song to sing. When troubles, uncertainties, and anxieties threaten to overwhelm us, we need a song to sing.
Join Pastor Dustin online on Fridays for High Noon Hymns. He will share songs and weave in scripture readings, devotional meditations, and meaningful quotes. There will be kid-friendly songs too.
Each broadcast will last about 20 minutes. The recordings will be available afterward for those who can’t be there live.
Head to our Facebook page when the time is right.
You can check out previous hymn sings Pastor Dustin has recorded here, here, and here.
Deacon Dave and Anna were married this past Saturday. They’re making their way back to Orange County this week. Church members have organized a drive-by reception parade to congratulate them and welcome Anna to California. Bring out your signs, banners, and wedding attire. Get creative. This is worth celebrating!
All the details including the parade route can be found on Facebook here.
The ladies of the church are invited to participate in the second round of our Secret Sister Note Exchange. Those who sign up will be given the name and contact info of another lady in the church who is participating. Send her a letter, card or email of encouragement. It could be scripture, what God is teaching you, a prayer, or maybe a way you have seen God at work in her life.
Participation is voluntary, but we ask that if you sign up, please be committed to sending your note.
Sign-ups open today and end this Saturday night (5/16/2020).
Here’s how it works:
On Sunday, you will be contacted with the name and info of your assignment.
You have from Sunday until Friday night to send your note. Please, make sure to sign your name!
Although we’re apart, we hope these notes of encouragement will draw us together. If you don't wish to participate, that's okay! Now is a great time to send a note of encouragement to someone else (a friend, family member, small group member, or neighbor).
On Sunday morning, Pastor Dustin shared the testimony of a woman named Monica, the mother of Augustine. By all accounts, she was a godly woman, a faithful mother, and an example for us to follow, whether or not we are a mom. Here’s her story:
Augustine was born into a family of respectable Roman citizens and received many advantages, not the least of which was a fine education. While his father, Patricius, was a pagan with a violent temper, his mother, Monica, was a Christian of godly virtue. She suffered deeply through his violence and adultery, but endured with faith and patience. She turned her attention to her three children and committed herself to motherhood. One biographer says, “As soon as he could speak, she taught him to lisp a prayer. As soon as he could understand, she taught him, in language suited to his childish sense, the great truths of the Christian Faith.” She was his first teacher, his first instructor in Scripture and sound doctrine.
Of the three children, Augustine caused Monica the most grief. From a young age, he was rebellious and rejected both the faith and the ethics of his mother. For a time he even gave himself to hedonism, pursuing carnal pleasure. When he was 19, he began a relationship with a young Carthaginian woman whom his parents considered far below his station and who soon bore him a son. Though his parents continued to disapprove of his relationship, he remained with his lover for 15 years.
Monica responded to her son’s rebellion with prayer—earnest, pleading, tear-filled prayer and fasting. One bishop who knew of Monica’s prayers comforted her by saying, “It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.” She prayed for Augustine and also remained close to him, accompanying him when he moved. When Patricius died, she gave herself to the service of the church, visiting the sick and mothering the orphan. Meanwhile, she continued to plead with her son to come to Christ.
In his early 30s as a professor in Milan, Augustine began to wonder if Christianity could be both true and satisfying. He wondered if it offered a solution for his raging carnal desires. One day, while sitting in a garden, he heard a child chanting, “take up and read.” He took it as a command and found the nearest text at hand, Paul’s letter to the Romans. Immediately he read, “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:13-14). He was forever transformed and was baptized the following Easter. Monica was there to witness the momentous event and to rejoice at the answer to so many prayers. She would die just months later, comforted by the knowledge that both her son and her husband had heard the gospel from her lips and come to Christ.
Now a Christian, Augustine gave himself to preaching and writing, eventually penning voluminous works, including his Confessions and City of God, both of which are commonly read today. Few Christians have made a deeper and longer-lasting impact on the faith. And he, of all men, knew of the great debt of gratitude he owed to his mother.
When Augustine penned his biographical Confessions, he paid tribute to her. He told how shortly after his conversion he read the Psalms for the first time and how she read them with him. He asked her for help understanding them, for “she was walking steadily in the path in which I was as yet feeling my way.” She was the one “now gone from my sight, who for years had wept over me, that I might live in [God’s] sight.” A biographical account aptly tells of her impact: “She died a happy woman for she had seen her prayers answered, and both her husband and her son had become believers. Augustine was only 33 at the time of his mother’s death, and many years of service to Christ and his church lay before him. In later years Augustine could look back on his life and recognize the importance of his mother’s perseverance in prayer to his own salvation and ministry.” Though he could run, he could never outrun his mother’s prayers.
On Sunday Pastor Mike taught from Psalm 139. This passage is commonly thought to be a calm reflection on God’s character. But it’s not that simple. The psalmist’s poetic explanation of God’s authority, power, and control over his life is not necessarily a comfort. He is wrestling. Just like we are during this pandemic. But God uses our faith-filled wrestling to develop in us a deep trust.