Sunday Stuff

This week has been a trying week for me personally, as I have allowed the pressure of this building project to stress me out to where my blood pressure is the highest it has been in a long time. Not only has the building project caused me stress, but also the overall condition of our church has been the cause of stress for me. I have learned in my years of full-time ministry, not to compare the condition of my church with the condition of other churches, but in my strong desire to have a successful ministry for God, I began to really question where I fit in the grand scheme of the Kingdom of God.

But I had a heart to heart conversation last evening with my best friend, Pastor Keith Witherspoon, and he helped me see that what I already knew, my faithfulness with produce great rewards from the Lord. So I got up this morning and with a strong desire to get to the house of the Lord to worship his name with other believers who have the same desire to worship. I went to the 8 AM service at the Mount Olive Baptist Church, East Orange, NJ where my good friend Pastor Michael Jordan serves as Pastor. The worship at Mount Olive was off the hook, and Pastor Jordan really did a great job with his message on Phil. 2:5 which he tagged Having the Mind of Christ.

I got to First Mount Zion with an urgent feeling of getting worship started and the Lord did not disappoint me. He met us in the sanctuary from Praise & Worship until the preaching of the Word. I led in the music ministry and there was an awesome presence of the Holy Spirit when we met together at the altar to pray. God be praised!!!

We continued our series on the model church in Acts 2 entitled Created for a Community, with our look at verses 5-11 which I labeled the message, Fulfilling Our Purpose. As a lifelong Christian who has been a member of the church of Jesus Christ for my entire life, I have discovered that many churches have failed to fulfill the purpose that God designed for his church. It doesn't matter how many members you have, how popular your Pastor is, how big your budget is, if you are not doing what the Lord has designed for the church to do, you are not fulfilling the purpose that God has for his church.

This purpose is found at the end of verse 11, for they heard them speak in their own language the mighty works of God. Scholars debate as to what exactly this phrase meant, many say that the 120 were praising God for his good works, but I would contend that if you are speaking about the good works of God, then you are speaking about the Gospel, which is the good news of Jesus Christ. So the purpose of God's church is to provide for the world a glimpse of God's goodness through the spreading of the Gospel. I will post the outline tomorrow.

Please keep our church and me in your prayers as we attempt to build God a Kingdom here on earth.