Remember that we will have a church dinner after the service next Sunday, May 17^th to celebrate the high school graduation of Charity Collins.

We will also have a church dinner after the service on Sunday May 24^th to celebrate the 100^th birthday of Norma Clement.

Grace in the heart will be seen in our walk before men. Don’t be mistaken about how this grace is seen by men. God’s grace in the heart will not be seen by men in how well we keep the law. Outward law keeping is how a legalist is recognized. God’s grace in the heart is seen in our attitude: in our love for others, in our compassion for the lost, and in how readily we forgive others.

“Whom we preach.” —How wonderful it would be, what good news to sinners, and how honoring to God if all those men who claim to speak for God would stop preaching what and start preaching “Whom,” the Lord Jesus Christ.

Pastor Larry Criss

THE LAST THING MY GRANDMOTHER TAUGHT ME

Last summer, I spent five days with my Grandmother Curtis. They were the last five days of her life. The last thing she taught me was that our flesh is utterly worthless, powerless, and full of inability.

As I sat helplessly by, she struggled to take each breath. She could not raise herself out of bed. Her thoughts came out in incoherent jumbled words. At times her heart rate jumped to 150 beats per minute, at other times it dropped to 25 beats. All these things were entirely out of the control of a woman who all my life had been one of the strongest women I have ever known. Then she took one last breath. There were no more.

All I could think about is how desperately wicked our own depraved hearts are to deceive us into putting confidence in our flesh: in our will, our strength, our ability. It is so very sad that sinners are being told that they can give themselves life by their works; that they can keep the law themselves; that they must do certain things or they cannot be saved. If there was anything that you told my grandmother she must do by her fleshly strength to save herself from death, it would have been utterly impossible for her; it would have been mockery to do so; and poor sinners are being mocked the same way. The requirements contained in God’s law are as utterly impossible for sinners to keep in perfection to save ourselves from spiritual death as it was for my 90 year old grandmother to do anything physically in her flesh. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.” (Is 40: 6-7)

Scripture says, “Salvation is of the Lord.” (Jonah 2: 9) It means God chooses, redeems, regenerates, draws, gives faith, preserves, resurrects and glorifies sinners through the person and work of his Son, Christ Jesus. May God make us confess we are sinners totally dependent upon God’s mercy and make us willing to put all our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. May God make us put away all man’s vain requirements and reveal in our hearts that Christ is All! If God is pleased to give us a long life like my grandmother, eventually, we will all come to those last five days. What a comfort it would be to face them knowing that when they are over we will open our eyes with God our Savior and give him all the glory for our complete salvation!