Please stay and enjoy a time of fellowship after the service today while we celebrate Gary Faulkner’s 70^th birthday.

TO BE ABSENT FROM THE BODY

“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (II Cor. 5:8).

A believer is so confident of Christ our Savior, that he is very willing to leave this world. We do not look forward to the process of the death of the body, but we do long to go be with our Lord. A believer has been born again into a new citizenship in glory and our new heart looks forward to going home to be with our Savior.

When a child of God dies, we who are left behind mourn the loss of companionship and friendship. However, we rejoice to know that the very moment a child of God closed his eyes in death, he opened them in glory, looking into the face of our Lord Jesus Christ! (Luke 23:43).

That is why we can say that the day a believer dies is the best day of his life. The day of the death of a believer is far better than the day of his birth (Eccl. 7:1), because that is the day we finally see our Savior face to face.

YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN

“Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)

I hear a lot about “reformation” in our day. There are reformed churches, reformed doctrine, reformed preachers and reformed believers, everything seems to be “reformed.” The word “reform” means to “improve” or to “make better.” If “reformation” means to improve myself or make myself better then, I don’t need reformation! What I need is a perfect righteousness. I surely can’t find any hope of eternal life in trying to make myself better, especially when God requires perfection. I don’t need “reformation;” I need “regeneration.” I don’t need to get my heart right; I need a new heart that is right. The lost sinner doesn’t need to just change their way; they need to change their God. I don’t need to make myself “better;” I need to be made “perfect.”

Reproving and refining one’s self cannot bring about eternal life. Reformation is not a call from death, but a call to death if the sinner trusts at all in their improving (reforming). Sinners don’t need reformation; they need to be made a new creation in Christ. (2 Cor. 5:17) Our Lord said in a most insistent way, “Ye must be born again.”

Pastor David Eddmenson

CHRIST WILL KEEP THE SHEEP (John 10:27-30)

I do not panic nor despair in this world of religious paganism and corruption. The Lord knows how to deliver them that love Him and worship Him out of all trial and tribulation. Evil may abound, false teachers increase, the true worship of the Lord may all but perish from the earth; but our God has a people who are chosen by Him, redeemed by His dear Son, and called by His Spirit. He will keep them from falling and He will keep them “Til the river rolls its waters at their feet. Then He will safely bear them over, where their Saviour they shall meet.”

Pastor Henry Mahan

Where grace reigns, there will be in the attitude, conduct, and conversation that which betokens its presence.