ANNOUNCEMENTS SUMMER/FALL - 2008
BIBLE CAMP for Teens in southern VA.
July 28 thru Aug 1
PREACHER BOYS CAMPMEETING & YOUTH RALLY.
August 8-9
Bible Baptist Church in Rossville, GA (Chattanooga, TN).
Pastor Ricky Gravley
MISSION TRIP ALBANIA
August 19-27
Have team assembled of 10 men.
Have raised $4,000.00 as of May 6, 2008, need $3,000.00 more by August.
5th ANNUAL OLD TIME BAPTIST CAMPMEETING
October 20-24
Jacksonville, FL
Morning and evening services, Monday thru Friday.
Meals provided and Motel rooms provided free of charge for full-time preachers.
Mike Bagwell, Dana Williams, Jonathon McNeese, and Earl Hughes preaching.
MAY-2008
“SURVIVING TRANSITION”
Genesis 7
We are faced all through life with the daunting challenge of TRANSITIONS. When God wisely and masterfully brings us into new Phases and into new Places, He does so through times of TRANSITION.
In Genesis 7, Noah went through probably one of the greatest transitions ever. Talk about God rearranging your world! Transition times are usually stormy times. What a storm God put Noah in. Transition times are also storage times. God will seal us, and supply us, and sail us, right through the storm. I think of baby Moses in his miniature ark (Exodus 2:3); being preserved, and protected, and promoted, right into the palace. And transition times are indeed, storied times. Did the nation of Israel ever hail such glorious testimonies of God’s deliverance and mercy, as in those stories that come from their transition times?
Let us learn from Noah how to survive transition.
When God is bringing you through transition, you must recognize that one WORLD may be ending but another WORLD is opening up. We often struggle against God’s operations in transition, because we fear to leave the comforting familiarity of the world we have been in, but trust God, for He has a new and better world waiting for you. Joseph left his world behind when he left his wonderful home at 17, and O, what a rough transition he had(the pit, Potiphar’s wife, the prison), yet look at the new world God brought him into when he finally put him on the throne, in charge of the whole world. Abraham left his world behind when he left Ur of the Chaldees, but God was taking him to the Promised Land. His journey of faith is quite a transition story indeed. Ruth’s world changed, did it not, when God transitioned her from cursed Moab to blessed Boaz, but it was not without a rough transition, which involved a famine, a funeral, a forsaking, and a field where she scraped the dirt for grain with the beggars.
When God is bringing you through transition, you must recognize that one WORK may be ending, but another WORK is opening up. Noah went from being a carpenter to being a zookeeper to being a farmer. We must be flexible in whatever He wants us to do; we must be fearless in whatever task He calls us to undertake, and we must be faithful to God in our work for Him.
When God is bringing you through transition, you must recognize that one WAITING period may be ending, but another WAITING period is opening up. Noah waited 120 years for the flood to come, and then he had to wait over a year for it to end. I can see the ark finally settling on Ararat in Gen. 8:4, and everyone on board rushing to the door, expecting God to open the door immediately. No doubt they had been fighting off claustrophobia. “Are we there yet?!?!?” But they had to wait 3 months for the mountain tops to come in view, and then they waited 40 days before Noah sent out a raven and a dove. Then the dove came back with nothing and they waited some more. Then they had to wait 7 more days, only to wait again 7 more days, before finally, in chapter 8, verse 13, God opened the door and released them into His new world. O, there is a reason we have so many promises in the scriptures related to waiting on Him!
When God is bringing you through transition, you must recognize that one WORD is closing down in your life, but another WORD is opening up. In chapter 6, God gave Noah a word concerning the old world, but in chapter 9, God spoke again, afresh and anew, to give him a word now, concerning the new world.
When God is bringing you through transition, you must recognize that one WICKEDNESS has been shut down, and must not allow the same WICKEDNESS to arise again. God had cleansed the world of fleshly corruption (ch.6), and sadly, tragically, fleshly corruption now cropped up again (ch.9) in the new world. God is so gracious to clear us and cleanse us of past failures, let us not allow those same transgressions to pop back up again. Though this sin brought judgement, thank God, there was a covenant of mercy for Noahs new world, and thank God for the covenant of Calvary given to us.
