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Attaway Baby!

Attaway

Church

!  You have to say it fast or you don’t hear it, it’s Texanese for “That’s the way,” I always heard it in baseball as “Attaway Baby!”  Everybody needs an attaway every now and then, good praise for good service.  We’ve got a couple of attaways to throw out.

 

Attaway!  To everyone who is making cookies, pitching in and praying for the success of D-Now this weekend.  We have had a great response and have had more people open their homes to a bunch of teenagers than ever before. 

Attaway

Church

!

 

Attaway Guys!  The Mitchell Class and some others have helped drive Keith Crawford to work in

Waco

for the last month while he recuperates from surgery on his leg.  Attaway guys!  That is what church is supposed to be like.

 

Attaway Wednesday Night Gang!  We’ve got more kids than you can stir with a stick.  Attaway to everyone who has helped to build this up, and Attaway to everybody who has pitched in when we needed extra workers!

 

In case you’re not aware, that is just good stuff! Attaway to be the church that looks like Jesus!

D-Now is Here!

D-Now is upon us!  One week from tomorrow will be the kickoff night and from that point on the weekend is officially in the hands of the youth.  This is always a great weekend and I know that this one will be as well.  We have over 200 youth, 10 churches, and 21 host homes already lined up, but there are still places you can pitch in and help.  We need 80 dozen cookies for Thursday night the 26th.  You read that right, 80 dozen, yup, that is 960 cookies!  If you can help with that, get hold of Cathy Norris.  With that number of kids there are also some transportation issues to help with.  If you can drive a church van or can drive your own multi-passenger vehicle (emphasis on multi!) get hold of Davey.

 

Numbers are always nice to see, but what really matters is what God does that weekend.  The most important way that we can help is to pray for the weekend.  Pray that the schedule goes smoothly, getting out of rhythm can lead to a host of problems. Pray for the kids and churches that are coming, the families that will host for the weekend, and pray for Asfshin Ziafat.  Asfshin will be the preacher for the weekend, pray that God will use him to reach kids that have never trusted Christ and grow those who have already begun to follow Jesus.  If you want to know more about Asfshin, check out his website, http://www.afshinziafat.com   Thanks in advance for making this a great weekend!

Waiting, Patiently or Not.

I do not like to wait and I think it would be fair to say that patience is not my spiritual gift!  I am getting better at it but by no means will I claim mastery.  We have waited two years for a family with whom we will build a habitat house. Two years.  In all honesty I had pretty well given up and had begun to look at other avenues of mission and ministry for our church.  It is a good reminder that God does not necessarily operate on our schedule.

Isaiah 30:18 says, "For the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for him!"  Isaiah 40:31 is most often translated, "those that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength."  In that passage some translations render "wait" as "hope", or "trust".  Both of those renderings are accurate because there has to be some hope and trust in our waiting! There is a whole lot of waiting in the Bible. Israel waited to be freed from slavery, waited to enter the promised land, waited to return from exile (on more than one occasion!), and waited for the Messiah. In the New Testament there was waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit and still the waiting of the return of Christ.  In Thessalonica there was a group who believed Christ's return was so imminent that they quit their jobs, sponged off of fellow church members, and waited.  Just for clarification, Paul told them that was not the way to wait for Christ in no uncertain terms.

So how do we wait upon the Lord?  Sometimes God waits on us even more than we wait on him.  God waits on us because we are not yet prepared for what he has for us.  On February 28th I will run the Cowtown half-marathon. When I started running this summer I was not ready to run 13.1 miles, at that point I wasn't even ready to run 1 mile!  Running hurt, I couldn't breathe, my heart pounded, and my muscles hurt. On Monday I ran for one hour, Friday I will run for one hour and forty five minutes and no, I am still not prepared, but I will be on the 28th.  Preparation takes time.  It is easier to wait upon the Lord when we recognize that it is not wasted time but time that God is using to prepare us for the good works, "which he has prepared in advance for us to do." Don't waste the prep time, ask God what he is doing and entrust the time to him.