Cedar Grove Church

Exciting times are continuing at Cedar Grove these days. We just finished up a great revival preached by Bro. William with upward of 100 people in attendance. The altars were full and decisions were made.

Pastor Jeff Carroll’s took the text for his sermon “After the Revival” from John 9:17-34.

For Christians, revival is to be a quickening in our spirit, the renewing of our faith and the rekindling of our fire to serve Jesus. If there is just a little spark, I can be stoked, relit to an inferno on fire for God again. We can be brought back to life again. For the lost it is to be saved, to be born again as a child of God. That is the best day of your life.

After you are saved, not everyone you know will be glad you are saved. People will be condemned and convicted in their sin; they will be uncomfortable, and Satan will use them to try and pull you back into to the life you led before you were saved.

The Pharisees were uncomfortable with the man in the book of John who was once blind but healed by Jesus. You see, they were used to people coming to the synagogue for advice and prayer, but they could not heal, so they were trying to stir up confusion and discord among the people.

Jesus is the total package, the Redeemer, the only name above all names by which you must be saved. When you are trying to explain to others what Jesus has done for you, it is hard to get them to understand. When you get everything right with Jesus, you don’t have to fear what people say or do to you; Jesus has already worked all that out.

The Pharisees got up in the synagogue in Jesus’ day and preached thus and thus. They were blind, even though they could see.

I know what Jesus did for me. After revival stirs up the hearts of Christians, harvest people get saved and start living for the Lord.

The devil is not going to give up, so what are we going to do? Give up or stand up for Jesus?

In closing: If Jesus really saves you, you will never give up; instead, you will stand up for Jesus not only when everything is going well, but when you are going through a battle and in the ups and the downs. Amen.

Prayer concerns: our pastors, our church family, our nation, the lost, those in hospitals and nursing homes, spoken and unspoken requests.

Submitted by Naomi Gillespie

Bethany Baptist Church

Service opened with the song “I Must Needs Go Home” and a devotion titled “Preparing for the Day of the Lord” from 2 Peter 3:10-14.

We are procrastinators, putting off everything until the last minute. When we know we are having visitors in our home or inspectors or VIPs at work, we really work to get everything in tip-top shape. Once the visitors, inspectors, or VIPs are gone, we tend to not be as busy keeping things as neat as we did before they came. If we really believed that Jesus would come any day, we would be much busier than we are now doing the work the Lord commanded his churches to do, which is to spread the gospel of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

“The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” The heavens and earth as we know them now will be changed. God is going to recycle them, a term we hear often in this day and age. “The heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” Everything will be burned up.

We who are saved are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth. We are told in God’s Word that Jesus will return one day for the saved; we know not when, so we must be very busy every day doing the work of the Lord and spreading his word to a lost and dying world.

Following a prayer, we sang “Fill My Cup, Lord,” “At Calvary,” “There Is Power in the Blood” and “There Is a Name I Love to Hear.”

Bro. Aubry made these announcements:

•An AMD meeting will be held in Haleyville on Sept. 12.

•Men’s and Ladies’ meetings will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 13, and the business meeting will begin at 5 p.m.

Bro. Aubry welcomed our visitors to our service, and we welcome each and every one to visit us at Bethany.

The morning message was titled “A Sleeping Saint” from Jonah 1:1-17. The world may reject the story of Jonah, but it is true as is the entire Word of God, the Bible. This story is recorded for all saints of God to realize that God has a work for us to do while living in this world. God wanted Jonah to go preach the gospel to the people of Nineveh.

When God calls, we need to go instead of run from God as Jonah did, and which we do so often. Jonah did not want to go. He was a chosen child of God and did not want to see those wicked sinners saved. He, like we, did not remember that he was a sinner who had been saved by the grace of God. He was the only believer on the ship; therefore, during the storm that arose, God would not hear the prayer of anyone on the ship except Jonah. The only prayer God hears from a sinner is the sinner’s prayer, which is “Lord, please save me.”   Our world is dying around us and going to hell, but are we witnessing and burdened for the lost to the point that we want to see all the lost become saved? When storms—physical or emotional—come up in people’s lives, they want to find a person who is saved and lives for the Lord to pray for them. Our entire country as a whole has turned its back on God and Israel.

The tragedy of sleeping churches in a dying world is found in Ezekiel 3:18. The blood of the lost who die and go to hell is on us if we do not try to win them to the Lord. Everyone needs to be saved, and it is the job of the saints of God to spread the good news of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to the world. The world wants God’s saints and his churches to pray for and witness to them.

Romans 13:11-14 tells us to wake up, for our salvation is nearer than when we believed. Our salvation, which we have forever once we accept Jesus as our Savior, is nearing completion, which happens once we go to be with Jesus.

Matthew 28:18-20 tells us that we must go and preach. Our witness, once we are saved, may be for the good of Christ or for the bad. Everything we do is a testimony to how much or how little we love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We must be careful to live our daily lives as though we are saved and believe in Jesus Christ. Once saved, we can never be lost again (John 10:26-30). If saved, we are heaven bound and hell proof. We are equipped with the power of God to tell the world that we are Christians.

Why did Jonah do what he did? Why do we not live for Christ as we should? Do not be ashamed of Christ, and warn the lost world that if they do not repent and accept him as their Savior, they will die and go to an eternal hell, separated from God forever and ever. We must work while we can; night comes when we can no longer work (Ecclesiastes 9:10). If you are not saved, be saved today.

We closed the services with a prayer and hymn “Work for the Night Is Coming.”

Our prayer list includes: our church, Journey Mission in Calera, Bro. Aubry, Shirley, Grace, Jackie, Glenda, Jenny, Lisa, Chris, Bro. Hubert, Debbie R., Frankie, Jeannette, J.C., and all of Debbie’s family, Charlotte K., and most of all, we need to pray for the unsaved.

Submitted by Jane Vines