July 2021 Devotionals

 Wednesday Devotional - 7/7/21

Prayers:

Let us remember to pray for those who are specifically fighting cancer right now. As many of you know, my mother-in-law fought cancer until this previous November. We know personally how hard it is to fight this dreaded disease. Remember those that you know who are fighting cancer by name this week as you pray. 

Also, remember to continue to pray for revival in our churches and in our personal lives. As I reminded the members of Mount Lebanon, it only takes one person to start a prayer flood of revival! Pray that God will bless us as we pray for this revival, and that we will be drawn


Announcements:

Suches Brushes will be meeting on Mondays at 9 AM in the Fellowship Hall. This is such a wonderful group of people to be around and a part of. Come and join them to create some great pieces of art!

On August 1st, we will be celebrating our 150+1 Homecoming Celebration. Since we missed our 150th Anniversary last year, we will be celebrating 150+1 instead! We will have special music provided by the Pressley Girls. There will be a love offering taken up for them at the end of service. We will have a meal after service as well, with meat being provided by the church. Bring your best sides and dessert to complete the meal! 

Finally, at church we are doing a study on the book of Revelation for our Sunday School at Mount Lebanon. This Sunday starts our intense study of the Millenium. We will be covering the different viewpoints of that in the upcoming weeks. Please feel free to join us! 

Devotional:

Since this is the first week of the month, we have a new set of memory verses to remember. This led me to think about those verses, and how they impact my life. Romans 1:16-17 in the King James Version reads:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Now, when I am remembering this, I know that we cannot be ashamed of the Gospel, and because we are not ashamed, we share it with others. As I was studying for this devotional, I came across an outline that I would like to share. The first point when we read this verse is that we are called to be a BOLD witness. What does that mean, though? To be bold is to be strong, courageous, and to take risks. Think of someone who you know is bold, either in a good or bad way. Nothing gets in their way to say their piece, does it? When we are bold in telling the Gospel to people, we are being courageous and strong. But we don’t have to worry about the risk if we are sharing the Gospel by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will already have been working with whoever you are sharing with, and will lead you as you share! 

We will delve more deeply into this topic over the next few weeks, so I hope that you will be emboldened to share the Gospel! 

Memory Verses:

Romans 1:16-17 (KJV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Wednesday Devotional - 7/14/21

Prayers:

During this week of July, I hope that you will take time to pray for your family especially. While we don’t know everything that is happening in your family at this time, God certainly does! Pray that God will bless your family, will show them His light, and will protect them in all that they do. Know that God is the originator of the family, and will bless it!

Also, remember those who are fighting various illnesses during this summer. We know of many that have been struggling through this time, and there are those of you who have let us know of various people having surgeries or procedures in the last few weeks. Pray that they will recover easily, that God will give them strength, and that the Great Physician will be seen through it all.

Announcements:

Suches Brushes will be meeting on Mondays at 9 AM in the Fellowship Hall. This is such a wonderful group of people to be around and a part of. Come and join them to create some great pieces of art!

On August 1st, we will be celebrating our 150+1 Homecoming Celebration. Since we missed our 150th Anniversary last year, we will be celebrating 150+1 instead! We will have special music provided by the Pressley Girls. There will be a love offering taken up for them at the end of service. We will have a meal after service as well, with meat being provided by the church. Bring your best sides and dessert to complete the meal! 

Finally, at church we are doing a study on the book of Revelation for our Sunday School at Mount Lebanon. This Sunday starts our intense study of the Millenium. We will be covering the different viewpoints of that in the upcoming weeks. Please feel free to join us! 

Devotional:

I hope that you enjoyed our devotional last week about being bold in your witness for the Gospel. This week, we stay with Romans 1:16-17, but we look at how we can be a POWERFUL witness!

Now, I know that there are some of you who think that being bold and being powerful are the same thing. This can be true. In certain ways, we cannot have a powerful witness without being bold first. To take that first step to tell others about Christ does take a bold move! But to continue to walk in this way takes power to do so. 

2 Timothy 1:7 reads “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” This is a power that comes from the Holy Spirit itself to be a bold witness for Christ in this world. Just as it says in our verse, too, the power of God is the salvation to every single one who believes. When we talk about the power of God, what we truly mean is that it is the power of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to set us free from the bonds of death in our sinful nature. That is the true power of God, and that is the true power that we have when we share our testimony with others!

Memory Verses:

Romans 1:16-17 (KJV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Wednesday Devotional - 7/21/21

Prayers:

Please remember Linda Stover’s family in your prayers. She passed away after a short battle with pancreatic cancer this previous Saturday. Her funeral was yesterday, and can be viewed online at www.facebook.com/MountLebanonSuches. If you have problems viewing it there, please let us know.

Continue to remember those within our community that are suffering from illness. We know of many who still continue to fight cancer, as well as other long-term diseases. Remember them especially, and pray that God will give them encouragement.

Announcements:

Suches Brushes will be meeting on Mondays at 9 AM in the Fellowship Hall. This is such a wonderful group of people to be around and a part of. Come and join them to create some great pieces of art!

On August 1st, we will be celebrating our 150+1 Homecoming Celebration. Since we missed our 150th Anniversary last year, we will be celebrating 150+1 instead! The service will be starting at 10:30. We will have special music provided by the Pressley Girls. There will be a love offering taken up for them at the end of service. We will have a meal after service as well, with meat being provided by the church. Bring your best sides and dessert to complete the meal!

Finally, at church we are doing a study on the book of Revelation for our Sunday School at Mount Lebanon. This Sunday we continue our intense study of the Millenium. We will be covering the different viewpoints of that in the upcoming weeks. Please feel free to join us! 

Devotional:

The next part of our study for this month tells us that when we are sharing the gospel, we must have an unprejudiced witness. Gordon Allport, the great American psychologist, defined prejudice as “a feeling, favorable or unfavorable, towards a person or thing, prior to or not based on actual experience” (Soares-Prabhu, 4). In short, according to this, all prejudice is a prejudgement, usually the result of a generalization or a set of experiences that someone draws a judgement on. Sometimes this presents itself as stereotypes of people, be they a different race or of a different social class than we are.

In the times of Paul, as he was writing this letter to the Romans, there was a great discourse between the Jews and the Gentiles as to who could be a true believer in Jesus Christ. But it is Paul who reminds us in Galatians 3:28 that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” When we encounter all humanity, they are members of the same people when they are saved through the grace of Jesus Christ. People are not longer considered outsiders, nor are they superior or inferior. They are ONE within the body of Christ himself!

Remember, too, that Jesus Christ was unprejudiced in his approach to others in his earthly ministry. Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus had no problem with approaching ‘sinners’, and furthermore he does not look down on them because of their condition. Even with the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus’ attacks were not necessarily personal in nature, but rather against their hypocritical ways and means to keep power. Even within his personal group of apostles, he had a great range of people within that circle. He had tax collectors, zealots, and even the betrayer Judas was from the southern part of the Holy Land. Additionally, Jesus shows great love towards the Samaritan people, using one as the example of one that was Holy, and another talking to a Samaritan woman. Jesus gave this example to show that no matter the background of someone, no matter where they come from, and no matter what social status they are, they mattered to God, and that He came to die for them! 

Taking Jesus as our example, then, we must always be unprejudiced in our approach to sharing the Gospel with others. And the reason for that is because Jesus Christ died for EVERYONE’s sins, not just those who are just like us. When we have the opportunity to share the Gospel with others, remember that it was Jesus who hung on the cross just as much for them as He did for you!

Memory Verses:

Romans 1:16-17 (KJV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Wednesday Devotional - 7/28/21

Prayers:

As we’ve seen this delta variant of the Covid-19 rise, please be in prayer that this will be a strain that remains weak compared to the original virus itself. Pray that God will protect us from this virus still, and that He will provide his blessings on us all.

I know that many of the teachers and students are beginning to go back, even starting this week, while others are still preparing. Pray for their safety, for their peace as they return, and for them to be a light in a dark place. Pray that God will bless the teachers as they go back into the workplace, and pray that they all have a much better year this year!

Also, pray for our church as we celebrate our Homecoming this week. Pray that it will be a good gathering of members, former members, and friends of the church. Pray that God will be glorified through it all!

Announcements:

Suches Brushes will be meeting on Mondays at 9 AM in the Fellowship Hall. This is such a wonderful group of people to be around and a part of. Come and join them to create some great pieces of art!

THIS SATURDAY, July 31, we will be having a church cleanup day. We will be focusing mostly on the church cemetery. We will get together at 8 AM. Please come help beautify what God has given to us! 

THIS SUNDAY!!, we will be celebrating our 150+1 Homecoming Celebration. Since we missed our 150th Anniversary last year, we will be celebrating 150+1 instead! The service will be starting at 10:30. We will have special music provided by the Pressley Girls. There will be a love offering taken up for them at the end of service. We will have a meal after service as well, with meat being provided by the church. Bring your best sides and dessert to complete the meal!

Please remember that this week we will not be having our regular Sunday School. We will continue our discussion on the different views of the millennium when we come back together on August 8th.

Starting on August 8th, we will start having our choir rehearsals again. We will meet at 5 PM at the church. Come and make a joyful noise!

Devotional:

This is our last week on this study on Romans 1:16-17. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have. I do have a confession: the outline of this came from a book titled “300 Sermon Outlines from the New Testament”. This resource is great for pastors, but also for the everyday Christian to use for study. William H. Smitty was the author of this (as well as the companion book “300 Sermon Outlines from the Old Testament), and many times his views help to challenge us to think outside the box. A search on Amazon or any of your favorite book sites will produce those books for sale.

Today’s lesson tells us that we are to have a SOUND witness. When I was a young child, I heard this phrase before and thought “how weird! What sort of sound does our witness make?” Of course, I was confusing the auditory with the thought of an idea conveyed by words! The soundness of an idea is always tested by people to see if there is truth to it or not, or if it is viable. Sometimes we hear that a Senator or Representative is not being of sound mind when they recommend something on the floor of the Congress, and that opposition is usually said by the opposite party! 

When we share our testimony, there will be times where people will think that you are not giving a sound statement. Those of the world will be confused, and want to know why you think that this man, who claimed to be born of a virgin, who died for the sins of mankind, and rose again, is worth the time of day. It is because of what we see at the end of verse 17: the just shall live by faith. There are some times in our lives where we must live by faith alone. It often happens when we are unable to fully explain something, or else something is happening in our lives that we have no control over. We live by faith, holding to truth and fact that will eventually turn into something greater for our lives. There is an old story that preachers use often about faith. When you sat down in a chair today, did you examine it before you did so? Did you measure the tensile strength of it, measure the height it stands, or check to make sure that it did not have some sort of damage that would cause it to not support you? Of course you didn’t! You had faith that the chair would hold you up! The chair was sound, if you like. You had a faith in something that was as simple as a chair to hold up your weight.

So how is it that we have trouble sometimes with our faith in the Lord? When we do live in faith in the Lord, we see the blessings that He gives to us. Hebrews 11:6 says “without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” The writer of Hebrews goes on to say that God has provided something better to us, and it is Jesus Christ. 

Why does it matter that we have a sound testimony? Because it is only through a sound testimony that people will listen to you, and that they will know the power of Jesus Christ in your life. If you have a sound testimony, you will be able to show it to others! 

Memory Verses:

Romans 1:16-17 (KJV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.