It is great to be back home at Shades! Janice and I are thankful for the six-week sabbatical that you gave us. It was a very restful and enjoyable experience, but now I am fired up about getting back to work.
First of all, two shout outs. A huge thanks to Chad, Steve, and Jacob for their excellent preaching in the sermon series “In the Wilderness."
And thanks to the Shades family for the hundreds of personal letters and notes that were typeset and bound in a beautiful book. Wow, what a way to start a sabbatical by reading so many affirming and touching messages! I feel deeply loved by the Shades family and thank you for taking the time to express your appreciation.
This Sunday I will begin a new sermon series titled “Recalculating.”
We set our life GPS on love; hope; happiness; meaning; and purpose and head in the direction we think best, but then things change and often we are faced with “recalculating.” Sometimes it is life situations that create detours and force a recalculating that we have no choice over, but we do choose the path to take; options are the world’s definition of recalculating or a biblical response of recalculating. Other times we are faced with life situations that expose the fallacies in our current path, and we have to choose whether to continue down that road or to accept recalculating and head down a different path and redefine our goals in life.
This is a great Sunday to invite a friend. All of us (believers and non-believers) have to deal with “recalculating” so extend the invitation!
This week I hope you take advantage of the post cards we distributed Sunday and take a few moments to write a note of encouragement to your children’s teachers. It will be a time of refreshment for the teacher and could open the door for you to share about your relationship with Jesus. We have extra cards in the office if you missed them or need more.
I look forward to seeing you Sunday and seeing what God’s Word has to say about recalculating!