October 2022 Update

It has been a while since I shared an update, and I am sorry to those who have been relying on these updates to know how to pray for me and the ministries I'm involved in.  Let me break things down ministry by ministry.

Harvest Christian Fellowship:  Thank you to everyone who is praying for the church.  We continue to ask for prayer in several areas, but especially in the following areas:  Our Pastoral Transition Assistance Team (the search committee responsible for searching for and interviewing pastoral candidates), our Future Facilities Team, Sunday School, Community Groups (that are just starting up again), our sister-church in Belarus, the other local local ministries we support and the missionaries that are working locally and around the world that we support.  You can find more information on the missions and missionaries that we support by visiting our website at https://hcfellowship.com/.  Please also continue to pray for our interim Pastor, Stephen Felker as he seeks to convey all to us that the LORD has laid on his heart during the time that he has left with us as he will no longer be our interim pastor once a full-time pastor is hired is nominated by the search committee, presented to the congregation, and approved of and hired by the congregation.

99-1 Discipleship Discord and Website Ministry:  I still have two men that are consistently meeting with me on a weekly basis.  We continue to study books of the Bible in a verse-by-verse format, but they do give some input into what books of the Bible they would like to study next.  We are currently about halfway through our study of the book of Revelation.  My main focus for these men is to see how Jesus meant for this letter to the early churches (and to the Church today) to be a message of hope.  Too often we read this letter like we are one of the members of the world that is under condemnation and wrath, but Romans 8:1 tells us that there is now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.  This message is also part of the "good news" or gospel message, and we are promised in Revelation 1:3, "3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near."  So then, this the perfect message for us during these times that we are in right now that don't look that different than the times that these early churches found themselves in, and many of the descriptions of the seven churches would adequately describe the various conditions of our local churches today (maybe we are mostly like one of them or some mixture of several of them, but the Lord's message to us has not changed throughout the ages).

On the website, I am making my way through the books of History in the Old Testament, currently in the book of Judges.  We have seen as we finished our study of Joshua and now as we are studying Judges that the LORD was faithful to keep and deliver on the covenant that He made with Israel even though it was a conditional covenant that they did not deserve to receive, because they were never truly able to keep their end of the covenant.  Now the LORD is using the enemies that the people failed to drive out to punish them for their wickedness, but one by one, those enemies are being driven out and defeated so that eventually the people are defeating most of the people groups that they were originally commanded to conquer during the times of Moses and Joshua.  God is using imperfect judges to accomplish these purposes and to call His people back to obedience to the Law, yet over and over again we see the people return to paganism and idolatry as the people do not seem to be transformed in the long-term.  They experience short-term external behavior modification, but that lasts only as long as the Judge is in authority and they fear punishment for doing wrong.  Almost as soon as that Judge dies, the people no longer remember or obey the LORD and do what is right in their own eyes and start acting like the pagan people that they have chosen to live among.  We no longer live in a theocracy like ancient Israel did, but we still face the same issues about failing to teach the covenant to future generations, making the truth of the "gospel" all about what we lived to and experienced so that younger generations can't grasp onto it, and that as we live among a godless culture we need to be in the world, but not of the world (Romans 12:2, which was Pastor Felker's sermon text this morning).  We are seeing the moral decline not only of our culture, but also of those who claim to be members of the Church.  Are we really part of the people of God if we fail to love Him and keep His commandments?  Those are the marks that Jesus says are marks of His true disciples.  That takes me to an additional item I'll include this time that I did not include as part of the regular Harvest Christian Fellowship update.

9 Marks Conference:  I had the opportunity to go to the 9 Marks conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary this past weekend.  The 9Marks at Southeastern 2022 videos are not yet available to watch on YouTube, but they should be uploaded to a playlist in the near future.  Keep an eye on this link and watch for them so you can hear from the same men that I did:  https://www.youtube.com/c/9MarksBuildingHealthyChurches/playlists.  I'll probably write something extra about this when those videos come out.  Suffice it to say though that we heard and saw things that encouraged us as brothers and sisters from many denominations (though mostly Southern Baptists) joined together to learn about what the "marks" of a healthy church are.  For information about each of the nine "marks," (as well as a video on each), you can visit https://www.9marks.org/about/the-nine-marks/.  The video playlist that's coming will feature at least the 30-minute video for each of the 9 marks as they did an overview of all 9 this year, and possibly some of the panel discussions afterwards, which I found to be even more informative on some levels as you got the perspective of many of the panelists in real-life situations on how these principles are put into practice in a local church.

Wednesday Night Men's Bible Study (ZOOM):  We'll be starting again this coming week and will be studying the book of Acts together.  Please pray for us as we study together that God will reveal to us how He plans for us to continue to take the gospel to the whole world as the book of Acts seems to have been written in way where Luke says that it is only the beginning of the work that Jesus would do through the Holy Spirit and where there seems to be a definite end to the time of the Apostles (with a capital 'A'), we continue on mission as the local church under the commission of Jesus Christ to His Church in Matthew 28 and Acts 1, and through the gifting and power of the Holy Spirit to be His ambassadors as we continue to take the gospel across the street and around the world.  It is a task unfinished much like the task of conquering the Land in the book of Joshua and Judges.

Tutoring at Reynolds Community College:  My work is picking up now as some of the later sessions have started--we now not only offer 15-week full-term classes, but shorter/intensive 12-week and 7-week sessions.  Our first 7-week sessions are drawing to an end, and the second 7-week sessions will be beginning next month as we are about halfway through our semester already (we end the beginning of December).  More students give me more students to interact with, but it's a little harder to get those one-on-one discussions with students that I want for evangelism and discipleship opportunities.  However, one of the big takeaways from the 9 Marks conference that I went to this past weekend is that we often think of evangelism as that one moment of conversion when the person says "Yes" to the gospel, but out of the over 500 Christians in the room, only one of them raised his hand to say that he repented and believed the gospel the very first time it was ever presented to him.  That's not the story for most of us, as we may hear the gospel (or at least have "nuggets" of the gospel planted) 20, 30, 40, or 50 or more times before we finally say "Yes."  I may not have as many opportunities now to be the one to reap the harvest, but please continue to pray for me that I would be faithful to sow the seed as the Lord gives me opportunity and that I would be faithful to "water" what others have planted as well even if another is the one to eventually be there for the harvest, and in all this to give thanks to the The Lord of the Harvest who is the one who changes the heart of men and makes the gospel effectual in our lives, giving the "increase" of a life that is changed into the likeness of the Son of God Himself.

Continue to pray as well for those that I work with that they would truly understand and believe the gospel.  For some of them, this is easier than for others because some of them must first be convinced they are not saved before being told how they can be saved while others have come having never heard the gospel and it is easier for them to see the depravity of man and the solution that the cross provides (though it is still foolishness to this world).  There are also many personal issues I will not mention her for each of tutors, especially for those that are still students and have classes and everything that comes with them to manage on top of work, family, and other obligations.  Please also pray for those that are in leadership over me that the Lord would bless them and give them His wisdom.

Other Online Ministry Opportunities:  I'm still engaged in other Discord communities--most of them centered around video games, and one related to the roller coaster enthusiast website that I used to own.  I may never have described how God has allowed me to use video games.  Most streamers play video games after work as a way to decompress.  Those that are "professional streamers" are much harder to speak to as they have larger communities, but I try to focus on the ones with smaller communities where I can help them with moderation and building their community (which puts me in a role of helping set the tone and the culture for their stream).  I then make every effort that I can to be present when they are streaming to talk to them and their community members which can lead to discussions that we want to have through Direct or Private Message through Discord.  Once they connect with me there, they can see my "About Me" on Discord which gives them access to this website as well as a link to my YouTube channel (which contains a lot of gospel-centered video educational videos) and access to my dedicated Discipleship Discord server where they can come to learn about the Bible, ask questions if they are curious about anything and seek to grow, even if they are still in the process of the seed becoming a stalk of grain that has not yet produced a head of grain yet.  Hopefully those I spend the most time with online see that my words and my actions work in concert with one another to show and tell the gospel, and where I fail in that area (because I still battle with sin and "fall short") that the Lord is still able to use that for His glory as it is an opportunity to confess, repent, and submit to the Lord.

Family Devotions:  I don't think I've had an opportunity to share this in a previous newsletter, but for a little over a month now, we've been reading and studying a chapter an evening from the book of Genesis.  It has been a blessing to us as we make this the last thing that we do together as a family before we go to bed.  We started with Genesis because that is the last book of the Bible that we partially studied together in the Wednesday Night Men's Bible Study (we only studied chapters 1-11), but my dad wanted my mom to be able to hear some of the things we had talked about and he wanted to be able to ask other questions and give us as much time as we needed to spend in the text with no time limit (in our Bible study we were trying to always be done by 8:30, but definitely 8:45).  The regret that we've had so far is that we never did this before.  We were encouraged to each have devotions individually (and I still do), but only recently did we take time to schedule out of day to come together around God's Word as a family.  We should be finishing the book of Genesis sometime next month and I look forward to updating you on where God takes us next.