Category: From the Pastor’s Desk

Every big business has a mission statement.  McDonald’s is “to make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone.”  Burger Kings is ” “to offer reasonably priced quality food, served quickly, in attractive, clean surroundings.”  “Chick-fil-a’s mission statement is “To be American’s best quick-service restaurant at winning and keeping customers”. But Chick-fil-a goes even further.  They also give a purpose statement: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”  Isn’t that great? Today we are going to talk about our mission and …

It is a wonderful thing that we can pray for each other in difficult times.  We hold a weekly prayer meeting here every Wednesday night and it is so encouraging to hear people praying for each other and to share in subsequent weeks how God has answered. Sometimes, however, God doesn’t always do what we had hoped.  His answers aren’t always the ones we had in mind, or they don’t come as quickly as we had hoped.  The truth is, while God loves us more than any human ever could, and cares about our suffering, sometimes our difficulties and our …

What brings you joy?  The Cambridge Dictionary defines joy as “great happiness or pleasure”.  I think we intuitively see joy as something deeper, more significant than happiness, hence the definition says, “great happiness”. The Lexham Bible Dictionary on the Logos Bible software platform says that “joy is more a state of being than an emotion”  Think about that a moment, a state of being rather than an emotion.  It is related more to our thinking, more of a choice or decision, than just happenstance, which is what happiness tends to be. This message is the first in a new series …

This is the last message in the series “Hope for Weary Souls” and speaks on how to move forward in a sustainable way.  If you haven’t heard the first 4 messages, I encourage you to do so, you can begin here. In this message we want to talk about living from the fulness of God.  Our spiritual and emotional resources are quite limited on our own but when we depend on God, our resources our immeasurable.  While we must always acknowledge that we are human with physical limitations, when doing God’s work God’s way, we are able to thrive in …

A lot of the stress and anxiety in our lives can be eliminated! Isn’t that good news? Now I am not talking about getting rid of your kids or your spouse.  I’m not talking about quitting your job or getting a total home makeover.  I’m talking about steps that we all can make in our lives to eliminate lies and negative influences that unnecessarily stress us out and weigh us down. So much of the weight that we carry is from unrealistic expectations, negative influences, and lies that we believe.  I’ve tried to already help eliminate some of those lies. …

In 1855 Joseph Scriven wrote the Hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.  In the first verse we find these words: “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needles pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.” Today I want to talk about just that, I want to discuss prayer. So often prayer is either totally disregarded because we don’t believe it works, or it is misunderstood, as something formal or formulaic. I hope that this message will give us all a fresh understanding and appreciation for the power of prayer, especially …

Today we have a guest speaker, Paul Connor of the Pennsylvania Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Paul is just the fourth State Rep of the Association, having served in this position for 25 years, longer than anyone before him.  Paul loves the church and loves to preach, having served as a pastor in multiple PA churches before becoming State Rep for the PARBC.  Paul will be retiring in just 2 months and is sharing his farewells with as many of the Association’s churches as possible in these last months of his formal ministry, though I am sure he will continue …

Are you weary?  We began this series to help address the pain, sorrow, stress, and worry that have many people down.  Life is doubtless going to be hard at times, the question is, can you rise above?  While times of sorrow and mourning are to be expected, and stress will come no matter what we do, some seem to handle it better than others.  What is the key?  Is it ignoring our emotions?  Is it medicating them? In this message we want to talk about those feelings of pain and sorrow and gain the right perspective.  We want to talk …

What gets you down?  What wears on you, makes you feel that life is more than you can bear?  We all feel stress at times, we all experience loss, but sometimes, the severity of these and other difficult life events begin to take their toll.  Sometimes the sheer number of adverse experiences that we are dealing with become cumulatively overwhelming. In this message we want to explore and validate the wear and tear that life’s struggles can take on our emotional well-being.  We want to do a mental health check and see if we accurately understand where God is in …