Hello! I heard that God blessed the Father's Day service on Sunday and He also blessed the mission trip to Phoenix (stories on Sunday)! Here are just a couple announcements. I'll send out another email later this week as well.

Announcements:

Wednesday Night 7pm at Hirshorn Park - This week (and the next couple weeks) we will have all the small groups meet together at the park to get out in our neighborhood and do surveys or do "cross-walking". It will be a good time of fellowship and of putting our faith and love into action! I look forward to seeing you there, and seeing what God will do with us!

Sunday Service

• 8:30am Prayer
• 9:00am Setup
• 10:00am Breakfast, Worship, & Message - This Sunday morning we will have a time of sharing stories from the Phoenix mission trip and we'll look at several tips on how to have "salty" conversations that lead to sharing our faith and the gospel.

From The Word:

"A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions." Proverbs 18:2

As with many verses from the Bible there are a lot of ways to practically apply them to our lives. I've been thinking about this Proverb as it relates to sharing the gospel naturally and confidently.

This Proverb states how fools don't care about true understanding (ie God's thoughts- "knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:10), but just in sharing their own thoughts and opinions. We can all find ourselves sharing our own thoughts or opinions about all sorts of things.

We share our opinions on different topics from the weather to sports or entertainment, to food and fashions, and to styles and preferences. Some subjects we even get more passionate about like politics, or economics, or the "recession" or the war in Iraq.

The question obviously becomes, "Why can we share our opinions so easily, and even so confidently, yet when it comes to sharing the good news about our Lord and Savior, we are often timid or silent?"

One tip that I've seen it play out in my life again and again for having more confidence with the gospel really comes down to a mindset. If we can share our thoughts and opinions often without fear of offending others and even sharing them passionately, how much more capable are we of doing this with God's thoughts and "opinions"?

Where a person will spend eternity is the single greatest issue someone can think about, talk about, and make a choice about in this lifetime. And we have God's thoughts on this life and death matter. It's encouraging to realize that these truths about heaven and hell are not mine, or yours, or made up by any man, but they are from God Himself. Not to mention, we also have the assistance of the Holy Spirit to empower us to speak on this!

So let's keep this mindset as we look to reach this lost and opinionated world with Christ and the "knowledge of the Holy One".

Press On,

Rich

P.S. Join us this Sunday as we look at some more ways to have "salty" conversations that lead to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.