The Thursday Update

Lakeshore Friends—

What is success?  The answer seems to depend on who you ask. 

Some say that success is based on achieving as much prestige, pleasure, possessions or power as you can in your life.  But in the end, Solomon, who had all of this (and more), discovered that all of it was ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

What does God say about true success?  In this new series starting Sunday called Success And Failure, we will offer up a biblical definition of true success and the path required to achieve it in your life.  We’ll also address how to handle the inevitable times of failure we experience on the path to biblical success so that we can fail forward and recover from the times we fail in really significant ways. 

Want to find a success that satisfies you inside?  This series will help you get there.

Hope to see you on Sunday as we remember those who gave their lives for us in service to our country this weekend.

Warmly,

Vince

Lakeshore Friends—

This Sunday, we will wrap up our series on what to do when life really hurts by answering an important question: why does God allow us to hurt in the first place? 

Great minds have strived to answer this question, and many have fallen short of finding and offering a satisfactory answer.

Some say that God would end all pain if He could, but He’s simply not able to.  Of course, this view is filled with problems because it denies the truth that God is all powerful.

Others say that God allows us to experience pain because He is uninvolved in the world’s affairs.  The problem is that this denies His control of all things, His sovereignty and His right to rule all things as He really does.

Still others say that God isn’t really loving and so He simply doesn’t care about our pain.  But if that were the case, why would God send His only Son Jesus into the world to save it by dying for it?

The truth is that no one can fully answer “why”, God allows us to experience hurt and pain, even though we know that human sin is somehow behind all pain because sin always leads to death (Romans 6:23).  But despite that, we can answer a more important question: “what?”

So “what” does God want to do in and through our hurt, our pain?  That’s what I’ll talk about on Sunday.  Know this: God never wastes a hurt in your life or in the life of anyone else.  And for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, He uses it for good.

Find out how on Sunday!

Warmly,

Vince

Lakeshore Friends—

On Sunday, I will be talking about the third person of the Trinity of God, the Holy Spirit, and how He is our comforter in all kinds of pain.  He is actually  called the Comforter in John 14:16 in many translations and he is known by many other amazing names like the Counselor, Advocate, Companion, Helper, and Paraclete.  We’ll learn a lot about the work of the Holy Spirit in helping us find peace in our pain.

Whenever it comes to the Holy Spirit being taught in churches, I find that there are often two extremes.

The first extreme is a constant, almost exclusive, discussion of the Holy Spirit that seems to drown out the other two members of the Trinity, God the Father and God the Son (Jesus).  It can sound really spiritual and personal at first, but in reality this extreme is incomplete because the entire Trinity shares the same glory as any of the other two members and it is out of balance to focus on just one.  People in this camp tend to focus more on the leadings, power, and miracles of the Holy Spirit over anything else.  And sometimes there is an abundance of focus on experiences alone.

The second extreme is the opposite, where the Holy Spirit is hardly talked about and, in effect, treated as somehow less than the other two members of the Trinity.  Talking about God and Jesus are absolutely essential but leaving the Holy Spirit on the sidelines of discussions and teaching is an injustice to the complete work of God.  People in this camp tend to downplay the leadings, power, and miracles of the Holy Spirit to their own detriment.  Sometimes there is an abundant focus on reason and logic, and a lack of focus on experiences.

I think at times I need to talk more about the amazing Holy Spirit than I do, and that’s what we’ll cover on Sunday.  We’ll study John 14, and show how the Holy Spirit comforted the disciples in their pain when they learned Jesus would be leaving them, and how He offers to do the same for us in our pain.  This message will be a little deeper than others in this series, but that’s a good thing.  Especially when you realize the Holy Spirit's role in the Trinity of God.

We need to know more about the Holy Spirit.

I hope to see you here on Sunday as together we learn more about the amazing person we call the Comforter!

Warmly,

Vince