The Thursday Update

OCTOBER 31, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Each year, the month of October is designated as Pastor Appreciation Month.  While it’s not a popular or well known month, it is a chance for people in the church to express their love for their pastors.  With October coming to a close, on behalf of all five of us Pastors, I want to say thank you for your cards, gifts and kind words for us this past month.  It’s been a blessing to receive such encouragement from you.  The truth is that you do this year round so consistently and practically.  Every Sunday, I leave church encouraged by the things you do for God and for others.  I’m also encouraged by the way you long to grow in your faith by attending and growing with a hungry heart for God and the Bible.  To my way of thinking, that’s your greatest gift of appreciation to me.

For all of this, I say thank you, Lakeshore!

My hope is that you feel encouraged by being at church each week.  That’s one of the goals of the church (Hebrews 10:23-25, 1 Thessalonians 5:11) and one of our many objectives each Sunday, even when the topics are also challenging on any given Sunday.

Isn’t encouragement so good to experience in our own lives and to extend to others as well?  This is why I’m excited about what we’ll learn together in our current series, “Defeating Discouragement.”  By looking at the Psalms, we’ll find the encouragement we need for this hard and sometimes discouraging life.  And you seem to be excited as well based on our attendance last Sunday and the things being said.

Let’s keep encouraging each other!  And let’s invite more people to join us so they can find the encouragement that God offers through His church.

Warmly,
Vince

OCTOBER 24, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Many years ago, I heard a quote from a great Christian Pastor of yester-year and it so moved me that I remembered it all these years later.  The man was A.W. Tozer and he said this: Preach to the brokenhearted and you’ll never lack for an audience. How true that is, especially today!

Everyone knows what it feels like to be discouraged.  People walk around with a heavy load of discouragement on their shoulders and wonder what to do about it.  So what do you do when you’re discouraged?  When you’re feeling discouraged by others?  Or discouraged by your own failings?  Or even disappointed with God? 

For the next four weeks, I want to “preach to the brokenhearted” with encouraging words in a new four week series, “Defeating Discouragement.”  In this series, we will survey select Psalms in the Old Testament to find answers to provide deep encouragement in our times of personal discouragement. 

Need some encouragement?  Know anyone who does?  Be sure to be here with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors to find practical principles to overcome discouragement from the Psalmists who will show us how it worked for them in the Psalms.

Warmly,
Vince

OCTOBER 17, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

What do you think about when I mention an event in the Bible called the Rapture of the church?  Based on my many years of experience, many people either don’t know about it or know so little about it that they lack any sense of appreciation for what it is.  And that includes so many Christians.

I think many people know more about Taylor Swift’s current concert schedule than God’s end-time prophetic schedule, which begins with the Rapture of the church.

How could it be that this incredible event—this absolutely world transforming event—is treated with such indifference?  I think there are many reasons:

1. Many churches don’t believe in it.  They have some vague concept that Jesus may come back and leave it at that.  The Rapture is too detailed and controversial to them.

2. Many churches are more focused on social justice issues and trying to change the planet.  In their efforts to focus on these temporal issues, they fail to realize that the only change that will make a difference is when individual lives are changed by Jesus.

3. Many Christians don’t know much about it.  In fact, they know so little about God’s plan for the future and that is sad because one-fourth of the Bible is spent on detailing the future.

4. Many people are living for this life and don’t concern themselves with the afterlife.  What makes this so sad is that compared to this life, the afterlife is infinitely longer.

Despite these facts, we’re out to change this by teaching you all about the Rapture of the church on Sunday.  It’s so important that it's called the "blessed hope" in Titus 2:14.  It is the event that is so consequential that it will rescue every true Christian from the seven-year tribulation period that ends the world as we know it, and will leave behind everyone who is not a Christian to try and endure this time of great trouble.  Those left behind after the Rapture of the church will endure a time of trouble that is so severe that an entire book of the Bible (Revelation) is dedicated to explaining it in painstaking detail.

How could this incredible event be seen with such indifference?

I hope you’ll be here on Sunday.  I hope you’ll invite as many people as are open to it to join you.  I’ll break it down in an easy-to-understand way and answer all of the big questions that you have about it.

Warmly,
Vince