God Has Great Things Ahead--8th Anniversary Message

God Has Great Things Ahead

Joshua 1:1-11 Colossians 2:6-10 9/5/2021

Rick Gillespie- Mobley

How many of you remember entering into the first grade. Some of us were excited, some of us were scared, some of us didn’t want to leave our parents, some of us were nervous about that bus ride. Some of us were glad to be able to walk to school with our older brothers and sisters.

We hung in there. We eventually reached the eighth grade. Everybody looked up to us because we were the oldest ones in the school. When we spoke, the other kids listened. We had completed elementary and junior high school and in a week we would be graduating.

How many of you know that even though we had accomplished a lot, there was still more for us yet to learn and to experience? We were graduating, but we were also preparing to start over again at the bottom of the school as freshman in high school with a whole new experience waiting for us.

None of us was wishing we could just go back and do sixth grade all over again no matter how much fun it had been. We understood that to reach our potential, we had to keep our eyes on our future.

Today in the history of New Life At Calvary, we are at the final week of graduation from 8th grade, because next week we will Celebrate our 8th anniversary as a church. And as good as God has been to us over these past 7 years and 51 weeks, we can know that our God still has some greater things ahead.

Looking back almost 8 years ago, Calvary Presbyterian Church and Glenville New Life Community Church came together with a united vision for the cause of Jesus Christ. That vision birthed a new congregation, New Life At Calvary. For the past almost 8 years, Jesus Christ has been our reason for staying in business. Jesus has been touching, healing, and changing lives in this place week after week, month after month and year after year.

When people ask, what is really going on in New Life At Calvary, they need look no further than our desire to be united in the cause of Jesus Christ as it is revealed in the word of God. We do not attempt to change the word of God to fit our desires. Our goal is to change ourselves to fit the plan and purposes of God.

We were challenged in the word of God today in Colossians 2:6 where it says 6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

For the past nearly 8 years we have been sending our roots deeper and deeper in Christ as a church, and we have been built up in him. When our former denomination would not stand on the Word of God, we left to stand with our sisters and brothers in ECO who believed, God’s word has the same power to change lives today as it did the day it was written.

God has been faithful to us in so many ways. We thank God for all of you who have joined us on the journey here at New Life At Calvary since our beginning in 2013. We can promise you that you will experience with us many great things that God has in store for us in the future.

We didn’t wait for everyone to get on board to start the new congregation. When God calls us to move, then the thing to do is to move. We didn’t know how we were going to make the numbers work financially, but God did.

After we had voted to come together as churches and had become one, we were blessed with a gift in the will of the Nelson Family with nearly a half million dollars to use for our ministry. We had no way of knowing that was going to happen, but God did.

So what did we do, nearly 8 years ago, we decided to believe God and that the new church would be His church. We stepped out in faith on what could possibly happen. We were willing to believe, that if God could take a Joshua and encourage him to only be strong and courageous, that same God could do the same for us if we chose the same path.

Joshua, the leaders and the people banded together, and they received the promises of God and the land that God had for them. For nearly 8 years, we have discovered a God who loves this congregation and is faithful to His word.