A Note from Pastor Keith
January 2, 2000
As I am writing this, the new year is only a few days away, yet by the time you read this, January 1, 2000, will have come and gone. How did the day go? Life as usual? A little hiccup? Meltdown? On top of these questions, I just read a report on CNN that said up to 90 percent of the problems associated with Y2K will happen after January 1st! Ugh. I couldn't wait until I could stop hearing "Y2K." Will it ever end? Frankly, I think the answer is no.
Think about it for a moment with me. If it is not Y2K it will be something else. Each day brings about its own set of challenges, even crises: from the inconveniences of daily living to a loss of job or home, or an illness or death in the family.
I know what you are thinking: "Gee, Keith, thanks for starting off the new year with such encouragement." If I stopped there that would be discouraging. The good news is that for Christians it does not have to stop there. It begins and ends with our faith in the living God! Now that is encouraging! What hope! What glory!
Because of what God has done for us, we no longer have to live in fear of each trial and difficulty that we face. Because we have the Holy Spirit available to us, we may now use trials as opportunities to strengthen our faith and to deepen our love and trust in God. I read recently a quote that said, "Faith is not the shelter against difficulties, but belief in the face of all contradictions." Amen!
My prayer for all of us this new year is that we would walk by faith and experience the joy and victory of a relationship with the living God in the face of triumph or tragedy. May we be a people committed to living according to the wonderful promise God has given us in Romans 8:35-39.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
In His service,
Pastor Keith
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