Sep 08 2010
Pastor’s Notes
Happy Fathers’ Day to all our Dads!
Today is a double Fathers’ Day celebration for me—not only did our children celebrate with me earlier in the year (South Africa has Fathers’ Day in May) but today is also our eldest son Garth’s 35th birthday. So it was thirty five years ago today that I first became a Dad. It was one of the best days of my life. I remember walking out of the Maternity Home in Port Elizabeth after he was born and I felt like I was walking on air. I had been in the Delivery Room and had signed as a witness to his birth and record of his vital statistics—I was a Dad!!!
I could scale a wall, I could advance against the troop. Woowee…
Thank you to Sal for stepping up to the pulpit today. She also did it for Mothers’ Day, so it seems to be her forté to celebrate parents. I’m away at the Men’s Walk to Emmaus in Katanning together with Steve, Tobias & Gerhard. When you read this, I’ll be getting ready to present a talk on Sanctifying Grace. Each time that I have presented this talk I am amazed at how God is continually at work changing us from who we are into who we can become. And each time I have to add to the talk because He has changed me just a little bit more. Steve, who is one of the Lay Directors on the Walk, will be speaking later in the morning about how we can continue to live our lives with God when the weekend is over.
Wasn’t last weekend really great. I was particularly inspired by the personal time I was able to spend with Chris Walker. And I thought that the sharing of God’s faithfulness in the service and in George & Val’s anniversary celebration was so uplifting.
I’m going to be away several times during the next month. During this next week I have a meeting with my Supervisor Group (a person appointed by the UCA as my mentor). Actually, in my case, several of us meet together every six weeks as co-mentors to share ministry thoughts and prayer. I have found these meetings to be exceedingly helpful to build up relationships with my new colleagues in the Uniting Church. The following weekend is the Synod Meeting and I shall be attending together with Steve Higgins. During the week which follows Synod I will be away on a retreat to fast and pray as I seek the Lord’s direction for us here in the Wheatbelt. There are times when the Lord begins to move His people in a particular way and I believe that we are presently in one of those times. You might well call it revival. The danger when God does begin to stir us is that we run ahead of Him and end up in the wrong place. I will be spending several days alone with the Lord so that I can be clear of His intention, both for preaching and for our outreach as a congregation of His people.
However, the whispers of the Lord are already sounding quite clear. Our combined churches prayer meeting for rain in Merredin had a number of consequences—apart from the rain, of course! First, it developed into a Statewide Prayer Meeting involving many churches, and hundreds of Christians across the State. Now it is developing into a regular fortnightly Combined Churches prayer meeting on a Friday afternoon. The first of these will take place at 2pm on Friday 10th at the SDA Church. And then, as a further direct consequence, we have been invited to host an evening meeting in Merredin on Sunday October 3rd with Marc Poree. Marc is Angus’ Buchan’s pastor as Shalom Ministries in South Africa. He is in Australia for a series of Mighty Men Regional Meetings but when word got out that we were praying for rain, Mac Forsyth & Craig Lydon who are organisers of the Mighty Men Conference Team, got in touch with me to hold a special meeting here in Merredin. This will, I believe, be another great opportunity for the churches in Merredin to get together and for us to reach out to people with the good news of God. Begin to pray about this meeting and invite your friends to come along.
Ladies—don’t forget the Fellowship Meeting on Tuesday. Chatting with Anne Sutherland about what is planned, I think that this yet another opportunity for us to reach out to others and to share what God is doing.
Love you all.
David
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