February 10, 2009

Dear Friends,

Well greetings in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior! I want to first thank all of our 1st time visitors this week for spending their Sunday with us. We are glad you chose to hang out with us and worship the God of the Ages. I must say that the worship this week was unusually intense for me. There are periods of time throughout our service that God chooses to meet with us in a special way. I appreciate the songs that are chosen each week by the praise team. It is a tremendous blessing to worship and see God move among us.

I hope that you enjoyed the snow last week and you were able to appreciate the beauty of it all. I don’t know about you but the snow reminds me of days as a child when things were much simpler. I remember snow days on my grandparents farm in Rockingham County, Virginia. My grandfather would fire up his Farmall Cub, attach the blade on the front and clear the driveway. Afterward, I would enjoy playing on the huge mounds of snow that were pushed up in the grass. When I got home from work last week, Stacey and Anna had built a snowman and little Anna could not wait to show it to me. So when I went outside, this is what I saw:

This poor snowman (woman) is now gone but she does remind me of just how quick our life will be gone also. My dear friend, don't let your life slip away without fulfilling the purpose that God has for your life. Be sure to get on God's agenda and not your own. What is He asking you to do right now that may be a little scary? It may even be something that doesn't quite make all the sense in the world but if God is behind it, he will equip you with all of the means necessary to accomplish His will for your life.

Over the past few weeks, we have been working our way through I Corinthians and God has honored this commitment to work through His Word. Even many of our Sunday School classes are going deeper in depth with I Corinthians being the topic. Imagine hearing a message and having questions about that message. Well now you can go into your Sunday School class and ask questions about the study. Trey Singleton who is leading our Crossroads Ministry just about had a full class this past week and it was his first Sunday. I want to encourage you to come out and check out Trey’s class who meet in the gymnasium right as you walk in (the room closest to the coffee and donuts). There is a Sunday School class for everyone who has a desire to grow deeper with God and build lifelong relationships.

There are a few things happening this week at New Life that we want you to be aware of. First, there is the Valentine’s Dinner beginning at 6 pm on Saturday. Everyone is welcome so bring your wife, date, or just yourself and come out for a wonderful time in the Lord. This Friday the 13th, we will be traveling to Stafford Crossing Community Church to a Celebrate Recovery (www.celebraterecovery.com) meeting. We are praying how God would use us to help those recovering from hurts, habits, and hang-ups in life. This ministry is a few months out for us but we are praying that God would send us laborers to work among these fields. If you are interested in going with us, we are meeting at NLCC at 5:00 pm and will be home around 10:00 pm.

There is much more happening around New Life weekly so I want to encourage you to keep up with us on our website at www.newlifeinlouisa.com. We try to keep the site up to date and make it a reliable place for you to go for information. Well this has been a great week and I want to encourage you to come out on Wednesday night at 6:30 pm as Pastor John leads a study in the book of James. If you have kids and/or teenagers, you will want to bring them out as well for a fun time in God's Word.