Woodbine FWB Church is now Cane Ridge FWB Church. The building we once met in is now the property of a Spanish FWB church. Cane Ridge FWB Church meets each Sunday in the cafeteria and gymnasium at A.Z. Kelly Elementary School. Each Sunday morning the set-up team meets an hour or so before services and sets up the chairs, mics, keyboards, etc. to enable us to meet for worship. The different Sunday School classes gather in groups in corners, behind the drapes on stage, or anywhere that is possible. Sometimes a group will have a loud outburst but usually there is just a quiet hum as the groups discuss the day’s lesson within their own group.
The same thing takes place for the evening services with one difference. After that service is over, everything has to be dismantled, stacked together, and carried out to vans, trunks, and trailers to be stored so we can meet in seven more days and do it all over again.
Is it tiring? Of course it is. Can it be exasperating? Absolutely, if you let it. Do people’s tempers get short? They could, but I’ve not heard that yet. You see, Cane Ridge folks are on a mission; they have set a course toward a goal and have no plans of looking back with regrets, backing up, or sitting down.
Sunday, April 5, 2009, Cane Ridge FWB Church will break ground on the property where we will build the first building of the new Cane Ridge FWB Church! What an exciting time that will be. Scores of us will ride by the property as the building begins to take place just to see how much progress has been made. As the the building takes shape the excitement will mount until one day we drive by and it is almost complete. Just a few more finishing touches and then we can move in. On that day, the glory of the Lord will fall and just as the Children of Israel stepped up the bank of the Jordan River to take possession of Canaan, Cane Ridge Church will take possession of the land and building God has given us with the task of conquering new territory for Him.
Are we up to the challenge? We’d better be. God does not do things halfway and He doesn’t expect His children, His warriors, to fall victim to that attitude either. So, we march on; we work; we give; we pray; we encourage; we remain faithful and the God of heaven and earth has promised never to leave us. He will finish the work He has begun.
Come see what God is doing at, and with, Cane Ridge FWB Church!
Grams
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet i will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).
Lately I’ve been reading the minor prophets, not because I’m such a theologian, but because I was curious. Beginning with Hosea, I’ve just finished Habakkuk. I can’t say I understood everything I read, but I did get enough to understand that regardless of the time period the prophet was writing about, they all seemed to have one thing in common. God was displeased with His chosen people and judgment was soon coming unless they repented. The thing is, if anyone ever got the point, they didn’t hang on to it for very long. The next generation invariably picked up where their parents and grandparents left off. Oh, there might be a momentary sorrow because of the hard times they were in, but nothing lasting, nothing genuine.
It has always intrigued me how closely paralleled the moral decay of western civilization is to that of Rome in its last days. But in reading about the Children of Israel, the parallel continued. My conclusion is that man is inherently evil and if left to his own inclinations will wreak havoc on all around him.
While problems abound because sin abounds; while people search frantically for a way; any way just so there is one, they turn a blind eye to the only solution available to them. Just like Israel did; just like Rome did; just like mankind has done since God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden, man has refused to listen to the God of heaven and earth.
The pat Christian answer is always that we have the answer, and we do. But how do we get people to look our way, to listen to what we have to say? I think I found the answer in the last verses of Habakkuk. He says, basically, that if the fields are bare, if there is nothing to eat, if there is no way to make a living, if all is lost in this life, still he will rejoice in the God of his salvation. What would make a greater impression on the lost world today than God’s people relying totally on Him, on His care, and rejoicing because of Him and His great salvation? And that’s the difference. We may go through the same hard times; we may lose our jobs, our homes, our retirement, but this is not the end. We can rejoice in the God of our salvation!
Grams