What a great weekend at Shiloh

Christmas Store
It is a blessing for me to study the word of God along with you. This past weekend was amazing as God really blessed us in his mercies and grace that He displayed in the Christmas store. It is great to see the church doing what the church is called to do. Not only did we provide Christmas gifts, food, and clothing to 160+ people, but we were able to share the great hope that we have in Jesus Christ with them, and saw two accept Christ as their Saviour.

Sunday Morning
The blessings did not end with the Christmas store, but continued on in our study of the book of Ephesians. We saw that God not only broke down the barrier of sin that separated us from Him by Jesus’ death, He also made Jew and Gentile, slave and free, into one new person. For you see, in the church, there is to be no respect of social status, ethnicity, or the power in one’s last name, in the Church we are one in the fact that we are all part of God’s family by the power of the cross. Do you ever look with disdain on someone and think they could not possibly be equal with you? Please realize that the ground at the foot of the cross is level and that there most be no favouritism(as we saw in James last week).

The study in Ephesians 2 continued in telling us we were made into citizens of heaven, members of God’s family, and Holy Temples unto the Lord. Have you thought of these blessings very much? We could spend all day basking in the glory of the great implications of these verses.

Sunday Night

As we looked together at James chapter 2 verse 14 and following Sunday evening we looked at a dead faith. How many times have you wondered how someone could claim to be a Christian and yet live like the rest of the world, not attending church, continually trapped in sin with their lives showing no fruit? James, and the rest of the NT writers say that this can’t happen. Saving faith will always be accompanied by changed life and works that point to the Father. Pray my friends, that peoples eyes will be opened to the truth of scripture and that they would no longer rest in a meaningless confession of faith, or church membership, or baptism to make them acceptable to God, pray that they would search their hearts and apply these tests presented throughout James to their life.