A word from Jordan and a call to action
A WORD FROM JORDAN
This Sunday’s sermon will be taken from Nehemiah 6 and will entitled “The Lord is My Fortress: Defending against threats of slaughter, slander and scandal.” (if you haven’t heard last week’s sermon on Nehemiah 5 “The Struggle is Real” check it out on our website www.hfcnh.org)
Lately, we have seen Nehemiah and the Jewish rebuilding effort go through a lot in the past few weeks. They have faced attacks from without (taunting and criticism), attacks from within (greed and heartlessness), and now Nehemiah will have a target on his back as he receives the last batch of external attacks. The enemies of God are not pleased with the success of the building project and the continued restoration of God’s people in the land, so they go on an all out assault on Nehemiah and his reputation. They will seek to assassinate him, slander his name and to involve him in a scandal to discredit his testimony. In the end, these attacks are unsuccessful because Nehemiah feared the Lord more than man. These enemies of God were basically terrorists seeking to incite fear in order to get Nehemiah to quit. But Nehemiah would not be stopped. He did not give up. He kept his testimony through it all. Nehemiah was able to trust in God as His fortress to fend off the attacks from the wicked. Read Psalm 18 in preparation for Sunday.
CALL TO ACTION
I would also ask you to pray for some things going on in our church. If you haven’t noticed we have some good problems. The last several Sundays our worship facility in New Ipswich has been very full. More often than not there are barely enough seats and never enough parking spots. I want you to know that I am praying very hard about the building project in Jaffrey. Why? Because I never want the church to be in a place where there isn’t enough space for those who want to hear gospel. While that has not happened yet, we are getting closer to that reality. We don’t feel it is necessary to start holding 2 services on a Sunday morning, but we are certainly seeing the advantages of the new building in Jaffrey to be finished as soon as possible. But for that building to be finished soon, we need you to pray. Pray that God would continue to grow his church. Pray that God would build our church in the same way he built the walls in Jerusalem and restored them as a nation. It only took 52 days in order to rebuild the walls! Wow! God can do great things! Pray God would provide the funds we need and for the laborers to “rise up and build” (Neh. 2:18). I want to thank all of you who have already given your time, talents and tithes to this project. I am constantly blown away at all of you who are invested in this church. Keep up the good work! Fight the good fight! It takes a team to build a wall, it takes a team to build a church and it takes a team to build a community.
WAYS TO HELP OUT
- Work Parties: Most Saturdays to come in the near future we will be busy doing something at the church. This Saturday we will be trying to get a huge chunk done on the siding if we have enough help. Would you consider coming out?
- Parking on Sunday morning is often tight, if you can please park in the lot next door to provide space for guests that would be helpful.
- Nursery is looking to make some improvements and will need more volunteers in the future.
- Give to the building project through our donate button: https://www.hopejaffrey.org/giving/
- PRAY! PRAY! PRAY! “So I prayed to the God of heaven” (Neh. 2:4).