Time to get ready for the new year
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Now let’s get ready for the new year. Starting in January, we will have Daytime Bible Study every 2nd and 4th Wednesday. We invite you to come out and study with us whether its Wednesday Daytime or Wednesday night.
I would like to take this time out to invite you and your family to come worship and study with us, especially the youth of our community. Our churches offer a variety of areas that youth can participate in such as choir, usher, praise dance, volunteering and our youth also participate in activities at other churches and go on educational trips. So, if you know of any child or family that needs a great church family, please contact me for more information. Some may ask, why do I put this in the article each week? I do because you never know whom may be reading for the first time and who is looking for a church home. As a believer, I am to spread the good news of Jesus, so I leave this open invitation to all.
Sylvester will host 5th Sunday Worship Service on December 30, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. Union Grove UMC will host its Annual Usher Day Program on Saturday, January 12, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. We invite you and your Usher Ministry to come out and celebrate the service of Ushers.
A word from Pastor Mann: When talking to others about things that are happening in the world around us, I remember the old saints saying on several occasions to “keep your lamps full.” Jesus told us to do the same thing in His parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. If we aren’t careful our lamps can become empty. The lamps of the five foolish virgins did.
How does it happen? How do our lamps become empty? From the parable we see that it happened from neglect. They neglected to take extra oil with them. They neglected to stay awake. They neglected to watch for the bridegroom’s return.
We must keep our lamps full. We can’t neglect so great a salvation. We can’t neglect our spiritual life. We can’t neglect the things of God. We can’t neglect the kingdom of God. We can’t neglect giving attention to the weightier matters and that which is eternal.
We must be on guard of being soothed to sleep by the cares of this life. We have to be aware of getting too comfortable here (in this world) that we fall asleep and stop watching and waiting.
We can be put to sleep by compromise, by leaning to our own understanding, by false reasoning, by worldly influences, by listening to the wrong voices, by taking our eyes off of the prize and by thinking that our Lord is delaying His coming.
So, be on guard. Keep your lamps full by keeping your relationship with the Lord your first and foremost priority. Stay awake by setting your affections on things above, by renewing your mind with God’s word, by watching and praying, by resisting the temptation to neglect the Lord, by communing with Holy Spirit daily and by living with the expectation that His return could be any time.
