May 29, 2026, 4:00 PM
Greetings in Christ! I pray you had a nice Memorial Day, and you are enjoying a good week so far!
We had a great day this past Sunday, May 24th, at First Christian Church. We witnessed the baptism of Jamie Wright-Allen into Christ. Jamie and her husband (Mike) have attended for nearly two years. What a great victory that made for a very special day!
We're currently in a series of sermons from the Old Testament wisdom book of Proverbs.
Last Sunday (05.24.26), I preached a message about what Proverbs has to say about "work."
What we do through our work matters to God. After all, over the course of a lifetime, people spend a lot of their time "on the job." Work is probably the biggest time investment of our lives -- second only to sleep.
Several years ago, I made the choice of having ministry be my "vocation." I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to think that I needed to have a lot of victories in ministry and do great things for the Lord in order to live a "successful" life of faith and please God. These things aren't bad.
However, I now truly believe God is way more interested in and pleased with us simply being faithful over a long period of time!
King Saul of the Old Testament is a good example of this.
Saul started very well. He had some major victories and successes, but he did not finish well due to disobedience and his own arrogance. Remember: Partial obedience is still disobedience. Saul didn't just disobey God, but he set up a victory monument in his own honor.
Listen to what God's prophet Samuel told Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22-23: "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king."
We need to look no further than Jesus for our example of faithfulness to see our work/mission to completion.
Jesus' life here on earth was relatively short (33 years), yet he finished well. Jesus says in John 17:4, "I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do."
John 19:30 records Jesus saying from the cross, "It is finished, and, bowing His head, He gave up His spirit."
My personal prayer is that I may complete the work God has given me to do while here on the earth. In fact, let us all make it our ambition to be obedient over the long haul!
Lord, help us to follow You faithfully with the Spirit of truth, teaching, leading, and guiding us!
This coming Sunday, we will continue in our sermon series on the Godly Wisdom found in the book of Proverbs.
We use a lot of words every single day. The research I've found this week says that the average person uses around 16,000 per day (that's nearly 2 hours of talking each day)!
The words we speak are POWERFUL. The Bible tells us there is the power of LIFE and DEATH in our words.
We'll be talking about how we can best use our words.
I hope and pray we'll see you at First Christian Church this coming Sunday (05.31.26) as we try to send May out in style! Until then...
God Bless,
Greg Herriford
