Bartimaeus Baptist Temple

We did not have many in church last week but we have a great time fellowshipping together. Pris encouraged us to get out of comfort zone and do things for Christ that may challenge us.  We all get too comfortable some times, we need to stretch our faith.  I spoke about how sometimes we allow our circumstances to blind us to the good God is doing right in front of us.  I hope this week you will put on your glasses of faith and see how God is still in control.  You may not like the place you are in right now but God has a plan to lift you up and deliver you to high places. Just remember the more faith you have the more you see God’s handiwork, and the more you see of God’s presence the more faith you develop.

This Sunday is Mother’s day.  What a blessing I have to get to talk about the hero’s that have shaped us as adults.  If you were raised by a christen parents you are truly blessed. If not, know you have a heavenly Father that adores you. As I speak this week about mother’s I went on the Internet and found three stories that I am going to share with you this week.  I think they show how we as parents should be and how we should not be.  I am going to share with you II Timothy 1:5 as Paul is writing to Timothy and praises his grandmother and his mother. He talks about the faith that he sees  in Timothy he first saw in these two women.  We often overlook the women in many religious origination, including the Baptist, and that is so wrong. I do not know where Bartimaeus would be today without the influences of so many women both past and present.  I hope you will be with us Sunday as we honor our Mothers.

I hope you are praying for those listed on our prayer list this week and pray that God will bring someone to your mind to pray for this week.  It is easy to get so busy that we forget how important it is to care enough about someone that we will pray for them, reach out to them even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. God wants you to reach out to the people around you.  Who knows one day you may need someone to reach out to you. Trust me we all need to be cared about.  Know we love and care about you and I hope to see you on Sunday as we celebrate Mothers day.

We love you so much,

Pastor David &Pris

Good morning beloved friends and family.  I realize it may not be morning by the time you read this, but the sun is rising, a bird is singing outside of my window, and I’m thinking about the wonderful time we had together yesterday and the reason we were celebrating.  He is still risen, even on a Monday morning!

Thanks to everyone who helped to make the dinner possible and special thinks to the Whitmore’s neighbor Dian, who once again provided creative, sweet, and practical gifts for everyone.  The worship was joyful and the teaching led us to appreciate and believe what Jesus did for us.

This week I’m going to take a detour from the deliverer series I’ve been sharing with you so that I can show you something wonderful that God showed me a few weeks ago.  It involves a tough piece of Old Testament law that’s kind of hard for those of us with disabilities to swallow.

Any man from Aaron the priest’s offspring in whom is a physical defect shall not come near to present offerings made by fire to Yahweh; a physical defect is in him; he shall not come near to present his God’s food. (Leviticus 21:21 Lexham English Bible)

How is one who has a disability to deal with this law?  It’s hard not to take exception to it, and many have.  Even a devout believer may feel hurt by it.  I confess that I have.  Even though I am aware that this was a regulation specifically for the priesthood, meant to emphasize the necessity of perfection we cannot obtain, it stings.  Combine that with a lifetime of always having in the back of my mind that somehow if I could only have enough faith or find some missing piece I could be healed and you have a toxic concoction of perceived inadequacy and failure.

Snippets of scripture taken from their context are usually not properly applied.  This one is no different.  Taken outside of the regulations for the priesthood it seems harsh indeed.  Yet there’s another little bit of text from the New Testament that really spoke to me recently and took out some of the sting of the Levitical stricture.

And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. (Matthew 21:14 NASB)

It’s almost an aside.  Nothing much is made of it.  Jesus just did that sort of thing everywhere He went.  But in the context of the law and who He is, you can find the whole of the Gospel story right there.  Our sins, our defects if you will, keep us from approaching a holy God.  Anything less than perfection dies in the presence of His holiness.  At that time only the high priest could come into the Holy of Holies once a year to offer the blood of the sacrifice.  If he hadn’t done everything just so, if he was impure in any way, he would die.  He had bells on his robe and a rope tied around his ankle so that if he died while in there he could be dragged out without anyone else having to go in.

Now look at this situation again.  Yahweh in the person of Jesus has come out of the Holy of Holies and is with the common people in the temple.  Those who could not be in the presence of Yahweh whether they were of Aaron’s line or not were coming to Him, and He was healing them.  We could not go to Him, but He came to us and removed that which prevented us.  Thus he would do for all of humankind not long after this episode as he died on that cross and rose again in the event we just finished celebrating.

We are all defective, but our perfection comes through Him.  Maybe you have felt unacceptable.  I hope you’ll come and join us this Sunday and let the Healer do His work on you.  I look forward to seeing everyone as we keep celebrating life all year long!

Last Sunday it was cold and raining but we still had a good group in church.  It was nice to get the rain.  Pris had a Sunday School lesson on who the Devil is and how he attacks us.  She pointed out how easily we can get fooled.  Chris Hale was not able to attend last week and speak to us so I brought a message on how much Jesus cares for us and how he wants to deliver us out of our darkness and failures to new heights.  Christ has picked me up so many times when I was down and I know he has done the same for you.

This week Chris will be in the service and he wants speak to us about what God has done for him and he will share with us the song he wrote, “rain on me heaven”.  I hope you will be in service Sunday as we worship God and fellowship with one another.

Please continue to pray for those mentioned in our prayer request last Sunday.  If you are struggling this week , you are not alone.  My encouragement to you is, as we talked about last week, know that Christ is leading you somewhere and he is ready to deliver you out of whatever turmoil you are in.  1 John 3: 1-2 “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is.”  That is my prayer for all of us, that we Will walk in the fact that we are children of God, brothers and sister of Jesus Christ.  We will see you Sunday and invite someone to come with you!!!

We Love you so much,

Pastor David & Pris

Hello again friends and family.  I hope everyone enjoyed our little outing last Sunday.  We got ourselves out of bed early and went to visit Renaissance Church in Plano.  Thanks to Pastor Danny Mack and everyone there who welcomed us warmly and made it a delightful experience.  Pastor David got to share a little about who we are and what we do.  I think this is only the beginning as we learn to get out and share what God is doing in our church and thereby inspire others to do the same.

This Sunday, I would like to continue exploring the picture of Jesus the savior presented by deliverers in the Old Testament.  Last time we talked about Noah and saw how his obedience saved humanity because he found favor with God.  Now we’ll move on to Joseph, who will show us how God is at work even when evil seems to triumph.  Joseph’s story starts in Genesis 37 and goes through the end of the book.  You may remember that God gave him some big dreams, and when he told his family about them, they weren’t too happy with him.  He was the favorite of his father Jacob, and his brothers were so jealous of him that they sold him to be a slave in Egypt.  His troubles didn’t end there, but in the end he would become a ruler in Egypt and God used him to save life.  This is what he said to his brothers when they came begging mercy from him after Jacob died.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen 50:20.)

Come and join us as we see what else we can learn from the life of Joseph.

Hello church family and friends.  It was a joy to be back together last Sunday after yet another weather interruption.  At least this time weather actually did make an appearance!  We had a great time of fellowship together celebrating Arthur and Jana Breedlove’s wedding.  Mr. Breedlove cooked up some excellent barbeque and everyone pitched in for a great spread.  Pastor David capped off his series on the beatitudes.  If we will take Jesus’ teachings seriously and try to live them out, we will indeed be blessed.

This Sunday Linda and I have the honor of sharing with you.  Linda has an important lesson for us all that I hope we will take to heart.  I want to encourage you over the next few months by talking about the people that God used throughout the Old Testament to illustrate what Jesus came to do for us.  None of these people were perfect.  Only Jesus is that good, but God used them anyway and that is what I think He wants us to see.  By looking at their lives and how God used them, we will learn much that can guide and strengthen us in our own journeys.

We’re going to start with Noah.  You’ll find His story in Genesis, Chapters 6-9.  You might want to read the whole passage to get reacquainted with the story, but we could sum it up with verses 5-8 of Chapter 6.  We all learned about the ark in Sunday school, but there’s much more here.  Noah is the first picture of a deliverer who would save humanity.  Let’s take a look at Noah’s life and see what we can learn.

Please come and join us!  The weather reports as of this writing show the rain on the way out by then, so you won’t need your own ark to get here.  See you Sunday!