Blessings to you, friends and family.  Here’s what’s new.

it was good to see Debra back again and to have the pastor’s friends John and Nancy pay us another visit.  Priscilla led into her Sunday school lesson with one of her stories and taught us how to have patience when things are hard.  The pastor challenged us to be good neighbors with the story of the good Samaritan.  We were still missing a lot of people though.  Pray for John.  We don’t really know what the issue is, but I understand he had some kind of surgery.

I’ve been thinking lately about how best to encourage everyone as we all struggle with different challenges.  Sometimes we fight well.  At other times maybe we don’t.  Sometimes we just don’t know what to do.  I wonder if part of our problem is that we have an identity crisis.  We don’t really know who we are.  I’m speaking to us as individuals.  Sometimes we let others label us.  Sometimes we label ourselves.  We adopt things about us, true or not, as the whole of our identity.  But when we become God’s children, we take on a new identity.  We become a new creation!  Our concept of who we are dramatically affects our lives.  It informs the choices we make and the things we are willing to accept.  If we could really understand the new identity given to us as God’s children, joint heirs to the inheritance provided by the creator of the universe through what Jesus did for us, I think it would change a lot of things for us.  We’re going to start from 2 Corinthians 5:15-18 and start living as the saints we are, not the sinners we used to be.

See you there!