Bulletin / Prayer List 11-11-18

Prayer List
We need to keep Don and Dannie Baker in our prayers.
Kenlie Haskett is recovering from her broken leg and her cast should be removed in about 4 weeks.
Chris Johnson’s mother Angel Johnson has begun cancer treatment.
Eddie Rolens blood filter was removed and he is doing well.
We need to keep Monty Randallph in our prayers..
Denise King’s brother-in-law Jared Harwell is having heart problems
Gary Hickerson is home and is doing well.

James and Florene Griffin, Billie Phillips, Billie Bradford, Betty Clark, Mary Hamel and her husband, Don Hickerson, Eddie Hickerson, Dorothy Hodges, Bobbi King, Audrey McKin, Beryl Miller, Brian Scott and Billy Joe Wheeler.

Serving in the military; Cody Blomstedt, Tyler Davies, Josh Van Deren and Chris Johnson. All are in the U.S. at this time. 

Let us pray for our country and government leaders and those who are in harms way, military and civilian personnel. 
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much… 

The Men’s Business Meeting is today after evening services. All men are encouraged to attend.

Pantry Item:Canned Corn

November 18 Prayers: Morning: Robert Embry – Charles Counts
Evening: Jerry Harris – Greg Counts
Scriptures: Robert Courtney
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For more than twenty-four years, Pepperdine University professor Dr. Ron Highfields taught an undergraduate course called "Christianity and Culture." Unknown to the students, the professor also was learning from them. Learning two things, Highfields now says--howthese students see God, and why.As he dialogued with his classes and interacted with students individually, Highfields was shocked and saddened by what he learned. For all their brilliance, social skills, and natural promise, many among this generation of young adults did not consider God's existence as an "unambiguous good." Indeed, students seemed increasingly reluctant to "affirm God as the only sure basis for hope and joy in life."

But if God is not good without reservation, how can we trust him not to do us ill, should we become involved with him? He might even hinder our doing what we please, a right our culture regards as the basis of our dignity and the chief expression of our freedom. In this understanding of God and humankind, God is much like us, except that he is a super-human with unlimited power. This concept of God evokes envy and not love. People who think of God as an overpowering competitor often react toward him in one of three ways: defiance, subservience, or indifference.

Defiantpeople determinedly shake their fist at God. This picture is as old as the story of Prometheus in Greek mythology. The spirit of defiance energizes Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, and it reappears in the writings of Goethe, Wagner, Nietzsche and Henley.

Others who see God as all-powerful competitorreact in a way opposite to defiance. They surrender to a lifetime of subservience, not out of love or gratitude, but simply in hopes of acquiring good things that make them happy and avoiding bad things that take their joys away. Highfields calls such subservience "the religion of idols, hypocrites, and hirelings." Religion not based in love of God is worthless, he warns. "Unless we love God for God's sake, writing volumes of theology, preaching eloquent sermons and writing Christian music are just ways of drawing attention to ourselves."
Still others are indifferent regarding God. They do not consciously decide to be indifferent. They are simply so caught up in other pursuits that they have no place or time for God in their lives. The distracting element can range from aesthetics and the arts to professional success or personal celebrity. Agnosticism itself can be a dodge to avoid facing God and his claims on our lives.

In each of these cases, the problem is a faulty view of God. The Bible reveals a God who is unselfish rather than competitive. He becomes one of us in Jesus Christ, and we see that he is self-giving rather than domineering. Jesus teaches us to follow him by imitating the Father in these traits. Instead of threatening our freedom and dignity, God as revealed in Jesus Christ gives freedom and dignity a solid foundation and enables and empowers their greatest fulfillment. Jesus shows us a new vision of God and humanity that gives our lives depth, purpose and meaning. Viewed through the "prism of Jesus Christ," we happily discover that both God and humanity "are perfectly reconciled and affirmed."

Great Is The Lordand co-author of Four Views on Divine Providence.

(Ed. Note: While one may have some scruples with regard to Pepperdine University, he must, however, see the truth regarding the view of God as expressed in young adults, which is obvious to the casual observer. ACQ)