Pastor's Proem
Don’t you just love getting something “new?” The fact that no one but you has ever touched it or experienced it makes it very special. God wants us to experience new things. He said to the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, I will do a NEW thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). The promise is that God, our Father, is going to do a new thing, and He desires for us to know it. “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). Other versions say, “to give you an expected end.”
Are you lost and lonely in the wilderness? God says He will make a way for you! Has your life become dry and barren like the desert? God says He will make a river run through it for you! Concerned about your future, God says He has a plan for you! With God on your side, you can have all the newness that you soul needs. Blaise Pascal once said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” In other words, God is everything that you and I need, and He has designed it so that even the things He has created, as good as they are, cannot satisfy us. God cannot reverse it!
In John 14, Jesus says I am going away to prepare a (new) place for you, and when I am done, I will come again to get you. In Revelation, John said that he saw a NEW Heaven and a NEW Earth coming down. That promise was given over 2,000 years ago, and it is still true today. While we are to await Jesus’s return, God longs to do something NEW in each of our lives. This NEWNESS comes through knowing Jesus and worshiping Him in the Spirit and truth. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a NEW creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become NEW” (2 Corinthians 5:17). I would like to personally invite you, your family, and friends to come experience the newness that Christ so desperately wants us to have in Him every Wednesday evening and Sabbath day at the Concord SDA Church.
In His Loving Service,
Pastor Scottie Deal