Sent by one of our leaders. I just had to share. May it bless you as it blessed me!
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Pastor McLeod,
I want to share this amazing experience that I had with my cousin this past Sunday evening. It all began when he called me out of the blue and asked could he stop by before he goes to work. I said yes of course; it had been a long time since I heard from him. Anyway he came in the house with a little conviction on his heart because he hasn’t been calling me to talk lately. He shared with me that part of it was probably because he stopped going to church, and knew if he called me I would ask him how it’s going.
Well anyway, to make a long story short we began to talk about the church and the Lord's grace and he mentioned that he doesn’t remember much from when he was small and going to church every Sunday. So my mind was like “ok, where is he about to go with this?” and it went where I was hoping it would go. He said to me, “the only thing I remember was when our grandmother would sit down and read the Bible to me and make me learn Scripture, that’s how I learned.” So basically he was hinting around to the fact that the Americanized church thing isn’t fulfilling; modern church culture had disappointed him and left him thirsty. So is said to myself “thank you Lord, checkmate it’s time to make my move”, and I did. :)
I began to share with him that many of the churches these days have the wrong focus. Instead of using the word of God to reach people they use the cute and fancy stuff (rock climbing walls, cafe's, game rooms, etc...) and that doesn’t reach the heart to be fixed it only gratifies the flesh. I begin to share with him how we sat down in your office one day and literally cried our eyes out because it seemed that nothing we did was working. I told him that CRCC no longer has a Youth Ministry, and that the children sit in the sanctuary with their parents. He looked at me strangely as if I was speaking in Spanish. :)
I told him that the children get the same teaching that their parents get, and this process challenges both children/teens as well as their parents. I shared with him about the D6 Reformation website that we are about to launch this summer as well as the Scripture of Deuteronomy 6 to prove that it was and is our responsibility to raise our own children and not the church. I told him we have family devotions that we call catechism, which teaches the principles of our faith, and that children are being equipped to quote, understand, and defend Scripture. It seemed as if he still didn’t comprehend what I was saying.
So I called for my children to come downstairs and I grabbed my Training Hearts Teaching Minds book and I gave him the extra copy that belongs to my wife and I began to ask them the catechism questions. And as they began to roll through the questions with the answers, I began to see his posture change into disbelief of what he was witnessing. After they finished I asked them to go back upstairs. He was so proud but couldn’t believe what he just witnessed and began to cry! He said to me that if I had told him he wouldn’t have believed it, but seeing it with his own eyes had blessed him tremendously. He said he is going to get the book and begin studying for himself! It was the confirmation that he needed to get back on track.
I’m sharing this with you to let you know that God is going to grow and bless CRCC abundantly above what you can imagine, not just because we want to take care of widows and orphans, not just because we are good stewards of His blessings, but because there is faithfulness to His Word. There is a desire in this house of worship to be obedient and humble to the word of God NO MATTER THE COST!!!!
Keep preaching this relevant Word, keep leading in this awesome movement because for the ones who don’t want to grab onto it, there are hundreds, thousands, or millions of people out there who are thirsting for confirmation in the Word of God to begin a legacy of Multigenerational Faithfulness. God
Bless you sir, you and your family will continue to be in our prayers.
