Guess everyone will be talking about where they were and what they felt when the East Coast, including our area, experienced a rare earthquake this past Tuesday. I’m sure the Carole King song, “I Feel the Earth Move,” has received a lot of playing time these past few days. Of course this is just another reminder of how little control we have over our lives, in spite of what we seem to think at times. Another great reason to trust God.

Today Benny Stephens with “Fishers of Men” is teaching our combined adult Bible class and will be preaching at this evening’s assembly. As our shepherds listened to our church family over several months of conversations in our Bible classes and in other sessions, one of the issues that kept coming up is that we are not reaching out to our own family and friends and neighbors in this area with the gospel. This series will help train us to do just that and begins Tuesday evening, Sept. 13th. I hope that you will plan on being here this evening, and will prayerfully consider signing up for this helpful and practical series.

Today is our last sermon in the series, “Righteousness Living: The Book of Romans.” I hope that this series has been helpful to you as you “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18.) I am looking forward to our next series of lessons on Sunday morning as we will focus on the conversion stories from the book of Acts. What an inspiration it is to read through this exciting narrative! We will once again be challenged to look deeply inside ourselves and our church family here at South Fork and ask ourselves, “Are we faithful as the church of the 21st century, just as they were as the church of the first century?

I truly hope that our study through the book of Romans has reminded us all of the greatness of our God; that He can be trusted to save us and to lead us, to challenge us to live a certain way, and to empower us to be faithful in that new life to which we have been raised out of our grave of baptism.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
(Romans 11:33-36)