A Bright Future

Time flies when you are having fun! It seems like just a few weeks ago that Treva and I pulled into Dewey on January 12th in 2005 with the north wind blowing and the temperature freezing but it was four years ago. This Sunday will mark the end of four good years with you, the Dewey church family. We’re glad we came and we look forward to the future with you.

And thinking of the future, I encourage us as individuals and as the church as a group to think about the words of Jesus as He encouraged His disciples in Matthew 9:35-37. “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. "Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.’"

Then in John 4:35-38 Jesus challenges His disciples with the following words:

"Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. "Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. "For in this case the saying is true, 'One sows and another reaps.'

"I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor."

When we, like Jesus, begin to really see the people and feel the compassion He felt, then WE will see the harvest. WE will be the workers to be sent. WE will be the ones who sow and reap. The harvest is there… all around us. Let us lift up our eyes to see and feel the compassion in our hearts. People really are lost and searching for something better.

The church here has a bright future. I am convinced of this. But the world is not looking at a bright future. There is darkness, depression, delusion, and demoralization in the world. The church has the Light to dispel darkness, Joy to overcome depression, Hope to replace delusion, and a Life that offers a sense of security. The church has the responsibility to present a bright future to the world by shining the light of Jesus as a beacon of hope and security.

See you when the saints meet, Lord willing.

Love, Tony