Pastor's Corner

How many of you have eager anticipation and joy toward certain tasks around the house? For instance: “Kids, its time to clean your rooms, pick up your clothes and toys and make your beds.”, or “I can’t wait to clean out our garage this Saturday!”, or possibly “Yes, we get to scrub the toilets by hand again this Tuesday!”. Maybe for some of you, these home tasks and others bring great joy, but for most of us, I would guess, we do them because we have to. Joy seems to be the opposite emotion when required to do certain home tasks, however, it is more than appropriate when the action is done in response to God’s character and love for us as beautifully stated in Psalms 100.

Shout to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Serve the Lord with joy;
come before him with singing.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
He made us, and we belong to him;
we are his people, the sheep he tends.
4 Come into his city with songs of thanksgiving
and into his courtyards with songs of praise.
Thank him and praise his name.
5 The Lord is good. His love is forever,
and his loyalty goes on and on.

As individuals within a church family we have an opportunity to serve the Lord with Joy in a wide variety of ways. On our journey with Christ, we have identified the third major area of our church function as the Serve Trail. To be fully committed members of Christ’s Body, service to others is a natural outflow of God’s love, forgiveness, and hope given to each one of us. We have many who serve the Lord with Joy in teaching, cleaning, cooking, decorating, singing, playing instruments, repairs, mowing, administration, ushering, visiting, etc. I am thankful for each of you in your joyful service to the Lord and most recently, Trevor and leading a team in cleaning up, planting, painting our facility grounds.

As a church we are planning to increase our opportunities to serve our community through Damascus Middle School and Deep Creek Elementary volunteer service. I have spoken with both Principals and they eagerly seek community members to serve as readers, mentors, and event volunteers. What a wonderful way to express God’s love to others through simple acts of service. All it takes is some time and the right heart attitude, and you will find it to be more rewarding than you might expect.