West Main

Every year I marvel at the way our kids at West Main are growing up! How do they keep doing this while I don’t age???   :) The little boys whose diapers I changed are now taller than me and the little girls, some of which I rocked to sleep as babies are now beautiful young ladies! In my own family it is no different. Our son is about to start 6^th grade, and our girls are entering 1^st and 4^th! It’s so funny how we feel like we stay the same, but these kiddos are just growing up faster and faster all around us!

These situations are all stark reminders of the sometimes cruel reality of time. It moves on whether we like it or not, and as it does, we watch things grow all around us! There is NOTHING we can do in our PHYSICAL lives to stop this growth from happening. We cannot keep folks from getting older, regardless of how much we may want to. As much as we want it to be different, people grow up and grow older.

There is only one realm in existence where we have ANY control over our own growth. That of course, is in our SPIRITUAL lives. When it comes to our relationships with our Savior, we will only grow if we choose to. God’s deepest desire is for us to grow in him and his knowledge, but he doesn’t “force” it. We actually CAN stop growth if we so choose. The choice is yours and mine ... will we continue to feed on “milk” or eat the solid food of a Christian who is “growing up?” (I Corinthians 3)

As much as we may sometimes want our kids to stop growing up and stay at the precious size where we can still bounce them on our knee and hold them, we can do nothing about it. But we can make sure that they grow in the Lord! And we can make sure our whole family does! The question then for all of us is this: What are we doing to “grow up?” Are we studying? Praying? Learning? I pray we all strive to find the answer to this question.

This Sunday please join us as we honor several of our kids who have “GROWN UP” and are graduating. Our prayer for them is that as they start this new chapter of life, they never stop growing in the Lord!

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. II Peter 3:18

– Pannell

THE GREATEST OF THESE

All of us are familiar with Paul’s words, “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). In a chapter where Paul mentions virtually every kind of Christian practice, “faith, hope, and love” form a kind of trinity summarizing the life of the believer. Faith, hope and love, together, is the engine that drives the believer forward till “perfection comes,” and “the imperfect disappears,” and we stand “face to face” with the One who knows us better than we know ourselves (1 Cor 13:10, 12).

While the necessity for discipleship clearly includes faith and hope, it is love above all that is necessary. Literally, “at the end of the day,” love is the driving force and purpose of life. But herein rests a dilemma: Love as a word seems to cover virtually everything so that it means nothing. The word love is thrown around loosely in our culture today to represent everything from loving chocolate, making love, to loving God. Despite the belief of some that chocolate is “divine,” how can one word possibly encompass the love of God and the love of chocolate?

What is necessary today in considering love is a more precise definition. It seems that love is used as the justification for almost anything and everything someone might think, believe, or do. For instance, some object to any biblical prohibition of same-sex marriage because of the love a same-sex couple feels for each other. How can same-sex relations be wrong if there is love between them? Or what of the atrocities of war committed in human history out of a “love of country”? The impression frequently given is that virtually everything is justified as long as love is the reason. Not everyone shares the same loves, so how can there be any judgments about the rightness or wrongness of what one chooses to love?

Is love pliable according to every individual whim, belief, feeling, and dictate someone might desire to exercise? Another way of asking about love would be to ask, “Are there any absolute prohibitions on love?” Can we say what love is or is not? The Word of God declares, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Since God is love, then surely not everything an individual wants to do can be done regardless of the holiness of God. God defines what love is and is not. Love needs a disciplined focus in discipleship grounded and guided in Scripture, for apart from Revelation we cannot know the depth and breadth of God’s love.

Starting next week, we are beginning our summer theme here at West Main. We are calling it, “The Summer of Love.” From our Sunday morning Bible class, sermons, to fellowships we will be emphasizing God’s love. We invite you to participate with us as we strive to define love according to the One who is Love: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If God is the meaning of life, and God is love, then there is no meaning in life without the love of God. Whatever else we may say or do in the Christian walk, “love” is “the greatest of these.”   

                                                                                           – Terry