WEEKDAY PRAYER

We will have a special prayer time every day this week, March 12-16. We will pray at the Cedarcrest office on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:00 p.m. and at the property at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday. We would love for anyone who would like to come pray with us on these days. Our community groups will also have focused prayer time together this week.

SUNDAY PRAYER AT THE PROPERTY

Join us for a prayer time on the property immediately following the 11:00 a.m. service on Sunday, March 18. A hot dog lunch will be provided or bring a picnic lunch. Wear old shoes and bring chairs/blankets for your family.

This is an incredibly exciting season for Cedarcrest Church! As God has continued to bless our church in living out the vision of “Loving God and Loving People as We Grow Together in Christ”, our leadership prayerfully believes He has opened the door for us to move ahead with the plans to build a permanent home. This facility will be built on 32 acres of land at Highway 41 and Cedarcrest Road that we already have acquired.

I firmly believe God has been preparing us for this exciting faith challenge! This March I will be asking every person who calls Cedarcrest Church home to commit with me in taking the biggest step of faith to date in the life of our church. This step of faith will allow us to finally set down roots in a facility that we can call home as we seek to be a light of the Gospel and reach more and more people with the good news of Jesus Christ!

In this special newsletter, you will find information about our “Imagine” initiative. Our goal is $2 million. Reaching this goal can only be accomplished through our continued faithfulness and fullest participation as we rely on God’s provision. My prayer is that this step of faith will become a future testimony of God’s plan to do what only He can do for His glory.

Please begin to pray about how you and your family can get involved in this exciting initiative!

The love of God is a picture of compassion and calls us to live with a heart of compassion. The heart of compassion modeled for us through Jesus Christ compels us to run to those in need, so that as we meet their physical needs we can point them to their deepest need—reconciliation that comes through the love of Jesus Christ.

At Cedarcrest want to be known not just for simply seeing and praying for needs but getting involved to meet those needs. Compassion is a fruit of growth in our faith. Let’s be like the Good Samaritan who laid aside his agenda to meet someone’s physical need while pointing to Christ who meets our ultimate need.

Finally, we’ll look at the next fruit of growth, which goes hand-in-hand with obedience and compassion. It’s the fruit of generosity.

Our world often views obedience as a draining obligation, and that’s exactly what it is without understanding and accepting Christ’s free gift of grace. But obedience as a result of abiding in God’s love offers the believer freedom (John 15:10). This doesn’t mean that God only loves good little Christian boys and girls. Salvation is free and unmerited and leads to the fruit of obedience, not the other way around.

Yes, God loves you with enormous love, but growth in your faith must be evidenced by obedience to God’s Word. Obedience shows that your faith is alive! (James 2:26)

At Cedarcrest, we want love to be at the center of all we do. And what we do must be guided by obedience to the Scriptures. When we are renewing our minds to who God is through Scripture and living our lives in active obedience to His Word, we will surely be growing in our faith.

“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:34-35

Love is THE thing that should distinguish Christians from all others. Jesus is saying that the greatest testimony and witness of the love of God to the world should be the love his followers model in the world. Though we can’t see God physically, we can provide a picture of His love.

Think about the person who first pointed you the Christ. Did they show you a picture of love or were their primary defining qualities worldly power and control? What is on display in your life as you point others to Jesus?

Next, we’ll explore how love should motivate all that we do.

Unfortunately, when believers put themselves on display instead of letting Christ’s love characterize them, they sound a lot like my son’s current drumming skills. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says it this way,

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

At Cedarcrest, our mission statement is Loving God and loving people as we grow together in Christ. We want love to drive all that we do. Because if all that we do, however good it is, is not driven by love, then it all means nothing!

Said another way, if people are only hearing our words but are not seeing our love in action, our message means nothing. Unless people believe that we care, they won’t care what we believe.

We want to continue to grow as a church, not be moved to a quieter place in a basement. We want to be defined in all that we do by the first fruit of growth—LOVE.

The second fruit of growth is Obedience. We’ll examine that next!