Trusting God's Promises - Our Second Church Visit

We visited Redwood Christian Fellowship in Fortuna, CA this week, pastored by Bob Hapgood, and enjoyed our time there.

The sermon text was 2 Peter 1:3-4, and pastor Bob called each person to practically trust the promises of God in daily life. God's promises are great and infinitely valuable and He is the one who makes them, therefore they are always true.

A few pointers:

He called his congregation away from trusting in worldly value-systems and instead to be shaped by the value-systems of God's Word. Whenever we are more committed to our immediate needs (in this world) more than our spiritual needs (salvation, trusting God's promises) we are out of whack and we need to have our values "put right" by God's gospel.

Like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, we all walk a narrow path and many times fall off, but we must continue down the path and we do so by trusting God's promises more then the many offers and temptations of the Worldly-Wise Men that meet us along the path.

One aspect that I really appreciated from Pastor Bob was his authenticity in sharing his struggles. He was not afraid to humble himself and lead his church in speaking out of his own experience and struggles in not trusting God daily. It's sometimes easy to view trusting God as a distant past-event of the first time one believed the Gospel, but our faith is shown by trusting God daily, be it confessing our sin and believing the Gospel and trusting God with our circumstances whether good or bad, because His promises are always sure and deal with the in's and out's of life.

Finally, his analogy of not just putting our wallet on the chair of God's promises, but putting our whole selves (our self-weight) wholly on God in life is the key. Throwing ourselves on God and leaning all our weight into Him is what He desires, not compartmentalizing our lives and only giving God particular categories of our lives.

Another wonderful thing was to take communion with God's people and be called back to the death and resurrection of our Savior. This church, at least on this Sunday, did a good job of keeping that central throughout the service, and that is always a joy to be a part of.