I just finished another great men’s retreat weekend and for those of you who read this every day, yes we caught fish.  It was a time of encouragement, refreshment, fun and some great study and accountability.  I always leave struck by some of the great faith insights that our men have.  I left the weekend thinking about the following words from Philippians 1.  These hold true not just for the retreat but for all of our church family.  Let’s look at the words together today. 

 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

I pray that for all of our Advent family.  I know that God is at work here and His promise is that He will faithfully continue that work.  I believe that God is ready to do a great work through the people of Advent.  He wants us to faithfully seek to add to our love and watch what He does with that.  One of my biggest takeaways from the weekend was the untapped gifts that we have in our Advent family.  One of the men joked that instead of a retreat we should call it a men’s advance, because God calls us to advance in our faith not to retreat.  I agree, God wants us all to be activated and to use our gifts to build each other up in the faith.  I pray that God would activate all of us and do amazing things in and through all of our lives for His glory.

In His Grip,
Pastor Dave