Samaria Baptist Church

This morning, our prayer requests emphasize Tucker Jones, Bruce Moore, Ronnie Lockhart, Horace and Gayle Cleckler, and our own Paul Shearon, who will be graduating this week. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the senior graduates of 2013.

Our pastor’s message title was “I Must Tell Jesus,” with scripture taken from Psalm 51.

In this psalm, we see a description of iniquity in David’s heart. He was a man after God’s own heart, but the sins he committed created a great divide between himself and God the Father. In Samuel, we read about David being brought face to face with his sin and wrongdoing. He became infatuated with Bathsheba, who was married to a man named Uriah. The sin of David and Bathsheba created a child to be born, so David ordered Uriah to be sent to the front lines of battle, assuring his death. This happened just that way, and David thought he had his sin covered, but he would lose his child and his leadership capability.

David tarried in going forth and taking care of God’s business. When he tarried, it brought about the temptation that he could not refuse. When we tarry, and delay in doing what God wants us to do, we can fall away into sin and temptation. This is a wonderful lesson for us all to adhere to. Serving God can put a lifetime stamp on our character, but sin can stamp our character in a negative way.

Remember that nothing can happen to you that God cannot repair, remove, revise and restore. The key to having our lives work out for good is living in the will of God, our Father, and serving him as he would have us to. David became haughty and arrogant, as he was a very important leader. We must keep humility if God is to be the dominant factor in our lives.

David never regained his place of honor, but he did repent and receive God’s forgiveness. Let us all seek God’s forgiveness and guidance today as we walk through our lives.

May God bless all the graduation ceremonies taking place this week.

Join us at Samaria. Next Sunday, night we will have a baptism service. God bless you.

Bethany Baptist Church

It was encouraging to have visitors this week. We hope they will continue to feel welcome in our services.

Bro. Steve’s text for the morning service was Psalm 133:1: How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! There is nothing more pleasing than to have unity and good fellowship, and nothing more unpleasant than not having unity.

Sunday night, Bro. Steve applied Proverbs 24:30-32 to our spiritual lives as saved people. We need to observe and carefully consider our spiritual lives for areas that may be neglected. Then we should use the word of God to help us correct those things. We do that by Bible reading, prayer, witnessing, fellowship, service and praise.

Our Vacation Bible School theme is “Our Mighty God.” VBS is planned for June 10-12. We will hold pre-registration on Saturday morning June 8 from 10 a.m. until noon.

Prayer list: Betty Biggs, James Bixler, Doris and Verdie Glenn, Billie Neeley, Ron Peppers, Grace and Elwyn Robinson, Elzie Sanders, Travis Swift, and Glenda Wallace.

We express sympathy to the families of Bob Taylor and Marie Godbout.