Bethany Baptist Church

Bethany Baptist Church met at 10 a.m. with a song “Tell Me the Story of Jesus,” followed with a devotion entitled, “The End of the Commandment is Love,” from I Timothy 1:5-7.

The problem when we do not have the love of God in our heart, as teachers, we do not portray to the world that we truly love God and our joy in teaching others. We are to teach newly saved people about God’s word and take the gospel message of salvation to the lost in the world.

We must not try to be popular or want more prestige for ourselves. These teachers had strayed and debated things in the Bible that they were arguing with people.

They had philosophical ideas and questions that had nothing to do with the gospel. They were trying to teach the law but did not understand it themselves, and lost the love of teaching God’s word.

Many today call themselves churches, teachers, and preachers, but they do not have the love of God for others in their heart. Our duty is to teach others the truth of God’s Word.

We were dismissed with a prayer to Sunday school after which we sang, “Thank You Lord,” “Come Ye Thankful People Come,” “Count Your Blessings,” and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You.”

Bro. Glenn made the announcements that we will have no Wednesday night services this week. Sunday we will have our regular fifth Sunday services followed by lunch and choir practice. There will be no night services.

On Dec. 13, we will be travelling to Landmark Baptist Church in Prattville to have our Christmas program with four churches and Dec. 20 at 5 p.m. we will have our Christmas program at Bethany with food and fellowship afterward.

Bro. Glenn filled in for our pastor Bro. Aubry and brought the message, “Emotions and Worship.” His text was from Matthew 6:25-29.

This was a continuation of “Running the Race” a week earlier. We need to learn how to avoid hindrances of our race. We are emotional people, whether positive or negative.

If not careful, we will let emotions rule how we run our race. Things do not always go as planned. When things go wrong, many people want to quit. Our emotion, whether secular or spiritual determines our everyday life.

Just when we think nothing can be done, we give up, as there is no point in keeping on. In the past,there have been wars, the great depression, the black plague in Europe, and so on back to the time of Noah.

Most of the world has not had Christian leaders. In Noah’s day only one family in the whole world served God. We are in the same situation as people in the past, because Satan is the ruler over the world.

The situations in the world have been and will be bad until the Lord returns. If our ancestors had given up on spreading the gospel, would we have been saved? We need to keep going because no one but God knows when Jesus Christ is coming again.

Do not give up and take the time to stop and realize that you are not alone in your struggles. Things may not be as bad as we think, but our emotions get in the way. Spiritually, we must not let our emotions get in the way of witnessing to others.

We should take every opportunity to witness or the door may be closed forever. Matthew 6:27 says, “which of you by taking thought (worrying) can add one cubit (18 in.) to your height.”

Why worry over things that you cannot help. If spiritually we are so worried about everything, we cannot serve God and it also says to the world that we do not trust God.

Tell how God takes care of the animals, birds, and plants. We are more valuable to God than all these things, so God will take care of us. We will worry, but do we continue to worry or pray and give our troubles to God.

I Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” When we have doubts or fears, turn them over to God who is bigger than all our problems. When running the spiritual race, if we are weighed down with worry, we will not be an effective witness for the Lord.

As the apostle Paul, we must lay our burdens at the feet of Jesus then pray and ask God to help us. We should do what we can and leave the rest to God.

The way we live our life affects not only us, but everyone around us. Once we realize that God will help us and is with us and in control of everything, we will be a happier and more effective servant of the Lord. He wants to help us, so let go and let God have his way.

Services closed with a prayer and hymn, “Only Trust Him.” Evening services began at 4 p.m. with choir practice, followed by our Wednesday night Baptist training course lesson.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, and we hope to see you on Sunday at 10 a.m.

Our prayer list includes our church, Bro. Aubry, Shirley, Henry, Myra, Grace, Debbie, Frankie and family, Helen, Vikii, Charlotte, Evelyn K, Lisa R, Jeanette, J.C., missions and missionaries, Journey Baptist in Calera and the pastor and his family. Many more include all the unsaved.