Can You Identify the Following Firsts
(Click here for answers)
1. The first person to call Jesus “Lord”?
2. The town of Jesus’ first miracle?
3. Where the disciples were first called Christians?
4. The first Christian martyr?
5. The first Christian missionaries?
6. The first Gentile convert?
7. Location of the first Christian church?
8. The first commandment in importance?
9. Disciple first recognizing Jesus as the Christ?
10. First commandment with a promise?
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Officers for 2008
Elected at the Dec. 9 congregational meeting for elder Tony Chambers; for deacons, Tom Ferraro and Rudy Seiffer; Congregational officers: Chairman Harold Donald, Secretary Carol Chambers, Treasurer Steve Richardson.
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New Pastor at Faith
At a Dec. 15 Florida Presbytery meeting held at Faith Church, Bobby Adams was approved as Pastor and at a Dec. 16 congregational meeting, Bobby was voted in as Pastor by the Faith family.
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Faith Kitchen Korner
It is Christmas Eve and I still can not believe another year is almost gone. I have recently asked to take over our church kitchen, and I am looking forward to a great year ahead. I feel the kitchen is the heart of the home and Faith Presbyterian is our church home.
I wanted everyone to know what I am doing and hope to accomplish in the upcoming year. After some “winter cleaning and organizing, I would like to get a “kitchen team” together. People who would like to help with planning, cooking, or any aspect of helping with the church functions from the kitchen side.
Everyone uses the kitchen at one time or another so I feel that keeping it clean and organized is important to all of us.
In the next newsletter I hope to have more information on what I need and hope to achieve in 2008.
I feel that I am blessed to have such a wonderful church family to work with and I wish all of you a safe and Happy New Year.
Submitted by Karen Thornton
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Meet Dena Willfong
Recently Dena Willfong joined the Faith Presbyterian fellowship. She has lived in the Melbourne and Merritt Island area since 1977, moving to FL from Alaska. She is currently a neighbor of Burt and Audrey Pearson. Dena’s husband of 53 years passed away June 13, 2007.
Dena has one child, Jerri Diane who is married to David Scott. They have five children and currently live in Tampa. Dena’s 5 grandchildren are spread around. She has a married granddaughter, Christina, and two great-grandchildren in Boise ID. Her grandson Matthew is a missionary to Chile. Another granddaughter, Rachel, is recently married and settled in Tampa. A grandson, Steven, is attending Brigham Young University and her youngest grandchild is 14 and still lives at home.
Dena was a finance and budget officer civil servant for the Air Force Titan Program. She worked at Patrick AFB and later transferred to Cape Canaveral when promoted.
Dena has traveled far and wide during her life, and has just recently started back onto her faith journey.
Welcome to Dena!
Submitted by Marilou Richardson
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Christmas Reunion
A True Story - by Pastor Rob Reid.
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church In suburban Brooklyn arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw
their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.
They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving
rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days . On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.
The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An
older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus.. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.
Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet.. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?"
The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.
The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria . When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and she never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do.. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.
One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving. The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike. He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison.. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.
He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.
Who says God does not work in mysterious ways?
Submitted by Burt Pearson
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Greetings From Holly Findley
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Greetings from Davao, Philippines! The first few months here at Mercy Maternity have been amazing! My studies are going well, and I am learning tons! Let me catch you up on what I've been up to since I arrived.
When the girls in my class and I arrived here in September, we were immediately immersed into work at the clinic. Every Tuesday my team does prenatal exams and 2-3 days a week I have shifts in the birth room. The rest of my days are spent on assignments and classes. It's really busy and sometimes pretty intense but I'm loving it!
I think the best part is how we are able to quickly apply what we are learning in school to our work at the clinic. It makes what I learn so much easier to retain! So far we have done four large school assignments, most of them taking 3-4 weeks to complete. At the end of the assignment we have a test and as soon as the test is over we are given the next assignment. I'm very glad that Christmas is here now and we have a bit of a break! My brain certainly needs it!
So far work at the clinic has been amazing and on Sunday, Dec. 16, I even caught my first baby! It was incredible having new life being born right into my hands. Just a few years ago, I never thought that I would ever have anything to do with pregnancy or birth and now feel so blessed that God opened the doors for me to do this. He certainly knew long before I ever did that this was His will for my life. All I can do is praise God for guiding me down this road that I would never have chosen for myself. I just want to sing and dance and laugh for joy! A verse that has come to mind a lot lately is Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." He has given me the desires of my heart before I even knew they were there! What an amazing God we serve!
Thank you all for the prayers and monetary support since I've been here! I feel so blessed knowing that you are all praying for me and making all of this possible. It is certainly a motivation to keep going just knowing that you are all back at home lifting me to the Father every day. I pray that you all have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year! Thanks!
In Christ, Holly
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Be A Pig
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
God’s Word tells us, in Deuteronomy 6:5-7, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
If we believe the Old and New Testaments to be the truth of God, then we can also agree, based on the passage above, that believers should not be worshipping God only once a week at a local church building. Christians should not be reading the Bible only during a portion of a weekly sermon. Parents should not be expecting their little ones to grow in knowledge and love of God’s Word through only an hour of Sunday school each week. So what should we do? Let’s look a little deeper into the meaning and application of this passage.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
What does it mean to love God with all our heart, soul, and might? Have you ever put all you could into accomplishing a task? I know there are some swimmers in our congregation. I am also a swimmer. Okay, I used to be a swimmer in high school, but once a swimmer, always a swimmer—no wait; I think that’s the Marine Corps slogan. Anyway, the point is, I know exactly what it means to put every ounce of your being into that last 25 meters of a race. It could be the difference in first or second place. The swimmers out there know exactly what I’m talking about. The same could be applied to running, biking, and thousands of other things, not even sports related. This is just a sinful, human application of what Christ calls the “great and first commandment.” (Matt. 22-37-38) The emphasis in the language of Deuteronomy 6:5 does not allow for just saying we love God, much like the Pharisees who met all the outward requirements of the law, but were not sincere. In Mark 12:33 Jesus commends the scribe who acknowledged that “to love him (God) with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
To help motivate people, a friend of mine uses the analogy, “Be a Pig,” to describe the total giving of oneself to a cause: One early morning on the farm, the hen and pig were in the yard together. Like all the other mornings, the hen stood up in its usual arrogant manner and announced how important she was to the farmer. “I provide eggs for the farmer’s breakfast every morning!” The pig was fed up with the hen’s arrogance and finally decided to say something about it. “Well, you give a part of yourself for the farmer’s breakfast, but when he wants bacon with those eggs, think about what I have to give up…”
Are you the hen or the pig?
Every facet of our lives as Christians should be affected by God’s Word and our love for Him. When we love someone, we do all we can to please that person. We find out everything we can about that person and spend as much time as possible with them. We do what that person asks of us and we would defend them no matter what the outcome. This is not because we think we will earn something or be rewarded in some manner. It is because we love that person unconditionally and are completely dedicated to him (her). So it should be with Christ, our Savior.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Deuteronomy 6:5, says of God: “We must highly esteem him, be well pleased that there is such a Being, well pleased in all his attributes, and relations to us: our desire must be towards him, our delight in him, our dependence upon him, and to him we must be entirely devoted. It must be a constant pleasure to us to think of him, hear from him, speak to him, and serve him.”
We cannot love God with all our heart, soul, and might because, as during the time of Noah, apart from Christ, every intention of the thoughts of our hearts is evil continually. Psalm 14:2-3 tells us, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”
What then is the solution? I think the answer is obvious, but one which we must hear as a constant reminder: Christ alone! John 1:16-17 states: “And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Likewise, in Romans 3:24-26, Paul reminds us that we are justified by God’s grace “as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” After we are justified, we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit and cleansed by the Word, that we might be presented to God, through Christ, holy and without blemish.
To summarize our sin and inability to love God with all our being, and our need for the cleansing of Jesus Christ, I turn to the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism:
Q: What is thy only comfort in life and in death?
A: That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.
In his commentary on this question, Rev. Norman L. Jones states:
Notice that the Gospel (good news) of salvation is concerned with three great matters: misery, redemption, and gratitude. Our misery is the misery of sin (not physical pain): We are guilty of sin, and have corrupt, sinful natures, and are under the awful curse of God.
But God has not left us to perish in the misery of sin. Rather, secondly, He has graciously provided redemption (salvation) for us, and this is our comfort. Comfort is to have strength, hope and thankfulness in the midst of trouble. And what is this redemption that gives us so much comfort?
Salvation is being taken by God to Himself, so that we no longer belong to the devil. Each of the three Persons of the Godhead saves us. The Father planned our salvation in every detail; the Son purchased our salvation by giving His life for us; the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of Christ’s work to us, gives us personal assurance of salvation, and makes us willing and ready to live in obedience and love to God. (Study Helps on The Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 1)
In conclusion, read God’s Word, repent for not obeying it, and pray the Holy Spirit will help you “be a pig.”
All Scripture references are from the English Standard Version (ESV)
Submitted by Chris Bergstrom
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What's Going On?
Thursdays, beg. 1-3-08, Choir, 7 P.M.
Thursdays, beg. 1-3-08 Women’s Bible Study, 10 A.M., at the church.
Tuesdays, beg. 1-8-08 Titusville Bible Study, 7 P.M.
Wednesdays, beg. 1-9-08 1 John Bible Study, 10 A.M., at the church
Christian Ed. Mtg., 1-7-08, 7 P.M.
Installation Service, 1-13-08, 6 P.M.
Diaconate Mtg., 1-14-08, 7 P.M.
Session Mtg., 1-16-08, 6:30 P.M.
Ladies Fellowship Bkfst., 1-18-08,
9 A.M. Victoria’s Restaurant
Thomases, Benecorts, 1-20-08, 6 P.M.
Men’s Prayer Breakfast, 2-2-08, 8 A.M.
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Firsts Answers
1. Elizabeth, Luke 1:43
2. Cana, John 2:1-11
3. Antioch, Acts 11:26
4. Stephen, Acts 7:54-60
5. Paul and Barnabas, Galatians 2:9
6. Cornelius, Acts 10
7. Jerusalem, Acts2:5, 41-47
8. To love God, Mark 12:29-30
9. Peter, Matthew 16:16
10. Honor your father and mother, Ephesians 6:2
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