61 Days of Faith
Since I have encouraged those who attend Southside Church to read Proverbs each day for 61 days beginning April 1, I have been using this for my Quiet Time. It is the first time in several years that I have read Proverbs day by day. I have read a one here and there by the day of the month method we are using now, but not every day. In doing so now, it has been a joy for me and once again shows me that there is so much that I can apply to my life and make it easier. Reading Proverbs encourages me to to do as the title of my blog shows, I want to grow spiritually more and more. The more I grow in Him the more I want to grow! My Quiet Time and applying it to my life does help me to grow in Christ!

One day since I began reading proverbs stands out and I want to share it. This is part of what I wrote in my spiritual journal on April 14:

"As I read this morning, the dominate thought in my mind is to be all God wants me to be, by living according to the wisdom He gives me. I see several things to avoid in this Proverb that will give me longer life. I see the reason why God gave so much wisdom to live by in all of the Bible. I just need to apply all I know and learn! I pray that my children, grand children and their children would live by the wisdom that is found here in Proverbs as well as all of Scripture!

All of this just keeps reinforcing that the Bible is the Handbook For Life!" Thanks Lord for Your Word and how it guides me."

I put this in the e-letter this week What a joy it was to minister along side you Sunday afternoon at Sunset Terrace. As I understand there were 157 who registered for the door prizes and about 30 without name tags, so that is 187 people. There was about 80 Southside people! I was so excited to see all that took place Sunday afternoon. It was certainly an all church effort! As Senior Pastor, I want you to know what a joy and how proud I am to see everyone "pitching in" to make this happen, to see everyone working side by side, and to see you mingling with all the people and staying to clean up. On behalf of staff and the Missions Leadership team THANKS for all you did to make this ministry a success. There are so many to thank! For those who couldn't attend, but prayed, THANKS! From a personal note: As I stood with a group introducing myself, one child said, "I have one Daddy whose name is Jerry too, but he is in jail." She began to tell me why he is in jail. I put my hands on her head to comfort her and she put her arms around my waist and hugged me. It brought tears to my eyes and I could say no more. I could tell you about a hurting teenage girl who poured her heart out to Kim Porter and me and other ministry opportunities, but I am sure you had ministry opportunities also. Thank you for stepping out of faith and doing what God wanted you to do. Praise God for all that took place! In His Name,Pastor Jerry

I am thrilled to see Southside people have this much interest in missions. What a great turnout of our people and the people of Sunset Terrace! We have taken 2 international mission trips in the last 2 years. They were great and I am glad I got to be a part of both. Yet I am glad to see us do local missions as a church. Because we had so many people involved and seeing everyone work together made it special. I believe that the results will be know only in Heaven. Today in staff meeting, we talked of doing it again maybe this fall and how we could follow up between then and now. If you have any ideas let me know. Ministry like this makes me proud to be Pastor at Southside!