Are You Ready?

As Mary & I reflected over 2008 and think of all the lives that have been impacted by your hard work, these are the thoughts we adapted from Ephesians 3, The Message.

This is our life work: helping people understand and respond to the Good News. It came as a sheer gift to us, a real surprise, God handling all the details. So here we are, telling things that are way over our heads, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ.

Our task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along for 2000 years. Then Jesus came, He died, He arose, He ascended, and now He's coming back! Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!

Mary & I get down on our knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. We ask him to strengthen all our CR family by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in us as we open the door and invite him in everyday of our lives.

With our feet planted firmly on love, we'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. We will reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God in 2009.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you can ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!

The CR wave is building!
Hang on for the ride of your life!

Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all 2009!

Peace for the New Year,

Mac & Mary

# 7 Ongoing Spot in Church Bulletin

Keeping Celebrate Recovery in front of your church family is essential for growth! But you may be thinking, “We’ve been up and running for several years. Surely everyone here knows about what we're doing."

A quote I read from an unknown author stated, “If you tell the average man there are 278,805,732,168 stars in the universe, he will believe you. But if a sign says Wet Paint he has to make a personnel investigation.”

Today may be the day someone is visiting your church for the first time. Or it may be the day someone says “Hey, I wonder if that paint is wet!” Either way, you never know who’s looking, so be ready.

Here’s a copy of one of our weekly bulletin spots:

Is Celebrate Recovery for me?
Are there things in my life
that I do that hurt others?

Is there something I wish
I could live without?

We would love to see you at CR
where you will find fellowship
with other believers who are
working through their hurts, habits and hang ups.

Every Fri. night 7:00pm

Praise & Worship,
Teaching or Testimony

For more information:
www.wfrchurch.org/celebraterecovery
http://www.celebraterecovery.com/

Notice we ask a couple of questions. Be creative and try not to ask recovery questions in the regular way like,"Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol?" Instead, come up with questions that will apply to a greater spectrum of folks. Also make sure you give some kind of contact information. Web sites are particularly helpful as people can check things out before actually talking to someone.

You know, I think next week we may actually start our bulletin spot off with the heading, "Wet Paint". You never know someone may reach out to investigate!

I would love to hear from you about your creative bulletin spots. You can e-mail me at mowen@wfrchurch.org or comment on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you.

Now in the words of Paul I will leave you with this, "In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 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." Philippians 1:4-6

Mac