Pastor Weekly - 4/2/25

Hello ICC Family!

Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

Philippians 2:1-2

A quick, simple thought for today: as we look to share Jesus with people… we are going to run into some people that already know him.  And that even know him well.  That has happened to me each of the past two days, and I can tell you that it brought me great joy!  One of them was a lady at Pinewood Square that shared her testimony, and the other was a vendor that came by the church.  Both of them radiated Jesus, and my hope is that I radiated Jesus back to them and encouraged their faith as well.

Ministers can often be so focused on doing the ministry that is planned, that we overlook the opportunities to bless that the Lord actually brings to us.  In seminary I lived with three other guys in a double-wide trailer outside of Wake Forest, NC.  I was dating Laurel at the time, and she was hanging out with all of us one evening when we got a knock on the door.  It was the pastor of a church that one of my roommates had visited, along with another person from the church that happened to be one of Laurel’s professors.  They were there to do follow-up visitation on behalf of the church.  We could have had an encouraging visit of sharing testimonies and blessing each other as we realized the Christian bond between us.  These visitors might have even prayed for us, because all of us were getting ready to head to the mission field within a year.  Instead, it was an incredibly awkward half hour of this pastor questioning our salvation and almost holding us hostage until he finished his evangelism talk.  The professor that was tagging along was so embarrassed he was practically hiding his face.  I think about that scene often to remind myself to never let my agenda get in the way of what God wants to do.

Instead, I want to have the attitude of one of the missionaries I knew in China.  This man considered every single encounter with another person as an opportunity to simply help that person take one step closer to Christ.  When that is our goal, then we can be a blessing to everyone we meet!  This approach simplifies our job to constantly be reflecting Christ in our character and speech and talking about him.  We do long to see conversions, but as we go… we don’t seek to convert people.  We seek to lift up the name of Jesus.  When we do that, we sometimes will run into people that have the same mindset - just like what happened to me the past couple of days.  I was blessed to meet people with the same joy and the same faith in Jesus Christ that I have.  And because each of us had fellowship with Christ, we quickly were able to also fellowship with and encourage each other.  This is yet another blessing of sharing Jesus!

Blessings to all of you and know that I am praying for you!

Pastor Aaron