“You have cap­ti­vated my heart, my sis­ter, my bride;  you have cap­ti­vated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your neck­lace.” (SOS 4:9)

Kendra, I am so thank­ful to God for you. I praise Him for the 10 birth­days we have now cel­e­brated together, and ask that He would give us many more. Few peo­ple will ever know how much God has used you and con­tin­ues to use to make me the hus­band, father, pas­tor, and friend I am. I love you!

Recently, I started read­ing Nehemiah — one of my favorite books in Scrip­ture. Nehemiah is the his­tor­i­cal account of God using Nehemiah, who served King Artax­erxes as his cup­bearer, to rebuild the walls (and there­fore, the honor) of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been sacked and burned by Baby­lon between 605 and 597 BC. After 70 years of exile, accord­ing to the prophecy God spoke through Jere­miah (29:10), God brought the Israelites back to Jerusalem. They worked hard under Zerub­ba­bel and Ezra’s lead­er­ship to rebuild the tem­ple, but the city was still in dis­ar­ray and dis­honor in 445 BC — about 80 years after the peo­ple had returned.

When Nehemiah (who was still liv­ing in exile under the Per­sians) heard about this, he was bro­ken and cried out to God to use him to restore Jerusalem’s honor and secu­rity by rebuild­ing the city walls. God gave Nehemiah favor with King Artax­erxes, and he was sent out with peo­ple and sup­plies to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Once Nehemiah arrived and cast the vision God gave to him, he said, “You see the trou­ble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suf­fer deri­sion.’ And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spo­ken to me. And they said, ‘Let us rise up and build.’ So they strength­ened their hands for the good work.” (Neh. 2:17–18)

Good speech. Good pep rally. But what would hap­pen? We often get excited about new  ideas  only to have our excite­ment fade into apa­thy in just a short time. For Nehemiah’s plan to work, one par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple had to buy-in to the idea — that group was the lead­ers of the people.

We read in 3:1, “Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his broth­ers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They con­se­crated it and set its doors.” By con­trast, we find in 3:5, “And next to them [other lead­ers] the Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord.”

One group of lead­ers, the priests, were will­ing to do what­ever was nec­es­sary to honor God and get the job done. They worked hard right along­side com­mon Israelites to rebuild the wall. But another group of lead­ers, the Tekoite nobles, did not work. As lead­ers, they believed they were above cer­tain kinds of work — even work done for the Lord.

Whether or not you are a rec­og­nized leader, some­one looks to you as a leader. The ques­tion is, “What kind of a leader are you?” Are you one who leads through sac­ri­fi­cial ser­vice to oth­ers or one who leads only through pos­ses­sion of a title? Only the for­mer is real spir­i­tual leadership.

This Novem­ber, we are excited to offer five dif­fer­ent Ele­ments Classes in a very acces­si­ble three-week for­mat. Classes will meet from 6:30-8pm on Novem­ber 1st, 8th, and 15th. Both mem­bers and non-members are wel­come to attend, and child­care is avail­able at the bar­gain base­ment price of just $5 per night per fam­ily. Here is a list of what we will be offer­ing — I’m sure it will be hard to choose just one!

“God’s Pur­pose and Design for Mar­riage” — Con­trary to what the world has come to believe, God designed mar­riage with spe­cific pur­poses in mind. We will study the Scrip­ture to under­stand God’s pur­pose and design for mar­riage, and then address some of the main areas of dif­fi­culty most cou­ples face. These areas will include com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­flict res­o­lu­tion, money, sex, and in-laws. This class will help you to strive for a godly mar­riage rather than set­tling for a worldly substitute.

“What is the Gospel?” — What is the Gospel? Ask ten peo­ple on the street and you’re likely to get ten com­pletely dif­fer­ent answers. Ask ten peo­ple in the church – and you’ll prob­a­bly still get ten com­pletely dif­fer­ent answers. In this class, we will explore what the Gospel is and is not and leave with a clearer under­stand­ing of how to apply it to our lives and the lives of others.

“Money: God or Gift?” -  Finances are nor­mally toward the top of our long list of wor­ries, mainly because money is often a god we serve to accom­plish our own pur­poses. In “Money: God or Gift,” we will look at the Bible’s com­mands and impli­ca­tions to us to use money to accom­plish God’s pur­poses and fur­ther His king­dom. We will address many prac­ti­cal aspects of finances includ­ing emer­gency funds, pay­ing off debt, sav­ing for the future, buy­ing cars, houses, and giving.

“Mis­sional Liv­ing: Disciple-Making in the Sub­ur­ban Con­text” — We know we are called to make dis­ci­ples, and we feel guilty for not being more com­mit­ted to the task. Now that “mis­sional” has become a buzz word, we feel even worse because we aren’t even sure what that means, much less how to do it. In this class, we will get back to the basics by defin­ing the task of dis­ci­ple­ship and then clearly think­ing about how to cen­ter our lives around mak­ing dis­ci­ples in the church, the home, and the city in a sub­ur­ban con­text like Col­lege Station.

“Dat­ing to the Glory of God” — Does God care about how you go about your dat­ing rela­tion­ships? Whether you are cur­rently in a dat­ing rela­tion­ship or you’ve sworn it off com­pletely, this class will chal­lenge you to be faith­ful to God and His Word in this area of your life. We will dis­cuss a wide vari­ety of top­ics includ­ing sin­gle­ness, idol­a­try in rela­tion­ships, the role of romance, gen­der roles, and what wise dat­ing looks like at dif­fer­ent stages of a relationship.

Like I said, it’s hard to choose between all the great offer­ings! Once you make your choice, please sign-up as soon as pos­si­ble to ensure we will have the nec­es­sary resources avail­able. If the class you would like to take has a text­book other than the Bible, you may order it your­self or order it through the church.