Courage

This morning in my devotions I found myself reading a familiar passage of scripture once again. My focus became riveted to a verse that I've preached upon many times in my 29 years of full time ministry. Joshua 1:9 (NIV) states, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." I have often reminded those sitting in our church services that God has promised above all else to be with us and that we can depend on him. What is courage? David Ben-Gurion once said this "Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared." A friend recently gave me a book as a gift. In it I came across these sentences. "Courage is the inner drive to make progress regardless of the difficulty... regardless of whether your moment is now or sometime in the future, you must be ready. Courage changes things for the better... With courage, you can stay at something long enough to succeed at it - realizing that it usually takes two, three, or four times as long to succeed as you thought or hoped." We all face things in life that stress us out. And on many occasions we allow those situations to create unnecessary fears to arise within us. Someone once said this, "Fear is the darkroom where negatives develop." When moments of instability and resistance occur, you and I need to embrace the challenge and not buckle under and run.  There will always be a headwind facing those who step forward with boldness. The motivation to deal with the challenges and uncertainties of life must come from deep inside. You must believe that God has a specific design and purpose especially designed just for you. As we engage ourselves more and more with Him we become changed. Once our weaknesses are exposed God uses them for his glory. None of us can avoid crises from occurring in our lives completely. Every crisis we encounter demands our best. And we must face them with courage. The more we live the chances of us experiencing failure increases. As we fail, determine to fall forward, into God's arms of grace. All of us must develop a God-grounded level of confidence. He always goes before us and promises to carry us in our darkest moments. As we put our trust in Him there are tremendous gains on the horizon for us to experience!

FAMILY NIGHT FUN FEST! This Wednesday!

Join us for this fantastic family event this Wednesday!  All mid-week service activities are cancelled and will resume the regular schedule next Wednesday, December 7th at 7:00 PM.  Both SCA and Sunset Chapel Kids received free admission to this event with a wrist band.  Contact Kids Church Director, Shari DeBord or the school office to make sure your child gets theirs.  Adults and all other students will be charged a $5.00 admission charge.  Hope to see you all there!

Sunday Splash!

I hope everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday as much as I did! Waking up to several days of much needed rest and food was just what my body and mind needed. My personal schedule in recent weeks had been in overdrive! I am definitely feeling refreshed and better prepared to finish 2011 well!

Typical weekend service following the long Thanksgiving holiday with many of our regular attenders missing in our service. Several others stepped it up today! I am so grateful to pastor a church filled with passionate people for Christ! Every base was covered as people began to drive onto our church campus! We once again had several guest's this week! Enjoyed meeting Lionel, Jose, Maria, Jenny and Jackie! These first time guests made my day! Three of them even made decisions for Christ! That never gets old! There is nothing like watching sincere tears fall from someones eyes who has just experienced a changed life! Also want to welcome back John, JR, Sophia and Kat back to our services! You have all been missed!

The perfect ending for today's worship experience was meeting with two young adults afterwards who wanted to deepen their study of God's Word! I shared with them about a couple of helpful resources they could each obtain and encouraged them to get involved with our Wednesday Bible study!

I shared with our church today some very important developments... This Wednesday we will host a Family Fun Fest! Admission is free for kid's with a $5.00 charge for adults! This event is being sponsored by our own Sunset Christian Academy! Their event was canceled a week ago due to a rainstorm and we rescheduled so that both our SCA and Sunset Chapel families could gather together! All our regular ministries will be canceled for this Wednesday( Nov. 30 ) and we want to invite everyone to this event! SC families should contact Shari DeBord to obtain free wristbands for their children to participate in all the fun activities!!

We also announced our second upcoming "Prayer and Fellowship" gathering at our home on Sunday December 11 at 7 PM. Everyone is invited to come with their prayer requests and a Christmas dessert to share with those in attendance. Speaking of Christmas, it's my favorite time of the year! I pray that every heart becomes a Bethlehem where Christ can be born!! The whole message of Christmas is that HE is with us!! It's also the perfect season to invite your family and friends to join you for a service at Sunset Chapel! I hope to meet them soon!

Sunday Splash!

I was supposed to get this update written a whole lot sooner, but it's been just crazy! Since last Thursday I feel like I've been running at full speed non stop!! We experienced a very good weekend of ministry here at Sunset Chapel! Our volunteers worked so hard to pull off our All Church Thanksgiving Dinner! I love our world class volunteers here at SC!!! They did a superb job! Special shout out to both Frances Watkins and Russ Barbour as well as to the many behind the scene workers who assisted them in making this event very memorable!!

Our attendance has been creeping upwards again for the past four weeks! This is very encouraging. I'm sure that the Lord is pleased with seeing us move ahead and not standing still. It was amazing to see that we've had double digit guests in our services for the past two weekends! Getting the chance to mingle and get to know those who attend Sunset Chapel are always opportunities I enjoy! We were blessed to have our son Calvin home for the weekend too! So many of you came up to him and thanked him for singing with the worship team and for singing "Arms that Hold the Universe" written by the group "33 Miles".  It was the perfect song to end my message with! God really used to him to sing this song with a great anointing!

Many of you also came prepared to give "One Days Wages" to our "One Day to Feed the World" offering that was received prior to the conclusion of our service. If you forgot to bring your donation there is still time to get it in. Remember for every dollar we donate it gets multiplied by seven and helps to feed hungry people. You can still make a contribution by going to sunsetchapel.com and click on the giving icon and then follow the prompts. Be sure to mark your contribution for "Convoy of Hope". This is the organization that we are partnering with to help feed people in desperate situations throughout the world!

I wrapped up Sunday by conducting the wedding ceremony for Robert and Geoconda Gutierrez! It was an honor to participate in their ceremony! God continues to do incredible things for them and their entire family!

Our ministry team's focus has now shifted towards this Wednesday's "Candlelight/Communion Service! Set a pattern of thankfulness in your home that will last throughout the entire holiday season. I hope that you and your family will join us for this very unique and meaningful service.  We will be using real candles in the service and NOT an iphone app!! All of us have much to be thankful for in our lives. Come be encouraged as you listen to some of blessing our SC family have experienced in the past year!! Our service begins at 7 PM and all our ministries will be combined for this very special "God's family" gathering!!

One Day To Feed The World- "Convoy Of Hope"

Deadly famine ravages East Africa. This summer the worst drought in 50 years has threatened as many as 12 million people in East Africa with malnutrition and starvation. The United Nations reports that an average of 1300 Somali refugees are arriving into Kenya every day.

Convoy of Hope has strived to meet the needs of these refugees by providing food and water in some of the hardest hit areas. In one location it is estimated that there are over 500,000 refugees in need. From Convoy of Hope's warehouse in Nairobi, food and supplies are being transported to these refugee camps. More than 3.3 million meals will be distributed in the coming weeks.

This Sunday, November 20 we will be partnering with Convoy of Hope's efforts to help save lives. At Sunset Chapel we care for the poor and suffering. Would you prayerfully consider linking together with us in giving "ONE DAYS WAGES"?? We are asking everyone to set aside one day of their life for the poor to share the love and good news of Christ. We are hoping to receive our single largest offering for missions this year this weekend. Your donation will be multiplied 7 times over!! For every dollar we receive Convoy of Hope is able to leverage that into 7 dollars worth of food, water and supplies to those in need. Convoy of Hope partners with hundreds of other resourcing organizations to provide sustainable solutions to unexpected disasters that occur all around the world. Since Convoy of Hope was founded, it has distributed $200 million worth of food, water and supplies throughout the world.

If your not able to be with us for this weekend, would you consider making an online donation? You can go to our church website sunsetchapel.com and click on to our online giving icon then follow the prompts to make your donation! Let's make a global difference this weekend for God! 100% of the offering received will be forwarded to this non-profit organization!!

Sunday Splash!

I think everyone in attendance in yesterdays service would agree that God showed up in a "BIG TIME" way!!! It was so awesome to see people plug into God's presence without any hesitation or instruction from the platform!! You can sense the hunger right from the start that everyone was ready for the  Holy Spirit to move!!

I think we hit on something as we started the service with a chorus and moved right into our water baptisms!! The energy that those baptisms produced was incredible!! I know that that word seems to get overused these days by many people. But there was no doubt that the service was just flat out "INCREDIBLE!! The whole church just latched onto the new song that Douglas Flores taught us "I'm Changed because of You" I think it's going to be a new favorite for all of us!!!

I met several new guests in the service! That's always exciting!! One of our new guest's, Kathia expressed to me of how much she enjoyed the service and that we would be seeing her again next week!! This afternoon we even received a phone call from one of our new families that have just started to attend Sunset Chapel in recent weeks that they are bringing several visitors with them this Wednesday!! WOW!!

After church Shari and I had lunch with a bunch of our young adults at Panera Bread. I get really energized when I hear how God is moving in their lives and the hunger they have to have their own experiences with Him! That kind of passion and desire always gets God's attention!!  I need to plan another get together with this group to discuss the possible "Road Trip" to Gatlinburg, TN in January 2012 to attend a national young adult retreat. I told them since some have never seen actual snow that I would gladly introduce them to their first snowball!!

Our day ended with 17 adults and 3 kid's coming over to our house for a very meaningful time of prayer and fellowship! The food was great! The fellowship was greater!! The prayer time was the greatest!!! I found out that our worship teams guitar player is one mean ping pong player!! Wil Tirado has got to have one of the nastiest serves I've seen in sometime!! All in all it was a great day to serve the Lord and be surrounded by some of God's greatest people!!

I can't wait for next weekend's service!!! Don't forget to bring a friend as we celebrate the Thanksgiving Season with our own all-church dinner immediately following the service!! There will be no Sunday School this weekend ( NOV. 20 ) but it will resume the following week!! If you still want to donate a pie to this weekends dinner be sure to call Frances Watkins at the church office at 305-271-4094. We could still use another 10-12 pies!!

This Sunday is also when we will be collecting a special offering for CONVOY OF HOPE. Everyone is being challenged to consider donating ONE DAYS WAGE to assist their efforts in responding to world wide disasters! COH is endeavoring to provide 3.3 million meals to the Somalia refugee crisis in Kenya. This area has continued to see extreme drought conditions on top of all the violence in that region. Every dollar our church gives this Thanksgiving is turned into seven dollars worth of food, clean water and supplies for children in need. $375 dollars can deliver up to ONE TON of food and relief through Convoy of Hope!! We are expecting to receive our single greatest offering this Sunday for world missions!! You can donate online if you like through our online giving option at sunsetchapel.com just follow the prompts to get started!

It's not to late to include in your Thanksgiving Holiday plans to attend this years very unique Candlelight/Communion service! Be sure to join us with your family and friends on Wednesday November 23 from 7:00-8:15 PM. This service features all our ministries meeting together in the main sanctuary with our families! I hope to see you there!

Go Public for Jesus!

It's going to be an awesome morning this Sunday!! ( Nov. 13 ) If you've ever attended one of our Baptism services, then you know we love to celebrate when people take the next step to tell the world they belong to Christ. We already have individuals ready to go public with their faith. If you haven't done so, it's time for you to take the next step too! Contact the church office at 305-271-4094 to get signed up. Then come prepared for the baptism service which will kick start our 10:30 AM service!! Bring with you a change of clothes and a towel to use after the baptisms are completed!! Don't forget to invite your family and closest friends to come watch this significant moment in your life.... this will be exciting!!

Inner Strength

In Luke 22:63-65 in The Message Bible it states that "The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded "Prophesy! Who hit you? And they said many other insulting things to him."

During this stage of Christ's suffering, his disciples had abandoned him and he had been arrested at night and brought before the Jewish council. While blindfolded, he was repeatedly ridiculed, spat upon and struck in the face. I am not so sure that either I or you could handle that stressful moment quite like Christ. He experienced and endured undeserved hardship during that trial. Yet in the midst of this overwhelming situation he was able to keep his emotions and responses under control. His "inner strength" was a result of his "inner connection" with his Father.

All of us have encountered explosive moments in our lives. Littered in our past are regrets piled up everywhere. And almost always our inability to control ourselves has only made things worse. In the heat of the moment our flesh often cries out for vengeance and retribution! It's in those desperate moments when we find ourselves about to cross over the line and add another regret into our lives that we need to seek out God and request that He place His "inner strength" inside us and help assist us to navigate through these unwanted periods of crisis!

Left unchecked, we are all capable of damaging our reputations, character and potential future use for His Kingdom purposes when we unleash our anger in unhealthy and ungodly ways. Let's all learn to cry out towards God for His intervention during those times when we are the targets of unfair treatment, taunts and pain. Let's all keep that "inner connection" consistent!!

Mounting Concerns

When you and I are face to face with concerns that are overwhelming and too great to bear alone. God invites us to toss our burdens and cares upon Him. He alone is able to sustain us in every situation we encounter. We shouldn't show a lack of faith in His ability or love for us. God can meet all our needs!

Psalms 55:22 ( Message Bible )
"Pile your troubles on God's shoulders, he'll carry your load, he'll help you out!"

1 Peter 5:7 ( NIV )
"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

Anxieties can be those things or circumstances that cause us to be troubled, agitated, and bothered. They keep us in a state of unsettledness and upset us to no end. For many it even robs them of their sleep! Each of us, myself included, need to learn to cast ( fling, hurl, toss, throw pitch, even sling ) ALL our anxious moments and problems towards God! One thing is for certain... He is available, always!!

My prayer today is that you and I will realize that there is no change of heart with God. His never ending love for us is constant. His concern for our lives and circumstances never just stops. He can be counted upon to always be there and available to meet our needs. Each person who is struggling with the unwanted weight of concerns in their lives needs to release that full weight of their fears, hurts and problems. He is our ever present help in the time of our troubles!

Sunday Splash!

Sunday was such an excellent day at Sunset Chapel!

Our attendance was encouraging.  

It was good to see some familiar faces once again in the crowd  that we've been missing.

And we had two guests from Denmark! Wow! God is really bringing people from far away! 

Actually it was one of our son's girlfriend and her mother. 

They came to Miami to check out one of our area colleges.

Thanks SC for being such awesome examples of Christ today! 

You made a great impression on them!

I really loved the new look in our sanctuary. It was fascinating to watch people 
come in and not see their customary seats available! I think God had a great big 
smile on His face as he observed our reactions!  I really appreciate John Kricker 
for assisting me on Friday to make the changes.  We are preparing to perform 3 
weddings in the next few weeks and our new set up is perfect for these upcoming 
ceremonies!

I felt like the message really hit home today!  I am so stinking tired and 
disgusted by the Devil keeping people gripped in fear, doubt, oppression and 
defeat! We exposed him for who he is!  He really is a liar, fraud, loser and punk!! 

He preys on unbelievers and followers of Christ alike. He targets believers with 
relentless attempts to sidetrack and hinder us from fulfilling God's Will in our 
lives! I can't wait to hear how God's Word changes people's lives who heard 
today's message and made the decision to take a stand against the Devils 
influence and schemes! Victory is ours in Christ!!

Can I just say that I am extremely proud of so many of our new attenders who 

really get the message about participating in God's Kingdom work. 

Their energy and enthusiasm is such a blessing! 

Thanks to all our volunteers for stepping it up in recent weeks! 

You can sense that the spirit is different. I really love the new vibe 
that I'm sensing in all our services and ministries!!

Has anyone else besides me noticed that we have a new streak going on at Sunset 
Chapel???  We've started our services on time for consecutive weeks now!!  Incredible!!  :)

This will be a very busy and challenging week for me.... so please keep me in your 
prayers as I try to accomplish much for Christ and His church this week!!

Whose side are you on?

Reading from Luke 11:23 (NIV) today in my devotions it says, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." It is totally impossible to remain neutral and on the sidelines regarding this spiritual conflict. There is simply no safe zone in this spiritual tug of war! The Message Bible says it this way "This is war, and there is no middle ground. If you're not on my side, you're the enemy, if you're not helping, your making things worse."

Let me break this down for you, those who do not join with Christ in opposing Satan and his evil influences... have in reality already set themselves against Christ and God's purposes on earth. Evil is never idle or inactive. It's destructive intent and effects are seen everywhere in our words, actions and attitudes. With no exceptions you are either on God's side and truth OR you are on the side of Satan and his constant lies.

Knowing that half-hearted commitments and partial obedience are unacceptable. By doing nothing and allowing our walk with God to dangerously drift and become lukewarm... we are in reality siding with Satan.

My prayer today is that you and I make right choices that clearly demonstrate to others through our actions, conversations and countenance that we won't allow our relationship with Christ to become compromised in any way.

May our example create open doors for transparent connections with others to take place so that we can become better servants and "gather" rather than "scatter".

College Student Hangout!

As promised here are a few of the College Student hangout pics! Shari and I really enjoyed hosting this gathering at our house. There were some very interesting moments and conversations around the dinner table! Deep discussion over tattoos... I am just saying that had to hurt! lol Also watched a considerable amount of youtube videos!!

Laughter is always good!!

Sunday Splash!

Yesterday was a wonderful day filled with some great wins for Sunset Chapel. Here are a few of the highlight's...
*Gathered for pre-service prayer in my office prior to the start of the service with everyone on the music team as well as our church ministry leaders! You could sense the difference that having bathed the service in prayer and going through the order of service made!
*We started our service "ON TIME"!! That is no small miracle!
*During worship we took the opportunity to pray with those who were hurting and burdened. God showed in a BIG TIME way in several hearts! There were some sincere tears flowing around the altar!
*I am extremely grateful to "Yvonne" who stepped out and joined our KID"S INC ministry and provided a much needed boost to our volunteer team! Two of our team members will be stepping away shortly from this key ministry here at Sunset Chapel for a break as they anticipate the new additions arriving in their families! Our nursery is about to welcome a total of five new babies! That's awesome!!
* Our missionaries to Spain Guillermo and Elena Monzon hit a homerun as they connected to our SC crowd with their presentation concerning the opportunities that God is creating and how we as a local church can partner with them in prayer and financial support as "Global Christians"!!
*Had a blast hanging out at our house with all our UM, FIU, and Miami-Dade college students after the service! Good times were had by all!! Shared about an upcoming Single Adult Retreat coming up in Gatlinburg, TN during the first part of January! More details will be coming soon!! Will post a few comments and pics from this gathering later today!!
*I thought the final message in our "Joyful Giving" series went well. I am encouraged by the numerous comments I've received concerning this topic and I am ecstatic over the tremendous jump in giving we've observed take place throughout the entire month of October!
*Stay posted there will be  lot's of outstanding ways for you to get connected to what's happening here at Sunset Chapel throughout the coming month of November!

Tailgate Sunday!

I had intended on posting some of the pictures from our recent Tailgate Sunday (Oct 23) sooner! It was a great time of fellowship and fun after the morning service!! It took me three days to recover from the soreness and pain of playing flag football! We've already heard numerous comments about everyone wanting to get together more often and enjoying more activities like this!! Enjoy the pics!!