November 5, 2024
If we are being honest, all of us can reflect on an instance where we were playing the role of God in our own lives, seeking our will over His, clinging onto control, and ignorant to the supernatural empowerment found through the Holy Spirit! Some of us only become open to give The One True God a chance when we have no other options, in need of a miracle, or desperate enough to try having faith and going all in! Many people come to Jesus out of vain, physical, or carnal desires, hoping for something in return or to be different, unaware of the opportunity for spiritual wholeness, trading temporary satisfaction for a soul defining relationship! God uses mysterious and endless tools to draw even the most immature and selfish of us all to Himself, but merely recognizing the work of Jesus can still leave us empty! He can easily become a genie, insurance, or a drive through if we have the habit of worshipping the blessing instead of the Blessor, entitled and stopping short of giving all the praise to whom all resources flows! Deliverance or provisions without the spirit are dangerous, so we must get to a place where we lay down our qualifications and become willing to commit our entire heart, our entire life to the pursuit of His glory due coming into contact with His kindness, sometimes recentering ourselves in this vow! Adopted, marked, and sealed the first time we make this confession, but continually brought into further guidance and revelations at the presence of the Holy Spirit when practiced! Jesus now has a home in our heart and He becomes a state of being, where love, faithfulness, holiness, and gratitude are an effortless result from involvement with the joy of salvation, transformed from the inside out! Without this gift, we are working and powerless in our flaws and inability, stuck on one of the far ends of behavior modification and legalism or lawlessness and hyper-grace! Where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, and we access this spirit when we accept our weakness, shift all honor to God, and become in tune with the frequency of the perfect power of Christ upon ourselves! Thank you Jesus for the possibility of grace through faith, the belief that separates us from all other ideologies, for when we encounter this experience our soul receives a fire that could never be distinguished and we are made increasingly more useful for the Kingdom of Heaven over time!
October 30, 2024
CCC Updates:
#1. This Sunday is deadline for ordering Blessing Baskets
#2. Don’t forget to “FALL” back this Sunday. Enjoy that extra hour of sleep!
When we take the time to consume scripture, we will find clear instruction to almost any circumstance that comes our way, but application is always the most difficult part! Many factors, especially followers vs. unbeliever, can influence our discernment in regard to our interactions with others, but Jesus gives us shrewd guidelines surrounding how we are to navigate ourselves in Godly community! He first pleas with us to keep our hands clean from the blood of others, sending a transparent message that it would be better for us to die, so avoiding His increased wrath, than lead one of His children into sin! It may be easy to recognize the covert sins commonly practiced together: like gluttony, false idols, indulgence, pleasure, gossip, etc. practiced outside of God’s intent, but sometimes our omission of correction is just as harmful! To love how God loves, we must be just as incessant on the destination others’ soul as He is, so that our loyalty and decree of truth is greater than our fear of man, need for approval, or identity in anything outside of Christ! While darkness enjoys company and guilt is more bearable with affirmation, Jesus urges us to rebuke fellow disciples towards seeking righteousness and holiness according to His word alone, because this is the part of the great exchange we are responsible for! Always hoping for reconciliation, unfortunately the outcome does not always lead to harmony when we sometimes find ourselves in confrontation, Jesus stresses the importance of countless forgiveness regardless! Our spiritual health and a deep intimate relationship with Jesus is realized through this discipline, the choice of forgiveness is not forced upon others but ultimately ourselves, knowing this sin left untreated will lead to a bitter, insecure, resentful, and hard heart creating a blockade inhibiting the flow of The Holy Spirit within us! Forgiving does not always mean we continue in association, but it does still look like being accountable, prayer, blessing, and returning good for any evil! Forgive as our Father in Heaven has forgiven us, not optional, grasping the category all God’s chosen ones fall in, worshipping a Divine Creator who desired an undeserving sinner so much He sent His one and only Blameless Son on a brutal redemption mission to restore us back into communion with Himself when we accept the start of conforming in His image! Be grateful for this transformative opportunity as a byproduct of the forgiveness, mercy, and grace already bestowed upon us for no other reason than God displaying His kindness!
October 23, 2024
In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus sends out an eye opening warning on the urgency of repentance, the perpetual agony our soul will be subjected to if tossed into the fire of Hell, and our spiritual ineptitude if we rely on our physical senses! Jesus’ teachings and ways often seem like a paradox or counterintuitive, to serve God at our highest capacity, we must abandon the culturally popular idea of a “good life” and voluntarily confront anything that opposes truth found in the gospel, for neutral ground when pursuing a relationship with our Heavenly Father can be detrimental! Our belief is shallow and our spiritual growth will be limited if we think God is only concerned with our comfort, pleasure, and happiness, leading to an attempt to manifest instant, temporary, and self indulgence! Jesus and the cross contradicts this hedonistic worldly view, but accepting the journey of building up our character for a purpose and sacrifice way higher than ourselves for His sake is a longing commitment to God! Dying to one’s self will require inevitable suffering at some points during our walk, anyone can follow when emotions are high and timing is in alignment with ours, but who can endure when God prunes and molds through trials, who can listen without compromise when God says no, who can work to God’s ultimate calling to fight evil and multiply disciples! The pathway to the realest thing we know will be found through the hardest, most transformative, and meaningful tasks we choose to carry out! We can joyfully embrace this adventure when we can zoom way out, delay our gratification, accept our role, and focus on eternity! We are nothing but temporary residents of this fallen world, understanding many of the heavenly attributes we acquire will not be rewarded during our time on earth, but nothing in the Kingdom of Heaven is forsaken! Submission, persecution, holiness, obedience, things the common person wants no part of please God, strengthen our faith, and produce trust; but are also evidence of an eternal hope and build us future wealth in the form of a heavenly inheritance, a crown waiting for all His faithful servants on the day of judgement! Confidence in our salvation and realizing our destination is secure will fill us with peace to courageously walk through any door God opens, make us responsible to our call of sanctification, and available to willingly undergo any burdens the will of God places upon us!
October 16, 2024
Hurricane Relief Update:
As we said on Sunday, we want to provide you ways you can respond to the ongoing critical needs of the victims of Hurricane Helene and now Martin. As always, please continue to pray!
#1. Sarah and Evan will be going to Asheville this upcoming Sunday to drop off supplies in person to a friend who is helping with relief efforts in NC. Here is a current list of supplies needed in the area:
Propane, Space heaters, camping stoves, tents, C Batteries, tarps, dehumidifiers, dish soap, baking soda, pine sol, blankets, laundry detergent, and mold removal supplies.
If you would like to help provide any of these items, please bring them to the church by Sunday, or you can contribute financially by venmoing Sarah directly at http://venmo.com/sarahdsamples
#2. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) teams rapidly deployed to serve these communities, and have been working hard across more than twenty response sites across the region. Your gifts are supplying meals, water, temporary roofing, flood recovery supplies, and more for these sites. Here is the link to give: https://www.sendrelief.org/projects/hurricane-helene/
#3 Former long-time members, Cliff and Jackie Hobbs' son, Luke has responded by taking equipment and supplies directly to the areas that have been devastated and he will go back on various trips. Here is his venmo account: https://venmo.com/u/Lucus-Hobbs
We will update you in the coming days as more opportunities arise.
In America, until someone goes all in on Jesus, they will most likely adopt the views of Western culture where consumerism and individualism are dominant, but this leads to inadequate placement of our faith and a mindset of scarcity, the opposite of what Jesus made available! This self absorbed mindset where nothing is ever enough, people and material are seen as transactions, and the gathering of the wrong treasure out of fear of future provisions only leads to emptiness and anxiety, because no matter how hard we try to acquire we are still bankrupt without the only blessing that can sustain us! As humans, we can only worship one thing, one thing will dictate how we make decisions, one thing sits on the throne of our heart, serving one master, and if it is anything other than Jesus we are in sin leading to torment and eventual destruction, we are designed to be slaves to God! When we can humble ourselves and sincerely accept Christ as our supreme authority, the sovereign controller and perfector of our faith, the only commodity that meets our every current and future need, we become the most rich, free, and selfless versions of ourselves, whole and in quenching relationship with our creator due to experiencing His grace and mercy through the Holy Spirit! This is the promise of abundant life, now we are in a constant state of surplus, a position to give away our time, energy, desires, money, or very life, not out of guilt or burden, but pleasure and gratitude, reflecting the walking sacrifice our Lord and Savior embraced! When we can comprehend how vast the blessing we have been given through the blood of Christ, anything we wrestle with laying down seems non negotiable! If this seems troublesome then maybe we need to circle back to the very beginning and reconstruct our faith, or possibly mature into understanding that this mindset will become a natural byproduct of genuine salvation, for being a disciple of Jesus is easy until we realize He asks for everything, and our sins were in fact exchanged with a cost! If we have experienced this admiration, what an indescribable place to be, requiring no approval but that of Our Heavenly Father, still encourage one another to endure down the narrow road towards holiness and consecration, for here we are set apart as a trusted clean incorruptible vessel for His glory bearing fruit some hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty, countless spiritual wealth! Desperately seek ways to continually fall into deeper more intimate relationship with Jesus, and don’t dare put a ceiling on the possible blessings and revelations of the Omnipotent One who has no limits, knowing our God is more than we can ever fathom, without origin, and boundless when we walk with The Spirit in surrender!
When we look at the outward landscape in The Parable of the Lost Son most people always see themselves distinctly as one or the other sons, but if we look closely at the heart and intentions of the two, it will be clear that we can certainly fill both roles at many different stages of maturation in our faith journey when we deal with obvious vs. hidden sin! Sure the younger son’s moment of reconciliation was highlighted and drastic, but how often do we need to run back towards our Heavenly Father at times we drift? Always, as there is no such thing as perfect repentance, because we are flawed humans in a constant fight where progression is not always linear, but make no mistake, the needle is constantly moving depending on what we feed! And if the younger son is not careful, how easily could he be in the same boat as the older son as he endures in rightful relationship with his father? Don’t get self-righteous, hidden sins of the heart are never exposed until circumstances or situations bring them to the surface, but dealing with pride, greed, envy, bitterness, or fill in the blank, can constantly flair up and should be treated immediately and aggressively, taking no advantage of the grace of God! We see the older son in the physical presence of his father his whole life, but how often was he spiritually separated from him unknowingly due to walls holding the capacity of his heart captive? Most of these deceptive sins and strongholds disappear when we can slow down, shift our mindset, and understand just how valuable and exclusive the gift of salvation we have received is, nothing else in this world we could ever attain will compare, never defiled or taken away, unlocking our heart to a full experience with the spirit! So what and why are we chasing finite things that will only betray us at some point? We have everything we need in this temporary life because our highest hope is in the reward of eternity with God through Jesus, content in this promise alone! All our current concerns, pain, and desires are petty in God’s grand scheme because He knows one day He will open our eyes, fully restore us, and they will become insignificant once in His pure everlasting presence! Jesus is the key and only possession we can take into our eternal life, and the only meaningful thing that will remain is the footprint we left from allowing Him to love through us and the expansion of His Kingdom! This is the source of our unshakeable peace and expectant joy, so rejoice if you have been chosen and be a light as God draws near to all!
October 9, 2024
Hurricane Relief Update:
As we said on Sunday, we want to provide you ways you can respond to the ongoing critical needs of the victims of Hurricane Helene and now Martin. As always, please continue to pray!
#1. Former long-time members, Cliff and Jackie Hobbs' son, Luke has responded by taking equipment and supplies directly to the areas that have been devastated and he will go back on various trips. Here is his venmo account: https://venmo.com/u/Lucus-Hobbs
#2. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) teams rapidly deployed to serve these communities, and have been working hard across more than twenty response sites across the region. Your gifts are supplying meals, water, temporary roofing, flood recovery supplies, and more for these sites. Here is the link to give: https://www.sendrelief.org/projects/hurricane-helene/
#3 Sarah’s friend, Jordan, who lives in Asheville, is helping with relief efforts in NC. They are in need of warm blankets, jackets, and cleaning supplies. If you would like to help provide any of these items, please venmo Sarah directly at http://venmo.com/sarahdsamples
We will update you in the coming days as more opportunities arise.
October 2, 2024
It’s humbling to think that just one small tweak in the mindset of our faith can have such a life altering impact on our trajectory, but with God, half measures or anything less than a whole hearted commitment will not yield natural, effortless, and everlasting transformation! Perspective becomes reality when we get away from all the things that bring us to, around, for, or close to Jesus, and we instead throw ourselves upon Him! Scripture reads to believe “IN” rather than believe “THAT”, this could be easily swept over as trivial, but it’s such a drastic difference! All the knowledge from scripture, practicing within ministry, witnessing of miracles, or testifyingHis name can be sought for proof or even manufactured, but they are rags until one has sincere intentions to surrender their entire life to God, willing to be obedient up to the point of death just as Christ was! This is where Jesus will meet anyone, burning our heart and leaving a scar that can never be forgotten or mistaken, left with an overwhelming wonder behind the mysterious flood that just redefined our life as we previously knew it! Now God can genuinely start our sanctification for His glory, saved not because we were beautiful but saved so that Christ can make us beautiful! If we are honest, all of us can always think of a room in our heart we keep God out of, an area possibly hidden or entitled to, maybe too dirty, too comfortable, or impossible to clean up! This should be the location of our focus, maybe it feels necessary to start small, but this won’t be the catalyst to our never ending breakthroughs, constantly run towards our biggest fear, our ugliest sin to find an intimate revelation of God’s forgiving grace and redemptive love at our worst, deliverance due to nourishment for our infinite souls only our infinite Father can satisfy! Once we see God move a mountain within us, everything else on the horizon turns into a mole hill, and here is where we claim confidence to constantly encounter a fuller experience of salvation by removing every ounce of sin from our heart! Rinse and repeat, the authentic process never stops because we will crave and cry out for the presence of our Lord and Savior once tasted, His absence we will become sensitive to during the constant battle between spirit and flesh, for nothing else will do except knowing the comfort that comes from Him dwelling in our heart! This is victory, where death truly loses its sting, and the words in scripture come to life right in front of us only when one places every fiber of their trust in Jesus Christ alone!
September 25, 2024
Rock bottom, end of your rope, sick and tired of being sick and tired are all sayings used to refer to a state of feeling lost, broken, desperate, and/or hopeless! What an advantageous and beautiful place to be, that is correct, for here we find a heart fertile for the mercy and grace of our Father! Sometimes orchestrated into a moment of humbleness, God can only assume His proper throne in our heart when we are willing to chase after Him constantly! This scenario is depicted in the story of the prodigal son, a parable with a parallel theme to the entire bible, where God redeems, restores, and gets back what was rightfully His to begin with! He doesn’t request any excuses, explanations, or clarification, He only asks for reciprocated love and devotion! He executes this through Jesus, God written into His own story, sent to rescue us only when we exchange our sins and our wretched life, for His righteousness and perfect life through faith! By this sincere shift in posture we are found and brought to life in Christ instantaneously, making our faith tangible, transformation unavoidable, obedience desired, and salvation sealed! Once experiencing the love of the Father, we will become ruined, there will be no other place we will want to be!
September 18, 2024
CCC family, strong and Godly leadership is necessary for the health and outlook of the church body, without discernment and truth the flock can subtly be lead astray! The enemy is hardly the terrifying depiction imagined in many of our minds most of the time, quite the opposite, seemingly identical to God and speaking unseen lies disguised with promises or ambition that appeal to our flesh! Navigating just ourselves down this treacherous road is not for the faint of heart, and being responsible for others God has entrusted us with is an even higher anointing, a burden only carried out appropriately when one can accept their innate weakness so that the perfect power of Christ can rest upon them! Credibility can be lost with one uninformed decision, that’s why integrity, the fear of God, and sound application of doctrine are essential! The only perfect shepherd is Jesus, but the people most capable of living up to this calling are the ones who cry out to emulate Him in every aspect of their lives, a total dependence on the one who makes us whole! So ask yourselves, who would I follow into battle, trust without doubt, and help facilitate my spiritual growth? The answer should be the one who continually finds ways to wisely lay down their very own life out of wonder for our Savior, despite the sacrifice, expecting nothing in return except the furthering of the cumbersome will of God!
September 11, 2024
Jesus warns us to acknowledge the seemingly unattractive obstacles to avoid a superficial repentance, and we can look no further than what He endured through His very life! CCC family, it’s vital that we equip ourselves and be aware of the suffering, submission, persecution, and sanctification we will inevitably face when we carry out a maturing faith to completion! Do I care about my temporary life and selfish carnal desires too much, or have I grasped the penalty Jesus took, that I deserve, enough to give the rest my earthly life in complete surrender to His will? This journey never authentically starts though until we truly become born again and alive in Christ, requiring the acceptance of a death, to intentionally reject our inherently flawed old self, and allow The Holy Spirit and scripture to edify our souls, leading to a lifestyle of revival and constant transformation into new creations reflecting the very image of our Savior! Sound uncomfortable, difficult, and strenuous? It is, but Jesus also tells us He came to give us abundant life, more than we expect, to fill us up until we over flow! Not prosperity, instead fruit of the Spirit, but those are just words until experienced! A life of sin and dependent on self is bondage and leads to destruction, but through the blood of Christ and obedience we have the opportunity to live this short time full of freedom, as well as, make deposits towards an inheritance waiting for us in our second, more important, and eternal life alongside our best friend!
September 4, 2024
CCC family, salvation is for us and the most valuable gift we will ever receive, but we are saved for community and His glory! Jesus illustrates this in the parable of the great feast, highlighting an invitation to the faithful, double minded, and lame! A genuine and full experience of salvation will lead to a calling, and a desire for discipleship of others ahead and behind you in your walk, witnessing to non believers, encouraging the body to persevere, and experiencing Jesus in reciprocal human relationships alike! As He prepares us, the responsibilities will only expand, so ask Jesus: Do I need to be more intentional, overcome with a spirit of boldness and courage, to hand out invitations and make your truth known? Are you the tip of my spear as I prioritize my life, or do I myself need to reevaluate my own zeal and invitation? Jesus, we all need clear perspective, the most important time of our earthly life is now, open our hearts to realize this impact for our eternal future!
8/28/2024
CCC family, let’s invite and encourage each other to continuously examine and take off any subtle temptation to drift into self-righteousness and pride, while clothing ourselves in the nature and humility of Jesus! Humility, much like biblical love, requires action and a choice, putting the needs of others at the forefront of our priorities! Jesus, not taking advantage of His divine privileges, emptied Himself while taking the form of a servant! Being humble and selfless is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less! Whose kingdom, in public and private, does our time, thoughts, energy, and effort go towards serving and expanding? God wants to add so much to all of His children’s lives, but desires cannot choke us out, honor must follow humility, our platform cannot outgrow our character, and Jesus must assume His rightful place in our hearts!