Life At The Ridge

One of our missionaries that we support Carlos and Barbara Barahona with Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) gave an update and spoke for us. Carlos and Barbara started the work in Honduras and have been there for 29 years. The ministry seeks to affect permanent change in the spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical lives of poor children living in Honduras. Children are given daily care and attention along with being taught biblical values, personal hygiene, and life skills. If you would like to learn more about their ministry please visit their website. https://hopeinhonduras.org

Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10 "That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection..." The word Paul uses for power here is the word "dunamis" We get the word dynamite from this word. Christ's resurrection has great power. Power to do what?

Who are the Elders and what do they do? God's Word gives us important instructions on how a church is to be led and the purpose of having Elders and what those Elders are to be doing. Contrary to popular tradition an Elder is not a decision maker or board member. This message will cover the importance of being Biblical in the way Pleasant Ridge is led and the importance of having Biblically qualified men who serve as Elders.

Are you ready for the return of Christ? He's coming back. Paul stresses to these believers at Philippi the importance of living like a citizen of Heaven, because Jesus is coming back. When Christ returns what will happen? How will we change, what will that look like? What will it look like when Jesus rules on this earth? Are you ready for the return of Christ?

"Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us." Philippians 3:17 How's your christian walk going? After Paul has just told us about the prize that he is pressing on towards which is holiness and to be like Christ, Paul is now stressing the importance to imitate or to follow the example of those who do walk in holiness. Are you walking in holiness? What does a Christians walk look like when they are not walking in holiness? Why is it important to walk in holiness? How can we walk in holiness?

Last week we saw that Paul made mention of a different resurrection for the believers. All the dead in Christ will be resurrected but Paul said he wanted to attain the out-resurrection. As we saw the out resurrection is a further seperation of believers who will be separated to a place of honor and service in the coming kingdom. These are believers who have sown much in the kingdom, they are the ones who have laid up treasures in heaven, they are the ones who stewarded their salvation well and used it to advance the Lord's kingdom. The next set of verses vs 12-16 lays out for us the why and the how of obtaining this out-resurrection. Are we striving and pressing on towards the goal? What is the goal?

Are you ready for resurrection? A couple weeks ago we looked at how the believer in Christ grows and Pauls last statement in vs 11 talks about the future resurrection. Every living human being will face eternity. Those that know Christ that have fallen asleep will be resurrected in Christs likeness. All those who are alive and remain when Christ returns will be changed in a moment in a twinkling of the eye when mortality will put on immortality. Even those who have died without Christ will be resurrected to face eternal Hell fire and the judgement of the Lamb. Pauls statement in vs 11 gives us some details about the future resurrection but what does it look like for the believer and more importantly how can we be prepared for it?

Visiting Missionary Jude Souza

How do we grow in Christ? Paul in his defense of what a true believer is tells us in Philippians 3:10-11. Pauls says "That I may know Him..." To know Christ means to know Him experientially, or to know Him personally or to know Him by personal involvement with. Our growth in Christ is one of the most important experiences that believers should have. What does this growth look like and how does it happen?

The verses that we are going to look at today come right on the heels of this idea of people who were promoting the outward, the flesh, and the religious externals to gain grace with God. What we’re going to see is Paul saying he’s had it all and lost it all so that he could gain Christ. There is a larger picture here at work other than salvation and that is having Christ as our all for everything we need.

Tom Konopinski was our guest speaker for our Missions Moment update

Jesse Maurer our worship pastor is speaking out of I Corinthians 13

Paul begins this new part of the letter with the words "Finally my brothers rejoice in the Lord" and then he spends some time warning them and reminding them to be on the look out for the counterfeits in the church. What do these counterfeits look like? How can we protect ourselves and others from these counterfeits?

As we sum up all of the prophecies concerning the virgin birth, we are faced with a decision of what are we to do with the doctrinal truth of Christ being manifested in the flesh. How does that change us? Paul gives us a interesting topic to discuss in I Timothy 3:16 with the "mystery of godliness" What is this mystery? The mystery is Christ being manifested in the flesh. But what is interesting is that Paul says it's the mystery of godliness. What does that mean?

What do we know about the virgin birth? Did it really happen? How do we know? No doubt a virgin birth is a miracle and unusual. There are over 400 prophecies about Jesus that we find in the Old Testament alone. In fact Jesus Christ, fulfilled numerous predictions that were given of his birth. Micah predicted He would be born in Bethlehem, and He was. Hosea predicted He would be called out of Egypt, and He was. The prophets said He would arise out of Galilee, and He did, out of the little town of Nazareth. The odds of one person fulfilling just eight of the predictions Jesus fulfilled is one in 10 to the 17th power! Truly a miracle! Isaiah the prophet prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 about Immanuel 700 years before Christ would dwell on the earth. The story behind the prophecy is truly amazing and all of it points to Christ who would be sent to be a redeemer for fallen humanity.

Bethlehem was the birth of Jesus Christ. It was also the place where a redeemer would be predicted long before Christ took on flesh and dwelt among us.

Doctrine is very important for the life of the church. The truth is everyone has some form of doctrine that they believe , but the problem is that many of those things don’t line up with the truthfulness of God’s Word. It’s always important to go back to the source and make sure we are getting an accurate view of Who God is and what God says. Scripture teaches us some very important truths about the prophecies of Christ and the message of the Gospel. Jesus’ coming was predicted for thousands of years. The Old Testament contains some 300 specific predictions about the coming Messiah. The very first prophecy about Christ is found in Genesis in the third chapter. In this chapter we have recorded for us the historical fact of the origin of sin, where it came from, how it happened and the result of its effect on this world, but in the midst of this catastrophic event God brings about hope for his creation.

What do we learn from the lives of Timothy and Epaphroditus? These two men are a great example of Christians who followed the example of Jesus. What about their lives can we learn that will help us be joyful servants? We will finish up Philippians chapter 2 with this second part on "Joyful Servants".

Thanksgiving is a time that our nation has set aside a day that we observe a day of thanksgiving I thought it would be a great time to remind us what God’s Word teaches us about gratitude. Gratitude is a constant theme in the Bible. In fact it is mentioned over 150 times in Scripture and 33 times that we find that word gratitude it is tied with a command to be thankful. Are we a people of gratitude? There are lots of things we can be thankful for and rightly so, but is that what thankfulness is? Are we to be only thankful for the stuff? What is thankfulness? We’re going to look at Colossians 3:1-17. Within this text there are three verses Vs 15-17 and they are the summit of a Christians life who is experiencing the fulness of Christ in their life. Thankfulness is more than just a word but it’s more of a lifestyle. True thankfulness is a way of life for the believer in Christ.

As we have been working through this letter to the Philippians we have seen that Paul stresses this idea of humility and unity to the church. We saw this first when Paul told us about unity in chapter 1 of vs 27. Then again in Ch 2 vs 2. Then we were given the great example of humility by showing us what Christ did for us 2:3-8. The last couple of weeks we looked at how we are to allow that humility and unity to be at work in our life as we are working out our salvation without grumbling or disputing. By doing so we will be blameless, without blemish shinning as lights in this twists and crooked generation. That brings us up to where we are going to looking at this next portion of Scripture Ch 2 vs 17-30. We are given 3 examples of humility and sacrifice in Paul, Timothy and Epaphroditus. What do we learn from these three men? How does their lives help us understand how we should be serving one another in humility and unity?