Declaring God's Faithfulness; Past, Present, and Future

GCC 20^th Anniversary Message

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Sept. 24, 2023

Declaring God’s Faithfulness; Past, Present, and Future

Before we open God’s word, I want to thank all you who helped make this day a special one. There’s been a lot of work put into making this celebration possible and it’s a great example of what the church is – a community serving the Lord together. So thank you, all of you, who have helped make this day possible. I look forward to what God has for us in the future as we serve Him together.

And we also want to acknowledge and honor all those over the past twenty years who have been a part of our history as a church; some of whom are here today and some whom are not- but so many have played an important role in building up this local church. God has used so many people – so many friends – so many brothers and sisters - over the past two decades- to make a difference for the gospel. So many have loved, encouraged, prayed, served, and given sacrificially throughout the history of this church and the Lord has used you to make an eternal difference – some of that you may not see this side of eternity but Jesus sees and he will reward you on that day. Jesus said I will build my church and he uses people to do that building and so to all of those Jesus has used over the years to build this local church we want to say, in the words of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, we thank God every time we remember you and your partnership in the gospel. Thank you so much.

A lot has changed in twenty years! Twenty years ago…

• George W. Bush was the president of the United States, Barack Obama was two years away from becoming a US Senator, and Donald Trump was a businessman who was a year away from starting a TV show called the Apprentice.
• Twenty years ago there was no Facebook, Twitter (or X), Instagram, or Tik Tok. MySpace was just beginning to get up and running.
• Twenty years ago, pretty much all your phone could do was make calls and texts.
• The price of gas was $1.59 gal.
• On a more personal level, twenty years ago, some of you in this room did not exist. And those of us who did more than likely have changed a little bit. We have a little more grey, a little less hair, a few more pounds, a little less energy.

A lot can change in twenty years.

GCC began our services in what was then called Corning East High School and for eleven years we met in various public schools. Every Sunday morning a group of mostly young people would meet at 8am to set up the sound system and the projector screen and children’s ministry and everything else that needed setting up.

After ten years of setting up and tearing down every week and just as the grace for doing that was waning and we were feeling weary, God led us to this building as our permanent home and made it affordable for us to purchase and renovate. That was such an answer to prayer!

Over the years there have been ups and downs, mountains and valleys. But through it all God has been faithful. He has answered prayers over and over again. We have seen salvations, baptisms, healings, and lives growing in Christ. We sent out one church plant, a missionary family to Thailand, and have supported many great missionary works both local and abroad. Through the members of this church, many financial, practical, and spiritual needs have been met, wounded and hurting people have found healing, grief has been shared and comforted. We’ve lived life together. Not perfectly, but that’s kinda what life looks like. God’s grace being perfected in our weaknesses and imperfections. I call it messy grace.

This morning I want to encourage you to know that the God who has been faithful to this church will be faithful to you whatever season you are in. God is faithful past, present, and future.

Pray

Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, a prophet named Jeremiah wrote a book called Lamentations. The name literally means “alas” and it’s a lament over the destruction and desolation of God’s people and the city of Jerusalem. Jeremiah feels like God is against him and chapter 3 opens with these words:

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath…Lamentations 3:1

Jeremiah then gets real and raw and says he feels like God is breaking all his bones. God is making his flesh and skin waste away. God is a bear and a lion tearing him to pieces. Jeremiah can’t remember what it was to be happy, any sense of hope he had is on life support. Every direction he looks in, past, present, and future, all he sees is sadness and anguish.

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! ²⁰ My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

God, remember the pain and bitterness of my life cause I remember it continually and the weight of it is crushing me. Myt soul continually remembers it…

But then Jeremiah remembers something else (vs. 21):

²¹ But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: ²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; ²³ they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

He remembers the love of the Lord. The mercies of the Lord. The faithfulness of the Lord. And from this place of crushing pain and sadness, Jeremiah is able to declare that the Lord is (present tense) his portion and therefore he will hope (future tense) in Him. God is faithful past, present, and future.

Two brief thoughts about the faithfulness of our God as we celebrate God’s faithfulness to Grace Community Church, to THE church, and to each of our lives individually!

1. Faithfulness is the rebar of God’s love and mercy

Let me explain: When construction workers do concrete work they add rebar or steel bars to the concrete in order to give it greater strength and durability. Concrete by itself has great compressive strength but is weaker in its tensile strength which means it can withstand tremendous downward pressure but is weaker when it comes to the kind of strain that pulls it apart. When rebar is added, the two (rebar and concrete) become one composite and that composite is much stronger at handling both the strain that presses down and the strains that pulls apart.

Sometimes situations and crisis’ put heavy pressure on our lives and churches. I listened to an interview of Brady Boyd, the pastor who succeeded as the pastor of mega church New Life Church in Colorado Springs shortly after their high profile senior pastor Ted Haggard resigned in the midst of a sexual scandal. The scandal made news around the world and Boyd inherited a church that was reeling from a deep sense of pain, betrayal, and disillusionment.

As they were trying to pick up the pieces and navigate an unknown future, just four months after Boyd became their new pastor, an active shooter shot and killed two members of New Life Church and wounded three others before he was shot by a volunteer security guard.

Can you imagine the pain and anguish that church must have felt? That’s a terrible weight for a church and those involved to endure. But God helped them get to the other side of it intact as a church and actually came out on the other side stronger. That’s God’s grace at work! Situations can put a lot of downward pressure on our lives, on our marriages, on our relationships, and on our church. Just as concrete has a lot of strength when it comes to downward pressure, a strong love can endure great strain and tremendous pressure and come out on the other side in one piece.

Often what tears marriages, and friendships, and churches apart aren’t sudden big pressures, it’s little thing over a period of time. Cracks begin to show not from downward pressure but from pull apart pressure. The little annoyances, the little disappointments, the day after day sameness, the taking for granted.

Faithfulness isn’t a different thing from love – it’s a part of the composite of love - the rebar that makes love stronger in the face of strain and stress. When a couple say their marriage vows they vow to love and cherish till death do them part. It’s a vow to be faithful to their vows to love one another. That’s why when someone cheats on their spouse, we don’t say they were unloving, we say they were unfaithful. Faithfulness is the rebar that keeps love strong under pressure and over time.

God’s love is steadfast and never comes to an end because God is faithful to keep loving forever.God’s mercies never end and are new every morning because God is faithful to be merciful every single day.

God makes His promises to us because of His great love and mercy. He keeps those promises because of His great faithfulness. His faithfulness isn’t a different thing than His love or mercy, it’s one composite – His faithfulness is the rebar to His love and mercy.

When we confess our sins to God, He is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness through the blood of Jesus shed for us.

Great is Thy faithfulness means God’s love and mercy is strong and loyal and unending. God’s love and mercy aren’t crushed by the big things and they aren’t pulled apart by the little things. Your flaws and failures aren’t straining God’s love. Your sin isn’t God’s mercy apart. When we come to God and confess our sin, God has new mercy today for us. Believe that with all your heart! Jeremiah did.

2. God is faithful in all directions: past, present, and future

In a very real sense we live our lives in three directions: past, present, and future. Jeremiah remembers the heartache of the past and the present, but he makes himself remember (he calls to mind) God’s love, mercy and faithfulness and because of that he will hope.

The past can bless us with memories or haunt us with regrets. The present can fill us with joy or weigh us down with worry. The future can excite us with its untapped possibilities or frighten us with its uncertainty.

For those who trust in Christ, we can be sure that God holds our lives in all three directions, past, present, and future. We can trust God with whatever we’re facing today. Is there something weighing you down today? Filling your heart with anxiety or sadness? Cast your cares on the Lord for He cares for you. Do you find you fear the future – the unknown? Or maybe the known, there’s something looming and you are afraid of what the future holds? God holds your future in His hands. Trust God and believe God – don’t let fear box you in, believe God for great things in your future.

What about our past, though? It’s done, we can’t change it, but we can, first of all, thank Him for the blessings He has given us. Treasure the memories and good things our past holds. And we can ask God to redeem our mistakes and the things we regret for His glory. And then, like Paul, we can forget what lies behind and press on. There’s no benefit in living in our past, regretting this, being haunted by that, wishing something was different. Pray God redeems our mess ups then live today and tomorrow for the glory of God. God is faithful, past, present and future.

3. Looking ahead to the next twenty years

When we began to talk about celebrating Grace’s 20^th, my friend Paul Mwangi said it’d be a good time to share our vision for the future of Grace Community Church. What do we hope for the next twenty years to look like?

I have no big predictions except God will be faithful. That I am sure of. But here are some things we hope for and pray for.

• Grow in effectiveness at making disciples. I believe the Lord has put some new ideas in my heart for what I’m tentatively calling “the Discipleship Initiative”. Largely aimed at strengthening our faith and helping us think biblically. I am convinced that one of the greatest threats to the church is a shallowness of biblical thinking and very powerful spiritual deceptions. Jesus said if we hold to his word we are really his disciples and we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. My goal for the discipleship initiative is to help deepen our faith in bible truth and obedience.
• Growing as a community of faith. That includes serving the mission together, caring for one another, and encouraging one another to love and good works.
• Serving our community in various ways. Serving the hurting and oppressed. Together. I recently joined the board of the Potter’s Hands Foundation – a ministry to young women who have been sexually trafficked, helping them leave the bondage and abuse of that evil world

I want to share our vision for the future as a simple prayer: God, grant that we be faithful to Your calling.

It’s not a bold prediction about our future or a particularly clever strategy, but I think it’s a deeply biblical goal.

Jesus said the words we should want to hear more than anything is “well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ Matt. 25:23

Paul expressed God’s grace on him to stay faithful when he said he finished his race. He broke the tape. He fought the good fight, staying in the ring until the last bell rang.

God grant us to be faithful to the end. Faithful to preach the gospel even when it’s not popular. Faithful to speak the truth of God’s word even when it goes against the grain of our culture. Faithful to love, faithful to care. Faithful to forgive when hurt. Faithful to trust when doubt raises its head. Faithful to walk in integrity and not go down in the flames of scandal. Faithful to seek God’s glory and not our own.

And faithful to anticipate with faith what our faithful God has in store for us in the days to come.

And when I say “us” I mean all of us. Whether this is your home church or not, we are all part of one Church – the one Jesus will be faithful to build.

And for those who haven’t believed in Jesus, I pray that you come to know him as your Savior and as the friend who sticks closer than a brother. Jesus died on the cross for the lost – and all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

And that’s a promise Jesus will be faithful to keep!