A New Beginning

The Lord has wonderfully blessed Monica and me by bringing us here to serve with you at Redemption Fellowship.  For us, this truly is a new beginning.  But I realized something—it’s a new beginning for you as well.  As we have been studying the first chapter of the Book of Joshua, we have discovered that God is a God of new beginnings.

Oh, what a blessing it is to start fresh!  It’s challenging! It’s exciting!  However, it is demanding!  New beginnings force us to dig deep and get involved in the process.  It causes us to focus on what’s important and to make right choices.  Ultimately, it brings us to a greater dependency upon God.

God is up to something new in our midst.  I sense His voice saying to us from Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  When I hear these words from Scripture I realize that God Himself spoke them, but that He spoke them to me and to you.  What an awesome promise.

Nonetheless, the success of our journey depends upon all of us.  We know that it is the Lord who makes us successful, yet we do have a part to play.  With that said, I challenge each of us to make a serious commitment to God, each other, and to our church.  Why?  Well, unless you have invested something significant, this journey will not be meaningful to you.

In other words, if you want to accomplish something worthwhile for the Lord then you need to have some skin in the game.  That is, something of high value to you that motivates you.  It has to be something so valuable that it will claim your attention and time, because winning and loosing matters.  Something so valuable that it will cause you to work harder, because you have something at stake.  Something so valuable that it will cause you to fight to the bitter end; it will not allow you to easily walk away.

The Lord has blessed us with ‘A New Beginning,” and we all can be assured of this one truth: Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus!”  Let’s honor the Lord with this fresh start that He has graciously bestowed upon us.

The Peace Of Christ Be With You!

~ Pastor Stephan Cobbert,
Senior Pastor, Redemption Fellowship Church