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Pastor Harry FrielinkPastor’s Corner: DOING TIME FOR GOD
This month I would like us in the Covenant church family to think about how we use our time for God. In our series on the letter of joy to the Philippians we are challenged to be partners with each other in the gospel. Here are two ways I hope you will commit to using your time for the partnership in the gospel: 1. Welcoming each other into our lives and 2. Remembering those imprisoned for our common faith. The verses I have in mind is:

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Hebrews 13:2–3 [Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)]



Hospitality through Coffee Socials
I mentioned a friend of mine that said the number one reason people are not going to one another in the church for a listening ear and godly counsel is “they don’t have time for that.” How sad that our fellowship grows so thin. Well, here’s one way to do something about that – Coffee Socials. Rather than meeting in the fellowship hall for fellowship time after church, on November 29th and three more times in the new year, we will invite each other into our homes for an hour long coffee time after church. The purpose is to get to know those we worship with on a little deeper level. You will be invited into a group of various ages and life circumstance. Some you may know well others not at all. Ten people have agreed to host groups of about a dozen people and I am looking for about 6 more homes willing to host a coffee social in their home. We will also have one that meets a Tollendale and one that will meet here at the church.   If you are willing to host such a group please contact Pastor Harry.
Please join me in praying for growth in the grace of hospitality in our lives.

Take back some of the time God’s put in your control to seek after hospitality and compassion in these two ways!  Shalom, Pastor Harry.

 

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SUNDAY DELIGHT?!?!
Even in our harried, frantic, world, where we rush around and spend so much more time texting, emailing, talking on our phones than speaking face to face. Even in our crazy busy culture, I’m sure there are some portions of time you delight in! Maybe it is the satisfaction of the end of the work week. Or watching your favourite TV show or sports event. Or maybe it’s that feeling on those Saturday mornings, when you can stay in your pajamas a little longer, and the whole family gathers for pancakes for breakfast. Or that time when everyone else has gone to bed, and there’s golden silence with only the sound of the fire place and gentle turning of pages of a book you love! We all have some time that we delight in. The scary thing is that with all our technology that time we delight in has shrunk for most people!

In recent study, 40% of kids felt if they could change one thing about their parents, they would wish their parents were less frantic. They wished their parents were less frantic so that they no longer would take out their built-up anger and stress on their children!

But did you know that God’s gift of a day of rest is supposed to be a whole day of delight for you? You may think that I’m going to lay out all the ways you didn’t find delight in your busy life through the week. Then say, “God’s designed a day off for you to now get those delights into this day off!” But it works a little different than that. There is another type of pleasure, another quality of time which we are to enter into on the Lord’s Day. If we learn to enter this kind of rest, we’ll have a new delight built into our every week. This type of delight is supposed to define who we are as a person, a family, a church family!

So what is this Sunday delight? And how can we enter into it, in the rush of a secular culture that no longer stops for such a day of delight? How can we find this in a church culture that also has come to assume that seven days are all alike and each day belongs to us?  In a church culture where we squeeze an hour or two for spiritual enrichment in our week, instead of enjoying a day of rest with our Lord? This is what I am writing a paper for our congregation and for a worship course I took this past summer. My hunch is that in the long term, few things will affect the worship of a congregation more than our view and appreciation for the Lord’s Day.

I would like to invite you into reflecting on God’s purpose for giving you a Lord’s Day by completing the following survey this week.