I will never forget the day Bradley was baptized at Graystone.

Baptism is our pubic profession of faith.  It is an opportunity to declare to our friends and family that we are followers of Jesus Christ.  If you have never crashed the waters of baptism, your next opportunity at Graystone Church is Sunday, June 24 at all 3 services.

If you are ready to go public with your faith, you can sign up here.  To find out more, we will have baptism classes on June 10 at 1:15PM for children, adults, and students.  Please be praying for those God will lead to take their next step of faith and obedience.

having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” Colossians 2:12

1.  I’ve received tons of positive feedback from last Sunday’s tag team message, Lies Women Believe.

2.  Sports Camp is only 10 days away.  You can sign your child up here.  Also, we will be having a workday on Saturday, June 2, at 8AM to get the outside facility/fields ready.  And we will be moving furniture and decorating the inside of the building on Sunday, June 3, at 1:15 PM.

3. The Man Series begins on Sunday, June 3.  Each Sunday we will have competitions outside on the front patio/lawn for EVERYONE to participate.  And there will be competitions during the service that you will need to sign up for the Sunday before.  So, our first competition sign ups will be this Sunday, May 27.  If too many men sign up, the names will go into a lottery.

ALL OF THE MEN are encouraged to participate in the beard growing contest to be judged on June 17 (Father’s Day).  Awards will be given in multiple beard growing categories (I.e. thickness, originality, etc.).  I’m the frontrunner for “weakest beard”.

4.  Monroe, Monroe, Monroe…everywhere I turn, God keeps putting Monroe on my heart.  As many of you know, Monroe is the target area for our first expansion campus.  We are in serious prayer and strategic planning for the best time and team to launch Graystone Monroe.  Please pray that God would lead us in His perfect timing to go multi-site.   Also, you can pray about being a part of the Graystone Monroe Launch Team.

5.  We will have our next Baptism Celebration on Sunday, June 24.  Our baptism classes for adults, students and children will be Sunday, June 10, at 1:15PM.  A special Man Series lunch will be provided.  I will post more details and online sign ups in a future blog post.

Go ahead and mark your calendars.  Game time is 7:05.   It will be a fun night for the entire family and a great time of fellowship for Graystone Church.

Any guess who gets to throw out the first pitch?

Let’s God’s word minister to you and transform your mind! 

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Beautiful (Part 2) Lies Women Believe

Jonathan and Jennifer Howes

Formula: 

World’s way:  appearance + performance + other’s opinion = my self worth

God’ Way:  God’s opinion of me = my self worth

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Lie #1:  Physical beauty matters more than inner beauty.

 Truth:  God cares most about my inner spirit and character.

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

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Lie #2:  If I fail at something (or have failed in the past), I’m unworthy of God’s love.  Or God can’t forgive what I’ve done.  

Truth: I am dearly loved by God.

  “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Soninto the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice forour sins.” 1 John 4:9-10

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Lie #3:  I must meet certain standards in order to feel good about myself  (I.e. perfect children, perfect home, perfect wife.)

Truth:  I am already fully pleasing to God.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Romans 5:1 

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Lie #4: I must be approved by certain others to feel good about myself (I.e. boss, spouse, friends, or even perfect strangers).

Truth:  I am totally accepted by God.

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—“ Colossians 1:21-22

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Lie #5:  I have to have a husband to be happy.

Truth: God promises to meet all my needs.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

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Application

 Step 1: Recognize the lie you’re believing.

 Step 2: Replace the lie with the truth of God’s word.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

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Closing illustration:  Jennifer’s cancer story

Prayer

Response Song:  More Beautiful You

Also, we will have a video “man moment” with senseless pain being inflicted on one of our tougher staff members.  Although it looks and was painful, it is hilarious.  The short video alone will be worth it for a man to be at Graystone on Sunday and will get him “happy, happy, happy” about The Man Series.

Here are the 5 Lies we are addressing Sunday:

1. Physical beauty matters more than inner beauty.
2. If I fail at something (or have failed in the past),  I’m unworthy of God’s love.  Or God can’t forgive what I’ve done.
3. I must meet certain standards in order to feel good about myself  (I.e. perfect children, perfect home, perfect wife.)
4. I must be approved by certain others to feel good about myself (I.e. boss, spouse, friends, or even perfect strangers).
5.  I have to have a husband to be happy.

• a late 11:00 service
• a rock star church with contemporary worship
• a place they could slip out as soon as the service was over
• a church in which they didn’t have to serve
• a church where they can simply be fed

As Jennifer was sharing with me their shopping list, one of our kids blurted out, “They expect us to feed them?”

We died laughing.

They will be spending the next several weeks kicking around the tires at other church dealerships.

Elliott, Julie, Ian and Colin Rogers

The Mother’s Day photos look amazing!  You can check them out and download them for FREE by clicking here.

Thank you so much www.375photography.com and Justin Wojtczak.  You are the man.  BTW, we have the most “beautiful” families at Graystone Church.

I’m loving our Beautiful message series.  If you missed week one, you can watch it here.  This series for women is great and much needed, but after Tuesday morning’s planning session, I think The Man Series will be the best series in the history (7.5 years) of Graystone Church.

During The Man Series we will have a contest for men each week.  As I mentioned last Sunday, we are having a beard growing contest.  If facial hair is not your strength, you will have an opportunity to compete by consuming large amounts of food in record time or displaying your athletic prowess.  Awards will be given to all the contest winners.  We debated giving participation trophies but quickly decided against it.

There will also be a raffle each week for the men to win some cool prizes.  We’ve thought about giving away everything from 4-wheelers, motorcycles, bass boats, shotguns, fishing poles, tool boxes, autographed football helmets, Braves tickets, etc.  None of these prizes have been secured, so don’t hold me to any of them.  If you would like to donate something (i.e Sea-doo), please let me know.

The Man Series begins on June 3rd and will run through Father’s Day (June 17).  The services will have elements that we have never had  before and will be much different than a normal Sunday at Graystone.  At the finale of The Man Series we will give a special gift to all the men that has specific meaning to all 3 messages.  Let me just say, the men are going to love this series, and June will be a blast.

 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11

Hey guys, how are doing? Just a reminder to tell you that I am not sleeping. We are busy 24 hour days and 7 days a week. God is pouring his blessings with the presence of a doctor coming from California Dr. Teddy Bartnett who has been seen dozens of patients at the mission. We having seen, this weekly only, 200 hundred patients. Our 100 plus of our students have been seen. We are looking forward to see another 3 to 400 hundred for the next couple weeks. He is here until the end of this month. I will be in Saint-Marc this weekend for a special prayer on Saturday for their spiritual and numerical growth and also to buy a piece of land to relocate our church. More babies more responsibilities. We have been so gracious to meet at their front yard. Our shelter can hold about 100  and God is adding every day those who have been saved to his church. We continue to send different lay preachers every week to Saint-Marc until the Lord will provide a permanent preacher. Also, our bible school is open this year in August. It will be for one month every summer for now. I will be the only teacher this summer. We are taking students from our all three churches. They will all come to stay at the mission for the whole month of August. We will have a very long schedule every day. We will be working from 6:00 am until 9:00 pm every day. We will be  sending them out every weekend to our different churches to observing and practicing.We cannot wait to see you guys. We have a lot to accomplish. We are working on faith and not by sight. I will be in Port-au-Prince checking on the French and the Creole bibles and I will send you the quote. One amazing news. As you know that we are fighting a warfare againt principalities and dominions. An amazing miracle happened just this week where we were casting 200 demons an a lady’s head in our church as we were fasting last Wednesday. You may ask how did we know it was 200 demons. The demons as we have in Marc chapter 5 have said it to us. “We are 200 demons, we come to look for her and we want to take her with us”. They litterally dragged her all over the place and wanting to run. 5 of us had to hold her very tight. We did not want her to cause any harm to herself. After spending times in prayers rebuking the demons. The demons were fleeing and she calms down and not agitating and screaming annymore. She was sitting still and her good sense. Now, she is completely healed. She was in our clinic today for dental check up. It is exactly happened the way you see it in Marc ch. 5. It is similar to the jewish people in Jesus time. This is what making our ministry so powerful in the village and else where. We will be able to win the whole of Haiti by such great move of the Holy Spirit. We have been under several circumstances like this. We have been always prevail. The people feel so secure spiritually and continue to bring so many of them to Jesus Christ.Let us continue to pray and fight.

Jeff

Our baseball season has been the most difficult we’ve ever experienced.  But my message to Joelan (and myself) is to persevere to the end and FINISH STRONG.  We will put a 4 game losing streak on the line this Saturday as we head into the playoffs.

If we FINISH STRONG in the tourney, we could turn the entire season around.  We’ve had a ton of injuries (Joelan broke his nose at the first practice in December.), bad attitudes from players and parents, and we enter the tourney as the last place team losing our last 2 games with a combined score of 0-23.  But if we win 4 games, which we are capable, we could find ourselves on Cool Ray Field playing for the championship.  And I’m pretty sure that would be the lasting memory of this team.

As this season of life and school year come to a close, let me encourage you to FINISH STRONG.  FINISH STRONG with your team, school, job, small group, marriage, family, church, and faith.  Although, I do think getting off to a good start is important (I.e. Valley Town Church), what’s more important is how we finish.  True authentic faith in Jesus Christ perseveres to the end.

I like what Paul says at the end of his life…

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:7-8

In what area of your life do you need to recommit to FINISHING STRONG?

P.S. If truth be told, Joelan cares more about Friday morning basketball with his church buddies after his discipleship group, than his U14 GGBL Baseball Season. BTW, their discipleship group started strong and FINISHED STRONG.  Thanks Nate for your leadership and investment into our young men.