Cattail Massacre

The Cattail Pull-a-thon was a big success thanks to The Rock’s Youth Group and Seminole Height’s Youth Group. We pulled cattails for 8hrs Saturday. It was hard work, but we made a ton of progress. That was the longest we had ever pulled cattails for, and it showed because that was the most we’ve ever pulled in one day.

This is Pastor Mike giving us the cattail pulling 101 class.

By the way, he’s the guy to get it from…did you see how fast that old man can pull cattails!
Shhh. Don’t tell him I wrote that.

Here’s us at it. Even though you probably can’t make us out unless you zoom in. Oh well.

How many of ya’ll have some killer bites/stings to prove you’re in the picture?

Seriously, really great job you guys. You made me proud with how well you all hung in there!

Don’t forget to sell some tickets for the car wash this Saturday.

Sermon Notes from 5/30/09

I preached a True Love Waits sermon last night.

The text I used was Proverbs 7. In this text Solomon, the writer of Proverbs, perceives a situation from his window of a young man being successfully seduced by an adulteress.

There are a couple key factors that doomed this young man and led to his fall into sexual immorality. First he lacked sense. To put in short, the young man was not a godly man; he did not desire to follow God. Second the adulteress was wily of heart. This means that in her heart she wanted to deceive her victim into believing what they were doing was okay.

She gave him four reasons/excuses as to why he should go home with her.
1. She was right with God. This is an outright lie.
2. She prepared her bed with great feeling linens from Egypt (Egyptian Cotton I presume) and great smelling perfumes. This is not a lie but a very enticing offer.
3. She appeals to his desire for sex. She says, “let us take our fill of love until morning”. That’s a pretty heavy come-on.
4. She says her husband is gone and will not be back for a while. aka: this is a total freebee, and no one will know.This woman is a liar and deceiver.

I tried to put a twist on the passage by symbolizing the adulteress with our world and our culture. Our culture seduces and deceives our young people every day. Millions fall into sexually immorality and most don’t know that God hates it. That is because ultimately Satan is behind this deception and he loves it. He loves it when unwed people engage in sexual activity.

The best way to fight this deception (any deception) is with the Truth. Having God’s word in our hearts and mind and confessing Jesus as Savior is the only way to fight this deception successfully. If we do not have Jesus in our life we will ultimately fall to Satan’s deceptive ways. We will become one of his many victims.

Wipe Out

For the rest of the summer the Rock Youth Group is going to be over at the Jarrett’s house (my house) hanging out, starting at 6:30pm (pool, pool, ping-pong, trampoline, frisbee, etc.) and watching Wipe Out at 8:00pm. Tomorrow night is the premier and I’m fairly excited about watching people “wipe out”. There is just something about seeing people fall painfully into a body of water that is pleasing to the soul.

Home For The Summer

I am really excited for this summer. Here’s why…

1. I’m youth pastor at The Rock
2. My bro is getting married this coming Saturday
3. And most of all I’m getting married July 25th

Now, reason number three would be enough in and of itself to have me super pumped, but I also get the privilege of serving as youth pastor at The Rock, alongside my Dad, and being Rayford’s best man in his wedding. What a great summer! Today was my second Sunday as youth pastor at The Rock, but it was really like my first because last Sunday I had only been home for a day and I had no clue what was going on. This week I was actually able to answer most questions and make announcements about our action packed summer. I am really excited in aiding our youth in their spiritual growth. It’s going to be an awesome summer.