GBC Community Update: Be prayerful and practice gentleness to show true strength

​Good morning. I hope you’re making this a great week! It’s hard not to, though, with these spring-like days we’re having.
Hard to believe we’re approaching Easter and starting our teaching series to prepare for the big day. It’s been quite the year, to say the least, which is all the more reason to focus on the words of Jesus and what He did for us!
 
 
Join us Sunday
I will be beginning our new series to prepare us for Easter: “Love lived out …Jesus in his own words.” We’ll be continuing with the theme from our previous series looking at Jesus words and seeing how they impact us today but now we’ll be looking at those which happened during Holy Week.  My hope and prayer is this will not only be an encouragement but also a challenge to live love out in your own life.
Remember, you can connect through our website www.guelphbiblechapel.ca  our YouTube channel as well as Facebook LIVE
 
 
40 Days of Prayer Update
This is Day 23 of our 40 Days of Prayer journey.  Today we’re praying that God would help us all align with his vision for GBC.   Many of us (like me!) are strong willed individuals and so aligning to something not of our creation is often a challenge. God has called us here at GBC to see lives transformed through Him. That’s our vision. So the question for reflection, and prayer today is: how can we be sure our actions are aligned to God’s call for our church?
 
 
Shower Update
We continue to pray for Levi Tamminga and Ken and Rebekah. May the Lord’s hand of protection, provision and healing be upon this family. Last week I announced we’d be having a shower to celebrate with this family on the 20th. For obvious reasons, we need to postpone to a later date.  We’ll let you know when that’s going to happen.
 
 
Thought for the day: Be prayerful and practice gentleness to show true strength
As we go through the 40 Days of Prayer as a church, I am reminded that Jesus was a man of prayer. In fact, I’ll be looking at perhaps his greatest prayer on Sunday. So, as we look at character and how to live it out, we should seek to be prayerful in our own lives.
No matter how busy His ministry got, Jesus found time to be alone and pray. Whether it is in the garden of Gethsemane, across a river, or on a mountaintop, Jesus disappeared for a while in order to pray to God, the Father. People always tried to find Him, and He never turned them away, but He also made sure to make time spent with His heavenly Father a priority. May this be something our lives are noted by.
Okay, that was probably an obvious one.  But how about this?  Jesus was seen to have a spirit of gentleness.
There were certainly times where Jesus used stern words, but He knew when gentleness was appropriate. Children seemed to love coming to him, and He made sure the disciples knew not to hinder them when they did so. When speaking with His disciples, mother, or other people, He could be very kind-hearted and gentle. But, when He was giving someone a rebuke or making a point in an argument, He knew when turning up the heat was necessary and only did so strategically. He could be characterized as meek. Meekness, or gentleness, is not weakness, but strength under control. In these emotionally-charged days this is a critical trait for we who would like to follow Jesus to practice.
In an era of action, of varying expressions of power, the one who is prayerful and shows gentleness is the true practitioner of strength.
 
In His grip,
Pastor Chris