GBC Community Update: Watch out for our enemy

Good morning.  It was great to be able to dedicate Nathaniel on Sunday with Ken and Rebekah and I mourn with Linda on the death of her husband Jim.  What a joy it is to celebrate and mourn with our church family. This is a special privilege we have as part of the family of God.

Celebration of life service for Jim Fazekas
As has been shared, Jim Fazekas who was a long time member of GBC went to be with the Lord on Friday. Jim served faithfully in our children’s ministry for many, many years and touched many lives.  We will be celebrating his life Wednesday at 11am with a time of visitation at 10am and lunch to follow. Any who knew Jim, or his wife Linda, are invited to attend. Please continue to pray for Linda and her family as they deal with this new reality.

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Oasis Craft Prep party Thanks and request for space-themed items
Krista & Lynn would like to thank all those who came out on Saturday to help make the tedious job of cutting, measuring, counting, folding, stapling and sorting daily craft supplies for nearly 90 campers into a fun party!!  We couldn’t have done it without you.  It was a blast! We are excited and ready to have an out of this world time in the craft room with our campers!

Speaking of Oasis, do you have any space-themed items that we could borrow to decorate the craft room at camp to spark our campers’ creativity?  Model rockets, spaceships, rovers, NASA posters, planet models, constellation diagrams, astronaut helmet, globes, etc.  Anything to transform the boring blank walls and empty shelves of the room we use into an inspiring room that will hopefully spark the kids’ imaginations to create and build and design the crafts that they will take home and hopefully help them remember their stellar week at Oasis, and shine Jesus’ light! Please talk to Krista or Lynn. 

Summer Prayer Time
Pastor Dan invites any who might be free, willing, and able to join him for prayer on Thursday mornings, from 8-9am. We'll be praying for the church, for the world, and for our lives.  This week Jacob Ginter will be leading.

Treasurer’s Update
Here is the latest update from our treasurer. Thanks to all who gave during the month of Jun. I appreciate your support a lot.
General Fund Offerings - Year to Date end of June 2023
Budget       $92,060
Actual          92,311
Surplus             251
(The Budget & Actuals above exclude contributions to the Pastor Fund)

Pastor Fund
Goal                             $65,000
Contributions to date     50,949  (including the $27,550 contributed in 2022)
Still to be raised             14,051


Summer thoughts to keep you on the journey: Stand strong in God!  Watch out for our enemy.
This is fairly short but very important to understand.  The devil will tempt us to rely on ourselves and our own strength to get us through. The Bible reminds us that the devil will disguise himself as an angel of light.  Our enemy will do anything to try to lure us away from truth and away from God. He knows our weaknesses and will try to tempt us in our greatest times of struggle. He wants us to fall for his traps and he’ll take any opportunity to kick us while we’re down. Don’t let him!

We read in Matthew 4: “The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 
How did Jesus fight back? With the Bible!  So, don’t do things in your own strength and don’t try to go it alone.  Get connected to God and the true power source.  Don’t allow the enemy to have a foothold especially in trying days like these.

In His grip,
Pastor Chris