For My Granddaughter

By Pastor Tim White

Pastor Rey has been teaching over the last month on how life is not a circus.  This last week, I was the substitute preacher because Elise was getting ready to deliver a new baby girl.  I entitled my message for My Granddaughter Isabela.  It was really my prayers as the founding pastor of our church that we would build a healthy - happy church.  It is so easy for a church or a family to merely become an institution or a wanna be success story.  God has designed us to have relationships that go through the good times and the bad times.  It starts by our having a personal relationship with him. 

I love the prayer for the church family that Paul prays in Ephesians 3:14-19, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

I have five prayers for my granddaughter and for every other child raised in this church that we can be a healthy happy church.

1.  I pray that my granddaughter can be raised in a church that is out to change the world through living out the good news of the kingdom of God.
2.  I beg God that my granddaughter can be raised in a church that treats women with Biblical dignity instead of demeaning of their gifts and talents.
3.  I ask that my granddaughter can be raised in a church that cares for the less fortunate and is happily involved in a changing world.
4.  I insist that my granddaughter is raised in a church where discipleship is a premium and people are taught to live like followers of Christ instead of just a culture game of religious superiority.
5.  I request that my granddaughter will be a part of a church where grace abounds and broken people are cherished and encouraged to be on Gods journey to wholeness.

  Someday there will be a little brown haired brown eyed little girl with the salt to change the world running around this church.  And along with all the other children - we want to bless them with a healthy model of faith and not some kind of a circus that we call religion.  Amen.