Foothill Bible Church, Pastor Nate Stevens

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1 Inspired by Faith & Love Foothill Bible Church, Pastor Nate Stevens Dion Deitz, Prayers/Birthdays Courtney Hengst, EPIC Randy Redfield, Elder Teddi Johnson, Foothill Family & Editor September, 2014 How desperate are you for God? How desperate are you for church? Those questions are related very closely. I don t know if you have ever tried Nutella. If you haven t, do your waistline a favor and never step foot on the slippery slope of cracking the golden foil of pure hazelnut and chocolate nectar. Once you start, it s so hard to stop, and it starts to color everything about your kitchen; PB n J gets lost in the lust for PB n N. Forget a healthy egg breakfast, only Nutella crepes will suffice. Peanut butter and honey on toast? Forget the honey and the peanut butter, for that matter; forget the toast. Great satiating tablespoons of Nutella is what your heart really wants. Your evening ice cream will no longer satisfy unless it has a dollop of the creamy goodness crowning it. Summer made the fateful mistake of indulging in Nutella crepes from Parisian bakeries while touring Europe in her college days. I, like Adam, watched as she brought the temptation into our lives. Now, we walk the aisles of Costco in nervous silence, knowing our random path is inevitably a bee-line for the double pack of large jars of Nutella. And once in our home, its sirens call cannot be silenced by cupboard doors or hidden by cans of corn. It s a must-have! Now that I have had Nutella, my only hope for freedom is avoiding that aisle, or if I must go down it, playing the distant, aloof, and preoccupied lover, too busy with life to go near an old crush. We are desperate for God, because we were made for God. Without Him, life doesn t make sense, and it doesn t work. Sure, parts of life can click here or there, but whole person engagement in life doesn t happen. What God has given to the world for the experience of Him, is church. The church is the body of Christ, to use Paul s language. God is doing what He is doing in the world through the church. It is His chosen tool to not only reach the unbelieving, but to grow the saved.

2 By church, I do not mean the building on the hill in Elderwood. In the New Testament the church didn t even have buildings. In fact, the first church structure that archeologists have discovered was from about three hundred years after the time of Christ. When the Bible talks about the church, it s talking about the people who know God believers. So if God says that what He is doing in the world He is doing through His church, if He says that the Church is the place of growth and maturity, if the structure He set up for people to engage with Him in meaningful relationship is the Church, then shouldn t there be a relationship between how hungry we are for church and how hungry we are for God? For many of us, what God is doing in the world isn t as important to us as what we are doing in the world. Think about it; re-doing that back room is just the last real project needed on the house, and a little more time, and a little more money is all that is required to finish it, right? Forget that you have used the same justification for the last five projects that weeks, months, years have been spent in such pursuits. A kingdom, a project, the goal, the big thing in your life a house? Maybe it s not your house, but maybe it s a vehicle. Maybe it s relationships, or maybe it s a position at work. Maybe it s an income level, or maybe it s food. You were made for far bigger things and far better things. We pursue these things because they give us the façade of meaning and a hollow sense of accomplishment. Think about it. If there were real substance to these pursuits, wouldn t achieving them satisfy? Why do you always start looking at the next room to re-do, the next benchmark at work, the next? If it were real and solid, wouldn t the achievement of it satisfy? That was the promise wasn t it? You will feel good, life will work, the driving hunger will stop and life will happen when I finish this, or when I accomplish that and maybe it works, for a few hours. God has called church not to be a place to go on the weekends, not to be a place to learn, not to be a place to placate some religious guilt, and not to be a place to hang out. God has called the church, our church, to be a gathering of people that changes the world. This should be every invitation to church: Do you want to come and change the world? Come to my church! Do you want to be changed? Come to my church! This is where God is working; this is His tool for advancing His will on earth. And this is the call whose answer satisfies once and for all the driving gnawing discontent inside us. As we are changed, and as we see lives changed around us, it makes sense. We see God working through us and through our relationships to do the impossible. It satisfies. It is the purpose we long for and the goal of our lives. Sunday morning service is part restoration from the week s battles as we are washed in the Word. It is part pep-rally as we engage with one another to hear what and how God has been working in and through our lives. Finally, the Sunday service is all worship as we ascribe to God His worth as our Lord in our lives. How worthy He is as our Lord! How unworthy we are as His children! Continued.

3 Currently in the strategic planning meetings, we are determining exactly what battles we as a church have been called to fight and in what arenas God has called us to change and be changed. We will be presenting these goals in the coming months, and my encouragement to you is this: Set aside the small goals that will never satisfy, and set your sights on the impossible that God can and will do through you as an integral, necessary, and vital part of His church. Now, someone sent Summer a coupon for a free jar of Nutella. Free! Can you imagine such deceit, such depravity! It s in my cupboard. I can hear it calling Pastor Nate c Please pray for our youth that are away. Letters are welcome! Please feel free to drop them a line. Paige Ainley & Audra Shipley 1717 S. Chestnut Ave. #92 Fresno, CA Jacob Deitz 1001 S. Jefferson Pkwy St. Martin DePorres Room 130B New Orleans, LA Nathan Deitz Mail: Northern Arizona University P.O. Box 7402 Flagstaff, AZ UPS, FedEx, DHL: Allen Hall 4 University Drive Flagstaff, AZ Nikki Bentley Goodwin Hall 3900 Lomaland Drive San Diego, CA Will Anderson 406 Golden West Arroyo Grande, CA Caleb Jobe KERR 410b Oklahoma State University Stillwater OK Hayley Hengst and Carson Costa 350 Felton Way San Luis Obispo, CA Tim Davis PO Bx 6409 Ft. Hood, TX If there are others that need to be included in this list please contact Teddi Johnson at Teddi_Johnson@sbcglobal.net or call at and we ll be sure to get them included in our next Lifeline.

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6 Let s hear from some of our Foothill Family. Tell us. What was your Favorite Summer Moment? Through Vacation Bible School we are there to teach God s word. When we had a sign-up meeting, Shelly Deitz had offered to help and was assigned to lead a group. I decided I was going to go where I was needed. I told Shelley why don t I go with you the first day and we ll do the group together. The first day she went wherever I went and then at the beginning of our 2 nd day she asked do we do the same rotation every day? and I said yes, but by the time we had snack time she saw the need for individual children to recite their daily scripture to her. She chose the most important eternal part and then by the end of the week she was completely comfortable doing everything that was needed to be done and excellently! Procrastination is staying where our comfortable. And purpose is volunteering yourself often times out of your comfort zone and trusting the Lord to lead you. ~Trish Stivers I celebrated my BIG 80 th Birthday this summer. We had a nice party with a lot of friends and family. It really was a wonderful time; to be surrounded by and celebrating with people I love. ~Leroy Maloy This summer I received a call from Charlie Mills and I had to explain to him that Bob Crawford and I couldn t be up there right away. Charlie then told me that he had twenty 1-hour rides booked and had no help. When I told Sandy her eyes turned the size of saucers! So I told Charlie, give me an hour and I will be there. We were there a while and it was a lot of work but wound up the trips on 4 days. It was GREAT experience. ~Doc Harrow My favorite moment was our vacation time in Santa Barbara over the summer. We were able to get out of the heat; it was nice and foggy. It was nice to have a chance of to just relax and enjoy being together. ~Frank Ainley What was exciting to me is that my daughter in-law Lydia s last day of work was last week. She went out on Maternity Leave! She s expecting baby#2; a baby girl around Nov 6 th. So the countdown begins! We are very happy grandparents. ~Pat Justice Attending the Shania Twain concert in Las Vegas was FANTASTIC! Imagine 10 women (in cowboy boots, of course!) bee-boppin to Shania s amazing songs with a ton of lighting (think IMAX theatre-type background videos), special effects (she came onto the stage singing on a suspended Harley about 25 feet above as it was lowered to the stage YOWZA!), live horses, incredible stage props, etc.!! It was an event not to be missed. ~Courtney Hengst Caleb and I went to OSU for an orientation. We spent 4 days there and I felt blessed to know that God would be transforming Caleb from a boy to a man there. I also taught summer school at El Diamonte in Visalia for high school biology. It was a nice change from middle school ~Dana Jobe "Discovering that we will be adding a FOURTH little person to our family! ETA, late February ~Summer Stevens

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11 PO Box 328 Elderwood, CA 93286