An Attack

These past two weeks have been tremendously overwhelming. On New Year's day two members of my church went to the hospital. Three days later I found another member of the church collapsed at his apartment. It turned out that he had a massive heart attack and died just yesterday. I went to go visit the family after Orville's passing and I was really hit hard. It's funny because I never knew the seriousness of my calling until I saw Orville that night. My church is going in a great direction and because of God's grace we have a wonderful group of people. We are currently going through a life changing series called "Discipleship" where we are learning the essentials of becoming and making disciples in the name of Jesus Christ. We are also pursuing a full time Youth Minister and are expecting an Preaching intern this Summer. We have an active part in the community and God is really blessing all that we do.
With that said, I have realized that this church is being attacked by God. My wife Heather said something very profound while I was sharing with her my feeling of stress. She said that, "God must really be doing something in this church." God really is doing something here, something that is causing Satan to attack this church with as many problems as we can get.
All throughout the ministry of the last two weeks, I have been attacked for the look of the new bulletins and I have received nothing but negative comments about the possibility of hiring a second staff member. I am honestly tired. I have not seen my kids but a couple of hours per day and I don't have time to stop and think. I know that it is only by the grace of God that I am still functioning properly. The only conclusion I can think of is that Satan is attacking my focus.
Hebrews 12:2 says, "To fix your eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith..." I have made that verse the anthem for our church and now Satan is trying to get us to lose our focus. When Peter was walking out of the boat, he had his eyes fixed on Christ and when he saw that giant wave come at him, he got scared, lost focus, and almost drowned. The last two weeks of life have caused a great wave of stress to come towards Forest Lake Christian Church, but we have to remain focused on the eyes of Christ; otherwise we will drown.
If you are reading this I ask you to pray over our church. I will personally be praying over Ephesians 6:10-20 so that I can ask God to put His spiritual armor over our church. That's it for now, more to come later...

peace, LOVE, and soul
Larry