Dear Brethren,

Our text for Sunday is Ecclesiastes 4:4-16 where Solomon teaches us how to navigate our way through life in a fallen world. We will learn about how to go about our labor, about the importance of companionship, and about the short shelf-life of popularity. Solomon teaches us that the vanity of life under the sun is more than just empty pursuits. It can also be tied to motives, to loneliness, and to fickleness. David Gibson writes:

As you think about where you are going with your life, Ecclesiastes gives you a middle road to walk. Don’t hate your neighbor – be neither too lazy to help them nor too powerful to avoid oppressing them; don’t be so caught up in your own ‘today’ that you cannot see their ‘tomorrow’. Don’t hate yourself – laziness, frenzy, envy, and love of money will each in its own way corrode you from the inside out. Take the middle path of loving your neighbor and so properly loving yourself. Don’t drop out like the fool; don’t be sucked in like the frantic. (Living Life Backwards)

Having started the new ‘Pulling Down Strongholds’ series last week by looking at the moral revolution and how we got to where we are as a culture, Paul will continue this Sunday afternoon with a message on the topic of ‘Homosexuality’ based on the text found in Genesis 19:1-11.

Prayer Wednesday evening will be at the Noah’s house.

Please continue to pray for the Browns, the Dohms, and Paul White. They are now in Blantyre, Malawi with Mala and Masa.

• Labor Day All-Church Picnic: Monday, Sept 3, at the Brown’s Farm
• Preaching With Precision & Power with Steve Lawson: October 23-25, at Ridgecrest in Asheville, NC
• The Glory of Christ Conference: October 25-27, at Ridgecrest in Asheville, NC

Songs for Sunday are as follows:

• Trust and Obey
• Day by Day
• He Will Hold Me Fast
• What a Friend We Have in Jesus
• Be Still My Soul