This year’s Vacation Bible School theme is about God’s amazing purpose and work to make His children more and more like Jesus. The memory passage is, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
 
God’s purpose has never changed. He has always planned for those who trust in Jesus to look like Jesus, think like Jesus, and be like Jesus in all our ways. Children do that better than anybody. Children want to be like Jesus. They are not corrupted yet by the ways of the world. They are tender and trusting. Children show us adults what pure uninterrupted Christlikeness looks like. If you want to see what God’s eternal purpose is, just show up this week walk around the church and watch the children.
 
We have over the past couple of years lost a lot of our children. Their families have moved away to other counties. We are now rebuilding our children’s ministry at Grace. This year’s Vacation Bible School will give us a great opportunity to reach out into the community to locate and enlist children that need to be a part of the ministry here. We not only need these children in our church, but they need our church to show them who Jesus Christ is. You can help reach children and their families to bring them closer to Jesus. Invite neighboring children to join us in Vacation Bible School this week. Bring your extended family member’s children each evening at 6:00 pm to join in the exciting activities taking place. Encourage your friends with children to come and participate in all that Jesus will do this week.
 
Most of all, pray. Talk to God about Vacation Bible School at Grace. Ask God to do miracles this week. Pray that God’s word will be clearly taught and that the Holy Spirit will guide our children to faith in Jesus. Seek the Lord in your own life this week. God is ready to do a mighty work of faith in all of us as we become more like Jesus through Vacation Bible School. God is willing to accomplish His purpose in us. Pray this week, that our children as well as all of us grown-ups will let God do His amazing work in us.

We started a new Bible study series this past Wednesday night. It is called “A Survey of First Things.” The first topic for our study was the life of Abraham. While Abraham is not the first father in the Bible, he is certainly the most important when it comes to his life and influence upon his family and the people of God. His name means “Father of a Multitude.” It can be translated as “Exalted Father.” Abraham was both. He was exalted by God, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great…” (Genesis 12:2)
 
To be blessed by God means that you share in the character of God. You can say that the blessing of God makes you Godlike. Abraham was a living example of God’s presence and likeness in all that he did.
 
God promised Abraham that through him, “…all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b). That means that God chose Abraham to show the world who God is. Abraham would display God’s likeness to people of his day, but when you add the word “all” you also include everybody, everywhere, for all time. Thus, Abraham is a chosen father for God whose influence and testimony continues even today. We are blessed because God chose Abraham to be a blessing.
 
     How does God use Abraham today to bless me and everyone all over the world?
 
The answer is repeated three times throughout the Bible:
“…he believed in the Lord; and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)
 
Those words are repeated by the apostle Paul in Romans 4:3, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” And then again in James 2:23, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.”
 
There are two ways Abraham’s blessing becomes our blessing. First, we are blessed by Abraham’s testimony of faith. He believed God.
 
R.C. Sproul said, “It’s one thing to believe in God and another thing to believe God.”
 
Abraham believed God by doing what God wanted him to do. His faith was lived out by his actions. Abraham was a father who believed God and showed us how to be a friend of God.
 
Then, Abraham was a blessed father who was righteous before God. God declared him to be “right.” In other words, Abraham was the right kind of father. He was right in God’s eyes.
 
     Was Abraham perfect?
 
No, he messed up occasionally. But every time God spent time with him to renew his faith, Abraham did the right thing. Abraham worshipped God, listened to God, and trusted God.
 
Righteousness is putting God where He belongs in your life. You cannot be right with God and put God in some place other than on the top shelf where He belongs. 
 
We thank God today for our fathers. They are truly blessed men of God who have been a blessing to their families and many others. Fathers renew your faith in God on this Father’s Day. Determine to walk by faith like Abraham did. Ask God to give you what you need to be righteous in His sight. Put God at the center of everything and you will truly be blessed.

​While on vacation last week, I started reading Billy Graham’s book, “The Reason for My Hope.” It is a book about the truth and hope we have in salvation. Billy Graham talks about his hope because he knows Christ Jesus as his personal savior. He talks about the reality of sin in our world and in our lives. Without hope that comes through salvation and the forgiveness our sins, we are lost in our sin and without hope in the world. We have hope because Jesus died to cleanse us from sin through His shed blood on the cross.
 
He talks about the hope we have through the cross. Jesus died in our place. He gave His life to redeem us and restore us, “The Bible says that we are doomed to eternal banishment from the presence of God because sin separates man from God. Remember, sin brings about a penalty, ‘The soul that sins shall die’ (Ezekiel 18:20). But Jesus Christ said, ‘I will die in their place. I’ll take their judgment. I’ll take their death. I’ll go to the cross.’ This is what Christ did for you and for me. Two thousand years ago, God invited a morally corrupt world to the foot of the cross. There He held your sins and mine to the flames until every last vestige of our guilt was consumed.”
 
Like the hymn writer wrote, 

​The cross upon which Jesus died,
Is a shelter in which we can hide;
And its grace so free is sufficient for me,
And deep is its fountain and wide as the sea.
 
There’s room at the cross for you,
There’s room at the cross for you;
Though millions have come, there’s still room for one,
There’s room at the cross for you.
 

There is another great point that Dr. Graham makes in his book about the truth and validity of Jesus. The Bible is true. It is not a book of fables and wishful thinking. Its truth has been verified by multitudes of witnesses of centuries of time. The Bible has not lessened in its importance, but increased in its impact upon history. This book quotes world figures, scholars, public leaders and historians about the truth and reliability of Jesus. Here are just of couple of examples:
 
Vincent Van Gogh: “Christ…is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.”
 
Lord Byron: “If ever man was God or God man, Jesus Christ was both.”
 
H.G. Wells: “It is interesting and significant that a historian, without any theological bias whatever, should find that he cannot portray the progress of humanity honestly without giving a foremost place to the penniless teacher from Nazareth… One like myself, who does not even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man… the world began to be a different world from the day that His doctrine was preached.”
 
Billy Graham’s hope is firmly grounded in every word the Bible uses to tell us about Jesus. The Bible is true and Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life (John 4:6). Amen, Brother Billy Graham! My hope is built on nothing less that Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. Jesus is my solid rock of hope too.