Have you ever seen one of those maps at the rest areas that has a big arrow pointing to your location that says:  “You Are Here”?  This is exactly what God wants us to be as a church!  God desires for us to be a reference point for upstate South Carolina and the rest of the world!  God has taken me on a very interesting journey over the past several months, that has brought me right back to that “You Are Here!” spot.  This month we are going to be taking a look at some very important questions and answers that God has provided for us as a church.  Questions like:

WHO ARE WE?  We are the place and people of RIGHT DIRECTION!  We are a community of followers of Jesus Christ, committed to pursue and share “RIGHT DIRECTION” living.  We acknowledge that RIGHT DIRECTION is given to us by God through His WORD and helps us to live blessed, fulfilled and growing lives!

WHAT ARE WE DOING?  We are helping people to find RIGHT DIRECTION in life!  We are doing this by being a church that is:

· A point of reference for upstate South Carolina. 

· A community of faith that provides direction in love. 

· A ministry of equipping people to fulfill God’s purpose.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?  We are going outside of ourselves to reach inside of others!  We have a COMMISSION to share Jesus and the difference a relationship with Him can make!  We have COMMUNION and can experience God in real and relevant ways!  We have CHARACTER and are growing through obedience to God’s Word!  We have COMMUNITY in which we develop caring relationships that help to get us through life on this earth.  We have CONNECTION and enjoying giving of ourselves to make life better for everyone!

We Believe:  The Bible is God’s Word to us and is the foundation upon which we build and grow our lives!  Jesus is the only hope for a lost, broken and hurting world!  The Church is God’s agent for redemptive change, growth and fulfillment!  Every Christian is called and gifted by God to fulfill the Great Commission!  There is a RIGHT DIRECTION and it will change your life! 

Today was a great day in the life and ministry of Northwood.  The Lord had us take a look at a very sensetive subject and provided us with some great insight into what our response as a church and as Christians needs to be!  We were taking a look at God’s command to not commit adultery!  God’s commands are provided to give us boundaries, so that we will know what, where, when, how and why to live our lives.  God’s command to not commit adultery is a command to practice faithfulness!  God wants us to be faithful in all of our relationships!

We need to make sure that we are faithful to God by living a surrendered and yielded life to Him and His will.  We need to make sure that we are faithful to our families by being committed to our spouse above all others and committed to loving our families with a love that is always looking out for the best according to God.  We need to make sure that we are faithful to our friends by being an honest and available friend.

When I finished the second service today, I really felt that the messages that I delivered today, while they were not easy to deliver, they were prophetic, in that – we as a Church and as Christians had better get busy talking about the things that really matter.  God deserves glory, the Chruch was created to grow and our lives are open books for blessing.  We have a lot to get right and with God’s help we are going to get more and more of it right in the days ahead!

It is always amazing for me to watch how the Devil works, especially whenever there is an important message that the Spirit is trying to communicate with the church!  Today, before I ever even stepped into the building, the Devil was at work – nothing big, major or splashy!  I have noticed that the Devil likes to work behind the scenes whenever he can.  I was getting ready to preach a message on ANGER and the Devil was doing everything that he could come up with to make me and others angry.  I guess that he thought that if enough of us were angry, we would miss out on the message from the Spirit about anger and what we need to do with it!

The funny thing about anger is, it almost always takes you to a place of thought.  I do not always think when I first get angry, but give me a little time and I will think and when I think, my mind and heart get just still enough to hear from the Spirit.  What the Devil was intending to use to mess many of us up, actually back-fired and got many of us to thinking about our anger, where it comes from and what we are going to do about it!  The Devil gave many of us an object lesson before we got the message, so that when we got the message, we really got the message!

What is the Spirit trying to teach you – you don’t have to let the Devil get in the way!  Use the devils attacks as stepping stones to take you into the blessings and growth of God!