What a beautiful winter day to come together in the house of the Lord!  Andy Hoffecker, accompanied by Kristy Ross, and the worship team led praise and worship, and Debbie Wood sang a beautiful special song titled “All That I Am.”

      We were blessed to see the children do their monthly BGMC march through the congregation today.  BGMC stands for “Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge,” and it is the Assemblies of God children’s missions program that equips missionaries with literature and other equipment they need to share the gospel around the world. 

      This morning, our District Assemblies of God Youth and Christian Education Director, Dave Pafford, preached a message entitled “Focus,” and his main text was taken from Luke chapter four.  Here, Jesus provides a role model of a focused life by quoting Old Testament words that speak of the purpose Jesus was to fulfill in his earthly ministry.  Jesus explained this purpose when he said, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free” (Luke 4, verse 18, NLT). 

      Dave explained that there are many good things we can do in life, but we must make a critical decision to focus on the greatest things God has purposed for our lives.  The Latin word for “decision” means “to cut.”  You see, we must cut out of our lives all things of lesser priority and focus our energy on finding and fulfilling our God-given destiny in life.  Pastor Dave challenged us with the example of Peter, who walked on water.  This was great, a miracle, in fact, but if Peter had not become distracted, he could have walked even farther on the water than he did.  Pastor Dave challenged us to evaluate if we have allowed distractions to take our focus away from the purpose God has for each of us.  The service ended with an invitation to prayer.