So Blessed By Our 'Living Stones'

At Redeeming Life, we believe as the Bible says: we are the Church.  In our English vernacular, the church is a physical building in which we do spiritual things; however, the Bible shows us that the church is a 'building' made of living stones (1 Peter 2:4-5).  Those living stones are the believers of Jesus Christ. With those believers, Christ is building his Church (Matthew 16:13-19). 

I am convinced that there is no other group of believers like the 'living stones' of Redeeming Life Church.  As a pastor, I am so blessed, and this has been impressed upon me a lot lately.  While I've been preparing to preach on Nehemiah 5, I see that the thrust of the chapter has a lot to do with selfishness.  God's people were working on a great task given to them by God, but there were some among them who seized an opportunity to build up their own personal kingdom over that of God's.  It has been disheartening to think about times in my past where I have seen this to be true of Christians today.  But our God is so good and he has shown me the other side of this story through the people of Redeeming Life Church (as well as some great people partnering with us).  

Just in this week alone, I've seen people drop what they are doing to give someone a ride home from the hospital.  Another person brought toilet paper and some essential supplies to a family who was sick and couldn't go shopping.  He offered to bring a meal too.  (Some churches take meals, but our church covers ALL the bases!)  I've seen people going WAY out of their way to give those in need rides to events.  Ten families signed up on our children's ministry.  Our church prays for one another and takes a serious interest in ways to bless each other.  We have people doing ministry on the streets two nights a week, every week.  We have someone serving in the Senior Center in our community.  One guy has been picking up shopping carts left around the community and taking them back to the store.  And there's much, much more.  The people of Redeeming Life love Jesus and out of that love, they serve one another.  

And then there was this Friday.  

67 chairs in Herriman, given to [R] to be used in Rose Park, SLC.

On Friday, I received an email and a text about 67 interlocking, padded chairs.  We are desperately looking to rent space if we can get partners to help us financially and we know we'll need chairs soon.  In fact, it was one of the things keeping me from moving forward.  Suddenly, God dropped 67 free chairs in our lap (through Hope Church in Las Vegas who gave them to Grace City Church in Salt Lake who gave the extra chairs to LifeStone Church in Herriman, who had to change to storage-friendly chairs so they gave them to us.)  The only catch was he had to pick them up that afternoon. 

I put out a text message to some of the men of Redeeming Life.  Within minutes I had an army of men, a truck, and wives who were willing to give up their husbands on a Friday night to spend an hour on the freeway (each way) to get chairs.  First, we had to unload our mobile-church trailer (also a blessing from LifeStone Church) so we could haul the chairs.  Then the guys loaded the chairs and hauled them to a house in Riverton where we're storing the chairs while we secure the space.  But the chairs didn't go into a garage.  No, they had to go down a flight of stairs into a basement.  (Thanks God for that empty basement!)

Not only did the men not complain, they did the work joyfully, with gratitude and thanksgiving on their faces. We're a smaller church, yet we had about half the men of our church serving on a Friday night, at the drop of a hat.  What a great group of selfless-hearted men and women. 

I can't imagine being blessed any more than I already am by our amazing church.  Thank you Redeeming Life family! 

So grateful,
Pastor Bryan

*Pastor Bryan has a newsletter where he shares stories like these, prayer requests, and many other things God is going in Salt Lake.  You can partner with him and Redeeming Life by signing up his newsletter here.