1 Thessalonians 5:18  (NLT)

¹⁸  “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”

Thursday is Thanksgiving and yes, we're all thankful on that day.    However, the Word says we are to be thankful in ALL circumstances, no matter where we find ourselves.

Twila and I are in Michigan enjoying some down-time with our kids and helping serve Thanksgiving dinner to a host of students and their families at Teen Challenge. What a blessing this is to us.

However this weekend, and at all times, we’re thankful for our Battlefield AG Family. You are loved and we are glad we’re all part of God’s  Family.    Rejoice and worship Him today with your whole heart!  

We’re blessed to call you Family!   

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Love ya,  Pastor Phil      

In my early years of serving as Pastor there was a time when Thanksgiving loomed close but the cupboards were bare.  The economy had taken a turn for the worse.  My wife and I prayed that God would send us a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Being new in the community, neither of us realized that several of our church families had more than one member working at a local factory that gave turkeys to its employees for the holidays.  Be careful how you pray, you may get it.

As Thanksgiving approached we wound up with so many turkeys from our generous congregation that we had to rent a freezer locker to store them!  We enjoyed roast turkey, turkey sandwiches, left-over turkey, warmed-up turkey, cold turkey...  we had all the turkey we needed or wanted and THEN some!

Philippians 4:19 became a way of life for us in those early days. We learned first hand that He really does care about those empty cupboards.  He really does hear those desperate cries as breadwinners pray for little hungry mouths needing to be filled.

These days our prayers might be a bit more specific.  We might think to include the side dishes to go along with the turkey.

Trusting God with you for a bountiful Thanksgiving!

Pastor Rich Orrell

Thankful for His Blessings

Psalm 69:30 NLT

^{30 “}I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. “

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday.  Just a little over a week from now we will all sit down with family and friends to give thanks to the One who provides all to us.

God is so good to us friends, His mercy abounds and gives us much more than we could ever deserve.

Today and every day let us let the Lord and others know how truly thankful we are for God’s bounty.

“He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay.”  

Love ya,             

Pastor Phil      

As a younger person I often heard about the importance of putting a good foundation under the building. Things were said about the strength of the foundation as well as the need for it to be plumb and level. I’m not sure I really grasped what was being said until I began remodeling an older home. Although the project was not extensive it grew into some major work as I discovered just how wavy the floor really was.

It did not take long to find out there was nothing square nor plumb in the entire structure. A quick trip to the crawl space revealed the problem; the foundation had settled and cracked. Oh, the building wouldn’t fall down. The ground was too rocky for that. But it certainly made for interesting times fitting well-built cabinetry into a kitchen that was badly out of kilter.

 After lots of hard work and ingenuity the cabinets fit (more or less) and life went on. A bit wiser at the close of the project, I made up my mind that if I were ever to build something from the ground up, I would do everything in my power to see that the foundation was rock solid. I had had enough of fixing preventable problems from the past.

It occurs to me that life is a lot like that. Things just go a lot smoother for a lot longer if the Foundation is secure to start with. For the person setting out to build a life, there IS no better Foundation than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

To know Him supersedes all else that might otherwise seem solid and secure. Without Jesus as the Foundation, whatever else one may build will be out of square and out of plumb. He truly is the Rock of our salvation. 

Lovingly,

Pastor Rich Orrell