These are exciting times at Living Hope Bryan. We have actually been meeting at our current location since February 2009.  It seems like just yesterday that we were meeting as a core group trying to decide what we were going to be about as a church.  It has been cool to see so many people step up in leadership and in serving.  We are truly becoming a family.  There is no way that we could have accomplished so much in such a short time without the body being the body.  As we have said many times before, “We are in this together.”  Although we may have a ways to go to be like the church in Acts, we are making progress.  I hope that everyone has been as blessed as I have with the team teaching approach to the preaching of the word each Saturday.  It is totally amazing how God uses men with totally different styles and delivery to preach the Word with power and authority.  As we all know, all of the authority for our faith and practice comes from God’s Word.  It is God’s Word that encourages us to change and to draw closer to our God.  As God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things, he gets the glory and the credit.  And this is what we are at Living Hope Bryan, a group of ordinary people serving an amazing and powerful God.  We have already had a number of new members added to our church family and also some new members to the kingdom.  Praise God!  As a body, we have stepped outside the walls of the church to pursue the community as well as other churches with the love of Christ.  Our first corporate worship service with three other churches in the Bryan area was a blessing to me personally because it has always been a passion of mine to see churches worship and serve together.  I hope that it is just the beginning to something amazing that pleases our Lord.

As Christians, we are called to be different.  The Bible calls us aliens in this world because this world is not our home.  We are to live life through God’s power that is available to us through the Holy Spirit.  We are to never settle for staying where we are spiritually.  As we read in 2 Peter 1:3-8, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.  For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

My hope and prayer is that no one ever settle for complacent, powerless Christianity but that they would commit themselves to a lifestyle of growth where they are adding to their faith things that would draw them closer to God so that they would gain the confidence and the power to have victory over sin and this world.  Remember, we are here for only a short time so we should live our life with a purpose:  To honor and glorify God.

Allen Palermo – Teaching Elder/Pastor