Waterbrooke Church Lisa Washington

This Sunday was Father’s Day. For our message this week, we spent a little time together meditating upon Psalm 23. The twenty-third psalm is without a doubt the most well-known and, I would suggest, well-loved of all 150 psalms. And I think rightly so.
This psalm brings the assurance that from beginning to end the Lord, Yahweh, shepherds his people through all the storms of life and brings us safely into our eternal home with Himself forever. It is a psalm of enormous comfort. It is a psalm of rock-solid hope and peace. What we often don’t recognize is that it is also a very personal psalm from the Son about his Father. 
One commentator reminds us that the Psalms are the most quoted part of the Old Testament in the New Testament. He writes: “This was not because the Psalms seemed to them to cover the full range of human emotions – a psalm for every mood. Not at all. It was not sentimentalism or anthropocentrism. Rather, it was because the Psalms were about the Messiah, the Christ of God.” Come this Sunday as we consider the twenty-third psalm through the lens of Jesus. It will prove to be an amazing picture for us of the purest and highest Father and Son relationship that led to our adoption into God’s family. Because Psalm 23 is about Jesus, we can be sure that He will shepherd us all the way home! Looking forward to worshiping with you all!
In Christ,
Kevin Dibbley, Senior Pastor

New Series this Summer - “Sing to the King.” It is a study of the psalms with a focus on God’s provision of a righteous, redeeming King for His people. That King is Jesus. Thank God that He is the King that we all need but could never find. In a world where leaders are perpetually flawed and fallen, there is One who can be trusted.
 

This Sunday, in our series called “Sing to the King”, we considered Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is one of the two “gateway” psalms (along with Psalm 1) that are designed to be the lenses through which we read all of the other 150 psalms. Psalm 2 declares that as aggressively evil and unjust as the world around us might be, nothing can withstand God’s zeal to establish the kingdom of His Son.
Do we realize how passionate our God is for the entire cosmos to be under the reign of His good King? The world might be passionate to throw off God’s rule over their lives, but it cannot compare to God’s passion to bring all the nations out from under sinful human tyranny and under the just, good, and faithful rule of King Jesus.
This Sunday’s message is called "Yahweh’s Chosen King". Come and be encouraged and filled with awe and hope at a God who will not rest until every corner of the earth finds its rest under the reign of King Jesus.
Pray for our church family and pray over your hearts that Christ would meet with us and minister His wonderful grace to us.
In Christ,
Kevin Dibbley, Senior Pastor
 
Need prayer?  Would you like to find out more about Waterbrooke Church?  Go to waterbrooke.church.

This Sunday, our sermon was entitled “Pursuing Godliness.” Often, in the western world, we think of our spiritual lives as a private or personal matter between us and God. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the New Testament, our personal godliness is a crucial part of the church’s mission to proclaim and to protect the truth of the gospel in a world in desperate need of Christ. This Sunday’s message will be taken from 1 Timothy 6:6-19 and it is a postscript to our study on the letter of Ephesians. 1 Timothy was written by the apostle Paul to encourage the pastor of the church at Ephesus to remember how crucial the church is to the mission of God in the world. Paul writes, “I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:14-15). How we live as the church upholds or undermines the truth of God. As we enter the summer season, what is really on your priority list? Summer can be a great season for rest, growth, and spiritual recalibration. However, it is often a time when many Christians are tempted to drift, to let down their guard, or to become distracted. Be careful… not just for your own sake but also for the sake of others. Summer is a time for spiritual intentionality. Paul makes it clear that Christians need to make it their priority to pursue growth in godliness. Let’s gather this Memorial Sunday and consider together how pursuing godliness ought to be at the top of our priority lists as gospel-loving, Christ-exalting Christians. Let’s commit ourselves to a summer of growth in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! Looking forward to worshiping with you!In Christ, 
Kevin Dibbley, Senior Pastor

God’s people continually need encouragement. You do. I do. Our missionaries do. In the mission of God, it is easy for Christians to forget that God has designed the church to build one another up and to encourage each other in the faith. This side of heaven, the Christian life is fraught with perils. We are in a spiritual battle. It is often discouraging and tiring. Yet, we are not alone in this.We have been studying this letter to the Ephesians because it contains the call of our Waterbrooke Church mission to be “compelled to love one another.” Encouragement is a clear way to love each other.  Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus from a Roman prison with the goal of encouraging and strengthening the brethren and to encourage them to do the same. Even though he himself was in the precarious position of being in chains for the gospel, he knew enough about how tough it is to live for the kingdom of God even when you don’t have chains. God’s people need to cultivate a consistent environment of mutual encouragement and edification. This week’s message, from Ephesians 6:21-24, is called “The Ministry of Encouragement.” In Paul’s final words to the church at Ephesus, we can see the kind of encouragement that we all need. Let’s pray for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we might learn to encourage one another in living out our great calling to be God’s people, His bride, in a broken and needy world. 
 

This week, our sermon, from Ephesians 6:18-20,  was called Fostering a Passion for Prayer. As the apostle Paul comes to the end of this letter to the church, he calls for an all-out commitment to prayer. Paul knows that human effort and ingenuity cannot advance the kingdom of Christ. Unlike Muslims who respond to an external call to prayer 5 times a day, Paul wants believers to respond to an internal call to prayer continuously. Prayer is Paul’s passionate conviction. It is Paul’s confidence in his life and ministry. Paul prayed earlier in Ephesians 3:20 declaring that God “is able to do abundantly more than we ask or think according to the power at work in us.” Every day when Paul looked in the mirror (or whenever, Paul could see his reflection), he saw the biggest miracle of his day. A hater, a blasphemer, a persecutor of the church is now one of Christianity’s greatest ambassadors. If God could save Paul, he could save anyone! Oh, that God would give us all a passion for prayer! Would you pray this week that you would start to pray kingdom-advancing, strong-hold breaking prayers? Would you pray that God would teach you to pray so that prayer would not just be a Christian task but what you look forward to most each day? Would we all pray for each other that we would continuously be in prayer for the people of God and the mission of God? Looking forward to enjoying Jesus with you this Sunday as we gather together for worship. Pray for us!In Christ, 
Kevin Dibbley, Senior Pastor

As we continue working our way through Paul's letter to the Colossians, we are encouraged to prayerfully live our lives and walk before the world in a manner which shows how beautiful Christ is.  Our personal contexts are a means through which God intends to communicate grace; both to us and through us. Though they may not be glamorous by the world's standards, we're in the service of the King!In Christ, 
Andy Keppel