Our Blog

Pastor's Point - July 2023

Dear Church Family,

This past month, Pastor Bryan, myself, and our wives went to the annual Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. As we met, we heard wonderful worship
with challenging messages and took care of important items of business as a convention of churches.

One of the highlights was the commissioning service of seventy-four new International Missionaries who were sent out to the nations of the world.  There were quite a few of
them who could not show their face or reveal which country they were headed to because the country is closed/hostile to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was so inspiring to see the willingness of so many ready to go to wherever God was calling them. This commissioning service is a highlight every year at the convention because it helps to practically remind Southern Baptists of the great mission work we do together as we faithfully give to the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. 

We also had to deal with a matter of a few of our churches who were no longer in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention. We have a confessional
statement of beliefs that we call the Baptist Faith and Message. In it, it makes clear where we stand on key theological understandings. One of those areas is that we believe the office of Pastor in the local church is to be filled by God-called, qualified men to serve our churches. This is not a new understanding that our convention of churches holds. But over the course of time, these churches ordained women to serve as pastors in their churches. As autonomous churches they can do this, but by doing so they were functioning outside the parameters of the Baptist Faith and Message. So, the convention voted to remove them from membership with our convention of churches. Having a common statement of faith that we organize ourselves around is vital for the ongoing spiritual health of our convention.

One other wonderful benefit of going to the convention is that it allows you to fellowship with other believers from around the country. As a part of that fellowship, we were able to spend time both with Jared Mitchell, a former Worship Pastor here at Oakhill, and we also got to spend time with Brian Van Doren, who just recently left us to go to Texas to pastor a church.  It was so wonderful to fellowship and catch up with these two great men!

Next year, the convention is in Indianapolis, Indiana! We are hopeful that we can take a group from Oakhill up on the weekend of the convention to do some mission work in the Indianapolis area. Start praying about that possibility and your availability to go!

We need to keep praying for our convention of churches. Please pray that churches will grow, that pastors will shepherd their churches effectively, and that more of us would look for opportunities to share our faith with the lost and hurting world that is all around us.

I love you and I love being your Pastor!

Pastor's Point - June 2023

Dear Church Family,

It is not hard to look around our world and quickly become disoriented and depressed by what we see coming out of the culture that we live in. As I have said to you before, our culture seems to be running away from God and His truth as fast as they can. If we are not careful, we can be tempted to…

1. Throw our hands up and give up.
2. Hide inside our homes and church.
3. Become sinfully angry and lash out at those who are enslaved in sin and the course of this world.

But I think there is another response that calls us to display an appropriate righteous anger towards the wicked influence in our world.

Recently in our Psalm 119 sermon series we considered Psalm 119:53 which states… “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.” ESV The CSB states…  “Rage seizes me because of the wicked who reject Your instruction.”

This is not so much an anger against everyone who finds themselves transgressing against God’s law at some times in their lives. Righteous anger wells up inside of believers who recognize people who as one commentator points out, “willfully and obstinately despise God’s truth, and cast it behind their backs, and live in a continued course of disobedience to it; they willfully deny the truth. These are people who actively encourage others to reject God’s truth and order of things.

But how can we ensure that our anger is righteous anger and not sinful anger? In an article entitled; Three Criteria of Righteous Anger Paul Tautges interacts with Robert Jones’s book Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help for a Common Problem. Jones warns about the difficulty we have of discerning the sinfulness of our anger, he writes of the danger of self-deception. He states, “Let’s begin with a humbling observation: most human anger is sinful. The biblical record confirms this. But then in his article, Tautges points out Jones’ three distinguishing marks of righteous anger to help us discern right responses in our lives. Jones points out that for our anger to be righteous, all three of the following must be true:

1. Righteous Anger Reacts against Actual Sin. Righteous anger arises from an accurate perception of true evil, from sin as defined biblically, i.e., as a violation of God’s Word (Rom 3:23; 1 Jn 3:4). Righteous anger does not result from merely being inconvenienced or from violations of personal preference or human tradition.
2. Righteous Anger Focuses on God and His Kingdom, Rights, and Concerns, Not on Me and My Kingdom, Rights and Concerns. In Scripture, God-centered motives, not self-centered motives, drive righteous anger. Righteous anger focuses on how people offend God and His name, not me and my name. It terminates on God more than me. In other words, accurately viewing something as offensive is not enough. We must view it primarily as offending God.
3. Righteous Anger Is Accompanied by Other Godly Qualities and Expresses Itself in Godly Ways. Righteous anger remains self-controlled. It keeps its head without cursing, screaming, raging, or flying off the handle. Nor does it spiral downward in self-pity or despair. It does not ignore people, snub people, or withdraw from people.

May God help us to know the difference between righteous and sinful anger in our lives. And then I pray that God helps us to have the courage of our convictions and be willing to display a righteous anger when necessary and appropriate as we live in this world for the glory of our God.

I love you and I love being your pastor!