True Fellowship 2/23/2013

Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. (Psalm 34:3)

  
 On the heels of last weeks abundant grace, our team; David, Mark (the Hammer), Sharon, Debbie, Jack, Dean C., Sai, Dean S., and Steve, enjoyed a time of refreshing fellowship and the quiet working of the Holy Spirit. We were joined, during prayer time, by Maggie Castro, who graciously stopped by to offer encouragement to the team. What a rich blessing it is to serve with fellow saints devoted to sharing the true gospel with every creature who will stand still long enough to listen.

In Acts, Chapter 8, verses 26-40, the Bible tells of how the Lord used the first missionary to be named in scripture, Philip, to "preach Jesus" to one man, "a man of Ethiopia." After witnessing to and baptizing this man Philip was "caught away" by the Holy Spirit to a place called Azotus, where he began preaching in all the cities on the way to Caesarea. Clearly, by divine appointment, every single person to whom we speak of Jesus is the person to whom the Holy Spirit has ordained for us to speak to. But we must speak.

Before Dean S. could get onto the box a homeless man approached him and asked him for prayer. Dean prayed for the man and then gave him some packaged snack foods. Unlike the North Hollywood station, we rarely see homeless people at the Burbank Mall. Seldom is a hungry person indifferent to the gospel after receiving even a small amount of food. The well-fed are often quite content to pass on by.



Please join us at the CBC Missions conference, SATURDAY, MARCH 2nd, 4:30 to 8:30 pm. There will be no evangelism outreach that evening.

Save Saeed

Epic Evening of Evangelism 2/16/2013

God answers prayer! The Lord is ever faithful to raise up laborers for the harvest. Tonights bumper crop of evangelists was greater than we dared imagine:  Mark, David, Dean S., Ruth, Steve, Forrest, Sharon, Debbie, Elder Bob, Dean C., Sai, Jack, Steve V., and a new guy, Paul.

Due to the abundant grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, there are too many things the Holy Spirit was doing to even begin to recount here. As the one whom Jesus loved said reverently, "if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25)

Consider the everyday miracle that sinful men and women, both saved and unsaved, could be used in such a glorious way, by the Lord, to accomplish His perfect will. Our friend and "nemesis," Roger, who is unrestrained in his passionate contempt for the plain truth of scripture, drew a crowd with his usual invective. What followed was two hours of heated heckling by various persons young and old. The result of which was the repeated, fervent, clear proclamation of the glorious Gospel.

Sometimes the observers can't help getting involved and start heckling the heckler. This is something we try to avoid, because it dissipates the focus of the crowd. So the man on the box does what he can to restore order.

Surrounding the public debate on the box, countless one-to-one and one-to-many conversations and Gospel presentations were occurring.

If you look closely, you will see at least six separate conversations taking place.

Some of the questions hurled at the man on the box:
-Is it a sin to be gay?
-Doesn't everyone have a right to be happy?
-How do you know that the Bible is true?
-How do you know that Jesus even existed?
-What is 2+2 ?
-Where do babies come from?
-How does a one year old child sin?
-Why do you want to force others to follow your religion?





The greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts of men was in the eagerness with which many sought answers to these and other serious questions. In addition to many tracts and all of the Bibles, 200 copies of the "180" DVD were distributed.

Finally, we were blessed to see numerous conversations continuing as we left the mall.

"Then He said to them, 'Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.'"  (Luke 24:46,47)

Free Hugs Are Nice, But . . . 2/9/2013

Free Hugs will not save you. Might as well hug a tree. Or visualize whirled peas. None of these things will hurt you, but neither will they provide anything but a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Instead we are called to:

Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  (2 Timothy 4:2-5)

Our core team: David, Mark, Dean, Sai, Jack & Steve heeded the call to fulfill CBC's ministry to the lost sheep of Burbank. Significantly, at the next day's service, Pastor Tim Carns, who had just returned from a mission trip to the Philippines, spoke passionately about the need for our Church to be engaged in the work of evangelism. The following link will open a new window and download Sunday's sermon to your computer: Philippines Trip

This can either be saved to your hard drive, or listened to directly. It is approximately one hour long. If for some reason the link above does not work, you can find this file at the CBC Website by clicking on "Listen - Sunday's Sermon" and navigating to the sermon dated 2/10/2013:  CBC Website

"Religious people think that; 'If I go to church, if I help old ladies across the street, if I give out free hugs, God will like me.' No! You need to be made righteous in the sight of God. You need to have your sins atoned for."

SIGN THE PETITION!

Go, Stand, Preach 2/2/2013

The Burbank mall was extra quiet on this Super Bowl weekend as some great preaching filled the night air. Elder Bob and other team members Mark, Ruth, Jack, Dean C., Sai, Dean S., Nathan, and Steve, distributed tracts and took to the box as a light rain fell. 

Handing out tracts is like sowing seeds of faith. Our prayer is that each one would find a heart that is open to the work of the Holy Spirit. Consider this: every seed that we sow will be used in the providence of our sovereign God to accomplish His perfect will. "So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:11)

Our newest regular team member, Jack, spoke to this group for about 20 or 30 minutes. It is impossible to know who will be receptive to the gospel. It seems the great majority of those we talk with have either never heard the true gospel, or have never heard it clearly explained.

In explaining the Gospel, Dean never fails to put the truth in clear, everyday language. "Please don't take kindness for weakness. Just because God doesn't punish you the second you sin, don't think He doesn't care about sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to know how much God hates sin, look at the Cross. Look at what He allowed His own Son to endure for you."

Elder Bob spoke of the justice of God: "If you were to go before a judge, and you had robbed a bank, and you were to say to the judge, 'I'm sorry, can you let me go?', a good judge has to uphold the law. He is not going to let you go. But we expect God to be unjust. We expect that when we go before God, He is going to look at our sin, and our rebellion against Him, and He's going to say, 'OK, I'll just let you go.' But it's not going to work that way."

CBC members and regular attenders are encouraged to sign up for Elder Bob's excellent evangelism class which will be held on Saturdays beginning February 16th.

Our prayer is that you will join us in serving the Lord in this exciting and faith-building way.

But at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, "Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life."  (Acts 5:19-20)

What are the Odds?

What are the odds of that?