Counting Our Blessings

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in an evening sermon about counting our blessings. The Lord has been good to us in many ways. Surely, we can’t number them all. However, it is a good thing to name some of the blessings we have kindly received from God. We have been blessed with family members and friends and jobs and provision. And our chief blessings are found in Christ through his life, death, resurrection, and intercession (Eph. 1:3-14). The Lord is the giver of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17)—the greatest being Jesus our Savior.

As it pertains to our church, in 2025, we experienced many blessings. CPC continued to grow. We saw conversions and a baptism by profession of faith. We had numerous children born into our visible church, along with covenant baptisms. We started a fuller Wednesday night ministry with a meal for fellowship, instruction for kids and youth, and we continued our weekly prayer meeting. We made our way through almost 40 sections of the Gospel of Luke in the morning service, along with a brief Old Testament series in the summer and an advent series during Christmas.

In the evening service, we heard sermons through 1 Samuel and started 2 Samuel. Our Sunday School activities included lots of teaching for our children, and instruction for our youth and adults on the book of Exodus, the Westminster Confession, Martin Luther, and the Nicene Creed. Our small groups and men’s and women’s studies met for fellowship, time in the Word, prayer, and instruction in theology. Our corporate witness was blessed through the ministry at the Phoenix Senior Living. Our individual witness saw many visitors to the church. CPC had several folks join the church in 2025. Our congregation is expanding downwardly in the Word, inwardly in love and service for each other, outwardly in evangelism, and upwardly in worship and communion with God. May we excel even more in these areas as we continue in 2026.

In addition, we were also blessed through our giving. Our tithes and offerings substantially exceeded our expenditure, leaving us with a large excess for the year. The session dispersed some of that to our existing missionaries that you see on the back of your bulletin, and we gave to other works as well. The reminder will be placed in the building fund.

Another area of blessing has been with our intern Trey Weaver and his family. Trey continues to work hard at seminary and with his presbytery responsibilities moving towards ordination. Lord willing, we will have a congregational meeting this Sunday for the purpose of electing the session to be the search committee, which in the weeks ahead will recommend that the congregation elect Trey to be an associate pastor at CPC. God has blessed us in many ways. Naming some of them one by one gives us perspective on the goodness of God. Counting these blessings makes us thankful and spurs us on in love and good deeds. Considering God’s blessings in Christ and in providence encourages us to keep growing in unity, maturity, ministry, and purity, all with our eyes on Christ.

—Pastor Clif