Thank you Lord for your blessings on me!

Today was a great day at Calvary Free Will Baptist Church. Things just seemed to fit together and the worship and preaching just flowed. School starts tomorrow, so a lot of folks that have been traveling around for the summer are back home and were at church this morning for which I am very thankful. I preached this morning from Luke 5:33-39. This text helps us to see that change is a fact of life and can be a great thing. Through Jesus Christ, God offers us an opportunity to share in a 1) a new celebration, 2) a new covenant, and 3) a new choice. Tonight we continued our look through the Old Testament book of Joshua. What has amazed as I have studied, prepared, and preached through this text many centuries old is how incredibly relevant and applicable it is to the Church today. God's Word, the Holy Bible, really is a living book unlike any other.
After services tonight Leslie and I went to Fuddruckers with some other folks from church. (Have you heard that Fuddruckers is going out of business??? That might be another post for another time.) After eating, I stopped by the Hospice house in Columbus to check on a dear saint who was suppose to have gone on to Heaven several days ago according to the doctors (Yet another post for another time). Sis. Jifkins is a kind, sweet Christian lady. As I walked into the room she raised up and motioned for me to come over to her and give her a hug, which I of course did. I visited for a few minutes and then had a word of prayer with her and her daughter.
As I traveled home, I began to reflect on today. I realize how tremendously blessed I am. God has been so very good to me. MUCH better than I deserve that is for certain. I have so much to thank Him for. Today, though in the midst of the harried Sunday of the pastoral life, God smiled down on me as I looked up to Him. I have the great honor of serving not only God, but a loving church family that means the world to me. I have the honor of breaking open God's Word for His people and He speaks through it and lives are changed.
There are certainly days when pastoring is a tiring affair. There are those Sunday nights and Monday mornings that make pastors cringe and think about throwing in the towel. But it is days like today that make it all worth while. No one became a Christian (that I am aware of) in services. We did not have record attendance. I did not baptize anyone today. (These seem to be the conventional ways we judge the  success of a church/ministry/pastor.) However, people responded to God's Word being preached. People came to the altar and prayed that God would help change them for the better. I was able to minister grace and comfort to a family facing the loss of a loved one, and enjoy the encouragment and fellowship of a group of people that have become part of my family. I think that it has been a good, successful day! Indeed God has certainly been good to me. I just wanted to stop and say, "Thank you Lord for your blessings on me!"

So tell me, how has the Lord been blessing you?