We kicked off our third year of ministry this past September at our Field Day. If you weren’t there you surely missed a good time of fellowship and growing closer to God. We ended up having over 60 youth and 150 total for the day. J.B. Long from Matheston, MS came and brought the message and we had three local girls come and share their music with us. We were blessed to have been provided with dinner by Zion Hill Baptist Church out of Liberty, MS. And since that weekend we have been blessed to get started on planting the food plots for the year.
We were led to expand our ministry this year and we now have a total of 29 food plots to be used by children and mentors. If you would have told me at the beginning how much God would be using our ministry, I definitely would have been amazed. And that is where I sit today, amazed in the presence of God. I have been blessed to see every one of the kids that have come through the ministry. I get to welcome back some each year and get an update on how they are doing. I am blessed to watch these mentors and hunters grow and mature in Christ. And my favorite blessing is to see one born into the kingdom. I’ve watched lives changed and I can’t begin to explain how amazing it is to see God’s will being done in the lives of those around me.
At the Field Day I watched children having the time of their life. It’s amazing to see kids become confident in things that they never knew a thing about before that day. I listened to a sermon on God’s love and was able to see the love of God flowing around me. I listened as 3 teens shared their talent and watched God move in the lives of everyone there. I saw hands raised in worship, and hands raised for Christ to come into lives. God is moving at Briar Ridge and I hope to watch it grow for many years to come.
I’ve struggled with this blog for almost a month. It’s not that I don’t want to share with you how God has moved at Briar Ridge, I just don’t have the words of praise for all He is doing. It feels as though I’m being redundant. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe how Great God is, and how if you open your heart He can change everything. God is showing me just how inadequate my words are to give Him glory. I’ve been blessed to see so many lives changed, people healed, and blinded eyes opened. So I have a question to each one of you reading this today. I usually don’t ask for a reply, but this season of my life is definitely different. How can we go day to day, minute by minute watching God bless and use us, and run out of praise. I’m not saying we aren’t praising God, or we aren’t thankful for what He is doing. It’s just today I sit in awe of what He has done.
smWe watch the news, or just read the feeds on facebook, and everything is so very negative. And truthfully if we take a look around we see a lot of pain. But, if we would just take a moment to really look their is so very much to praise God for, so much evidence that He is alive and working in our lives today. From some peoples’ point of view, this world is hopeless. But from a Christian point of view, I can see God moving and changing things daily. I watch as my two year old learns to pray, I watch as a 9 year old leads a Bible study, I watch a young girl explore the Bible for the first time, I watch as God answers prayer for a girl never expecting God to move at that time. I ask that you look over your life in recent days, or weeks, and share how you have seen God’s hand at work. Let’s take a moment to remind each other of Who God is and that He is still on the throne!
Love in Christ,
Briar Ridge
