Overcoming Fears and Obstacles

Dear Crosswalkers,
We praise God for last week’s wonderful celebration of what God has done through Crosswalk Church in the past 10 ½ years!  I extend a great thanks to all who made it such an awesome day of praise and worship and celebrating!

This Sunday we jump back into our “Heroes by Faith” series, a study through the famous faith chapter of the Bible, Hebrews 11.  We will be looking at how BY FAITH, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.  In this passage we will see some practical lessons for overcoming fears and obstacles in our lives.

Joshua was the leader of God’s people at this time.  He was a wonderful military champion because by God’s grace he overcame his fears and saw obstacles as inconsequential to those who live by faith.   This is what God says to Joshua:

“This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the

Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” – Joshua 1:9

Years back, there was a survey taken of what pests we fear most – #1 for men was wasps and bees.  The #1 fear for women was rats and mice.  What unites us is our fear of snakes.  Ophiophobia is the irrational fear of snakes.  David Shepherd, a professor at Southeastern University, did an experiment regarding people’s fear of snakes.  On a highway in Louisiana, he took rubber lifelike turtles and placed them on the highway.  All the motorists would swerve to miss the turtles.  Then he placed rubber snakes in the road, and found that not only would people not hesitate to run over the snakes, but they would even swerve out of their way to run over the snakes!  When the snake was placed off the road on the shoulder, some motorists even drove off the road to run over the snake!  One driver ran over the snake, stopped his car, backed up over the snake again, opened the car door and made sure his rear tire was on the snake, and then peeled out.  But even more interesting was a police officer.  He ran over the snake, backed up, ran over the snake two more times, then got out of his car, drew his service revolver and shot the rubber snake.  We all have fears.

The only way to overcome fears and obstacles is to face them BY FAITH!  This Sunday, I pray that God will help us overcome our fears and the obstacles that are always between us and God’s best for our lives.  As always, this is a great day to invite others to come and worship the Lord with you.  Good things are happening at Crosswalk!  Invite others to share in what God is doing!

Please pray that the Lord would propel us into the future and that all real and perceived obstacles will become irrelevant by virtue of our strong faith!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie

P.S. Thanks for everyone who brought rice and pasta in September for our partnership with Sunnyvale Community Services in feeding struggling familes in our area.  In October, we will collect Halloween candy for our Community Trick or Treat Outreach Event!


UPDATE ON PARKING LOT FUND!
Thanks to some additional gifts, including a generous gift from Sunnyvale Christian School, we have now received a grand total of $20,009.25 to our efforts to remove trip hazards and improve our parking lot!  For this we heartily praise God!  We actually have enough to do the minimal repairs needed to take out the hazards, but of course we would like to do the complete job, which would require between $8-10 thousand more.  We are over two thirds of the way there!!!