Suffering & Trials

The evening opened with Elijah at Horeb (1 Kings 19), where God asked, "What are you doing here?" The preacher pressed every heart to examine its true motive for coming to the house of God: not to socialize or merely hear the singing, but to meet Jesus himself, who promised to be present wherever two or three gather in his name. He recalled how, at his conversion in 1979 at age 23, one name alone drew him - Jesus Christ - and reminded the church that a right motive changes the way we sing, pray, and live. The main message walked through the book of Job under the theme "Where is your happiness hidden?" Job was blameless, God-fearing, and immensely wealthy, yet he rose early to pray for his children and stayed faithful "all his days." When Satan stripped away his wealth and his children in a single day, Job worshiped: "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Never knowing of the unseen contest in heaven, he endured, argued honestly with God, repented when God spoke from the whirlwind, and was finally restored double. James points to Job as proof that the Lord is full of compassion. A visiting pastor from the Rivne region of Ukraine then testified about serving through the war - cutting and shipping firewood, food, and clothing to the east and south, and visiting war widows with the gospel. From the woman who anointed Jesus ("she did what she could") to the parable of the faithful servant, he urged the church to labor now, while it is still the day of salvation, and not to be held back by critics or fear.

This Sunday gathering brought three voices together around one thread - trusting God by faith. The first message opened with Jesus' words that we live not by bread alone but by every word from God, then asked plainly: what is faith? Drawing on Peter stepping onto the water, the shield of faith in Ephesians 6, and the disciples who could not free a tormented boy, the preacher described faith as full surrender - handing a situation completely to God and refusing to take it back through fear and worry. A visiting brother from Orlando turned to the cost of following Christ. Using Jesus' call to deny ourselves and take up our cross, Micah's charge to walk humbly with God, and Joshua's resolve that I and my house will serve the Lord, he reminded the church that Jesus warns us out of love because hard moments truly come, and that real discipleship means losing our life to find it in Him. The closing message was the most personal. A preacher shared the loss of his newborn grandson, who lived barely an hour and a half, while his son served on the front line of war. Out of that grief he proclaimed, from Genesis, Isaiah 40, Job 38 and Revelation 15, that God is God - unsearchable, always right, never obligated to explain Himself. Faith does not wait to understand before it obeys; it says, You are God, and that is enough, even through tears and unanswered questions.

On Good Friday the church gathers to keep the feast described in 1 Corinthians 5:8 - Christ our Passover, the Lamb of God slain for us. Reading Luke 23, the preacher points to three groups at the cross: the soldiers who carried out the execution, the crowd and priests who mocked, and the believers who knew the Lord and watched from a distance in sorrow. We belong to that last group - those who have come to know Him and the power of His blood. The heart of the evening is remembrance. Just as God told Israel to keep the manna, write His commands on their garments, and raise stones from the Jordan as a memorial, Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." We were redeemed not with silver or gold but with His precious blood. The old sacrifices of goats and calves only covered sin, but the blood of Christ cleanses and justifies us once for all. A great price was paid, and that price is what makes us precious in God's eyes. The message ends at the Lord's table. Christ bore not only physical agony but inner anguish in Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood, to win our peace as the Prince of Peace. As we eat the bread and drink the cup we become one with Him, sharing in His death and resurrection, and we remember that whoever is forgiven much, loves much.

A guest preacher from Borispol in Ukraine reminded the congregation that the church, like the pool of Bethesda, is the place where we come to touch God - and that in a world still full of the wounded and the needy, that meeting matters more than ever. Drawing on 2 Corinthians 2:14, he gave thanks that God always leads His people in triumph in Christ and spreads the fragrance of the gospel through them in every place. He urged everyone, especially the young men, to labor for God's kingdom without waiting for an easier day, because every hour given to God is counted and rewarded. Turning to Luke 23:32-34, he pointed to Jesus, led away to die between two criminals though He had done no wrong. He told of believers from his own church seized off the street and taken to the front: a worship leader who stepped on a mine and now praises God seated on a prosthesis, and brothers who never came home. Like them, Jesus was treated unjustly - yet from the cross He did not call for punishment but prayed, Father, forgive them. The heart of the message was a question: what do we do when we are wronged, slandered, or robbed? The answer is to do as Christ did - entrust our lives to the Father, trust His will in which not a single hair falls without Him, and answer injustice with prayer and forgiveness. We live in the days of Matthew 24, when wars are not yet the end and our faith must not fail when it is sifted like wheat.

The evening opened with a call to prepare our hearts like good soil, so the word God sows can take root and bear fruit. From there the message turned to the Book of Ruth, set in the days of the judges when famine drove a family from Bethlehem to Moab. Naomi loses her husband and both sons and comes home empty, yet her daughter-in-law Ruth refuses to leave her, choosing Naomi's people and Naomi's God without knowing what the future holds. In Bethlehem God begins to rebuild what was broken. Boaz, a godly kinsman-redeemer, honors the foreign widow and chooses to fulfill the law and restore her family, while a nearer kinsman, afraid of losing his own inheritance, refuses and is left nameless in Scripture. The preacher tied this to Paul's words in Philippians 4: to be content in plenty and in want, doing everything through Christ who gives strength. A second word pressed the same theme - go all the way to the end. Drawing on Galatians 6:9, Elisha's double portion, the arrows King Joash stopped shooting too soon, and the persistent Canaanite woman, the message warned against growing weary, living on old memories, or stopping halfway. God has plans for our future and hope (Jeremiah 29), but much depends on whether we keep seeking Him with our whole heart and finish the race.

This Lord's Supper service was devoted to the suffering of Jesus Christ and the price He paid for our salvation. The preacher opened in Luke 2, pointing out three ways people come into God's house: some are drawn by the Spirit like Simeon, some by the faithful habit of prayer and fasting like Anna the prophetess, and some simply by custom like the family of Jesus at Passover. Whatever brings us, he said, it is good to be in the house of the Lord. Tracing the cross through Scripture, he showed how Abraham's offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah pointed forward to the Father giving His only Son on that same mountain. Isaiah foretold centuries in advance a Servant whose face was marred beyond any man, who gave His back to those who struck Him and bore our iniquities, so that by His wounds we are healed. Christ went to Golgotha willingly, never cursing His tormentors, drinking the cup of suffering so that we could receive the cup of blessing. As the congregation broke the bread and shared the cup, the message turned to grace. We are precious not because of ourselves, dust that returns to dust, but because Christ paid so great a price with His blood. Remembering His death proclaims His victory until He comes again, and it gives believers strength to resist sin and to rise after a fall, just as Peter was restored after his denial.

In the rush of the holiday season, this Sunday service called the church to step out of the world's busyness and into God's presence. Drawing on Psalm 73, the first message recalled how Asaph found peace only when he entered the sanctuary and understood his true end - the eternal home waiting with God. The closer we live to the Lord, the more He fills our lives; the farther we drift, the smaller He seems, like a distant plane that looks tiny only because of the space between. From Luke 5, a second message followed Jesus calling Simon Peter. After a fruitless night, Peter obeyed the simple word "at Your word I will let down the nets," and the catch was so great the boats began to sink. Yet the real miracle was not the fish but Peter's broken, humbled heart. God calls the obedient rather than the impressive, gives our ordinary work a higher purpose, and asks us to pour everything we have into His kingdom and follow Him completely. Finally, from Gethsemane in Luke 22, the service turned to Jesus in agony, sweating drops like blood, strengthened by an angel. Prayer was His way of life, never a last resort, and in His deepest pain He prayed more earnestly still, clinging to the Father instead of pulling away. The closing appeal was tender and personal: in seasons of suffering and fear, the only real choice is to draw nearer to God and pray harder, like a hurting child who holds tightly to a parent.

This Sunday service brought together two complementary messages. A visiting minister from California opened the Word from Colossians 2:6 - "As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him." He reminded the church that we first came to Christ by faith, in that unforgettable moment when God opened our eyes and gave us peace with Him. Yet receiving Christ is only the beginning: like Demas, some who once burned for Jesus later drift away, so the call is to stay rooted in Him, in whom the whole fullness of God dwells. Drawing on Romans 8, he compared walking in the Spirit to boarding an airplane: the law of gravity still exists, but a greater power lifts us above it, and so the law of life in Christ raises us over sin and death. Through the picture of a father who gave his only son, and an auction where buying the son's portrait won everything else, he pressed home Romans 8:32 - the God who did not spare His own Son will surely give us all things in Him. A second message, from Psalm 121, spoke to those in painful, unanswered seasons. Sharing his own struggles over a daughter's health and an uncertain future, the preacher confessed he had no neat answers, only one word from God: keep looking up. When we fix our eyes on the troubles around us, despair grows, but our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. The service also honored the church's pastors and servants and closed in prayer for the sick and grieving.

The midweek service opened with Paul's prayer in Ephesians that believers would be strengthened in the inner being by the Holy Spirit, so that every desire and plan would be brought under God's will. From there two connected truths were unfolded: how much our souls are worth to God, and how openly we are invited to speak with Him. The first message reminded us that the soul cannot be bought back with silver or gold, but only with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). No one can climb up to heaven by his own effort. Drawing on the rich man and Lazarus, the half-shekel ransom of Exodus, and David's sinful census, the preacher warned that a person can gain the whole world and still lose his soul (Matthew 16:26). He shared his own testimony of coming to Christ near the age of thirty-three and then patiently praying for unbelieving relatives, urging us not to grow weary. The second message taught that prayer is honest conversation. Looking at Lamentations 2:19 and Psalm 88, it showed that we may pour out grief, anger, and unanswered questions before God without pretending to be more spiritual than we really are. God knows how to listen, and even when no immediate answer comes, His grace fills the emptied heart with peace.

This midweek service centered on an honest question many believers carry into prayer: what do we do with our negative emotions, our pain and confusion, when we come before the Lord? The preacher first reminded us that Scripture is not a book of magic formulas that works automatically. God has set real conditions for our walk with Him, and our difficulties often appear where we fail to do our part, so we are called to cooperate with God rather than treat His Word mechanically. Drawing on the so-called psalms of cursing, the book of Job, and Psalm 62:8 - pour out your heart before Him - the message used the picture of a full cup. A heart already overflowing with bitterness has no room for God's presence. Job and the psalmist brought their rawest, even shocking words straight to God instead of venting them on other people, and God listened in silence, giving them room to be honest before turning their hearts back to praise and trust. The evening also welcomed three young people preparing for water baptism and prayed for several in need. The closing call was to be real before God: empty your heart of every burden, and let Him fill the space with His peace, just as Jesus, when reviled, did not retaliate but entrusted Himself to the righteous Judge.

This midweek service carried two messages. The first reminded the church that real faith is never just words but shows itself in works. Like the disciples who spent a single day with Jesus and then went out saying, "We have found the Messiah," our ordinary lives should let people see Christ, so that our light shines and the Father is glorified. The main message continued a series on prayer as a conversation with God and asked what place our emotions, especially the negative ones, have in that conversation. God does not forbid or condemn our feelings; pretending all is well while we are hurting only divides and damages us. The Psalms show honest believers pouring out grief, despair, and even the raw, frightening words of the cursing psalms before the Lord. Two lessons stood out. A strong revulsion at real evil proves our conscience still tells right from wrong and that we are spiritually alive. And the bitterest feelings are meant to be carried to God in prayer rather than dumped on the people around us. Buried emotions never disappear; they are far safer handed to the Lord, who heals what we surrender to Him.

On the night before His death Jesus rose from the supper and washed His disciples' feet, leaving an example of humble, voluntary service (John 13). Even with the cross before Him, His concern was not for Himself but for those around Him, and He calls us to lift one another up just as He came to lift us out of our troubles and into fellowship with the Father. Drawing on Exodus 12 and 1 Corinthians 5:7, the message recalls Israel's slavery in Egypt, the ten plagues, and the spotless lamb whose blood on the doorposts caused God's judgment to pass over His people. Jesus is that flawless Lamb (1 Peter 1:18-19); we are redeemed not by silver or gold but by His precious blood. Yet the blood must be applied personally - confessed with the mouth and believed in the heart. The congregation then shares the bread and the cup, remembering His broken body and the new covenant in His blood (1 Corinthians 11). Because we eat from one loaf, we belong to God and to one another as His body. The service ends with a call to answer such love by giving Him our whole life - not half, but all of it - just as He set Himself apart for us (John 17:19).

On Palm Sunday, one week before Easter, the pastor reflects on Jesus entering Jerusalem and weeping, because He came to His own and His own did not receive Him (John 1). The greatest privilege a person can have is to open the door of the heart, welcome Him in, and be called a child of God. The central message, drawn from a childhood memory of a village blacksmith, compares our lives to iron in the forge. The smith heats the metal red-hot, hammers it, and plunges it into cold water to make it strong and useful. In the same way God allows us into the furnace of testing - pressed at home, at work, even in church - to burn away our pride and refine our character for eternity (Proverbs 17:3). Through Joseph, betrayed by his own brothers yet later forgiving them and giving them the best land, through the three young men in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3), and through a struggling former student who feels God has abandoned her, the pastor insists that God is not a feeling but a Person we trust. Hold on to Isaiah 41, where God promises to hold our hand, and you will come out of the fire stronger and receive the crown of life promised to those who endure (James 1:12).

The service opened with thanksgiving and worship, prayers over the children from Psalm 8, and a reading of Psalm 67. Pastor Nikolay then preached from 1 Peter 5:6-7, "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God," weaving in the story of Israel's seventy-year captivity in Babylon. While the false prophet Hananiah promised an easy two years, God had decreed seventy, reminding us that deliverance comes in God's time, not ours. The pastor taught that God controls everything, both the good and the hard, and uses our trials to remove the pride and self we were born with. Sharing how he once discovered he could not truly forgive, he urged the church to stop pitying themselves, lift their eyes to heaven, and praise God in the storm, following Christ who suffered without retaliating and entrusted Himself to the righteous Judge (1 Peter 2:21-23). A closing message and a mother's testimony of her daughter's healing carried the theme further. Like the broken alabaster jar that filled Simon the leper's house with fragrance (Mark 14:3; John 12:3), believers once cast aside like lepers are now the aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:14). Carrying this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7), we are called to proclaim His victory everywhere, even through suffering.

The midweek service opened with John 13:31, where Jesus, the very moment Judas left to betray Him, said: Now is the Son of Man glorified. Before the cross, before the empty tomb, He already spoke of glory. The preacher reflected on how often we fail to see what God is doing - when people betray us, when we carry a cross of sorrow, when we pass through the valley of death. Only on the far side do we begin to grasp that God wants to be glorified in our lives. Scripture after Scripture made the same point: the man born blind (John 9), so the works of God might be shown; Israel trapped between the sea, the mountains, and Pharaoh (Exodus 14), so God could display His glory; the doubting officer at Samaria's gate (2 Kings 7), who saw God's provision but never tasted it because of unbelief. God's ways are not our ways, and His timing is not ours. Like the sister who said she would lay down her oars and let God steer her boat, we are called to stop striving and trust. A second message urged believers to put off the old self and put on the new (Colossians 3, 2 Corinthians 5, Romans 12), to be transformed by the renewing of the mind and to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. Using the picture of Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3, stripped of filthy garments and clothed in clean ones, and the bronze mirrors the women of Israel kept polished, he called the church to daily cleansing through Christ's blood, so His glory would shine from their hearts. Testimonies of answered prayer - a visa granted and a sudden healing - confirmed that God is faithful to His word.

Preached during a week of fasting and prayer for the church, this Wednesday message opens with the reminder that God now dwells among His people in the church, the pillar and ground of the truth. The preacher shares his own first experience of fasting, when he begged God for healing, grew impatient, and finally learned that he had nothing to prove to God; the Lord healed him in His own way and time. Fasting, he explains, exists to deepen our prayer and to pull us out of our comfortable routine so the spiritual person can grow. The heart of the message is Israel at Rephidim (Exodus 17), where thirsty people quarreled with Moses and asked, 'Is the Lord among us or not?' Though they had just seen the sea parted, manna, and quail, hardship turned them into complainers, like a spoiled child stamping his feet. The preacher confesses he met the same temptation in a half-built church with only a handful of workers, and again during the COVID years; yet those who kept trusting and laboring saw God build His house. He then points to the struck rock as a picture of Christ, the source of living water, broken for us so that rivers of living water might flow. Finally, in the battle with Amalek, Israel prevailed only while Moses' hands were lifted in prayer. The lesson: when we stop crying out to God, the stream of His grace dries up, so we must come boldly to the throne of grace, where faith, prayer, and obedience turn the impossible into the possible.

The evening opens at Psalm 51, where David asks the Lord to open his lips so he can offer praise. God does not delight in outward sacrifice but in a broken and contrite heart, the kind of prayer the tax collector brought in Luke 18 when he beat his chest and asked for mercy. We gather not to impress one another but to sharpen one another, like iron sharpening iron, and to come before God humbly. The main message walks through Acts chapter 5. The apostles are jailed for preaching, freed by an angel, and told to go right back and keep proclaiming the word. Against all human logic they return to the same place that got them arrested, declaring before the council that we must obey God rather than men. Gamaliel warns that schemes built on men collapse, but a work of God cannot be stopped. Like Joseph, who honored God through slavery and prison and was lifted to second in the kingdom, those who put God first bear fruit that lasts. The preacher asks whose voice we really follow: God's, or the noise of news, fear, leaders, and friends. A second word turns to love. Jesus told the rich young ruler to love his neighbor as himself, and then gave a new commandment to love one another as He has loved us, so that everyone would know we are His disciples. Salvation is grace, a gift we cannot earn by works, shown in how Christ looked on Peter and restored him after his denial. We are called to love one another without conditions, no matter how others have treated us.

Opening with Matthew 11:28-30, the preacher observes that people everywhere are exhausted and anxious, chasing an elusive "American dream" that never satisfies. Jesus calls all the weary and burdened to come to Him for rest - not so He does our work for us, but so He lifts the crushing weight of our own worries and gives us His light yoke in exchange. The theme is "gain through loss." Christ Himself lived to do the Father's will rather than His own, and He invites us to do the same: to stop being slaves of our own desires (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Galatians 2:20) and let Christ live in us. We are not our own, having been bought at the price of His blood, so the hardest battle is the one against our own self-will, and it is won only by the help of the Holy Spirit. Bearing the cross God assigns makes us salt and light in a perishing world (Matthew 5; Matthew 10); living only for ourselves leaves us no different from unbelievers. Faithful cross-bearing leads to a glorious crown (Revelation 3:11), for there is no crown without a cross and no gain without loss. The preacher closes by urging each listener to examine their heart, repent while there is still time, and willingly take up Christ's yoke.

This Wednesday service held two messages, yet both beat with one heart - learning to trust God when life turns difficult. The first, drawn from Psalm 27, the psalm of trust, looks at how David prayed while enemies pressed in around him. He opens not with a list of requests but with a confession of God's strength, refusing to be afraid, longing above all to dwell in the house of the Lord and to be led by God's own hand. In these last and unsettled days, the preacher urged, our prayer must become constant and sincere rather than rote, because heartfelt prayer brings peace and steadies our hope. The second message turns to the prophet Elijah at the brook Cherith, fed by ravens - birds the law called unclean. Elijah did not argue with God's strange way of providing; he simply obeyed. When the brook dried up, that very hardship moved him on to the widow and later to Mount Carmel, where the people repented. In the same way God often arranges uncomfortable circumstances to reposition us where He needs us, for all things work together for good to those who love Him. The God who spoke 'let there be light' over formless darkness still creates from nothing by His word. Even when faith and resources feel gone, calling on Jesus carries His light into the darkest corners of our lives - for healing, for salvation, for change. The evening closed with the apostle Paul's testimony: fight the good fight, finish the race, keep the faith, and live longing for the Lord's appearing.

This Sunday service was given over to the Lord's Supper. The pastor read from 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul passes on what he received from the Lord: the bread is Christ's body broken for us, the cup is the new covenant in His blood, and we keep this table in remembrance of Him. Before anyone eats the bread or drinks the cup, he must examine his own heart so as not to receive unworthily. To prepare those hearts, the preacher walked through the passion in Mark 14 and 15. He pointed to Mary anointing Jesus in the home of Simon, the leper Christ had healed; to Judas grumbling over the cost and then betraying with a kiss; to the Last Supper; to the hymn sung on the way to the Mount of Olives; to Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed, let this cup pass, yet not My will; and on to the arrest, the trial before Pilate, the crown of thorns, the mocking, Simon of Cyrene, the crucifixion, and the centurion's confession, Truly this man was the Son of God. He urged believers to trust the Word of God rather than their own ideas, to walk the good road every day, and to live ready for the moment life suddenly stops - where would we go then? He shared the joy of an elderly Jewish woman coming to Christ, and invited anyone present to call on the name of Jesus and receive Him. The service closed in prayer as the congregation took the bread and the cup with reverence and thanksgiving.

This midweek gathering opened with a reminder that God's Word falls on an open heart the way rain and snow fall on an open field (Isaiah 55). It never returns empty but always does its work, so nothing should be allowed to stand between heaven and our hearts. A second brother, reading from 1 Peter 1, spoke humbly of his own frailty, of twice being close to death, and urged the church to keep believing, hoping, and loving, since the wings of the Holy Spirit are faith and humility. Reflecting on Sunday's communion, one preacher took up the hard question of Gethsemane (Luke 22): was Jesus afraid of the cross when He prayed for the cup to pass? Tracing John 10 and 12, Hebrews 5 and 10, he concluded there was no fear, for perfect love casts out fear. The agony, even sweating blood, was the enemy's last assault, and Christ prayed not to die in the garden before reaching Golgotha. An angel strengthened Him so He could finish the work, and a poem about the thief on the cross showed that all of us, like that dying man, were rescued by sheer grace. A further message rested on Psalm 23 and John 10: the Lord is my shepherd. We entrust God with the greatest thing, our eternity, yet often refuse to give Him the small daily worries, though His thoughts are far higher than ours. The service ended with a call to fast and pray for the church, recalling how King Hezekiah carried his crisis straight into the house of God and was delivered.

The evening opens with Psalm 103:13 - as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him - and turns to a question that quietly haunts many believers: if God blessed, healed, or rescued someone else, could He not do the same for me? Walking through Joseph interpreting the two prisoners' dreams in Genesis 40 and the crowd at Lazarus' tomb in John 11, the preacher shows how naturally we generalize God, assuming that because He acted one way for one person He owes the same to everyone. Hebrews 11 shatters that assumption. The same chapter celebrates those who by faith conquered kingdoms and received their dead raised, and then lists those who were tortured, stoned, sawn in two, and killed by the sword. Same God, same faith, the same will, yet wildly different outcomes. Romans 9 and the image of the Potter and the clay answer the cry for fairness: God shows mercy to whom He wills, and the clay has no right to argue with the Potter. The call is to stop measuring our lives by other people's blessings and to accept God's individual purpose for us. God can, but He is not obligated. Like Peter, who asked about John, we hear, "What is that to you? Follow Me." The safest and happiest place is the center of God's will, even when it is painful or hard to understand, saying, "I agree with You."