God Is Able, August 23rd, 2026

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Well, good morning, church. Let's try that again, good morning, church. Good morning, this is the day that the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. I wanna say happy Vision Sunday to you, to all of our campuses who are gathered together across central Arkansas today as we worship the Lord, as we fellowship together, and as we celebrate what God has done over the past ministry year and look forward to what God is going to do. My name is Justin Billson. I'm one of the four teaching pastors here at Fellowship and I am excited. I love today. You know why I love today? Because today is a reminder that God is working through his church and you and I get to be a part of that work. Let me say it again, today is a reminder that God is working through his church and you and I get to be a part of that work. And so today we celebrate what God has done over the past ministry year where our focus has been, your kingdom come. And we've got much to celebrate and I'm going to walk through some of those points of celebration and you should have gotten a bulletin when you came in. If you didn't, you can grab one before you leave any one of our campuses. There's a QR code there and I would encourage you to go scan

that and you can receive a digital copy of our annual report which will cover in greater detail a few more of the things that I'm going to cover briefly today. So again, scan that QR code and you can see a digital copy there of our annual report. But church, here are some of the ways we saw God build his kingdom and his church. Right here in central Arkansas we saw God building his church, this church, Fellowship Bible Church, we welcomed over 800 first time guests this past year. More than 300 new members are now calling this church home and we celebrated over 200 baptisms across all campuses. Can we stop and praise God for that across all of our campuses today? Let's stop and praise God, amen. Also want to celebrate that through your generosity in giving, through your generosity in giving, as you may be well aware, we give a portion, a percentage away of whatever we raise, whatever is given, we give a percentage of that away to local and global missions and by God's grace and through your generosity in giving, we've been able to give away last year over $2.4 million to local and global missions and we praise God for that, amen. We can praise God again for that. I also want to remind us and I know maybe you have forgotten since last August, but let me remind us of our initiatives and we'll celebrate some of these more in just a moment, but we praise God for not only the launch, but the growth of North Little Rock and they're watching us

even now, praise God for our North Little Rock campus. Mark is going to come talk about that more in a moment. Talk about how we have grown deeper through the spiritual discipline of prayer with our monthly prayer cards. I praise God for those. How God stirred our hearts for the nations through our global missions weekend, you remember that? Where seven of our international partners came and shared with us what God is doing around the world. And even through our summer feeding initiative, where across all of our campuses, we created, we put together more than 3,000 meal kits to serve families who are food insecure. That's just a few of the ways that we saw God moving in and through our church this year. But specifically, there are also things that we've seen at our individual campuses, at our Benton campus, we celebrate how you have loved your community well through the annual Daddy Daughter Ball, where this year over 350 fathers and daughters and even some father figures were in attendance. Our Cabot campus, we celebrate your generosity in collecting over 11,500 boxes to go to Operation Christmas Child. We celebrate our Espanol campus through their ongoing partnership with Southwest High School. And they, since last year and even now have had 16 faith conversations with students at that high school. We celebrate Maumelle through your intentionality with loving the moms in your city by hosting a Mother's Day

brunch there at Crystal Hill Elementary for over 150. Celebrate the West Little Rock campus right here at the West Little Rock campus, the dedication to serve and pour into the next generation. More than 1,000 kids and students are being discipled each week. We also praise God for the ways God is working at our Midtown campus, how you serve with open hearts, how you care for your neighbor, their access schools, and how you are intentionally pouring into the lives and ministering to those in the Dorcas house. We celebrate these moments and so many more, and I believe that our response to all that God has done is found in the words we too can say like the psalmist in Psalm 118 and 23. As a matter of fact, we're gonna put it on the screen. I want us to say this all together, church. Let's say it across all of our campuses. One, two, three. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Isn't that true today? This is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. We've seen his kingdom come in so many ways this past year. Mark is going to come in just a moment and talk about what we have to look forward to in the coming year, but before he does, I want you to check out this video of a young lady whose life was changed. She shared her story, not only of salvation, but of baptism.

Her name is Ruby, and I want her to tell her story in her own words, so let's watch Ruby's story together. My name is Ruby. I'm about to graduate from Central High School, and I want to take a moment to share why God brought me here today. My dad is strong and wise, and throughout his 26 years of service to our country, he set an incredible example for our family. However, while military life has brought us so many blessings, it's also been the hardest part of our life. The first time I remember my father being deployed I was three years old. This led to some of my earliest memories being filled with anxiety and fear. This constant state of nervousness controlled every part of my life. In middle school, I started battling depression, and I could never quite find peace. I was lost and alone, and began searching for my worth in other people. That led into high school, which made me incredibly vulnerable to peer pressure. I made some bad decisions and didn't treat those around me with love, and no matter where I was in the midst of it all, I still always felt fear and anxiety. That was until October of 2023, when I hit an all-time low when Jesus

found me on my bathroom floor, where he saved my life. He wrapped his arms around me and played my life back to me in my head. The life I'd been ungrateful for, that I hated all of, he showed me the underlying beauty in every moment I've ever taken for granted. And for one of the first times in 15 years, I didn't feel anxious. A month later, one of my friends invited me to FSM at Midtown. What felt like nothing more than an invitation changed my whole life. And now three years later, she's here baptizing me. That alone is something I could never have planned or imagined. Ava simply did what the Lord calls us to do. She planted the seed, and God, in his perfect timing, watered it. What started as a simple invite turned into a friendship that means everything to me. She's now not only my best friend in the world, but my sister in Christ. At Midtown, following that invitation, within the walls of the church and the gym below it, I found the peace that Lord showed me the night that he saved me. But peace is not a gift, it's a blessing. Peace isn't all he gifted me. He gave me freedom from anxiety, freedom from sin.

He gave me a better relationship with my parents. He gave me the best friends. And most importantly, he gave me a new life. That's why I've chosen to be baptized today, not because it saves me, but because he saved me. Today's not about what I've done, but about what he's done in my life and will continue to do. Today, I'm up here not to proclaim my faithfulness, but to publicly testify to his. Do you confess that Jesus lived and died for your sins? Yes. Do you confess that Jesus was raised from the dead and is now Lord of your life? Yes. Thank you, Father. God bless you. Thank you Jesus for giving me this life. God bless you, God bless you. Can we take a moment here and just celebrate Ruby and thank her for sharing her story with us here for a moment? Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your stories about the way the Lord Jesus has worked. work this past year and how he's changing and transforming hearts and lives. And it's so fun to be a part of a church where lives are being changed, where hearts are being transformed.

And that's happening here at Fellowship. And it's been cool to watch over these past few years how the Lord has been working and moving to accomplish the vision that he's given us here at Fellowship. As many of you know, we have a mission here at Fellowship, and that is to make disciples who live by God's grace and for his glory at home and across the world. But we also have a vision as a church. And you may be wondering what's the difference between our mission and our vision. Well, the mission is what we want to do. But the vision is what we wanna be. Think of it almost like a car that's driving down the highway. Our mission acts like guardrails that make sure that we stay on the right path, doing the right things. But our vision is where we're headed. It's what we want to be. And here at Fellowship, our vision, and I'm gonna put it up here on the screen for you, is this, that we hope to be a multi-site, multi-ethnic, multi-generational church with eight campuses, 60 church plants, 100 mission partners locally, globally, intent on making worshipful disciples who follow Jesus and live in his transforming grace in a way that the gospel is proclaimed to over 100,000 in Central Arkansas and beyond.

And we have seen God already working to accomplish that over the past few years. And in particular, this past year, we saw God expand his vision by deepening and enlarging our local and global partners. We now have 48 global partners and 32 local partners. And as our vision says, we're all working together to proclaim the gospel to over 100,000 people here in the greater Little Rock area and beyond. We also saw God expand our vision around multi-site this past year. As Justin referenced, we went from six campuses to seven campuses this past year with the official launch of our North Little Rock campus. And it's been so cool to see what God is already doing in and through our North Little Rock campus. Let's watch this video together that highlights some of the things that are already happening on this campus. We are a place of six campuses, but today that changes. We're excited that we are launching Fellowship North Little Rock, let's go. Fellowship North Little Rock, whoo! I want to welcome you to the very first Fellowship North Little Rock service. Give it up for God. Thank you. You may not know this, but we've been praying for years for this very moment. And God is on the move.

So what you see tonight is the culmination of the fact that God has been bringing people into our story, into our midst, into our church, and they're using their gifts, they're serving, is kind of a big picture of the story that's happening. I'm Garrett, this is Mary, and we are the Ghouls Bees. I think we saw a Facebook post about interest meetings that they were doing at a community center in North Little Rock. During that time, it was kind of an invitation not to just attend the church, but also to get involved and serve, because they needed as much help as they could get. When we first started helping serve at the North Little Rock campus, I was a part of the connections team, and I saw Alan just running around like a madman, trying to get pictures, like last minute, constantly just be holding the camera over everybody's heads, and just snapping a quick shot, and he was just running around, and I was just like, well, I mean, I do this as a full-time job, I might as well just help out here, and do it at this campus. Really, in any way that Alan sort of needed help, we would try to be available and help with things. I'm Olivia, nice to meet you. My name is Sherika McKeever, and I was born and raised here in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Being a part of a...

A church launched, like, just from the ground up. I've embraced that. I've never experienced anything like that. It's amazing. I think it's a wonderful experience to see a group of people take what they know in their heart that God is telling them to do and step out with no church home, no building, no address. When they started talking about interest and serving and volunteers, I was, I mean, quite naturally, I was like, I'll help with the kids' ministry, you know? And so I have. And I've been helping serve in the kids' ministry since we've launched. Just every single thing that you do, every second that you have, meet people, welcome them, let them know we're so thankful they're here. So for the last week, we have been praying. We have been asking that God would provide the right space and the right location in our community to be able to serve Him. And so there were long nights of prayer. And we're excited to let you know that we are in week two of meeting at Park Hill Presbyterian Church. And so we're excited that we're able to meet weekly, not just monthly. We're gathering kids. We've launched fellowship students at this point. And as you see this video, we are gathering as Fellowship

North Little Rock during a service. As you're worshiping, we're worshiping as the seventh campus of fellowship. And so we're so thankful for your prayers and excited to see what God's going to do in the future. Well, how about that? Yes. Thank you, Lord. God is working and moving. And those are just a few of the ways we've seen this past year, God accomplishing His vision in and through fellowship. And I'm excited this coming next year, we have an incredible moment coming where we're gonna be able to stop for a moment and celebrate 50 years of God's faithfulness in accomplishing His vision through fellowship. Next year, we're gonna have a 50th celebration service at the State House Convention Center. Can you believe 50 years? Yes, and it's gonna be a great moment for us just to stop as a church, as a people of God, and remember, remember what God has done for us and through us over the last 50 years, but at the same time, to take a moment to look forward to what we hope and dream He will do over the next 50. But before we get to that 50th celebration service, I'm here to tell you, we have an exciting year of ministry planned. And Ben's gonna come now and share a little bit more

with us about the direction that we're headed this next year. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, man, it really is such a fun day to come together and just like Mark and Justin showed us, really celebrate what God was able to do last year through the reality and through the vision that we had for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we know we just rattled off a whole bunch of stats about things we did and events that we had and even the launch of the campus that you've heard about and all those things, but hopefully like you saw in Ruby's story, hopefully like you saw in the North Little Rock video, the reason why we're celebrating these things isn't just to say, hey, look at these events, look at these things we did, it's look at the lives that God is changing. We prayed for His kingdom to come and for His will to be done last year on earth as it is in heaven. And His kingdom came in Ruby's life in a powerful way. His kingdom is coming to people's lives in North Little Rock that they have a place to worship together there that they didn't have before. And that's what we're so excited about celebrating this morning. And there's so many more stories that we could tell and so many more things we saw Him do last year

that we could celebrate. But the other part of what we do every Vision Sunday on a day like today is not only look back on what God did last year to celebrate that, to praise Him for what only He can do, but to also look ahead and what we feel Him calling us to in this coming year. And I want you to know, as Mark and Brandon and Justin and I got away last year, like we always do and spent time praying about this and searching the scriptures and begging God to show us, reveal to us, specifically where He wants us to help lead Fellowship Bible Church in this coming year. And then as we shared that with the elders and got their confirmation on it, shared it with the campus pastor, shared it with our central leadership team, what we felt God drawing our hearts to were verses like Romans 16, 25, that says, "'Now to him who is able to strengthen you "'according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus.'" Jesus Christ, right? That he's able to strengthen our hearts. We were drawn to verses like Jude 1, 24, that said, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. He's able to keep us from stumbling as we try to follow him.

Ephesians 3, 20 says, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us. He's able to do way more than we could possibly imagine in strengthening our inner man, Paul says to that church. Verses like 2 Timothy 1, 12 that says, but I'm not ashamed for I know whom I believed and I'm convinced that he is able to guard until that day what's been entrusted to me. I hope you hear the theme that we're pointing to this coming year. Over and over and over again, we felt the spirit uniting our hearts around this reality. In the midst of all the unsettling things that we see going around us in the world today. God wants us to be the kind of church fellowship who looks at any circumstance, no matter how daunting it may be, and declare in our heart, yes, I see that, but God is able. God is able to do whatever he needs to do for our ultimate good and for his ultimate glory in any situation, no matter how hard it seems. Which is why of all these verses that I'm talking about with you this morning about God being able that we could have used for our theme this year, we actually settled on a passage in Romans 4 if you wanna make your way there this morning, if you have your Bibles with you. That's Romans chapter 4, verses 18 to 25,

where the apostle Paul writing to the church at Rome about the confidence Abraham and Sarah had in God, says this. It says, in hope, he believed, and I love this phrase, against hope. He believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told, so shall your offspring be. And yet it says he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old. Or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb, and then listen, no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced, and here it is, that God was able to do what he had promised. That's why it says his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but here it is to ours also, fellowship, that it'll be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. I want you to focus in on verses 20 to 21 again with me. This is the theme verses for our year this year.

He says no unbelief made him waver concerning the promises of God, but he grew strong in his faith and he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. God was able to do what he had promised. Let me ask you something this morning. Do you believe that today? I mean, do you really believe that today? When you turn on the news and see that the U.S. is at war with Iran, at the same time that the Ukraine is at war with Russia, at the same time that Israel is at war with Lebanon, do you believe that God's in control of all of those things and is able to do whatever he needs to do for all of our ultimate good and for his glory in the midst of that? When you turn on the news and you see a world full of droughts and floods and wildfires and earthquakes, are you fully convinced, like this passage says, that God knows where each storm is gonna start and where each storm is gonna stop? And he loves you in the midst of however those things might be affecting your life. When you get the diagnosis from the doctor and it's not the news you would have hoped that it was, are you fully convinced in that moment that God is with you in it, walking with you through it?

And he's able to do whatever he needs to do for our good and for his glory. He's able to give you the strength to walk through whatever that is. As long as you need to walk through it for the good of your own heart, for the good of those walking through it with you, who are close to you, for the good of those watching you from afar and how it might impact them and their faith and their relationship with God. And do you believe that as soon as he needs to, he can heal you like that when that's the best thing for everyone involved? See, that's what I love about this passage in Romans 4, talking about Sarah and Abraham and their faith. It doesn't ignore the daunting reality of what they were facing. It doesn't candy coat it for us when we come to it. Look again at verse 19. It says, he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old. And then not only that, but when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb, who at the time, by the way, was 99 years old. I mean, what God promised Abraham and Sarah was impossible. It was truly impossible. And Abraham and Sarah had to walk through

believing that God was able to do what he said he would do and get this for 24 years. It's not just like they had to believe that God was able for a couple of weeks and then Isaac showed up. It's not just like they had to believe that God was able for a couple of months and then Isaac showed up. It's not even that they had to walk through a hard season of wondering when and how God was gonna do this for a couple of years, which is incredibly long, to keep faith in God that he's able to do what he said he would do. No, they remained fully convinced that God was able to do what he said he would do to fulfill his promise for 24 years. That's incredible when you think about that. And yet they kept clinging to the promise that God was able. And when it says no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God in verse 20, listen, that doesn't mean Abraham and Sarah were never confused about what God was doing. Doesn't mean they were never confused or daunted about how he was gonna accomplish what he said that he was. I mean, that's the reason that Abraham begged God to just go ahead and fulfill his promise through Eliezer, his servant, and call him his son and his offspring, his descendant.

But he's like, God, I don't know how this is really gonna happen between me and Sarah, do it this way. It doesn't mean that he and Sarah didn't question, maybe God wants us to help him out with this promise that he made to us to see it accomplished when Abraham went into Hagar and had Ishmael, which caused all kinds of issues and problems in their lives in the midst of that. No, it's not that they did everything perfectly as they believed God, just like you and I won't do everything perfectly as long as we maintain our faith and hope and trust in the Lord. But here's what it's saying. Even in his struggle, fellowship, Abraham never quit believing that God would fulfill the promise he made to him. He didn't know how, so he kept trying to help him. He didn't know when, so he kept trying to help him. He made all kinds of missteps in the midst of it, but he never stopped believing God is gonna make a great nation from me somehow. My descendants will be like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky somehow. I don't know how, but somehow he will do it. And that is what kept Abraham walking with God no matter how crazy it seemed. That's what kept Abraham attuned to God's voice throughout it all, and that is what will keep us walking with God in the midst of things

that we're living in as well, fellowship. Staying true to the unwavering belief that no matter how crazy our situation seems, that we're absolutely convinced that God is able to fulfill his promises to us, which is why Paul says these words are not just for Abraham and for Sarah, but it says specifically in verses 23 through 25, for us also. And I love what Paul does here. He connects their faith that God would give them a child at 99 and 100 with a barren woman, their faith in that promise, he connects it to our faith that Jesus was raised from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins, and that God will one day raise us from the dead as well. Because one of the many beautiful things that the cross gives us, church, as we place our faith in him and believe that it is true, is that it convinces us, it's meant to convince us that God is able. Because here's the reality, fellowship. If he loves us enough to send his son to die on a cross for our sins, then he's loving you through whatever he's asking you to walk through right now. He is loving you, if he loves you that much. And he is loving us as a church family and all the things happening around us right now in our country and around the world if he loves us that much.

If he's able to bring Jesus Christ back from the dead, and think about how impossible that is. Then he's able to raise you and me to life to be with him forever after we die as well. And then if he's able to raise us back to life, to eternal life, our dead bodies, and if he loves us enough to die for us to prove it, then here's what we should all have confidence in. If he's able to do that, guess what? He's able to bring that wayward child back to faith in him. He is. He's able to do that. If he's able to resurrect your dead body from the grave, fellowship, he's able to resurrect your marriage, no matter how far gone you think it is. If he's able to do everything that he promises us in the scriptures, if he's able to provide eternal life for you, then he's able to provide for your family as you're between jobs. He's able to reconcile family relationships that you never thought would ever be good again. Which is why right after this coming up next week, man, we're gonna launch into a sermon series preaching on the miracles of Jesus from the gospels to remind ourselves a number of different ways that God is able to do far more than we could ever hope or imagine

in so many different areas of our lives. And it's why we're gonna preach through the book of Esther after that. Because God's able to use us no matter what situation we're in, no matter how intense it feels, just like he used her all those years ago. And all the other things that we'll preach this year. Because God wants you to know this year and every year that whatever you're walking through, whatever you see going on around you, no matter how daunting it seems or how impossible it feels, church, he is able to do far more than we could ever hope or imagine for our good and for his glory as we walk through it. And he convinced, just like Abraham and Sarah, that he is able. And I want you to hear this this morning. The reason why we're so passionate about this theme for this year and we wanna preach this through to you is because that reality is where peace is found in the midst of the chaos. That's where you'll feel the peace that surpasses all human understanding. That's where joy is found in the midst of the pain that the scriptures talk about. And that's where abundant life is found in the midst of the hardest things we face

each and every day. In the faith that we have, that he's able to do whatever he's promised us, no matter how hard it feels for our good and for his glory on the earth. And there's some really practical ways that we're gonna live that out this year as a church family. Some church-wide initiatives that the campus pastors are gonna come and share with each of their campuses that Brandon's gonna come up and share here at West Little Rock with us and with the chapel. But before we get into that, I'm gonna invite my fellow teaching pastors back up here on stage with me, Brandon and Mark and Justin, to pray this morning and to beg God to do what only he can do to show us how he is able to accomplish the purposes he has for us. So Brandon, would you come and pray for that and then lead us on in the next part of our time? Yeah, you bet. Let's pray together. So thankful for what God is doing here in this place called Fellowship. Let's pray together. God, thank you so much that you truly are the God who is able. God, you're the one that parted the Red Sea. You're the one that rescued Daniel from the lion's den. You're the one who rescued Shadrach, Meshach,

and Abednego from the fire. Lord, you're the one. You're the one who fed 5,000. Lord, you're the one who walked on the water. You're the one who did all these things. God, you're the one who raised Jesus from the dead. And so we know that you're able. God, as we think about our own lives and as we think about our church, and Lord, it's your church and how you were able to take us, Lord, to transform us, to help us grow in grace and knowledge of you, to help us to live for your glory. God, that you are able to be with the one who needs provision. Lord, you're able to heal the one who needs healing. Lord, you're able to sustain the one who needs sustaining. God, that you're able to give peace to the one who needs peace in this moment. God, that you're able to comfort to the one who needs comfort in this moment. And so, God, we just thank you that you are the God who is able. You're able to keep us from stumbling. You're able to present us as blameless before you with great joy. Lord, you're the one who is able. And I pray that as we go through this year, Lord, that by your grace that we wouldn't waver in our unbelief, that we would grow strong in our faith,

that we would grow together in grace and knowledge of you, that we would be fully convinced that you will keep your promises, that we'd be fully convinced that you are able. And Lord, that that would cause us to live lives that give glory to you. So God, would you strengthen us now? Would you grow us in our trust of you? Would you grow us in our faith in you? Because you are able. And we say to the one who is able, be all glory and honor and power and majesty forever and ever and ever. It's in your mighty name, your able name that we pray Jesus, amen. Amen, amen. Well, it is such a great morning to be together and I'm so thankful for my teammates that I get to do life with and ministry with. And I'm so thankful for our church family and our campuses and all that God's doing in this place called fellowship. And I wanna take just a moment to share as we think about some of the initiatives that we have for this year. And am I the only one that thought at some point Ben was gonna start singing in church? Am I the only one that thought at some point Ben was gonna start singing, don't stop believing? I thought that maybe he would have that for us,

that we wouldn't stop believing, that we wouldn't waver in our faith, that we would be fully convinced that God is able. And I love how he presented that because the reality of it is this, is that people who are fully convinced that God is able, we live differently, we give differently, we worship differently, we serve differently. Like it impacts our lives. And so I just wanna take a few moments and I want to just highlight. Matter of fact, Justin pointed out already that you have a bulletin. You can kind of see already where we're going. Like some of the things I'm gonna share with you in the next few moments, you're not gonna like, oh wow, I didn't see that one coming. It's because you didn't read your bulletin. You gotta see it coming. It's there for you to see. But we're just so excited about the ways that we believe God's leading us as a church. Some ways that will impact us individually, some ways that will affect us as families, some ways that will affect us for those of us who are parents, some ways that will affect us as we serve our community, as we love the world that God's called us to live in. And so it's gonna impact us in so many different ways. It's exciting to think about that

and to know that God is able to do more than we could ask, think, or imagine. He's that kind of God. That he gives us the power with courage, his humility to live generously and to live with hope and to be fully convinced that God is able, that we have this trust in the Lord. So I wanna share just about five things with you as we think about initiatives. But one of the ways where it all starts, in a lot of ways, is really how we give, how we give, that we're a generous church. And Justin had pointed that out just a few moments ago. And I wanted to just say, I'm so thankful for the generosity of this church, for how we give and how we worship the Lord in that way, how we support our communities, how we love sharing the gospel around the world. I wanna show you kind of how we ended last year on our budget so you can kind of see this slide that we have, and it shows that we, our budget last year was 12.7 million, basically. And we actually gave 12.5, so we got really, really close to meeting our budget last year. I am happy to say this, that our staff, our wonderful staff here at Fellowship, they want to steward resources so well. And so what they did, by God's grace, is they actually spent under the budget. So we gave 12.5, and we actually spent less than that

as a church last year, so we actually ended with a surplus. And I'm thankful for that. But I also wanna call to this next year, we believe that for expenses and for the way we wanna do ministry, what God's leading us to do, it's gonna take 13 million, just a little over 13 million to do that. And when you see that, sometimes people gotta go, okay, Vision Sunday, we're gonna talk about money, those kind of things. Of course we are, we're a family. We're a family. And sometimes you might say, well, I just don't know that my little bit's gonna matter. You know, this is a big church, big things. They don't need my, they don't need my money. And in some ways, I would say, you're absolutely right, we don't need your money. But what we're trying to disciple you in is this, it's an act of worship. It's the way we worship. It's one of the ways that we worship the Lord, is to be generous, to follow him. And we do that because we're fully convinced that God is able to keep his promises, to be able to do what he says he's gonna do, and he wants to use the church in that. So we're calling you up as a church family to say, let's give, let's meet our budget this year, let's do that. If you're on the giving team, praise God for that.

If he's leading you to give more and sacrifice more in that area of your life, praise God for that. Follow him in that, worship him in that. Be convinced that he's able to do that in and through you. If you're not on our giving team, for whatever reason, if you said, I don't have enough, I've got a lot of things going on in my life, and I'm not able to do that. Listen, if you're all in it, fellowship. If you really believe that God is able, we encourage you, we invite you to come and give as an act of worship. Not necessarily because we want it, but because we want you to know the joy of giving that God does for his people. So we'll invite you into that. So we're looking forward to showing, seeing how God is gonna work with that with great joy and how he is able. All right, so let's kind of keep moving forward because one of the things that we wanna do this year too is scripture memory. We've already said this a few weeks ago in our. In our blessed series, we talked about blessed as the one who delights in God's word, and so we wanna do scripture memory. What's funny is, is that a lot of times, scripture memory gets relegated to kids, doesn't it? We think scripture memory's for kids, and some of us make jokes about how we can't remember things, you know?

Can't remember our kids' names, or our grandkids' names, or our dog's name, or we just call people different things. We can't remember things. We kinda make jokes about it, but you know what, as a church family, we wanna lean into this this year. We wanna memorize scripture, and adults, like men and women, we wanna lead the way. We wanna show our students and our kids what a beautiful priority it is, that we hide God's word in our hearts, that we memorize scripture, because there's so many ways that God can use scripture that we're fully convinced. One of the things we talked about was we're fully convinced about God's promises. Well, guess where God's promises come from? His word, and that's why we wanna memorize. That's why we want to take time to marinate the scriptures and be saturated and filled with scriptures in our mind and in our hearts, because God allows us to pray those scriptures for others, to read those scriptures over others, to share those scriptures with others. Scripture comforts us, it strengthens us, it helps us, it instructs us. You get the point? I don't need to give you another message on that, right? Scripture memory, and we have bookmarks, right?

You can get a digital copy of this. You can get a reminder of it every month, but we're gonna be praying that scripture, reading that scripture, and there's 11 scriptures that help us as we begin in September, and we go all the way through next July, and so we want to value memorizing scripture. So I'm looking forward to seeing how God's gonna use this in the life of our church, all right? Second thing is this, we have something called re-engage. It's a marriage class, and the reason that we're doing that is because we believe that one of the ways that you highlight that God is able is through your marriage. One of the most beautiful testimonies, marriages are meant to reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ. Marriages are meant to reflect this great truth that God is able. God's able to save your marriage. God's able to strengthen your marriage. God's able to heal your marriage. God's able to use your marriage in a lot of ways, right? And so we're doing this class called re-engage because our desire is to help strengthen and save marriages, and one of the primary ways to do that, we think, is through having a class together called re-engage, and on this campus, Marty and Amy Skravanis will be the ones who are kinda leading us week by week. It's a 10-week commitment. Ooh, some people are like, ooh, 10 weeks. Well, I think that's a good investment for your marriage,

10 weeks, to be able to come and be a part with other couples as we invest in the scriptures, as we invest in the lives of one another, and so do we have that slide? Did we put that up already? Can we show that one more time? So it's in the warehouse, 4 to 6 p.m., and you can register at fellowshipar.com slash re-engage. It's not too late for you to do that. It starts September 13th, and we believe as God strengthens marriages in our family, that affects. It affects us as a church as a whole. It affects the way we live and serve and show that God is able. So I wanna invite you into that. The third thing is this. We're gonna be doing a parenting, a parenting class in January. We're just trying to tell you to kinda keep it out there. It starts on January 31st. We want you to mark it on your calendar. It's gonna be for six weeks. We're even smart enough to take the week off for the Super Bowl, okay? We know that. It's gonna start January 31st, and it'll be six weeks together, but listen, one of the other places that we can highlight that God is able is in our parenting. I mean, the Lord knows that parenting

is not for the faint of heart. It's rewarding, it's refining in so many different ways for all who are on the journey. What I love about the team that's putting the curriculum together, Kerry Carter, Jay McGuirk, there's been a lot of people who've been working on this curriculum together for parenting, and what I love about it is it's how not to be a perfect parent. And you're like, ooh, I can sign up for that class because we don't need perfect parents. We need parents who are convinced that God is able. That's what we need. We need parents who are convinced that God is able. That we lead our kids to Jesus, we point them to Jesus, and we say, you know what? We are imperfect parents. We can't do it fully right. We're gonna give it our best, and we're gonna try to honor the Lord in that, but we wanna point you to Jesus. So it's one of the ways of convincing people that God is able. So I wanna encourage you, put that on your calendar, save the date, and just say, you know what? We're gonna make it a priority. There's a lot of other things you can be doing, but investing in your parenting in those moments would be an amazing way to spend your time. We want you to know this is for young kids,

middle schoolers, teenagers. This is for you. Next thing is this. We're also gonna have in March our spiritual renewal weekend. We call it SRW, spiritual renewal weekend, and listen, full permission right now to grab your phone, save the date, okay? March 5th and 6th, it's a Friday night, it's a Saturday morning. We love you so much that we've compacted it down to six hours. So when you say, I can't do that, I got too much going on. If that's the case, then you do have too much going on, all right? Friday night, three hours together. Saturday morning, three hours together. We come, we worship together, we fellowship together. we share the scriptures together, we have a guest pastor who comes in and speaks the word of God to us. We have some moments to practice the scriptures in the quiet places. It's a beautiful weekend. Matter of fact, some of you were here three years ago when we did spiritual renewal weekend, and some of you have reaped the benefits. You're still reading Psalms every day, five Psalms a day. A man named Don Whitney was here, and he taught us how to pray the Bible.

I've heard from multiple individuals who came that weekend and said, man, that changed my life. It transformed my life, and so one of the ways that we want to see that God is able, we wanna connect with the one who's able to keep us and strengthen us, but the reality is we struggle to make it happen a lot of times, and so I wanna encourage you to come and be a part of this spiritual renewal weekend in March, on March 5th and 6th. Make plans to be there with us. The last thing I'm really excited to do is to talk to you about this. We have a foster care initiative this year. You know, we've got a prison initiative which was amazing. We did the summer feeding project, the feeding initiative. This year, we wanna take some time to invest in our foster care families, foster care kids, foster care workers, people's staff who invest in doing this in the state. Did you know this? The foster care system in Arkansas is in great need. There's over 3,400 kids in foster care and just 1,680 open foster homes, 736 kinship homes. There's a need for foster families, foster family advocates, respite night volunteers. There's over 1,200 Department of Children

and Family Services staff, and it is a difficult, difficult job. These staff are giving their all to help these families and to help these children. There's so many who are affected by foster care need, and we wanna appreciate them, and we wanna celebrate them, and we wanna know that they're valuable and what they're doing matters, and so we wanna come alongside as a church family and say, listen, God cares about the orphan. God cares about the one who is in need, and we believe that God is able to keep His promises. We believe that God is able to help those in need, and so we wanna be the kind of church who does that, and there's several ways to do that. I wanna go ahead and put that back on the screen if we can, the slide. There are several ways we can do this, opportunities we have. You can pick up a kid's card starting September 13th, and you can pick up a kid's card, and what it's gonna do is it's gonna give you some items that you can buy and you can purchase, and then what's gonna happen is we're gonna come together on October 7th here at the West Little Rock Campus, Espanol Campus, and we are going to pack gifts. We're gonna pack packages to be able to give out to those who are in foster care, to give to the DCFS staff. We're gonna be able to give them a package as well,

a care package, and we're also gonna be able to give it to the foster families and to biological families, and so we're gonna come together. Over 3,600 cards that represent the kids in foster care who need to receive a gift, and so we're gonna come together. We're gonna pack 2,500 packs for foster kids, 1,200 packs for DCFS staff, 600 packs for biological families. We're gonna pray over them. Listen, even if you don't get a card, even if they're all taken at some point, we want you to come and help us pack that night. We're gonna write individual little notes to those who will be receiving the packages. We're gonna pray over them. It's gonna be a beautiful night as a family when we come together and we serve in this way, and then we're gonna distribute them on October 17th, but then also, we're also gonna have a night for families, for families who actually have adopted, for those who are actually doing foster care right now. We're gonna celebrate on November 15th and have a dinner where we encourage and we love, and we just celebrate what God is doing and we pray for one another. We really believe that God is able, that God is able to make a difference in the lives of those who are fostering, those who are in foster care,

those who are serving foster care families in the job that they have, and we wanna come alongside as a church and say, we love you, we value you, and we see you. So we're so excited to be able to think about how that's gonna happen this year. Listen, we are fully convinced that God is able. There's so much going on, and sometimes when you come to a place like this, you say, why are we talking about this? We want you to commit and be a part of it. We know you're busy, but mark your calendars for all these different things and say, this is a way that we can get involved and we can live out this truth that God is able. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for your beautiful truth. Thank you that we serve a God who truly is able. And Lord, as we think about the initiatives that you set forth this year, we know that ultimately you're in charge. Lord, ultimately you're the one who will see this all play out. But God, we know you're worthy of praise and glory and honor. We know, we wanna grow in our knowledge of you. We wanna grow in being convinced to the uttermost that you are able. That we are witnesses of the work that you have done, that we are witnesses of the work that you are doing,

that we will be witnesses of the work that you're going to do. So this morning, we just humbly say to you, God, who is able, you're able to do more than we can ask, think, or imagine. You're able to keep us from stumbling. You're able to watch over us. Lord, you're able to work in us and through us, and we pray, would you do that for our good and for your glory? It's in Jesus' able name, we pray, amen. Thanks again for listening to the word of God. We are blessed to reach you throughout the week through whatever platform you're listening on. If you're needing prayer or you want to talk to someone about your walk with Jesus, reach out to us at fellowshipar.com slash contact. Have a great week.