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Each month's newsletter is posted here. Previous month's issues can be found in the archives.
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Church of God Faith Fellowship
www.churchofgodfaithfellowship.com
August 2026 - Vol. 26, No. 8
Meeting place: Gray Summit United Methodist Church
Calendar Notes:
Sabbath, August 1st - downstairs, Mark has the study; men’s study after potluck
Sabbath, August 8th - downstairs
Sabbath, August 15th - upstairs; GCUMC community breakfast in fellowship hall
Sabbath, August 22nd - downstairs; women’s heart to heart (praise) after potluck
Sabbath, August 29th - downstairs
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Soccer for Suckers by Dan L. White
Homeschool Helpers Newsletter, Issue 558, 7.10.26
As we get older, we get sicker. And no matter how old we are, we want to be made well.
One old man over 80 years of age had prostate cancer that had spread to his bladder. Clinicians treated his bladder and the cancer disappeared for the moment. He was so happy over that, and I was a little surprised at his reaction. After all, he was 80 years old! But age does not quell the desire to live and be well.
Now here I am, at about that same age, with a different type of cancer, but cancer nevertheless. And like that man, my dad,
I have the same desire to be well. And statistically will likely wind up with the same result as him.
I knew a fine Christian lady who was 57 years old and had a serious cancer. I was young enough then to think that she was old, instead of middle aged. She told me that she had prayed and fasted, but she wasn’t healed. Why? Of course, I had no real answer. I was struck, though, with the common idea that fasting is only for emergencies, and not as a common practice. That lady soon passed.
I had a very close friend of some years acquaintance who in his mid-70’s came down with a serious cancer. As with most cancer victims, he did not expect that. He had long-lived parents on both sides, tried to live a healthy life, and yet was stricken. I remember talking to him about how seventy years is the years of a man.
Ps90:10 - The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away.
He knew that verse already, and even though he had passed the seventy year mark, he had other things he wanted to do in this life. And in my life, there are a lot of dumb things I have done, and that was one of them. The passing of this life, this meager morsel of years that we have, is such a serious thing for our spirit that it inevitably is a great weight. I spoke as one who wasn’t weighed down at that time, to one who was weighed down. Stupid me.
Really inconsiderate!
He passed, following the normal cancer progression or regression, despite many prayers and creative cure attempts.
On the other hand, I knew another fellow in his seventies or so, who suddenly had health issues, and a big hospital told him to put his affairs in order because of his cancer. Before his passing, though, he wanted to attend one more Feast. At that Feast, after being anointed he was healed. That week he went from hardly being able to trudge down the beach to being able to run down the beach. He probably couldn’t have done that even before the cancer hit! Another exam at the big hospital showed the cancer was gone.
And in a well known instance, a home school mom after birth labor had a couple of blood clots ready to pass through her heart. She was not old, but young with other children and a husband to care for, so a nationwide fast was declared for her, not as a church command but as a spiritual urging, by whomever wanted to join in that, with no list involved. Yes, the clots passed with no harm, making the local news in a major metro city, and she returned home to her hubby and children, nursing her brand new baby.
But several years down the road, I can’t recall just how many, her husband, who believed she had lived by a miracle from God, passed from a cancer himself.
I suppose the biggest lesson from all this mental meandering is the brevity of life and the seriousness of its ending. This is your opportunity in eternity to appear before God with your life and what you choose to do with it. Most people choose not to do much of importance at all. Maybe go to church once a week, have a dinner with all the other overweight Christians, and watch a few ball games. The world cup soccer tournament is currently being held as I write this. Millions of people from around the world have converged on the US as the site of this event, and they fear and hope, and scream and cry – really cry! – over a round ball being kicked up and down a field.
All for nothing. There is nothing going on there that has any real value. It’s just a bouncing ball! On the other hand, the negative value is all the time and life energy that is consumed by so many over so little.
And such is the common life of almost everyone, every day.
Very few Christians think that God has called them to do something special with their lives. They automatically assume that if they go to church – any church, as long as it’s a church – and don’t get thrown in jail, then they are living a good life. Somehow that comfortable picture does not fit the New Testament scene.
One good thing about being old, and having some sign that your life has just about run its days, is that for the first time in your life, you can see more clearly why you are alive.
How about that for irony? When you’re about out of life, you can see more clearly why you’re alive.
And you know what? Then you have no real interest in soccer matches or such, unless it’s just to watch the grandkids. But then you really don’t care if they win or lose, because you have lived long enough to know that doesn’t really matter.
A couple verses after the one cited above about seventy years being the days of our years, is this one.
Ps 90 12 - So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
That means that long before we know we are going to pass, we should remember that we are going to pass. That is what numbering our days is. Old people with cancer or whatever can number their days pretty closely. I read once that the average life span of someone who is diagnosed with MDS is about 18 months from diagnosis. Some more, some less, but none very long. That leads such a one to pray, ‘help me make the most of my time and not waste it.’
What if a young person could have such an attitude, while still young?
Now that would be a heart of wisdom. Kind of like getting a free kick.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
My dog kept chasing people on a bike,
so I took his bike away …
then he just sat there in the yard and barked all day.
So I gave him his bike back . . .
because his bark was worse than his bike.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Honor God First by Cynthia Saladin
Honor the LORD with your wealth . . .Proverbs 3:9
All good gifts come from God (James 1:17). Can you think of some wonderful gifts God has given to you? Life, health, a great family, plenty to eat, a pet, an answered prayer - many different things could fall into that category of being a wonderful gift from God!!
So what is your response to having been given a gift? First, you should always say, “Thank you!” We do that in our prayers at each meal - thanking God for the food. But are we diligent to say “thank you” when God gives us good things? I sure hope so!
But we should go one step further than simply saying “thank you.” We need to demonstrate that we are grateful to God by honoring Him first with whatever it is that we have.
A banana is a gift - you can tell because it’s gift-wrapped. 😀 When you open a banana, you get to decide what to do with it. Most people eat it one bite at a time. Even if you cut it in half and put it in a banana split, you still end up eating it one bite at a time. What if we used this banana to talk about how we should honor God first with the gifts that He’s given us?
Here’s the easiest analogy. I really want to give my husband a bite of the banana, but each person in the room wants a bite. And I find that the banana is all gone before I get to my husband. There’s nothing left for him.
Or what if each bite represented the time I have in each day? I only have 24 hours. Let’s pretend that I get to sleep 7 hours. I might spend 5 hours cooking, eating a meal, and cleaning up the kitchen. (Wow, that’s half of my day already!! No wonder it’s hard to get everything done.) Maybe I spend an hour doing paperwork and taking care of emails, although that could easily be two hours every day. Then I spend four hours teaching and checking homework. I spend one hour walking the dogs, feeding them, and getting them clean water. I spend another two hours cleaning the house, sweeping the floor, opening the curtains first thing in the morning, closing them at night, and watering the plants. If I have errands to run, that will easily eat up three hours because it takes 30 minutes to get anywhere and then get home again. I can be at the end of the day, ready to brush my teeth and fall exhausted into bed and there’s no time left to pray to God, to read His word and to think about His ways (meditation).
Have you ever heard the saying, “Give to God what’s right, not what’s left”? There’s a lot of truth to that! If we don’t make it a priority to give God the first chunk of our day, we can find ourselves at the end of the day with no day left to give. And that’s not good. That sends a message that He is less important than all the rest of the things in our day. And that’s not true! God is the most important part of our day. And our days will flow a whole lot smoother if God is first, if we start each day with Him (and honor Him on the Sabbath day!!), honoring Him, praising Him, and thanking Him for the gift that He has given to us.
Time is one of the gifts that God gives us. But it’s not the only gift. You can apply the banana analogy to any of the gifts that God has given to you. Make sure you say “thank you” to God for the gift He’s given by honoring Him first!
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
What’s the difference between Iron Man and Aluminum Man? Iron Man stops the bad guys,
but Aluminum Man only foils their plans.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Sabbath School Memory Verses:
Sabbath, August 1st - "Learn to do good..." - Isaiah 1:17
Sabbath, August 8th - “but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” - Isaiah 40:31
Sabbath, August 15th - “ . . . ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; . . . ” - Jeremiah 6:16
Sabbath, August 22nd - “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13
Sabbath, August 29th - “ It is he . . . who established the world by his wisdom . . .” - Jeremiah 51:15
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Out in space two alien forms are speaking with each other.
The first spaceman says, "The dominant life forms on the earth planet have developed satellite-based weapons.”
The second alien, who looks exactly like the first, asks, "Are they an emerging intelligence?”
The first spaceman says, "I don't think so...They have them aimed at themselves."
www.churchofgodfaithfellowship.com
August 2026 - Vol. 26, No. 8
Meeting place: Gray Summit United Methodist Church
Calendar Notes:
Sabbath, August 1st - downstairs, Mark has the study; men’s study after potluck
Sabbath, August 8th - downstairs
Sabbath, August 15th - upstairs; GCUMC community breakfast in fellowship hall
Sabbath, August 22nd - downstairs; women’s heart to heart (praise) after potluck
Sabbath, August 29th - downstairs
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Soccer for Suckers by Dan L. White
Homeschool Helpers Newsletter, Issue 558, 7.10.26
As we get older, we get sicker. And no matter how old we are, we want to be made well.
One old man over 80 years of age had prostate cancer that had spread to his bladder. Clinicians treated his bladder and the cancer disappeared for the moment. He was so happy over that, and I was a little surprised at his reaction. After all, he was 80 years old! But age does not quell the desire to live and be well.
Now here I am, at about that same age, with a different type of cancer, but cancer nevertheless. And like that man, my dad,
I have the same desire to be well. And statistically will likely wind up with the same result as him.
I knew a fine Christian lady who was 57 years old and had a serious cancer. I was young enough then to think that she was old, instead of middle aged. She told me that she had prayed and fasted, but she wasn’t healed. Why? Of course, I had no real answer. I was struck, though, with the common idea that fasting is only for emergencies, and not as a common practice. That lady soon passed.
I had a very close friend of some years acquaintance who in his mid-70’s came down with a serious cancer. As with most cancer victims, he did not expect that. He had long-lived parents on both sides, tried to live a healthy life, and yet was stricken. I remember talking to him about how seventy years is the years of a man.
Ps90:10 - The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away.
He knew that verse already, and even though he had passed the seventy year mark, he had other things he wanted to do in this life. And in my life, there are a lot of dumb things I have done, and that was one of them. The passing of this life, this meager morsel of years that we have, is such a serious thing for our spirit that it inevitably is a great weight. I spoke as one who wasn’t weighed down at that time, to one who was weighed down. Stupid me.
Really inconsiderate!
He passed, following the normal cancer progression or regression, despite many prayers and creative cure attempts.
On the other hand, I knew another fellow in his seventies or so, who suddenly had health issues, and a big hospital told him to put his affairs in order because of his cancer. Before his passing, though, he wanted to attend one more Feast. At that Feast, after being anointed he was healed. That week he went from hardly being able to trudge down the beach to being able to run down the beach. He probably couldn’t have done that even before the cancer hit! Another exam at the big hospital showed the cancer was gone.
And in a well known instance, a home school mom after birth labor had a couple of blood clots ready to pass through her heart. She was not old, but young with other children and a husband to care for, so a nationwide fast was declared for her, not as a church command but as a spiritual urging, by whomever wanted to join in that, with no list involved. Yes, the clots passed with no harm, making the local news in a major metro city, and she returned home to her hubby and children, nursing her brand new baby.
But several years down the road, I can’t recall just how many, her husband, who believed she had lived by a miracle from God, passed from a cancer himself.
I suppose the biggest lesson from all this mental meandering is the brevity of life and the seriousness of its ending. This is your opportunity in eternity to appear before God with your life and what you choose to do with it. Most people choose not to do much of importance at all. Maybe go to church once a week, have a dinner with all the other overweight Christians, and watch a few ball games. The world cup soccer tournament is currently being held as I write this. Millions of people from around the world have converged on the US as the site of this event, and they fear and hope, and scream and cry – really cry! – over a round ball being kicked up and down a field.
All for nothing. There is nothing going on there that has any real value. It’s just a bouncing ball! On the other hand, the negative value is all the time and life energy that is consumed by so many over so little.
And such is the common life of almost everyone, every day.
Very few Christians think that God has called them to do something special with their lives. They automatically assume that if they go to church – any church, as long as it’s a church – and don’t get thrown in jail, then they are living a good life. Somehow that comfortable picture does not fit the New Testament scene.
One good thing about being old, and having some sign that your life has just about run its days, is that for the first time in your life, you can see more clearly why you are alive.
How about that for irony? When you’re about out of life, you can see more clearly why you’re alive.
And you know what? Then you have no real interest in soccer matches or such, unless it’s just to watch the grandkids. But then you really don’t care if they win or lose, because you have lived long enough to know that doesn’t really matter.
A couple verses after the one cited above about seventy years being the days of our years, is this one.
Ps 90 12 - So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
That means that long before we know we are going to pass, we should remember that we are going to pass. That is what numbering our days is. Old people with cancer or whatever can number their days pretty closely. I read once that the average life span of someone who is diagnosed with MDS is about 18 months from diagnosis. Some more, some less, but none very long. That leads such a one to pray, ‘help me make the most of my time and not waste it.’
What if a young person could have such an attitude, while still young?
Now that would be a heart of wisdom. Kind of like getting a free kick.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
My dog kept chasing people on a bike,
so I took his bike away …
then he just sat there in the yard and barked all day.
So I gave him his bike back . . .
because his bark was worse than his bike.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Honor God First by Cynthia Saladin
Honor the LORD with your wealth . . .Proverbs 3:9
All good gifts come from God (James 1:17). Can you think of some wonderful gifts God has given to you? Life, health, a great family, plenty to eat, a pet, an answered prayer - many different things could fall into that category of being a wonderful gift from God!!
So what is your response to having been given a gift? First, you should always say, “Thank you!” We do that in our prayers at each meal - thanking God for the food. But are we diligent to say “thank you” when God gives us good things? I sure hope so!
But we should go one step further than simply saying “thank you.” We need to demonstrate that we are grateful to God by honoring Him first with whatever it is that we have.
A banana is a gift - you can tell because it’s gift-wrapped. 😀 When you open a banana, you get to decide what to do with it. Most people eat it one bite at a time. Even if you cut it in half and put it in a banana split, you still end up eating it one bite at a time. What if we used this banana to talk about how we should honor God first with the gifts that He’s given us?
Here’s the easiest analogy. I really want to give my husband a bite of the banana, but each person in the room wants a bite. And I find that the banana is all gone before I get to my husband. There’s nothing left for him.
Or what if each bite represented the time I have in each day? I only have 24 hours. Let’s pretend that I get to sleep 7 hours. I might spend 5 hours cooking, eating a meal, and cleaning up the kitchen. (Wow, that’s half of my day already!! No wonder it’s hard to get everything done.) Maybe I spend an hour doing paperwork and taking care of emails, although that could easily be two hours every day. Then I spend four hours teaching and checking homework. I spend one hour walking the dogs, feeding them, and getting them clean water. I spend another two hours cleaning the house, sweeping the floor, opening the curtains first thing in the morning, closing them at night, and watering the plants. If I have errands to run, that will easily eat up three hours because it takes 30 minutes to get anywhere and then get home again. I can be at the end of the day, ready to brush my teeth and fall exhausted into bed and there’s no time left to pray to God, to read His word and to think about His ways (meditation).
Have you ever heard the saying, “Give to God what’s right, not what’s left”? There’s a lot of truth to that! If we don’t make it a priority to give God the first chunk of our day, we can find ourselves at the end of the day with no day left to give. And that’s not good. That sends a message that He is less important than all the rest of the things in our day. And that’s not true! God is the most important part of our day. And our days will flow a whole lot smoother if God is first, if we start each day with Him (and honor Him on the Sabbath day!!), honoring Him, praising Him, and thanking Him for the gift that He has given to us.
Time is one of the gifts that God gives us. But it’s not the only gift. You can apply the banana analogy to any of the gifts that God has given to you. Make sure you say “thank you” to God for the gift He’s given by honoring Him first!
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
What’s the difference between Iron Man and Aluminum Man? Iron Man stops the bad guys,
but Aluminum Man only foils their plans.
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Sabbath School Memory Verses:
Sabbath, August 1st - "Learn to do good..." - Isaiah 1:17
Sabbath, August 8th - “but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” - Isaiah 40:31
Sabbath, August 15th - “ . . . ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; . . . ” - Jeremiah 6:16
Sabbath, August 22nd - “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13
Sabbath, August 29th - “ It is he . . . who established the world by his wisdom . . .” - Jeremiah 51:15
⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️
Out in space two alien forms are speaking with each other.
The first spaceman says, "The dominant life forms on the earth planet have developed satellite-based weapons.”
The second alien, who looks exactly like the first, asks, "Are they an emerging intelligence?”
The first spaceman says, "I don't think so...They have them aimed at themselves."
