The Lord’s been good to us; amen?  Our sanctuary has been such a good place to meet and to gather.  The first time I came into this room, right here, there were little toy soldiers painted on the back wall and the red, ugly, velvet-looking kind of curtains hung across here.  You all know what the little pegboard stuff looks like?  The pegboard was on that wall and went around, and it was like, blue and yellow and all kinds of different colors going down that way.  The ceilings were stained yellow-brown, drywall with no tape.  We bought this place looking like that.  Everybody said we were insane for leaving those five acres in Herndon and moving up here.  No pavement—many of you remember the great Sunday of the paving.  And we all had to go to different churches because the road was impassible because they had laid it and prepared it for paving.  It had rained, and the county wouldn’t allow any cars on it.  So, we went to different locations.  It was time to build something.  

Many people build based on Sunday morning crowds.  For me, we’ve never believed in being a Sunday-morning church.  In the Scriptures, the church met daily.  So, the Lord’s blessed us.  Many of you have been here for the whole long haul, ever since the Herndon days.  And, praise God, some of the older ones are still kicking and working on these buildings, and we believe they’ll live long enough for the next one.  Hopefully, the Lord will come first; amen?  But I’m very excited.  I think I saw this afternoon what this interior’s going to look like when we’re done renovating the sanctuary.  I’m excited, looking forward to that. 

Let’s go ahead and turn to the Book of Exodus and look at a couple of passages.  Whenever we’re involved in any aspect of ministry, we always just go to the Scriptures to increase our faith, to clarify our vision and the course that we’re on.  And we’re going to take a little time and do that.

Just before we get into the teaching, I want to, again, thank everybody for their work.  It’s just great time of fellowship.  I’m having somebody try to calculate how much Gatorade we drank over the weekend; I know I did my couple of gallons.  And it was just so great to watch the koinonia.  I might tell you that up there on the roof working is just as much, if not more, biblical koinonia than sitting in a circle singing “Kumbaya”—the body coming together and fellowshipping, lifting each other up.  There’s more comradery that comes off a weekend like that than all year’s home fellowship group meetings.  This is one of the reasons that we do these things.

And just the fellowship.  I know for myself, I enjoyed the opportunities to work with guys, that I hadn’t talked to that much for two years, on a certain project.  You get with a group of guys, and you’re able to fellowship and share different things, people that you can work with, work alongside some of the young people.  It's such a blessing, just seeing these young guys working like that and to have them emerge and just say, “Pastor, thank you for letting us come and be a part of this.”  That’s exciting.  And every person, they had different skill levels, but everybody did their best and worked as unto the Lord.  Those are exciting things to see.  You can’t buy that, and it only comes by a common goal, and that’s all of us being thankful to the Lord for what He’s done in our lives.  And one of the greatest things Father’s given us—and we don’t always appreciate it—but one of the things that Father’s given us, the greatest gift of all, is each other.