This month as we celebrate Valentine's Day, it's a good time to reflect on what love is really about. Unfortunately today, there are many people that do not understand what true love is. Many people think it's a feeling. But for the Christian, we understand love in the context that God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to lay down His life for us so that we can be forgiven of our sins and have a relationship with God and therefore have eternal life. This is true love! It's a love that causes us to show that same kind of love to others. The fact is that we can't really love anyone until we have experienced the love of God in our own lives. When we have experienced it, we can show love to not only the relationships we have in our lives, but we can show it to those we find difficult to love and to those whom we do not know. My encouragement to you this month is to share Christ's love with someone you know who is lost and tell them the good news of a Saviour who loves them and wants to have a relationship with them.

This month is the annual Evangelism Conference that will be held at Central Baptist Church in Warner Robins. The dates are Feb. 26th and 27th. I would love to see as many people who can go from our association to attend. I promise you that you will be encouraged to reach more people with the Gospel. You can register for this conference at: gbcevangelismconferences.com

In closing, I want to inform you that we are planning on having some listening sessions in different regions of our association for the purpose of discussing the direction of the association for it to become more relevant and trying to understand how our churches can be strengthened so we can reach more people with the Gospel. I will be sending information out regarding this within the next few weeks. It is my prayer that we will become a stronger and healthier network of churches! I thank God for the opportunity I have to serve our Pastors and our churches in our association!

Bro. Gary