Ray Family Update from January 2023

Dear Praying Friends,

What a tremendous time to be alive! Our opportunities to stand out for the Lord are abundant and accessible on every front. Any feeble attempt to obey the Lord and His word will make one look, act, and talk different from the world and, sadly, even most professing believers. The same thing is true for our churches. If we make even the smallest effort to check our worship, preaching, service, and standards against the word of God, our churches stand out as unique and different. Hence, the temptation! How willing are we to take a stand and be different? How much does it mean to us to strive to please the Lord in all that we do? Are we willing to be mocked and rejected by the world and potential church attendees? I sure hope it means that much to me and to Antioch!

Looking back over the last month, it is encouraging to see all that the Lord has already allowed us to do for Him. First, I had the privilege of preaching on music at a meeting in Superior, Wisconsin. This was the first time I had ever been to the church and most of the folks were unknown to me. It was a blessing getting to preach to and meet new people. They truly treated me like family. Less than two weeks later, I had the opportunity to fill in and preach a message entitled “Behold Our Creator” at a Bible conference in Deland, Florida. Locally, we have resumed our outreach after the winter break. It has been a joy to be back out on the street declaring God’s word. My youngest son Isaac overcame his fears and apprehensions and took a few turns quoting scripture to the captive audience sitting at the red light.

To update you on other fronts, likely, by the time you read this, we will have started renovations at the church. We have broken the overall project into three phases and we have the funds to complete the first phase. We hope to have it completed by the time our June Bible conference rolls around. In the meantime, we pray and trust the Lord for the other two phases to be complete in His time. He has never failed us in the past and we do not anticipate that He will start now. We also have two books waiting on final touches to be complete before going to the printer. We would love to say that both will go to the printer before the end of the month, but things always move slower than expected. After these are complete, other writing projects can resume that have had to go on the back burner.

For those of you who love our family and our church and are willing to do so, we ask you to hold us up in prayer. We have already seen our share of spiritual battles and we suspect more are on the horizon. On a personal level, my family and I desire to please the Lord in all that we think or do and we want to serve Him accordingly. On a congregational level, we want God to lead us and guide in the path that He would have us to follow, surely a path that brings Him the great glory due unto His name. We fully believe in the power of prayer and beg that you pray with us in this vein.