First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado

08/16/2026

Worship 8-16-2026

08/11/2026

Devotion for August 11th
Lord of All Creation
Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.
Jonah 1:3–4

We are not in control of creation. But God is—and He is therefore worthy of all our praise and adoration.

Divine control over the oceans—indeed, over all creation—was a reason for constant praise in the psalmists’ work. When we read the Psalms, we discover again and again that God’s people delight in praising His sovereign power over the created order: His control over the seas, even over the ebb and flow of their tides.

We see in Psalm 33, for instance, that “he gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses” (v 7, NIV). It’s a dramatic picture—and it is part of God’s excellence and glory. In the same way that we may move and pour a gallon of lemonade, God Almighty is able to simply gather up the oceans of the world and put them in jars. How right and fitting, then, that we worship our Creator God in awe and reverence!

Likewise, God’s authority over creation encourages us to trust in His providential care. Later in Jonah’s story, we discover that the Lord “appointed a plant,” He “appointed a worm,” and He “appointed a scorching east wind” to fulfill His plans for Jonah and for the people of Nineveh (Jonah 4:6-8). How different this is from the pagan mindset both in Jonah’s day and in our own. The crewmen on Jonah’s ship regarded the sea as an uncontrollable primeval force at whose mercy they were all captive. In the same way, we are confronted today by the notion that “Mother Nature” is an untamable and merciless force. But the truth is that all things, including the entire created order, are God’s servants (Psalm 119:91). We are not left to be cast about on the sea of chance or buffeted by blind, impersonal forces. No, God “determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4).

Only the sovereign Creator Lord can gather the seas in heaps and command all of creation to do His bidding. Not only that, but He chooses to direct His commands for the good of His people. The great wind that God hurled upon the sea as Jonah’s boat sailed toward Tarshish was not intended to be a curse upon him but rather a call to him to return to faithful obedience to his God. What God sent upon Jonah, God also saved Jonah from. How remarkable: God summoned up the immense power of a storm simply to bring one errant child back home.

Truly, all things are arranged for the glory of God and the good of His people—including you. It is this God we praise, this God we trust, and this God to whom we commit our lives. Let this truth be on your lips today: “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3).

08/09/2026

08/06/2026

Happy birthday to Pastor Stan!

08/04/2026

Devotion for August 4th
The Perfected Kingdom
He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new!”
Revelation 21:5

Everybody always wants to know how the story ends. The book of Revelation gives us the opportunity to flick forward to the final page, in order that we might walk towards the end of history with greater faith, confidence, and joy.

Scripture is very clear that all of history is moving towards a final goal. This is a matter of extreme significance; God has created men and women to know that something exists beyond death. Indeed, He has set eternity in our very hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Every religion and worldview attempts to make sense out of history. Hinduism, for example, teaches that the reality in which we find ourselves is not moving towards a destination but is actually going round in circles—that history is cyclical. Atheistic naturalism argues that there is no pattern to history and no purpose or end goal; history is simply the tale of atoms rearranging themselves (and so are each of us). Christians, however, recognize that the Bible shows history to be linear: there was a point of beginning, there will be a point of ending, and there is purpose to its direction. Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and return are the central theme of all of history. All of humankind’s story must therefore be viewed within that framework. Jesus will return; He will complete God’s eternal plan of salvation, and He will usher in God’s perfected kingdom. He will make all things new and perfect.

What is the perfected kingdom that Jesus brings in? It’s a kingdom that centers on His cross. It’s a kingdom that changes hearts and lives, and its citizens bow before Jesus as King. It’s a kingdom of love and justice, of compassion and peace. This kingdom is growing and reaching out to the ends of the earth—and at the appointed time, which is unknown to us, God the Father is going to give His Son the nations as His inheritance (Psalm 2:8).

Even now, God is working out His sovereign plan and the mystery of His will. When John writes concerning the end times, he reminds us that “salvation belongs to our God” (Revelation 7:10). If salvation belonged to another or if it were left to chance, God’s plan might not be fulfilled. But He is the author of history and the ruler of the future. He has purposed to save His people, and He will. One day we shall hear Him say, “It is done” (21:6).

God has begun the work of our salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection, and one day He will bring all things under one Head, Jesus. Therefore, if we are united with Christ, “we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37), enabled to reign forever with the Son. How do we respond? With faith, confidence, and joy! For while we do not know how our lives will go, we do know how the story ends—and how our eternity begins. So we pray with eager anticipation, “Our Father in heaven … Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:9-10).

08/02/2026

Worship 8-2-2026

07/29/2026

Devotion for July 29th
Embracing Interference
As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?”
Mark 11:27–28

None of us like someone else interfering in our business.
When someone insists on our attention or demands our obedience, we instinctively respond negatively. Generally speaking, we don’t want people telling us what to do, least of all in spiritual matters. It is always tempting to buy into the notion, particularly popular in our day, that our spirituality is no one else’s business—a personal matter to be known only to us.

In reading the Gospels, then, we may become distinctly unsettled as it becomes clear that Jesus interferes in our lives. Yes, it’s for our good—but nevertheless, He interferes. Indeed, in his autobiography, C.S. Lewis refers to Jesus as the “transcendental Interferer.”

From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, people recognized that He spoke with authority (see Mark 1:22, 27). He said things in such a way that they couldn’t be sidestepped or simply dismissed. But they could be resisted and rejected. His authoritative teaching became a thorn in the religious teachers’ side, and they began to oppose Jesus, soon plotting to kill Him so that they would not have to open up their spiritual lives to Him (3:6).

Like the religious leaders, we often prefer a personal spirituality that is molded by our agenda and lifestyle: “This is what I believe. This is what I hold to. This is what we’ve always done. This is our tradition.” Jesus comes crashing into those notions, turning everything upside down, taking man-made values and upending them. In fact, at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He declared that all authority had been given to Him (Matthew 28:18-19). He doesn’t share that authority with anyone. Our spiritual lives are, in fact, His business. We bow down before His authority and embrace Him as Lord and Savior now, or one day we will bow before Him and meet Him solely as our Judge.

Adding Jesus to a little corner of our existence is easy and nonintrusive; it’s another thing entirely to allow the “transcendental Interferer” to take over every aspect of our lives and command from us complete obedience. His perfect authority is an issue we must consider in every decision we make. So we are faced by the unsettling question: Am I living according to my natural desires and the rules I have fashioned? Or am I seeking to joyfully submit to my Savior on every day and in every way? It is only when we choose to bow down before Jesus’ authority, acknowledging His lordship over our time, our talents, our money—our everything—that we can truly begin to embrace Him as Lord and Savior and enjoy knowing Him as a friend and a guide. Are you keeping Him at arm’s length in any way? That is precisely the place where He calls you to let Him interfere; it’s the place where you have the opportunity truly to treat Him as the one who has all authority. He will certainly disrupt your life—but He alone has the right to, and He alone can set you free.

07/28/2026

Devotion for July 28th
Be a Doer
Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
James 1:22

As believers, our lives can and should be marked by minds that are trained in and subjected to the truth of God’s word, and we should surround our circumstances with prayer (Philippians 4:6-8). But still, if we are to know and enjoy God’s power at work within us, we must take what we hear in the Scriptures and put it into practice. We should be diligent in our attention to the Scriptures each day, and in our attendance when the word of God is being expounded, but we should never fall into the trap of thinking that attending, paying attention, and listening carefully are enough. We must be “doers … and not hearers only.”

In John 13, on the night before Jesus’ death and after He has been teaching the disciples for a while, He says to them regarding His lessons, “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17). If you wonder why you’re not experiencing God’s blessing, it may be because you aren’t putting His words into practice. The Lord has given us rich instruction and He has given us the Spirit to be our Helper. Now we are responsible for drilling our minds in the truth of God’s word and then doing what we have learned, received, and heard.

What a great sadness it is when churches become like dusty old libraries, filled with so many lives that are like volumes of truth just sitting there, never used. The temptation as we become increasingly aware of the truth is just to sit and think about it without ever taking action. James puts that kind of life in stark terms: it is to deceive yourself. No—a church is to be a gallery of living experience. There ought to be a vibrancy about believers, so that when we face the world’s many problems—problems we ourselves are not immune to—we can see them for what they are and respond by holding out the truth of God’s word as we ourselves live it out.

Determine today not to be a hearer only, and so deceive yourself into thinking you are a growing Christian when in fact you are a shriveling one. Resolve to be a doer of the word. Look honestly over your life now and identify any areas about which you have heard how to live for Christ but have never actually obeyed. That will be the part of your life about which the Spirit is saying to you right now, Do not be a hearer only. Be a doer—for that way blessing lies.

07/27/2026

Devotion for July 27th
Consider Him
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Hebrews 12:3

Have you ever been tempted to give up on your faith? Maybe during a tough week, you’ve considered your circumstances and thought, “None of this is working to my benefit. It’s time to forget about Christianity and live as others live.” In those moments, it’s easy to look around and see our unbelieving friends, family, and coworkers living differently and more easily and seemingly having a great time. Envious glances allow doubt and disillusionment to creep in and steal our resolve to stay on the straight and narrow path.

This was the experience of the psalmist Asaph. He “had almost stumbled” because he “was envious of the arrogant when [he] saw the prosperity of the wicked” who were “always at ease” (Psalm 73:2-3, 12). This, it appears, was also the experience of the Christians to whom the writer of Hebrews addressed himself. They had “not yet” had to shed blood in order to stand firm in the faith (Hebrews 12:4), but it was clear that the struggle against sin within and the struggle to withstand opposition from without were taking their toll.

What should they do? Consider Jesus. The biblical antidote to faintheartedness and weariness is to fix our eyes on Him who endured hostility—who endured the cross—in order to obtain the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).

At some point in our lives, all of us will face unjust suffering in words, deeds, or circumstances—and we can admit that we don’t want to take the dig in the ribs and the spikes in the shins. All of us will face the reality that we have not yet defeated the sins that we have struggled with for years and years. All of us will face days when we don’t want to be in the race, when we are tempted to give up and drop out. What should you do on those days? Hear God’s word saying, Consider Him. Consider the life of Christ: what it was like and where it led. He opened the door to glory; now we walk the path behind Him. Look at Jesus, who ran this race and is now “seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Day by day, no matter whether the course runs uphill or the wind feels full against us, we consider Him and “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (v 1).