Cola Church

03/08/2026

09/02/2024

The Monday Muse
Forever by Perrie Keeve
I’m preparing a lesson and this idea popped out. God is vast. Infinite. He possesses a manifold wisdom that is beyond human comprehension. But over the course of history–in order to reveal himself to us for the sake of intimacy–God has given us two things to help us grasp his infinite person. The first is His Word, which is true, eternal and revealed completely in the Trinity aspect of the man Jesus. The second is His Spirit, which is given to all those who surrender their entire soul to the King Jesus. Again, God gives us these things so that we may know him in the truest, deepest, most intimate sense–that is the point of all creation, a perfect relationship with God. Satan hates this intimacy and so introduces into creation ideas that are untrue. He unleashes spirits that are not of God. The combination of the untrue ideas and the deviant spirits are revealed in theories, concepts,and principles upon which kingdoms and nations are founded. Notions of race, economics, politics, paths promising prosperity, ways boasting health and wellness, fads that cleanse your life for the better–people build their perception upon these things, they guide nations with them and with them they galvanize hearts towards promises that can never be fulfilled. This is what I’ve learned: All of these ideas, theories, notions, concepts and principles will pass away. Nations and kingdoms will rise and fall. Societies will come and go. And though Satan will wield every one of these things as a weapon against the truth, in the end, “nothing can be done against the truth, only for it.” The Christian should desire to take refuge in the Spirit of God. More than that, the Christian should be filled with that Spirit, molded by Him, transformed into something more by Him. That way, when Satan throws the tempest of untruth and malspirits towards us, we’ll stand undaunted and unconquered by the Word and the Spirit that is true and forever.

07/08/2024

The Monday Muse
You Think You Grown! by Idris Chandler
You ever meet a kid who thought they knew everything and they're only eight, a pr***en, or the dreaded teenager? It's so annoying cuz as the adult you know they have lived "no" life, and don't have enough experiences to be so confident! I wonder if God views us that way sometimes.

I find the younger children most interesting, the ones that still have their innocence and see the world through kid eyes. It's important to encourage them and help them to value their strengths; to continue to wonder and see the world with curiosity and purity. To discover, and then questing some-more. Children of all ages are looking for guidance, they want to know everything and so they're primed for righteous teaching. I pray they find righteous adults in their lives.

Adults can be so foolish! Like the "older" children they think they've got it all figured out, and they're often not willing to listen when those with more wisdom and experience are telling them, "Hey, there might be a different perspective to be had." Often with God, we exhibit these pride filled attitudes, while God's exhorts, "Be like the little children, be humble, be inquisitive; know that there's more for you to know, more for me to show you." As humans it's easy to be skeptical of each other, but God deserves ALL of our trust. His promises are true and He never lies. He didn't want us to know everything anyway; just the good that he'd prepared for us.

Oh well... so much for that Eden. Now we have only to guard our hearts as best we can and trust that He's been around & knows what's best.

May I always be like a child, always in your presence, O God.

Luke 18:16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

07/01/2024

The Monday Muse
Rest in God by Emily Camerino
It’s been a while since I’ve written out what I’ve been musing about and so much has happened over the last four months, mostly pertaining to having twin girls! I feel like I blinked and they’re already so much bigger. They say the days are long and the years are short, but in newborn season it feels like the days are short and the years are short! Because so much of my time is filled with “mundane” things now (feeding babies, burping, diapering, playing, and rocking to sleep all on repeat), it’s easy for me to just let my day slip by. Now I know those things are still productive and “productivity” in my life will look different than it did before, but at the same time I want to make sure that I’m really giving God my time and honoring Him with it. Part of that is of course taking care of my kids, but it’s also making sure I’m spending time with Him through reading and prayer, serving my family (kids and Dom) and not brushing things off for someone else to do because “I’ve done more”. Time is one of the things I can feel incredibly limited in, if only there was more time in a day or I needed less sleep to function! But alas, that will never really be the case and so I have to be disciplined with my time and plan well. The planning things in advance is easy for me, but it’s the being disciplined with my down time that can be hard. It’s easy for me to fall into the trap of “I deserve a break” and use free time to mindlessly scroll on my phone or watch a show, neglecting to spend time with God because I just want “mindless” time. Rest and shutting the brain off are important, but if it’s hurting my relationship with God or my ability to be a loving mother and wife, then it isn’t true rest. When I find rest in God through reading and prayer, even if it’s a short amount of time I never regret it and leave refreshed, it’s just being disciplined enough to start. For you, what are things that can distract and pull your attention from finding rest in God? How are you, this week, going to plan well and be disciplined with your time?

06/28/2024

Sunday Recap | House Church

06/25/2024

The Monday Muse.
Filled with what? by Dom Camerino
There is an ongoing spiritual battle that we often don’t acknowledge is ongoing around us. Never before in the history of the entire world have we ever been more connected as humans and have more information at our fingertips. Within seconds information can be passed around all over the world for all to see, and more importantly, be influenced by. The rise of the internet in the last 25 years has changed our world drastically and in many ways this has been a positive occurrence. However, there is now a battle all Christians in today’s internet world must face now. The battle for influence. The average person spends about 7 hours a day engaging with a “screen” in some form, whether that’s their phone, computer, tv, you name it. The average Christian in America spends around 15-45mins in time with God daily in the form of reading scripture and praying. I am not pointing this out to say all social media and the whole internet is wrong and evil, I personally think it’s neutral. However, something to note is that in the vast majority of our culture, the greatest influence in our lives isn’t coming from our personal times with God, but rather the shows we watch, the social media algorithms, the news agencies we subscribe to. More and more in my own personal walk with God, I have been evaluating the question of “What am I being filled with?” One of the scriptures that comes to mind is in Ephesians…. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) Being filled with too much wine leads to debauchery which means to have an “abandoned and dissolute life”. Meaning the fruit of filling myself to drunkenness leads only to death and an empty life. It has really made me think about everything in my life that I consume and whether or not it will be helpful to fueling the Holy Spirit in me towards life rather than quenching the Spirit which only results in death. More on this some other time but just evaluate these two questions “What am I being filled with?” And “What is it forming me into?”

06/23/2024

Cola Church got to celebrate our Generosity Sunday a few weeks ago!

06/17/2024

Stitch by stitch: Nikki Keeve
Any parent will tell you, life with small children is a roller coaster. So much blessing and frustration piled up into such small people; it certainly is a wild ride 😅 With so much of my time these days taken up by holding and nursing our sweet babe, I have noticed a gnawing feeling that I am “wasting time” as I attend to such mundane tasks. I find myself frequently frustrated by just how little I feel like I accomplish each day.
I set intentions for the day, make my to-do lists, mentally prepare to try and be productive.
Yet at close of day I often feel that my entire day was spent cleaning the house….only for it to still somehow be messy and crumb-laden. Spent trying to answer the same messages..only to be interrupted at every turn. Spent trying to accomplish goals..only to be detained by nursing the baby. A day spent laboring and striving and fighting with my character as I deal with my children. The hard work of pouring out energy and time and endless effort, unseen and un-praised. Some days I feel that my only accomplishment was keeping everyone alive. I’m sure most mothers can relate!
Recently I have been mulling over a prayer that I came across (), which has helped me to reframe my labors,
“Let me be content to minister regardless of visible outcomes,
Trusting that the small mercies I extend
Will be woven into the larger theme of redemption at work in the lives of others as you woo them to yourself.”
The labors of caring for a household of young children can seem endless an oh-so-unproductive. But each mundane task I attend to is like working a single stitch into a larger tapestry. God is wooing my children to himself and every moment I expend in loving and caring for them is adding a stitch to that tapestry. The folding laundry, the hard talks, the holding onto my patience when I don’t want to be kind, the nursing of the baby, the sweeping of the floors for the 7th time in the same day: I trust that as I pour out my life, God can use it to draw my children and show them His Light.

06/14/2024

Singles Luncheon!

06/10/2024

The Monday Muse
The Real Hard Work by Perrie Keeve

These four devotions are how the church practices Ephesians 3 and 4. The great priority is building a family that loves and serves all its members into spiritual maturity. The world will be reached, God will make sure of that, but not by disciples OVERREACHING. He places us all exactly where we need to be. We must be people humble enough to trust the process and do the hard work of loving each other, an endeavor that trains us to be more like Jesus as we bear with the failings of those who have decided to make Jesus Lord. This is the great contradiction of the Christian community. It’s filled with sinners growing into saints and it's hard work dealing with that process in other people. It takes patience, mercy, compassion, daily encouragement, real discipling and deep relationships, it takes personal humility and growth. Consider these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world…Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight…A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community…He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” The miraculous power of the Christian community is the love that bears with and serves the community like Jesus bore with and served us. This is the real hard work. Forgiving. Having mercy. Loving the community in the weak and immature years and not just when its fun enough to make your experience there comfortable and to your liking. Many people want to live in a well built, well established house, but not many want to take the time to build such houses. But we’re all builders, not tenets. We’re all under construction until God prepares a permanent place for us after everything is said and done and until then we don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which partially built house is going to be a better shelter for us. We have to build where God places us and learn the power of loving the Christian community rather than using it. This is the maturity that God calls all disciples to.

06/09/2024

Midweek Shenanigans! And VBS is upon us. Make sure you sign up!

06/03/2024

The Monday Muse
Forging the Community by Perrie Keeve
Jesus spent three years teaching the disciples the power of salvation. They watched individual after individual being taught that sin’s destruction was far worse than the physical problems in the world. When Jesus gave the great commission, it made sense to the disciples–Jesus’ great solution was that everyone would know of the power of the Kingdom and experience it through living like the King. That is what it means to make disciples. And when Jesus gives the great commission, he begins with the end goal: the whole world! But in Acts, just like in the Gospels, he starts small. The Holy Spirit comes and affects a community of three thousand people. He begins by forging that group into the example of the Kingdom. That early church displayed how the power of the Kingdom could change the world: three thousand people DEVOTED fully to the Word, fellowship, prayer and the ceremony that ensured every one of them would remember the reason why they did everything: Communion, the breaking of bread, the remembrance of Jesus’ life, sacrifice and resurrection. This is the first great step to the church fulfilling the great commission–its members must be devoted, but modern Christianity misses this point. Today, we want the virtues of Christianity without doing the real hard work of practicing the disciplines like Jesus calls us to. There can be no Christian community without the community being devoted to the Word of God, the fellowship, prayer and communion. Only when these things are embraced fully and consistently, can the community transform into a peoples who are driven by sacrificing like Jesus sacrificed, meeting needs like Jesus met needs–within the small community that Jesus provided–and showing the world, through the love and power of that community, who God really is. Sacrifice that meets needs to the glory of God–that defines Jesus’ life and it should define the church’s function.