A Letter that shows why we do what we do at CSF!

This email is from a new person who has attended CSF a few times this Spring. This person is responding to our follow up letter sent to them.....Names and specifics have been omitted.


"Hi Rick… sorry this has taken so long to reach you. What a kind and thoughtful note. Thanks so much for the prayers. My family has been through a lot...suffice it to say the prayers are extremely appreciated and I know they have helped, because we are doing better and things are rolling along without too much of the normal drama.

I thoroughly enjoyed the service and the sermon. I like sermons I can understand and that don’t make me feel any worse about myself than I already do. My desire to get back to God was provided to me in the counseling process. Mike (staff counselor) encouraged me to come to your church. The CSF service moved me because God was refereed to as the author of life and was mentioned in that way several other times. I am a journalist and ad copywriter by trade who desperately wants to become an author so I naturally took being at CSF as a divine sign. By the way, the video was amazing. I like that sort of message.

I also enjoyed meeting a lady in the cafe. She acted like she had known me all her life and we had just met. This was an odd departure from my previous church experience and the people there. Everyone there is always dressed in their Sunday best and appears wealthy and oh-so together. They file out afterwards, quipping requisite church small talk as they scurry off to brunch. I know these notions are not all real and result from my own warped view of church, but I think I associate religion to some extent with playing the role of "got-it-together Christians" who walk a social path to God. Mike promised me CSF would be different and he was right. I felt the people were real – they were drinking coffee and engaged and they piled in the doors and didn’t seem like actors. I did not feel like an outcast there. Yes, I was uncomfortable, and had a lot of anxiety being there, but it was okay that I wasn’t the ladies bible study leader, and I didn’t have to pretend to be a social butterfly.

So many negative things have happened in the past several years that I basically spent the bulk of the last few years withstanding crisis after crisis, mostly brought on by family stuff. I suspected that God lurked behind bushes and boulders with a lightning bolt, waiting for me to walk by, and when He saw me coming, gleefully jumped out to strike me down in some vulnerable area of my life. For years I felt that way and sadly, sometimes still do. The counseling has helped with this too, and that is why I deliberately set out to find a Christian counselor.

I’m not sure why I don’t commit to church, because in church I often feel the hand of God on my shoulder in those hallowed places; I know He is there and I know I am His beloved. It’s when I get out in the world that I royally screw up.

CSF and the counseling I am getting has really changed my life and is the catalyst that brought me back to God and to church after a many year absence. Even though I am an infant in this process I could not, would not be where I am without it. Thank you for the work you are doing and please accept my gratitude for providing a service and a safe place for lost souls like me to find the way out of the darkness of this world back to the light."

WOW.......Isn't t great to be part of a church that reaches those who are lost, confused and hurting. At CSF we are a Team of people called the local church that has one common goal....changed lives.

Today's Bible Reading. 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4

Are you shocked as you read through the Bible how many times the Bible talks about SEX? Why is that? It is because of what Paul says in verse 7..."God has called us to live a pure life." Sex is designed by God to be a great and erotic thing...between married couples! However, the misuse of it will always lead to problems and pain. The strength of the joy and pleasure is paralleled to the destruction that it misuse can bring.

We need to always make sure that we are on guard and that we control our bodies in a way that honors God, ourselves and those in our family.