God Ties Everything Together
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28 NKJV.
I have been the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Elk City, Oklahoma for almost seven years and will have been preaching at this church for eight years at the end of 2024. The first pastor of Fairview, Jess Rowley, married Jeanie and me many years ago now at Jeanie’s parent’s home. Bro. Rowley had been the Pruet’s pastor previously at Prairie View Baptist Church before the family moved into Elk City from their farm.
The sanctuary of Fairview was once the Ural Baptist Church building a little country church located south of Elk City and about a mile and a half or so east of Highway 6 on the north side of Highway 152. The church facility was moved from there to its current location after Ural had disbanded. Ural Baptist Church was the first church that Jeanie attended, and it was when she was a baby. Her family lived south of the church a few miles. Ural was where my father-in-law, Leon Pruet, was saved and baptized and it is also where Leon was ordained as a deacon.
I have a connection with Ural in that across the road from the church south of Hwy 152 was where my grandparents, Jim and May (Siniard) Wrather lived. In 1947, before I was born, while they were living there, my grandmother had a hysterectomy and sadly during the surgery she passed away. Did my grandparents ever attend church at Ural? I doubt that they did but my grandmother’s obituary does say that she “preferred the Baptists.” So, I guess that it is possible.
If we love the Lord and are the called according to His purpose God will use everything in our lives for good. God is not the author of any evil, but He can and will weave things together to bring about good in our lives and in the lives of others. I am even now, amazed, by what God has done in our lives!
All of these connections that we have to Fairview has only been fully revealed to us in recent years. I did not know that my grandparents lived at that location near Ural until sometime around 2006. It was only when I was driving my Dad back from seeing my Mother in a nursing home that he casually mentioned it as we drove by that my grandparents had lived there.
Look around and see what amazing things God has done and is doing in your life. For God is always at work in your life.