God’s love and the call to share it with others brought participants together for the Bonnerdale Seventh-day Adventist Church’s 18th annual Cowboy Camp Meeting, Oct. 9–10. Services took place in the pavilion on the church grounds.
Mitch Elrod, speaker from Branded Hands Ministry, and other speakers inspired attendees with stories of God’s love, reminding them that because God loves us, we ought to love one another.
“What’s love got to do with it?” Elrod frequently asked. The answer? Everything.
The messages emphasized that Jesus would have come to earth to live and die even if only one person would have been saved through His sacrifice. Loving others, no matter how unlovely they may seem, means doing what is necessary to give them the opportunity to be saved in God’s kingdom.
In the closing sermon, Leonardo Meléndez, D.Min., Evangelism director for the Arkansas-Louisiana Conference, challenged attendees to reach someone for Christ. Drawing from John 4, he shared the account of Jesus healing a royal official’s son.
The official believed Jesus’ assurance that his son would live and headed home. Later, he learned that his son had recovered at the very moment Jesus spoke. Not only did the official believe in Jesus, but after this miracle, his whole household believed as well.
Other accounts illustrated how Jesus reached individuals whose experiences then led others to believe, including the Samaritan woman and the man delivered from demons among the tombs.
The challenge extended to everyone present: We, too, can introduce someone to Jesus, who may then share Him with others.