If you are active in the the service of the lord, you may know how much we are often tested in his divine service. Our own ministry, for many years, had to preach out of a storefront, with barely enough money from our poor congregation to pay the rent to the building owner, much less the fund to build a church.

Those were some hard times, times that even tested the faith of many in the congregation, with the economy on the ropes, and many local families almost knocked out through the drugs, crime, and poverty that stalked the inner city where we did the work of the lord. But God showed us through the hardest of times, and now rather than fighting to keep our ministry running, we are finally building a church.

It is not just poverty that tries mens souls. Success can do the same. Building a church is no simple matter. We thought that we had had it made when we finally had the funds for building a church, but we were mistaken. It had only just begun.

Our contractor, despite claiming to be Christians and churchgoers themselves, were dishonest men. They cut every corner they could building a church, and tried to charge us for various unforeseen expenses. They thought that because we were religious people we would be easily taken, and that there was some powerful moneybags who was bankrolling our church building. But we were building a church by ourselves and for our community, and there was just simply no way that we were going to let anything happen to it.

Construction got pushed back and pushed back, and soon instead of building a church, we found ourselves fighting for that church against the wicked contractor in court. But through the grace of God, and the rightness of our cause we persevered, and were able to stop fighting for what was ours and start up with building a church again.

Now, we have finally finished building our church, and I can tell you what a fine sight it is. The whole community can take pride in it, because the whole community paid for it and the whole community worships in it. Now that we have finished with building a church, we can get back to doing what the church is supposed to do that is we can minister to the needs of our community and help the poor and the godless.