Letter From Caleb Click
Dear Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church,
A warm hello from the Click house! Words can’t describe how delighted we are to be joining our family to yours. The grace and relational authenticity you preach are the grace and authenticity we have experienced in every encounter with you. Through Bob, God has laid a rich gospel foundation, and we are excited for the opportunity to build upon it. We have sensed God’s hand on this from the very beginning and cannot wait to see his plan unfold in the years ahead.
We want to first express our profound gratitude. Thank you for faithfully praying for us even when you didn’t know us by name. We felt every one of those prayers. Thank you also for embracing and loving us when we visited you. Our prayer coming into last weekend was that it would feel like a homecoming, and by God’s grace, it did. And lastly, thank you for trusting us enough to extend this call. Christ’s goodness throughout this process has staggered our whole family.
As we consider what’s ahead, I keep returning to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 2:16, “Who is sufficient for these things?” The answer to that question is, “Not me.” The answer is also not you. Not us. But Jesus is. His grace is sufficient, his power is made perfect in our weakness, and he is not only able but willing to make us what we are not (2 Cor. 3:5-6; 12:9).
At the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, Aslan sprints off into a gloriously redeemed Narnia and shouts over his shoulder, “Come further in! Come further up!” The children take off after Aslan, following him further up and further into his country, this land they’ve been looking for their whole life and yet never knew until now. They discover they can’t feel afraid even if they try, and everything is more real, more solid than anything they’ve experienced before.
I pray that Christ will grant us a similar experience in the years ahead. We need him to take us further up and further into his goodness and mercy so that we can discover in him the home we looked for our whole lives but never knew. As we eagerly await our Savior’s return, may the sure knowledge of his presence so transform us that we cannot feel afraid even if we try, and may he empower us to continue to engage every neighbor with the surprising power of grace.
Please continue to pray for Mallory, Mary Neal, Alice, Lucy, Maggie, and me. We want to finish well at Perimeter and start well with you. Ask that the Lord would make our transition smooth and guide us through it as clearly as he has guided us to you. We are praying for you what you prayed for us – the words of Colossians 1:9-12.
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Yours in Christ,
Caleb, Mallory, Mary Neal, Alice, Lucy, and Maggie
