New Summer Schedule
Reminder - we are now on summer schedule. We have ONE service at 10:00 AM. Curbside and Backyard are also at this time.
We will resume back to two services starting this fall. More details will be released as we get closer to that time.

Women’s Breakfast Our women’s ministry is expanding! Join your PTCC friends on Saturday, June 24th at 9AM for fellowship, a warm breakfast and details on our future ministry. The breakfast will be at the home of Carla Moss in Frisco and childcare is available. For more information please send us an email at info@prestontrail.org. MORE

Coming Soon - Youth Camp
Also, plan ahead for Youth Camp, which will happen July 17-21 in Corpus Christi, TX. Cost of the camp will be $365 which includes a 4 night 5 day stay in the Holiday Inn - Emerald Beach, meals, as well as a great speaker and band. You don't want to miss out. Contact Ryan Hairston at ryan@prestontrail.org for more information.

Discover Preston Trail Class
New to PTCC? Join Pastors Jim and Paul on Sundays at 11:00 AM as we take a look at our church and where it is going. This is an opportunity for all guests who are new to PTCC to learn more. Session will meet at the AMC Theatre. Please signup at the Life Group table. A 5 week Partnership Class will follow for all those interested in becoming a PTCC partner.MORE

Curbside Note
On July 2 we will NOT hold Curbside. Children that age are invited to attend service with their parents.

“How Many Days Do You Have Left?”

Twice in the last few years I have pulled out the old calculator to estimate how many days I may have left to live. I’m 50 now. If I live to be 80, that gives me 30 more years. Multiply 30 years by 365 days/year, and I get 10, 950 more days. Of course, that assumes I live 30 more years. If I live only 3 more years, I have just a little over 1,000 days left.

Sound morbid? Not to me. It’s just a way to reflect on the reality we least like to talk about … unless we’re talking to our life insurance agent! The simple truth is, no one lives forever, at least not in this condition. Everyone who is alive today (presumably that includes you) has an outer limit to the number of days they have left. If a newborn girl lives to be 100, she will live 36,500 days. If your aged grandfather dies before 2006 ends, he has less than 200 days, starting now.

What has me thinking about life and death?

Two things actually. The first concerns my mother. Mom turned 84 last month. She has outlived her parents, her sister, her two husbands. Until she turned 80, she acted 20 years younger than she was. She traveled like crazy, never slowed down, showed few signs of normal wear and tear. But a couple of years ago, after my stepfather died, she began showing her age. Recently she has fallen a few times. She’s had surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. She takes more pills than any human I know. And she forgets things from time to time. But she still is doing remarkably well for being 84. This weekend I will help Mom move from Longview, where she’s lived for 20 years, to the DFW Metroplex, where she will move into a senior retirement center. For the first time I realize that she won’t live forever. That’s hard to swallow, because after dad’s death 37 years ago, she changed her whole way of life to take care of two teenagers and put us through college on a teacher’s salary. She has always been there for me. She’s never missed a big event in my life. But I know that track record won’t last forever. I don’t know how many more days she has – she may outlive me. But I know the outer limit for her days is shorter than I want it to be. While that is sobering, what makes it easier to stomach is that she has been faithful to her Lord since she was a child. She led me to personal faith in Jesus when I was 10, prayed me through some bad romances in high school and college (!), and has supported me in every way as an adult. She’s truly been a godly mother, the kind described in Proverbs 31:25 – “She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.” However many days she has left, I am confident she will use them to love and serve God.

The second reason I’m thinking about all of this is because last week I spoke with a longtime friend of Denise’s who is getting ready to move to Aceh, Indonesia to work with Compassion Frisco. In one of our conversations, she told me the interesting story of how she decided to move to a third world country at the age of 46. She grew up in Indonesia, where her parents were medical missionaries. Her dad was a surgeon. After she returned to the states and graduated from college, she sensed that God wanted her to serve Him in a foreign country just like her parents were doing. She attended seminary, nurtured her divine call to missions, graduated, got married, had children, … and then life sort of just happened. She got busy and never went overseas. She weathered some difficult experiences. Along the way she forgot about missions. About 18 months ago, she was reflecting on her life and began to think about her aging parents, now in their 80s. She realized that when their days on earth come to an end, God will welcome them into heaven and say, “Well done, good and faithful servants!” Then it hit her: What would God say to her if she died that night? The question haunted her. She wanted to hear the same words one day, but would she? She prayed and pondered it all until one evening she knelt beside her bed and cried out, “God, I will do whatever you want me to do, go wherever you want me to go, say whatever you want me to say. Just make my life count for more than it does now!” That brought a release she had been missing for 25 years. With her kids grown and gone, she now has the chance to do what God asked her to do long ago. So she’s moving to Aceh this summer. She realized that life is short, and that if you put off what you know you need to do, you may never get to it. So she “stopped” life … listened to God … and did what God said. She was living out the prayer found in Psalm 90:12 – “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

I don’t know how many days anyone has left to live. But I do know this: living for God is the only thing that makes life worth living. I mean, consider the alternatives. Do you want to live for yourself? Donald Trump has that one cornered. Do you want to live for music? Check out Ozzy Osbourne – he may make you think twice. How about lust? Howard Stern owns that prurient interest. Seriously, the only thing or person worth living for is Jesus. That’s what comforts me. Because no matter how long I’ve got left on this little planet called earth, I intend to serve Jesus every day. I hope you’ll make that same commitment … no matter how many days you have left.

Grateful for life, and hopefully more and more ready for death,

Read previous Trail Notes here

Click here for more information on Dream Big!

Chapter 2
Join us WEEKLY on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM, for a deeper service of biblical teaching, looking into the Life of Jesus. Led by our senior pastors, this will be a meaningful time of prayer, worship and teaching. 7:00 pm AMC Theatre.

LISTEN! Preston Trail Podcast
Sermons now available online! In keeping up with the times, all PTCC Worship Sermons are available for downloading on our website. So, if you missed a service, go here and take a listen.
You will have the option of downloading and listening to them on your computer or even subscribe here to have them come to your computer automatically each time one is added - then play them on your computer or your iPod. CDs will no longer be sold at our Resource Table, however entire sermon series will be available for purchase once our new building is complete.