Do you marvel this time of year, if not daily, that the Son of God came in the flesh? It is truly a mercy that God has sent the Son, but that wasn’t the only gift He gave. When Christ rose victorious, He sent the Spirit of Christ to those who believe. This gift was not one to hoard or merely contemplate, but a powerful gift that would continue the earthly mission of Christ to take up the work of seeking out the broken, wounded, festering, poor, captive sinners and telling them the good news that “Your God reigns,” (Isaiah 52:7).
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A hike up a mountain is full of disappointments; the way is marked by false, unmet expectations, some obvious and maddening, most insignificant, unnoticed, never rising to the level of conscious awareness. But together they conspire in a liturgy of despair; a training of head, heart, will, body, soul, and imagination in a reality in which disappointment is at the bottom of things; a kind of anti-discipleship whose master asks, “Is it really worth it?” It’s this pedagogy of futility that most threatens my desire and intention to go on; it’s the barrage of disappointments, of expectations unmet.
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We recently encountered David’s lamentation on the deaths of Jonathan and Saul right in the center of our study on 1 & 2 Samuel. Not only is this a reminder of the God-honoring act of lamentation, and a model of how to do it well, but it is a reminder that heartfelt lament is not contrary to a life of faith and trust in our sovereign and powerful God.
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Often when I’m interacting with unbelievers about the Bible, they will ask, “Why should I trust a 2,000-year-old book?”, as if truth had some sort of expiration date. Which brings us to the Reformation, an event that happened 500 years ago during the Renaissance (age of rebirth) in Europe. Why should we care about the Reformation?
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The Kerdos ABF recently returned from its second annual weekend getaway to the Wolf River and the Nicolet National Forest. Our goal was to . . .
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Delighting in the Trinity, a must read for all, gave us a large-scale view of our Triune God. “For what makes Christianity absolutely distinct is the identity of our God...the Trinity is the governing center of all Christian belief,” says Reeves. He goes on to compare and contrast our Triune God with the one person gods.
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As he winds his way through these regions, he is surrounded by blind men. They are everywhere! His disciples only can see their need for bread. The Pharisees only see their mousetrap set for Jesus and long to bait it with a “sign.” The crowds on a hillside are eager only to be fed with the bread of this world. Finally, in the midst of the tour, a physically blind man is brought to him in Bethsaida and Jesus stops the train.
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The love of Christ is a strange thing, especially in the heat of competition on the field. The “strange” stands out. And it caught my eye, and had soon changed my life… The prayer and goal of Sports Ministry is that the “strange” will stand out - in how we play, how we host, and in how we love one another.
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On the other hand, a healthy Father-child relationship is marked by trust and confidence in the Father. As we pray, and as we see (even seemingly superfluous) prayers answered again and again, our trust and confidence in God’s fatherly care for us matures. By regularly turning to him at all times in all our need, by regularly and knowingly receiving from him all our needs, we live more deeply into our filial relationship to him.
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However, that very truth puts professing Christians in a quite vulnerable place. It is all too easy to weave US history together with our Christian faith in such a way that almost any threat (real or perceived) to our personal liberty can feel like an attack on our faith! And any moral legislation we disagree with can generate rather significant confusion regarding whether we should view the issue in question more as a citizen of the US or as a citizen of heaven!
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Today, when I read the news or hear about a movie promoting teenage suicide or engage in a discussion with an atheist or even contemplate my own temptations, I am often reminded what a dark world it is in which we live. Unfortunately, I am not always as shocked as I was waking from my summer dreams years ago.
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June was a refreshing, exhilarating month at Grace Church! Global Outreach (GO) Month was so clearly assembled by the Lord that not even our GO Team would express it differently! Now, make no mistake, the attention the Team gave to planning was as enhancing as it was appreciated. But the actual assembling of the participants was worked out by our Heavenly Father without our involvement! Let me explain.
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Unbelievable!… the job you people did with VBS… you are amazing! You did exceeding abundantly beyond ALL that we could ask or think… according (and this is the important part) according to the Power that works within you. To God be the glory!
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We had 128 children, rotate through 5 classes, in 80+ degree heat… and yet we still call it Operation Arctic, and not Operation Oven! Counting the Nurseries we had a total of 140 children all over our campus . . .
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This summer the women of Grace will be discussing a book that I hope will lead us to know the love of Christ through an understanding of the triune God. Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves was written--as he wrote in his introduction--to help us grow in our enjoyment of God and see how God’s triune being makes all his ways beautiful.
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