As Pastor Tony finishes his study leave, guest speaker Chad Nuss takes us to Genesis 3:14-24 to look at the need to plant new churches..
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Deacons, I hope you have been blessed by your efforts to know the gospel as you have studied God’s word over the past couple of weeks. As we continue to seek ways to be saturated with the gospel, we note that the second means suggested by Anyabwile is that we desire to hear the gospel. We must seek out those who preach it and open our ears to hear. As we sit in the pew listening to the preacher, we must prick our ears to hear the gospel preached. And wherever the whole council of God is preached there too is the gospel.
But we must not depend solely on the preacher or the teacher of a Life Class to preach the gospel to us. No, we must preach it to ourselves. There are various ways that we can do this, and I would encourage you to explore them in your devotional life. Some of the ways that Anyabwile mentions that I have found helpful are:
There are other ways to preach the gospel to yourself, but here is a crucial place to start. Encourage each other in these disciplines and share with each where you are being blessed in these efforts.
Next time, God willing, I will write about some of Anyabwile’s other tips for being saturated with the gospel. Until then, preach the gospel and learn to love it so that you seek it always as the very sustenance of your soul.
Blessings, Mark
The basis for these writings on being a Healthy Church member are from Anyabwile, Thabiti M.What is a Healthy Church Member?. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2008.
Pastor Lisle concludes our study of prayer with Matthew 6 to help us embrace our hypocrisy and begin the daily fight to move our minds from seeing prayer as a transaction with God to seeing prayer as a relationship with God.
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Recommended Resource: “A Praying Life”, by Paul Miller.
Seeing life as God sees
Beginning February 7 we will begin a study of the Life of David, the Old Testament king of Israel. We will follow his story as it is recorded in the books of I and II Samuel. David’s story is truly one of the good, the bad and the ugly. If we take this story at its true value it will have a considerable shocking effect on us. When God told David’s story he did not sanitize it, God told it as it was. Most of us tend to sanitize the stories of our own lives, for ourselves and for others, but God does not. Following David will help us to truly know God in our real life situations and with our real life selves. Think of it this way. When people see us in public they usually don’t get the real us, the good, the bad and the ugly. They usually see mostly the good, with a little bad and ugly mixed in. Just as we prepare our faces with make up or shaving, our appearances with hair styles clothing and cologne, we also prepare our souls with make up so people cannot see our real thoughts and feelings. David’s story clearly shows us that there is no make up for the face or for the soul before God. God knows everything and we can hide nothing from him. For poor David, God revealed many of David’s secrets, and recorded them in his Bible for the entire world to read. Why? Oh, the reasons are many. This is better than any reality TV, because this is REALITY. Just be glad God is not still recording, or is he? What if he told your story? Would you stay around for the reading of it at church on Sunday? I wouldn’t if it were mine! David’s story is a key to understanding all of history and to understanding your own history (as well as your present and future). David’s story was written to tell us how to get our story re-written.
If you would like to get ahead on David’s story, start reading at I Samuel chapter one. Reading a chapter a day will have you ready to get inside David’s life through our study and learn what it is to know that God is engaged in every detail of your life. Throughout the study we will be alternating perspectives to get the best view of life and clearest meaning of God’s word. This means that some days we will be looking at God through David’s eyes to learn how a man of great faith sees God. Other days we will look at David through God’s eyes to learn how God really sees us. Both of these perspectives hold stunning and even frightening views, but don’t close your eyes, you won’t want to miss anything.
Tony
Pastor Tony takes us to Philippians 4:4-9 to provide Biblical application in the face of change in our daily lives.
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Deacons, as you know, this past Sunday we discussed the Third Mark of a Healthy Church Member from Thabiti M. Anyabwile’s book, “What is a Healthy Church Member?”. Anyabwile argues that “The gospel is absolutely vital to a vibrant, joyous, persevering, hopeful and healthy Christian and Christian church.”
I believe that statement is true. For that reason I commend to you the task of becoming saturated with the gospel. When something becomes saturated by something else, it takes on a different quality or nature. The nature change of a Christian, who is gospel saturated, is magnificent. One goes from negative and despondent to joyous, from consistent struggles with sin to persevering in righteousness, from always seeing doom around every corner to hopeful for a future glory promised and certain. In short, one who is gospel saturated moves from a state of sickliness to a state of vibrant health. So again, I commend to you the task of being gospel saturated men. The church needs its leaders to be among the healthiest of everyone in the church.
The question is, how do we become gospel saturated people? According to Anyabwile, first we must know what the gospel is. We must know that it is the good news of God’s saving grace and redemption brought to a lost and justly condemned people through the obedience and sacrifice of God’s Son so that any who would believe in Him, confess Him as Lord and repent of their sins are guaranteed forgiveness and life ever more.
We will talk about further means of becoming gospel saturated over the next few weeks. For now, I encourage you to seek out, in God’s Word, pictures of the gospel, things that help you better understand the gospel in its entirety and commit those things to your heart.
Blessings, Mark
The basis for these writings on being a Healthy Church member are from Anyabwile, Thabiti M.What is a Healthy Church Member?. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2008.
Pastor Tony begins an informal series on Prayer with Matthew 6:5-15 to look at the Model Prayer.
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Deacons, as we finish this Mark of a Healthy Church Member I bring you two very important benefits of being a Biblical Theologian. These two benefits speak to me of the criticality of each of us taking the whole council of God into view as we study in single part of scripture.
As we begin to read the book of Hebrews we learn that God has spoken at many different times throughout history; He has done so in many different ways and to many different people. This tells us that God’s revelation of himself is spread out over a large range of texts. We have each of those texts in scripture, and therefore, in order to know the full revelation of God about himself we must take all the text of the bible into our purview.
The impact of this is that our erroneous ideas about God, which are caused by our misinterpretations of particular texts of scripture are corrected as those ideas are stood up against the entire council of God. When, as Church Members, we approach our theology in this matter, we provide a protection for the church.
We must remember that the scriptures were given to us so that we would not fall (1 Corinthians 10:11). As pastors and even church members study and teach as Biblical Theologians, they protect the church from error, silly myths and irreverent ideas about God (1 Timothy 4:1-7). The end result of this approach to biblical study and teaching is that God’s people are made wise unto salvation (2 Timothy 3:14-15).
Finally, as our commission is to make disciples of all the nations, in agreement with Anyabwile, I will state that we cannot easily or very well obey the command of Jesus if we do not have a strong biblical theology. Such theology gives a greater facility with the gospel . We need to see the unity of the bible in its proclamation of the gospel in order to be effective and true disciple makers.
I hope you will make being a Biblical Theologian a priority in your life.
God’s blessings, Mark
The basis for these writings on being a Healthy Church member are from Anyabwile,TThabiti M.What is a Healthy Church Member?. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2008.
What is P2P?
This guided weekend retreat is for a father and son or mother and daughter to prepare their sons or daughters to make wise biblical choices. This getaway will also help strengthen your relationship with your child as your roles begin to change. Hopefully, after this weekend, your child will begin to see you differently—as a trusted advisor and friend. You, along with teaching from our pastoral staff, will prepare your child to make wise biblical choices about. . .
· Friendships
· Growing to sexual maturity
· Moral purity
· Relationships with the opposite sex
This is not a time in which you will just sit and listen. It will be a time in which there is a balance between you and your child listening to teaching, and then applying what you have learned through object lessons that you do together.
When: February 19-20
Where: Legacy Center is on the campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For directions, For directions, click here or call the church office.
Cost: $95 per family unit (‘family unit’ is defined as father and son or mother and daughter) Cost includes: Saturday breakfast and lunch; one night stay; and Passport to Purity materials.
How do I sign-up? You can sign up at the registration table in the foyer starting Sunday, January 17 and ending Sunday, February 14 or signup online.
Parent Preparation meeting: Sunday, Feb. 14 5:00-6:00 PM. This meeting is for the parent to help prepare you for the object lessons that you will lead during the weekend.
*We recommend that you take just one child per parent.
A new listing of recommend books has been added to the Resources page. For your convenience, they have been linked to Amazon.com. Feel free to buy them at your favorite bookstore.
