Growing In Grace

When church gets out do you find yourself thinking about those areas of your life that you need to improve? Or do you leave pondering the gospel of grace, and the glory of God in Christ's work in our place? Certainly we may leave with both of these things on our minds, but which one did the pastor emphasize the most? A dear friend of mine who is a truck driver told me when I got my commercial drivers license that the best thing I could do to drive straight was to look as far down the road as I could. Even when driving through curves I should anticipate where we are heading and keep my eyes fixed there. The reason is that if we look down right in front of the bus or truck to keep ourselves between the stripes we actually make things worse. We end up looking back and forth and over-correct back and forth. Though it is completely counter intuitive, trying to look close to stay between the lines makes doing so very difficult. This principle holds true for us in our Christian walks to...

The more I study the Bible the more I realize the depths of the treasures that it holds. We will never be able to exhaust it's riches, but we must press on and dig deeper throughout our lives. This word study is another one that shocked me because I had always understood the promise made to Abraham a certain way. I grew up hearing it taught a certain way, and never thought to question it. In fact, in some circles questioning the interpretation that I was taught was taboo (borderline heretical in others). However, if we truly believe the Bible is the Word of God, infallible and authoritative, then we must allow it to change even our most deeply held understandings of things if they can be proven to be untenable. This is one of those beliefs that is often bound up with so much emotion, so I would just ask that you let the Bible speak for itself and then draw your conclusions. Perhaps this will challenge a long held belief, but if this is what the Bible truly says then that belief m...