Growing In Grace

One of my favorite verses is Romans 1:16 - "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,..." The Apostle Paul wrote this just after the introduction to his letter to the Roman believers in which he gave them a brief summary of the gospel saying, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ," (Romans 1:1-6 ESV). For Paul the gospel was not merely something that was to be shared with a non bel...

In an article on Youth Ministry Dave Wright said, "... we lost sight of the Great Commission, deciding instead to make converts of many and disciples of few." I could not agree with this statement more. Except I see it as being for more indicative of Church in general. If we forget or ignore what Paul says in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (the gospel), then we turn salvation into something that can happen willy nilly, and frankly, in doing this we have removed the very power of the gospel that Paul was writing about in Romans 1:16! Sadly many churches today have substituted the 'sinner's prayer' or 'standing to be saved' for the preaching of the gospel. But lest we be deceived,  no one has ever been saved from saying the sinners prayer or from standing at the end of a church service when a generic message about a few Bible verses have been taught . That is simply not the way that God has designated that peop...