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...

"...it is the goal of good theology to humble us before the truine God of majesty and grace." - Michael Horton from The Christian Faith. I love theology! I have entire shelves dedicated to theology books in my office, but I need to be constantly reminded that any study of theology that doesn't cause us to be more in love with Jesus is empty. Last time the post began with the reminder that the "chief end of man is to worship God and to enjoy Him forever." We have been created to find our purpose, joy, and fulfillment in the God of the universe who loved and died for us. In Joshua Harris' book "Dug Down Deep" (a great intro for someone that has never studied theology before) he also speaks about the goal of studying and learning theology and the doctrine of God in particular. He says, "When we study the doctrine of God, there should be a sense of awe in our hearts. We should be like children with a telescope under a starry night sky. Then w...

I am learning that in every situation in life we must always come back to the gospel, and that this is especially true in interpersonal relationships. Most of our lives are spent in relationship with other people, and since no two people on earth are going to be able to agree on absolutely every issue conflict is a natural part of every relationship. I want to look at some practical ways that the gospel should change how we as believers interact with other people, but first we need to consider a few foundational principles. We are all creatures of habit. Some fight against this more than others, but to some degree we all have our little routines that we can't live without. Perhaps some would try to argue that this is not the case for them because they intentionally avoid routine, but avoidance would still be classified as a routine. Since we are creatures of habit, for the most part, we are going to continue to resort to many of the same thought and action patterns that we have ...

For many years, having grown up in the church, I had always read and understood Jesus' words in John 14:15 in what seemed to be a pretty straightforward way. In that verse Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." These words were so important to the Apostle John that he repeated them in his epistles numerous times (1 John 3:23, 1 John 5:2-3 & 2 John 5). It seemed plain enough to me, that if we really love God then we will prove it by obeying what He commanded of us. Maybe many of you have had similar thoughts regarding these verses. Jesus Himself said that the greatest commandment was to love God and the second greatest commandment is like it, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Naturally we realize that the greatest commandments were summary statements and that the implications of them are quite far reaching. Elsewhere Jesus would say that the love believers are to have for one another should cause the world to recognize that we are His disciple...

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...