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Only 3 Weeks?

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…Yes. Only three weeks until I leave with students and adults from our church for Student Life Missions Camp. It looks like we will have a great week, with Neil McClendon as Camp Pastor and Billy & Cindy Foote leading our music. The theme is Flip! There’s also some great promotional videos available. We have been assigned an amazing missions opportunity. We get to work with a local community service organization that assists women. We will be painting and serving them.

Pray for this week as details come together. Pray for the staff at the camp. They have been doing this for weeks now and we want to refresh the spirits of all we encounter. Pray for our group to minister and reach out. Pray for God’s glory to be seen in all we do.

Resurrection Realities

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Today’s sermon is up and thought I would post on it. Seemed like a different kind of sermon for me. So often, we talk about the resurrection as if it is some huge event and have a hard time drawing application. I’m not bemoaning the importance of it, but simply confessing how difficult it is to apply it to our lives.

Doctrine matters. The resurrection isn’t just about an important part of the Gospel. The resurrection affects the way we live. Mark 16:1-8 seems to point to that. How does this show itself in your life.

Sunday Review – Following

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Thought we had a good morning yesterday. The sermon, entitled Following Jesus, from Mark 15:39-47 is now online. The thrust of the passage, obviously was on the burial of Jesus. In Mark’s Gospel, with last week’s clear picture of who Jesus was, I think Mark intentionally gave us some pictures of what it means to follow, since that has been a major theme of Mark’s Gospel.

My three applications to conclude were:

Confess – speak of Jesus before men
Serve – identify with Jesus by serving Him
Courage – don’t be driven by the fear of man; courageously honor Christ

Hope you had a great Lord’s Day!

Weekend Preview…6/21

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We are anticipating a good Lord’s Day. We’ll probably have some special arrangements to make for children and students in light of the mess. The sermon will be from Mark 15:39-47. Yes, we will be looking at the centurion, again. His confession is a capstone to this excellent book. The focus, though, in the burial of Jesus will be on these three remarkable characters we meet who are followers of Jesus. The centurion demonstrates his following in boldly confessing Christ. The women demonstrate following in identifying with the Savior and serving His needs. Joseph (of Arimathea) shows his following of Jesus in courageously extending honor to Him. We are thinking of what it means to follow Jesus, therefore, which is a huge theme in Mark. Hope to see you there.

Our Basement…

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Our basement at the church has flooded, which leaves me with some theological musings…

1) Is this depth of water level what liberal scholars really think Pharaoh and his army perished in when chasing the children of Israel out of Egypt. (They say that the children of Israel actually crossed the Sea of Reeds, which was just a few inches deep.) The only problem is the drowning of those chasing. Just a thought.

2) Our insurance company says that this isn’t covered because it isn’t an “act of God.” (I jokingly told our treasurer we should sue on theological grounds. You see, we believe in God’s providence, which means that He is sovereignly in control and governing ALL THINGS. Not an act of God. Ha! I can read the headline now, “Local Church in KS Sues Insurance Company Over Doctrine”. Oh, well. NO need for mean-spiritedness.)

3) There has to be some sort of ramifications for Baptists and Presbyterians with all this water.

Oh, well. God is gracious and we are trusting Him to provide the means and take care of us. When you pray, ask God to endow us with wisdom.

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Jesus Is the Christ…

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Thought we had a glorious morning service, surveying the wondrous cross. The sermon, The Christ (Even In Death) from Mark 15:33-39, is online. There were many applications. I mentioned three:
1) I’m struck by how Scripture-saturated the Son of God was. In His most desperate hour and incredible suffering, He ran to the Scriptures, specifically Psalm 22:1 for comfort.
2) I’m amazed at how we try to sew the temple curtain back in two by placing religious deeds before the Gospel.
3) I’m convicted that the boldness of the centurion should stand as a challenge to us all to say with our lips “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

What applications struck you?

DeYoung on God’s Will

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Kevin DeYoung has written a helpful book on knowing God’s will. There are lots of books in this genre, but this one is practical and very helpful. I would highly recommend it. Here’s a review from Team Pyro. You can also check it out on Amazon and WTS Books.

From the back cover:

Hyper-spiritual approaches to finding God’s will don’t work. It’s time to try something new: Give Up.

Pastor and author Kevin DeYoung counsels Christians to settle down, make choices, and do the hard work of seeing those choices through.

Too often, he writes, God’s people tinker around with churches, jobs and relationships, worrying that they haven’t found God’s perfect will for their lives. Or–even worse–they do absolutely nothing, stuck in a frustrated state of paralyzed indecision, waiting…waiting…waiting…for clear, direct, unmistakable direction.

But God doesn’t need to tell us what to do at each fork in the road. He’s already revealed His plan for our lives: to love Him with our whole hearts, to obey His Word, and after that, to do what we like.

No need for hocus-pocus. No reason to be directionally challenged. Just Do Something.

You might also want to check out Kevin DeYoung’s breakout session at Next entitled, fittingly, Just Do Something.