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Weekend Recap – 8/12/12

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We enjoyed a great Lord’s Day yesterday.  For me personally, it was great to get back into the pulpit and, specifically, return to the book of Hebrews to find strength for enduring.  My sermon, Father’s Discipline, from Hebrews 12:5-11 helped orient us to God the Father’s love and care for His children.  God helps us endure by training us to run and encouraging us to be holy and bear fruit that is honoring to Him.

Also, before I preached, we saw a video as Arwen and TJ sang “The Prodigal.”  Here’s that video:

In the evening, we met in small groups.  My group worked through Chapter 4 of Jerry Bridges’ book Who Am I on the appropriate subject: “I am an adopted son of God.”

All in all, we had an amazing Lord’s day.  I hope you were blessed through it.

Orphans

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My wife sent me an email last week on the needs of orphans in Haiti. As she read certain posts online, her heart was moved with compassion for the needs of these. As we are urged by James, caring for orphans is the essence of Christianity working itself out in love (James 1:27).

Here are some interesting sites to consider for this need…

Together for Adoption
Look After Orphans (an article in the recent World Magazine)
Noel Piper has had some amazing articles and challenges.

Here’s the questions my wife asked me in email (taken from the T4A site)…
• What can we do over the next several weeks so that we don’t forget about the people of Haiti?
• What will our church be able to do if/when Humanitarian Parole is granted for Haiti’s orphans?
• Where in Haiti can we send our people to serve on short-term trips come summer?
• How many people can our church send?

Oh Phil, will God call us to sacrifice greatly is the midst of this devastation?

I hope you can sense the compassion in her pleading. Let’s pray for God’s mercy and pray for wisdom in our actions.

The Gospel Brings You Into “A New Family”

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…so says Tullian Tchividjian:

“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household,” Paul said. In other words, when God adopts us, we not only gain a Father, we gain a whole new family: the Church. The biblical word for “church” does not mean a building or institution, it means “the called out ones.” It refers to those whom God calls out of slavery and into sonship. The Church, in other words, is people: people adopted by God, people who know God as their heavenly Father. When God saves sinners he saves them into a whole new community — the “family of God.” As Frank Colquhoun wrote in his book Total Christianity, “When Christ saves a man he not only saves him from his sin, he saves him from his solitude.” He brings us into meaningful fellowship with others who will help us along the way in our relationship with God. [a meditation from Tullian’s book Do I Know God?]

This theme of adoption is a key component of our Week of Prayer emphasis. I hope you are encouraged today by what God has done to give us access to Himself in prayer.