Posts by Pastor Eric (Page 18)

• Ten lepers called out to Jesus to be cleansed, a prayer he answered promptly (Luke 17). But only one, a half-blood Samaritan, came back to give thanks — a story Luke tells as a wake-up call for self-righteous Israel. All the more powerful if Gentiles were to turn back and give thanks, which you can do tomorrow. Come and strengthen one another and honor the Lord by…

• This is 2 Cor 7:10 — “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” I find this coming up in conversation lately: people who feel grief for their sin, who feel condemned in it, but not to any purpose or fruitful outcome. The answer to that is usually some form of 2 Cor 7:10— that Satan seeks to use…

• Since reading the first chapter of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together for the officers’ retreat, I’ve been happily stuck on the notion of living by faith in what God has already accomplished in Christ, rather than what I’m planning or inventing or accomplishing on his behalf. In other words, what if what he has done is more significant and powerful than what I am going to do?

• We very much need your prayers for the officers’ retreat which begins tomorrow evening with dinner and runs throughSaturday lunch. We’ll be taking our key from the first chapter of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, which distinguishes between fellowship founded upon human vision and desires, and fellowship founded upon Christ and what he has done, and is doing, in and through…

• “They have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant that I made with their fathers” (Jer 11:10).

• What if humility, far from being simply a character trait of “nice” people, is rather a kind of doorway, a portal, through which God chooses to enter human affairs, just as pride is so often the occasion of his wrath (for his enemies) or his chastening (for his children). In other words, what if your experience of God, or lack of same, is due not to how hard you’re…

Brothers, join us for the Men’s Breakfast, this Saturday at 8:00 am. I encourage younger men to leave the kids with wives and come. This is, in part, for their sake. The topic will be the Ashley Madison hack. Ed Stetzer, a mentor to ministers and elders, suspects that about 400 men were forced to resign their positions in churches last Sunday, once the Ashley Madison list…

• Another way to think about living for the glory of God is through Jeremiah’s comment that we become like the thing we worship. Worship shapes identity: “what wrong did your fathers find in me… that they went after worthlessness and became worthless?” This idea runs throughout the Old Testament, hence Hosea 9:10 “they consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and…

• The Lord doesn’t want us to feel good only, he wants us to actually be good, and he knows the difference is a much richer, more peaceful life. In this way, the ethical imperatives of the Gospels are for our well being as much as they are for his own glory. Think of Luke 6:46:

• On Sunday July 12 we will all meet together in one worship service at 10:00am. That is also the Sunday we will be ordaining officers. I was speaking recently with the worship leader at another church, and he encouraged us to consider meeting together as one body once a quarter in order to strengthen and unify the church. The elders have agreed, so we’ll begin two weeks…