New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

The fourth chap­ter in Don Whitney’s Ten Ques­tions to Diag­nose Your Spir­i­tual Health poses the ques­tion, “Are You More Sen­si­tive to God’s Pres­ence?”  At the out­set, Whit­ney notes that while we may not fre­quently sense the super­nat­ural pres­ence of God, it also should not be unusual for us to believe that “God is here” (56).  If we begin to live as though God is not present and dis­cernibly so on many occa­sions, “More plea­sure is sought in things, dreams, or peo­ple than in God.  A rela­tion­ship with God is reduced to mere religion…Obviously, this is not the pro­file of a grow­ing Chris­t­ian” (58).

What do we mean when we speak of God’s pres­ence?  Sev­eral things.  First, God is present every­where, which the­olo­gians speak of as his “omnipres­ence.”  Sec­ond, God was and is present in the per­son of Jesus Christ.  Third, God is present in every believer through the Holy Spirit.  Fourth, some­times God’s pres­ence is more per­cep­ti­ble than at other times, as Whit­ney notes on page 58, ref­er­enc­ing Luke 1:66 and Acts 11:21.  Finally, God is present espe­cially in heaven.  God is not only present there, but He is most uniquely present there.   When we under­stand God’s pres­ence in these gen­eral cat­e­gories, we are helped to see that 1) We have expe­ri­enced God far more often than most of us believe, and 2) We are informed as to how we should look to expe­ri­ence God’s pres­ence.  We are not free to try to expe­ri­ence God accord­ing to our own ideas and feel­ings; Nadab and Abihu tried this and it went poorly for them (Lev. 10).  Rather, we are to expe­ri­ence God in the ways He has ordained and pre­scribed for us to expe­ri­ence Him.

So, how can we grow in sen­si­tiv­ity to God’s pres­ence?  Whit­ney gives four recommendations:

1. Go often to the place where God has revealed Him­self most clearly – the Bible.  Whether you feel like it or not, you are encoun­ter­ing God every time you read His Word.  He is speak­ing directly to you through the pages of Scrip­ture.  Open your Bible expect­ing to hear from God, and you will!

2. Acknowl­edge His pres­ence with you by talk­ing with him.  We have been con­di­tioned to think of God’s pres­ence only in cer­tain places or only at cer­tain times.  We are sure God is present in the church build­ing and when we pray to Him before meals, but we aren’t as sure if He is present in the office or in the van when all the kids are cry­ing simul­ta­ne­ously.  We have been com­manded to pray con­tin­u­ally, and we can do this by sim­ply talk­ing to God through­out the day.

3. Seek Him in the man­i­fes­ta­tions of His pres­ence given only in con­gre­ga­tional wor­ship.  This is a much-overlooked point today.  Whit­ney states, “In a true church, His Word is preached, His Son is pre­sented in the Lord’s Sup­per, His Spirit min­is­ters through many and diverse gifts, and so forth.  The soli­tary wor­shiper does not have access to the pres­ence of the Lord in exactly these ways” (66).  This is a mes­sage des­per­ately needed in an age where many Chris­tians are con­tent to lis­ten to pod­casts and Chris­t­ian music as a sub­sti­tute for mean­ing­ful involve­ment in a local church.  God is present in His body, the church, in ways that He is not present with us indi­vid­u­ally.  He has sim­ply and beau­ti­fully designed it that way.

4. Con­tin­u­ally reaf­firm the truth that He is omnipresent.  When we feel alone, it is help­ful for us to remem­ber that God will never leave us or for­sake us.  Feel­ings of iso­la­tion can occur late at night, when you are alone, when you are in a large crowd, when you are tempted, and at every other pos­si­ble moment.  Mem­o­rize or med­i­tate on Scrip­ture pas­sages to help you remem­ber that God is always with you.

Our Fall 2010 Mem­ber­ship Classes begin tonight at 6:15 pm.  The two classes will be held tonight (Sep­tem­ber 28) from 6:15–8:30 pm and on Tues­day, Octo­ber 5th from 6:15–8:30 pm.  Each prospec­tive mem­ber needs to attend both classes and sign-up for a 20-minute per­sonal meet­ing with one of the elders, which will be held on Tues­day, Octo­ber 12th between 5:30 and 10:30 pm.  If you have any ques­tions about Mem­ber­ship, visit our web­site or con­tact us.  See you tonight at 6:15 pm!

The new Resur­gence site is totally awe­some.  I’m pumped at how easy is it to locate great con­tent — most of which can be read, watched, or lis­tened to in under 5 minutes.

Under the “God” tab, there is a sec­tion called “Study.”  In this sec­tion, you can study either heresy or Gospel.  Now, some of you might be think­ing, “Why would I want to study heresy?  I thought we were  sup­posed to watch out for that stuff.”  On one hand, you’re right.  We don’t want to fill our minds with lies.  On the other hand, study­ing heresy can help us avoid the­o­log­i­cal errors that lead to sin and folly — errors that are sim­ply made again and again.  As Solomon says, there’s noth­ing new under the sun, and that applies to here­sies as well.

The “heresy” sec­tion fea­tures a bunch of arti­cles that are titled, “The­ol­ogy Fail.”  I found that to be hilar­i­ous the first time I read it, and to be hon­est, I still laugh a lit­tle when I think about it.  Oth­ers don’t find it as funny, but my wife laughed too, so that’s a good sign for me.

And finally, the point of it all:  one of the “The­ol­ogy Fail” arti­cles fea­tures the Judaiz­ers, who Paul is writ­ing against in his let­ter to the Gala­tians.  Take some time to read the arti­cle and to med­i­tate on the fact that God is glo­ri­fied by call­ing you to faith and by call­ing you to min­istry.  Both are evi­dences of His amaz­ing grace.

Tonight’s mes­sage is enti­tled, “Sum­moned by Christ: The Power of the Gospel” and cov­ers Gala­tians 1:11–24.  We will con­sider how God is glo­ri­fied by call­ing us to faith in Christ and by call­ing us to min­istry.  None of us would come to Christ if it were not for the grace of God, and the grace of God is what saves us.  God is glo­ri­fied when peo­ple like you and me come to Him in ini­tial and ongo­ing faith!  Fur­ther, God is glo­ri­fied by call­ing us to min­istry.  Every one of us has been saved to do good works that God has pre­pared for us (Eph. 2:10, Tit. 2:14).  Where has He called you to serve for His glory?  We hope to see you tonight at 5 pm!

The folks over at Resur­gence have worked hard on the new site and it has been live now for a lit­tle while.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, I would highly encour­age you to do so.  In one post on the site, Mars Hill Pas­tor Dave Kraft (who authored the new book Lead­ers Who Last, which I’ve been devour­ing for the last week and a half) gives four causes of tired­ness that stem from busyness:

1. The inabil­ity to say no. Lead­ers are often ser­vants at heart. They feel called to help peo­ple and to try to meet their needs, which are end­less and inex­haustible. We have lim­ited capac­ity, time and gifts and we need to learn to set bound­aries, rec­og­nize our lim­its and cre­ate mar­gin in our lives. We can­not and should not be at the beck and call of every per­son with a need. Even Jesus, at times, left peo­ple who were in need and dis­ap­peared to be by him­self (See Luke 5:15,16).
2. The inabil­ity to slow down. Too many lead­ers move at an insane pace and work too many hours. They love to work and, in many cases, get their sense of self-worth through their work. In John Grisham’s novel The Bro­ker, one of the char­ac­ters says, “I’ve been there (Wash­ing­ton D.C.). I’ve never seen so many peo­ple rac­ing around, going nowhere. I don’t under­stand the desire for such a hec­tic life. Every­thing has to be so fast—work, food, sex.” That’s us in the good old USA—going at break­neck speed and not always sure why. One of the results is that we are slowly, but surely, becom­ing addicted to speed and busy­ness; and some­times we’re not even capa­ble of slow­ing down.
3. The inabil­ity to think straget­i­cally. Frankly, I meet very few lead­ers who are strate­gic in how they allo­cate their time and energy. Most are reac­tive rather than proac­tive. We are all com­posed of a few themes and need to stick with our unique contribution.
4. The inabil­ity to sim­plify. Recently, I have been med­i­tat­ing on 1 Tim­o­thy 2:1–2 in The Mes­sage: “pray espe­cially for rulers and their gov­ern­ments to rule well so we can be qui­etly about our busi­ness of liv­ing sim­ply, in hum­ble contemplation.”

Sound like you?  I could def­i­nitely relate to this.  I encour­age you to read the whole post and check out the rest of the newly remod­eled Resur­gence site. Enjoy!

Would you say that you love well?  If so, accord­ing to what stan­dard?  The Bible is filled with exhor­ta­tions for us to love:  we are to love God (Deut. 6:4–6), we are to love Chris­tians (Rom. 12:10), and we are to love our neigh­bors whether they love us or not (Matt. 5:42–47).

The third ques­tion of Don Whitney’s Ten Ques­tions to Diag­nose Your Spir­i­tual Health is, “Are You More Lov­ing?”  In this chap­ter, Whit­ney notes that many believ­ers are not grow­ing in this essen­tial mark of a fol­lower of Christ.  He notes that we often make time for projects, but not for peo­ple; that we allow peo­ple to ruin their lives because we are too scared to con­front them; that we feign con­cern for the lost but do noth­ing to help with their phys­i­cal or spir­i­tual needs; that we love those who love us but not those who hate us.  Whether all of these descrip­tions per­tain to you or not, we can call agree that we have a lot of grow­ing to do in the area of bib­li­cal love.  So what should we do to grow in this vital area?  Whit­ney gives six help­ful suggestions:

1. Med­i­tate on love as the most impor­tant dis­tin­guish­ing mark of a Chris­t­ian.  Jesus never said that all peo­ple would know we are Chris­tians by our right the­ol­ogy, by our busy church sched­ules, or by whether or not we have kept up with the lat­est trends.  Rather, he said that all peo­ple would know we are his dis­ci­ples if we love one another.  When­ever you come across a pas­sage on love or demon­strat­ing love, med­i­tate on how you can under­stand and apply that kind of love in your own life.

2. Let your heart be often warmed by the fire of God’s love.  Eph­esians 3:18–19 describes God’s love as wide, long, deep, and high – in other words, it is inex­haustible.  Whether in this life or the next, we will never be able to fully grasp the immen­sity of God’s love – espe­cially as demon­strated in the life, death, and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus.

3. Dis­cover assur­ance that God is your Father by lov­ing as He loves.  Every time we show Chris­t­ian love, we can praise God because that is an evi­dence of God’s grace at work in us.  Learn to praise God when you show Christ­like love; it demon­strates that you are a child of God.

4. Delight in imi­tat­ing God.  We are told to imi­tate God, and we imi­tate God when we love oth­ers who can offer us lit­tle or noth­ing in return.  God loved us when we were his ene­mies (Rom. 5:8), and we love like him when we love those who do not love us.

5. Iden­tify those rela­tion­ships where you most need to grow in love.  These might be fam­ily mem­bers, neigh­bors, cowork­ers, class­mates, or even entire peo­ple groups (chil­dren, old peo­ple, white peo­ple, une­d­u­cated peo­ple, etc.).  Begin to pray for grace to act in love toward these peo­ple at every opportunity.

6. Take the ini­tia­tive in show­ing love, espe­cially when you have lit­tle or no expec­ta­tion of love in return.  As Jesus said, we like to invite peo­ple over for din­ner when we know we will get invited in return.  We like to lend to those from whom we’d like to bor­row.  How­ever, if love is going to cost us some­thing (not an invest­ment, but a sunk cost, in busi­ness terms), we tend to shy away.  But we can live like Jesus when we show costly love.

So, are you more lov­ing today than when you first believed the Gospel?  Every one of us needs to grow in love for God and for oth­ers.  Where will you start?

Intro­duc­tions to New Tes­ta­ment let­ters often get glossed over fairly quickly.  This hap­pens in ser­mons, in books, and yes – even in our own Bible read­ing.  It is easy to skim what seems to be mere for­mal­ity to get to what appears to be the real meat of a par­tic­u­lar letter.

If ever a letter’s intro­duc­tion needed to be read care­fully, under­stood clearly, and applied cor­rectly, it is the intro­duc­tion to Paul’s let­ter to the Gala­tians.  In this intro­duc­tion, Paul defends his apos­tle­ship (vv. 1–2), he defends his Gospel (vv. 3–5), he con­fronts false “gospels” (vv. 6–7), and he con­fronts false teach­ers (vv. 8–10).  Paul’s apos­tle­ship estab­lished his author­ity (more accu­rately, God’s author­ity vested in Paul), which gave cred­i­bil­ity to the mes­sage he preached.

Paul’s apos­tle­ship (or non-apostleship, as the false teach­ers asserted) has direct impli­ca­tions for us.  If Paul was a true apos­tle (which he most cer­tainly was), then God spoke His Word through Paul and we are respon­si­ble to know it, love it, and obey it.  Paul pro­claimed the true Gospel – that sal­va­tion was by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone.  We must not believe or live a Gospel of faith plus works in any way, because if we do, we are actu­ally or func­tion­ally cut­ting our­selves off from the grace of Christ.  While we are likely not believ­ing or teach­ing that one must be cir­cum­cised and keep the law of Moses to be saved (as the false teach­ers were say­ing), we may be believ­ing or liv­ing as though we must do cer­tain things or avoid cer­tain things in order to be saved.

The true Gospel hum­bles us because we are saved by God’s grace, not our works.  The true Gospel embold­ens us because we can come before God by God’s grace, not our works.  The true Gospel uni­fies us because we are made broth­ers and sis­ters by God’s grace, not our works.  Has the Gospel brought humil­ity, bold­ness, and unity to you and to your church?

This evening we begin our fall ser­mon series called “Sola Fide: Paul’s Let­ter to the Gala­tians.”  Over the next 14 weeks, we will go verse-by-verse through the book and learn how what we believe about the Gospel affects every area of our lives.  “Sola Fide” is Latin for, “by faith alone,” and we have cho­sen that title because it is by faith alone that we are saved.  We hope to see you tonight at 5 pm as we tackle Gala­tians 1:1–10!

Ear­lier this week, Kendra pointed out to me an arti­cle that had been pub­lished only a few days before the final mes­sage in our M3 series (“The Meth­ods”).  The post was writ­ten for the Acts 29 blog by pas­tor Jake Cham­bers.  He iden­ti­fies six “red flags” in dis­ci­ple­ship that reveal pre­sup­po­si­tions that many of us have oper­ated under or still oper­ate under.  Then, he iden­ti­fies bib­li­cal truth to con­front those red flags.

The com­ments already posted serve to bring greater clar­ity to the dis­cus­sion.  I hope this post will help you as you seek to live on mis­sion to make dis­ci­ples of Jesus by pre­serv­ing and pro­claim­ing the Gospel.