Next Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 8^th we will begin our new blog series through Don­ald Whitney’s book, 10 Ques­tions to Diag­nose Your Spir­i­tual Health.  I went through the book a few years ago and really ben­e­fited from it.  I went to my shelf today to grab the book in prepa­ra­tion for this announce­ment, but alas – some­one has bor­rowed and not returned; taken, but not given back.  If you have my copy, could you let me know?  I won’t fine you.

Sev­eral Life Groups will be going through the book this semes­ter, so if you are part of a Life Group make sure to ask your leader if your group will be study­ing the book along with us.  Of course, any­one who wants to may fol­low our blog posts for the next ten weeks.  We will have the book avail­able in our book­stall this week­end for $10. Happy reading!

This evening at 6:30 pm we will observe the Lord’s Sup­per and spend time in prayer and wor­ship with Liv­ing Hope and Liv­ing Hope-Bryan.  The ser­vice will be held in Liv­ing Hope’s build­ing and will last about 75 min­utes.  We hope you will join us!

New Life’s Annual Meet­ing will be held tonight at 6:30 pm.  This evening we will have the priv­i­lege of cel­e­brat­ing what God has done in the past fis­cal year and look ahead to what we hope He will do in the year and years ahead.  We will spend time in wor­ship through song, in prayer, and then in sev­eral impor­tant busi­ness mat­ters.  All mem­bers are asked to attend.  See you tonight at 6:30!

Last night was a great start to our new ser­mon series called New Life M3: The Mes­sage, The Mis­sion, The Meth­ods.  We dis­cussed the first and most impor­tant of the aspects of who we are as a local church.  The Gospel mes­sage is our foun­da­tion, and it informs every­thing we do, includ­ing our vision state­ment (which we will dis­cuss next Sun­day night) and our phi­los­o­phy (which we will dis­cuss in the final week of the series).

Many Chris­tians wrongly believe that the Gospel is merely a set of facts that we must believe in order to go to Heaven.  While it is true that the Gospel is based on his­tor­i­cal facts (Jesus really lived, really died, and really rose from the dead), the Gospel is not merely a set of facts to be believed.

Rather, the Gospel is the Good News that Jesus lived per­fectly, died, and rose again to purify for Him­self a peo­ple that are zeal­ous for good works (Titus 2:14).  The Gospel is the Good News that a believer no longer has to live in bondage to sin, but is made a new cre­ation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).  The Gospel is the Good News that a believer no longer has to strive, hop­ing to please God by doing good works and avoid­ing bad works (Gal. 2–3).  Best of all, the Gospel is the Good News that a believer is no longer an enemy of God, but a friend, and is counted as both not guilty and right­eous in God’s eyes (Jn. 14:15; Rom. 3:21–4:8).

The Gospel is not just Good News for the day on which I die, though it most cer­tainly is Good News on that day.  The Gospel is Good News every day of my life, because every day of my life as a believer I enjoy fel­low­ship with God through the shed blood of Christ.  I am set free to serve Him, to serve His peo­ple, and to serve unbe­liev­ers in my life.

This is why we talk so much about the Gospel mes­sage at New Life.  The Gospel has changed us, is chang­ing us, and will con­tinue to change us each day.  And that’s Good News.

Tonight we will begin a new series called “New Life M3: The Mes­sage, The Mis­sion, The Meth­ods.”  This evening we will con­sider the mes­sage of New Life, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, from Acts 13:13–41.  The Gospel is the power of God for sal­va­tion, and is the foun­da­tion of our local church.  We hope to see you tonight at 5 p.m. for wor­ship and that you will stay after the ser­vice for din­ner with us!