New Life has been invited to Liv­ing Hope this evening  for their annual water­melon fel­low­ship.  Tonight at 6 p.m., we’ll have the priv­i­lege of rejoic­ing with other believ­ers as they obey Christ’s com­mand to be bap­tized in response to his sav­ing work in their lives.  After the bap­tisms are com­pleted, we will enjoy a time of fel­low­ship with mem­bers of Liv­ing Hope and Liv­ing Hope — Bryan.   We hope to see you this evening!

Last night we fin­ished our 10-week series through the Book of Malachi called “Gen­uine.”  We con­sid­ered Malachi’s prophe­cies to God’s peo­ple, who had begun to doubt God’s love for them, grown com­pla­cent in their wor­ship, and ceased to obey God’s clear com­mands. Their self-righteous ques­tions and com­ments were out­ward demon­stra­tions of their cool feel­ings toward God, who had cho­sen them, pro­vided for them, and con­tin­ued to pur­sue them in spite of their rejec­tion.  Rather than won­der­ing at the man­i­fes­ta­tions of their sin­ful hearts, my hope is that we have seen our own sins and sin­ful ten­den­cies  in the pages of this prophecy.   May God con­tinue to grant us repen­tance and faith as we seek to honor him and see  him glo­ri­fied in our church and our city.

This Sun­day, we will begin a three-week series called “Rooted” that will focus on the vision of New Life — to pre­serve and pro­claim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as revealed in Scrip­ture, for the glory of God through the delight of all peo­ples.  Each mem­ber and guest will be charged to know the vision, make the vision known, and own the vision.  We can­not live the vision until we can artic­u­late it, and we can­not artic­u­late the vision until we under­stand it.  Our hope is that every per­son at New Life would be on the mis­sion to become and to make mature dis­ci­ples of Jesus Christ. Please pray that God would use this series to clearly com­mu­ni­cate our vision and its impli­ca­tions to every mem­ber and prospec­tive mem­ber at New Life.

A cou­ple of days ago, Desir­ing God linked to an inter­view of John Piper by the rel­a­tively new Bible Study Mag­a­zine.  In the inter­view, Piper answers ques­tions on Scrip­ture mem­ory, mak­ing time for the Word, and inter­pret­ing the Bible, among other issues.  You can down­load a PDF of the full-color, 6-page arti­cle here. May God use this to encour­age you in your own study of the Word!

Eric Mason, lead pas­tor of Epiphany Fel­low­ship, has posted an excel­lent arti­cle enti­tled Gospel Cen­tered Dreams and Prayers on the Acts 29 blog.   Lord will­ing, Jason and I will get to learn from him (as well as other godly men in the A29 Net­work such as Matt Chan­dler and Jonathan Dod­son) next month at the Hous­ton Boot Camp.

Take a few min­utes to read his thoughts and eval­u­ate whether or not the Gospel is at the cen­ter of your own prayers and life ambitions.