New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

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The Unpopular Path to Life” Tonight

This evening we will con­sider Matthew 7:13–14 as we near the end of our Right­eous­ness Rede­fined series.  There are only two gates, two paths, two crowds, and two final des­ti­na­tions.  We would love to have more options or, bet­ter yet, be able to com­bine our favorite parts of all the options, but Jesus has not left us that option.

Hope to see you tonight at 5 pm!

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Questions for Husbands to Answer Every Day (but especially right before Valentine’s Day)

A few days ago, Kevin DeY­oung posted some great ques­tions for hus­bands in light of Valentine’s Day from the Song of Solomon.  Here are a few excerpts:

“Ques­tion 1: Do you gush over your wife? I mean, do you really pile on the com­pli­ments? No need to ration here. The more you speak them the freer they come. So why so stingy in telling your bride she’s more stun­ning than ele­gance wrapped in sweet­ness cov­ered in perfection?”

“Ques­tion 2: Do you pur­sue your wife? Words are won­der­ful, but pur­suit may be even more pow­er­ful. Now lis­ten, guys, don’t get all weird and stalker-like. Remem­ber, you should pur­sue her as she likes to be pur­sued, not as you do. So sur­prise her. Woo her. Take her away (with­out the kids for heaven’s sake).”

You can read the whole post here, and I believe he is writ­ing one for the ladies today.  Guys, whether you do any­thing par­tic­u­larly spe­cial for Valentine’s Day or not is not the issue with me.  Any loser hus­band can pick up a bou­quet of flow­ers and a card one day a year.  I want to know if you are gush­ing over and pur­su­ing your wife the other 364 days a year.  I know I still need to be chal­lenged and held account­able to lov­ing and pur­su­ing Kendra all year long, and I hope these ques­tions will serve you well as you do the same for your wife.

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Living the Cross Centered Life Chapter 2

The sec­ond chap­ter of Liv­ing the Cross Cen­tered Life is enti­tled, “The Divine Order: What You Feel vs. What is Real.”  In the chap­ter, CJ Mahaney demon­strates that most of us make eval­u­a­tions and base deci­sions on feel­ings rather than on objec­tive facts, namely the truth of Scrip­ture.  He states, “Our com­mon ten­dency is to habit­u­ally begin with the inter­nal, the sub­jec­tive, the expe­ri­en­tial, then use those feel­ings and impres­sions to deter­mine what we’ll accept as being objec­tive fact.  We let our feel­ings tell us what’s true, instead of let­ting the truth trans­form our feel­ings” (32–33).

I think all of us would agree with his assess­ment. Mahaney goes on to say that every day we have to make a choice between lis­ten­ing to our­selves and our con­stantly chang­ing feel­ings or talk­ing to our­selves about the unchang­ing truth of who God is and what he has accom­plished for us through his Son.  To that end, here are some ques­tions you may use for per­sonal appli­ca­tion and reflec­tion or for dis­cus­sion in your Life Group this week.  Many of them come straight from the chapter.

1. How often do you make deci­sions and eval­u­ate real­ity based pri­mar­ily on your emo­tions at the moment?

2. In what area(s) of your life do you feel that you most con­sis­tently strug­gle to eval­u­ate real­ity on truth instead of on your emotions?

3. The Gospel is the Good News that God has done for us what we could not and would not do for our­selves; namely, that he has cho­sen to rec­on­cile us to him­self through Jesus’ life, death, and res­ur­rec­tion.  How does the Gospel speak to the way we nor­mally eval­u­ate our circumstances?

4. Mahaney notes that emo­tions are a won­der­ful gift from God (41), though some believ­ers seem to treat them with con­tempt.  How can our emo­tions help us to honor and obey God rather than dis­honor and dis­obey God?

5. What prac­ti­cal mea­sures can you take to help you eval­u­ate your cir­cum­stances based on truth instead of feelings?

Next week, we will con­sider chap­ter three,  “Search­ing the Mys­tery:  A Cap­ti­vat­ing Pic­ture of His Love.”

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Membership Class #1 Tonight

Our Spring 2010 Mem­ber­ship Process begins tonight!  If you believe God is call­ing you to join New Life, you need to:

1. Attend both Mem­ber­ship Classes, which are from 6:15 to 8:15 p.m. tonight and next Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 16th.

2. Read through our mem­ber­ship mate­ri­als, which include our mem­ber­ship book and What is a Healthy Church Mem­ber? by Thabiti Anyabwile.

3. Sign-up for and attend a Per­sonal Meet­ing with one of our pas­tors on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 23rd.  If it is your inten­tion to join New Life at the end of this meet­ing, you will be asked to sign our State­ment of Faith and Church Covenant, which are included in your mem­ber­ship book.

4. Attend the busi­ness meet­ing on Tues­day, March 9th at 6:30 p.m. where you will be affirmed and rec­og­nized as a mem­ber of New Life.

Even if you are still check­ing out New Life and aren’t sure if you are ready to join, feel free to attend our classes.  You are not com­mit­ting to any­thing by com­ing, and we trust that you will have a bet­ter grasp on who we are and what we believe by attend­ing these classes.  We look for­ward to see­ing you tonight!

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Quotes from Last Night’s Message

Yes­ter­day, we were encour­aged to per­sist in prayer with con­fi­dence that God will answer us because he is good and always keeps his word to his chil­dren. You can lis­ten (or lis­ten again) to the ser­mon here.

Here are a few quotes from the mes­sage that you can con­tinue to med­i­tate on as you apply the mes­sage this week:

Some­times a fail­ure to per­sist in prayer proves that we were not seri­ous about our request in the first place.  At other times God wants us to per­sist in prayer in order to strengthen our faith in him.  Faith would never grow if all prayers were answered imme­di­ately” (Don­ald Whit­ney, Spir­i­tual Dis­ci­plines for the Chris­t­ian Life, 81).

The great fault of the chil­dren of God is, they do not con­tinue in prayer; they do not go on pray­ing; they do not per­se­vere.  If they desire any­thing for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it” (Roger Steer, George Muller:  Delighted in God!, 310)

There­fore, broth­ers, since we have con­fi­dence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and liv­ing way that he opened for us through the cur­tain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assur­ance of faith, with our hearts sprin­kled clean from an evil con­science and our bod­ies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:19–22).

Enjoy and pur­sue God’s grace this week.  He delights to give it to those who ask!

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