Words for Reflection

Give me the kind of love you possess.  I do not have it within myself.  I need You to give it to me, God.  I know this is  prayer that will please You.  Answer me in Your love.

I want to give love freely, without counting the cost, but this is not natural.  I do not have it within myself.  I need You to give it to me, God.  I know this is a prayer that will please You.  Answer me in Your love.

I want to bless, with joy, and self-sacrifice, not considering my own wants, but I do not have it within myself.  I need You to give it to me, Lord.  I know this is prayer that will please You.  Answer me in Your love.

Give me this love in abundance.  Please, God, grant my request, and make me a shining beacon, radiant with the generosity of Jesus. 

Kari Kristina Reeves

 

Order of Worship, May 26 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church 



Words for Reflection

As Christians we cannot activate a spiritual gift by flipping some inner switch of awareness.  We seek God's glory, not our own, trusting the Spirit to enable us in speech and action.  Since all is of Him, there is nothing the Spirit cannot use.  Desire to please the Lord clarifies our purpose.

The fellowship of the Spirit is more than a sense of camaraderie.  It is a sharing together in the presence of the Spirit, and of His gifts... Christians often most need those who differ from them the most with regard to spiritual gifts. Seeking the unity of the Spirit means appreciating the diversity of the Spirit's gifts and learning from one another -- growing together to the full maturity of Christ.

Ed Clowney

 

The Christian is not a natural man who has become religious.  Already before conversion, Paul said, many early Christians were highly religious, devoting themselves earnestly to the worship of idols.  Conversion, moreover, did not just involve a change of liturgical habit... To be a Christian means to be refashioned in all of one's desires, aims, attitudes, actions, from the shallowest to the deepest.  This is not a matter of giving shape to unshaped human nature.  There is no formless, underlying "human stuff" waiting to be modeled into a Christian shape... For the unbeliever, the problem is not that the stuff is unformed but that it is badly and wrongly formed and has to be reformed and transformed into the form of Christ.

Peter J. Leithart

 

Sermon Notes -- The Body of Christ, a People of the New Creation (I Corinthians 12:1-31)

Reverend Jason Little

 

We vacillate between self-loathing (my part is not needed) and self-worship (my part is most important).  But Jesus gives us at third way.  It is by the same Spirit that we are all called here, and that means what He gives to each to bring is essential.  No spiritually insignificant or nonessential person, gift, or ministry among us, the Body.  If you don't trust yourself to see that, trust that God sees it. 

 

Order of Worship, May 12 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church



 

Words for Reflection

The believer sanctifies himself that God's purpose may not be frustrated in him, but find glorious fruition.  Only he does so in constant reliance on divine grace.  It would be a mistake to confine the province of faith to justification.  All progress in holiness depends on it.  It is the element, the atmosphere in which the Christian lives, that which imparts to his works their sacrificial character and makes them pleasing to God.  And, because, thanks to God, it is deeper in him than his deepest sin, even when he fails and falls, he does not despair, nor is utterly forsaken. God's witness remains in him; he can say with Peter: "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love thee!" Finally, the Lord here assures the hungry and thirsty ones, that they shall be satisfied. 

Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

 

Sermon Notes -- The Body and the Table of the New Creation (I Corinthians 11:17-22)

Reverend Jason Little

 

The Need: Broken relationships; relating just as the world does ... poor & needy not taken care of, haves & have-nots within the church totally separated and distant

 

The Gospel: Giving to us Jesus -- cling to Jesus, and your relationships will be transformed.  Remember who Jesus is to you and you will remember who you are to be to one another.  'On the night he was betrayed...' and then extends the bread and wine as forgiveness and grace.

 

Application: Have to feel and own that as much as we belong to Jesus, we belong to one another.  What's important is that we feast, together.  As we come to Him, our lives are woven into each other.  Coming together to feast is the chance to rehearse forgiveness and reconciliation.  To love each other, we much worship together. 

 

Order of Worship, May 5 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

 





Words for Reflection

We need to face the truth of the limits of our perceptions and look again at who Jesus is revealing Himself to be.  Jesus' words are an invitation to contemplation, a call to awareness.  His admonition is the gentle but powerful reminder that a great deal of the work we do as we follow Him along the Way is to keep opening our eyes and ears to the truth of who He is.  He can never be exhaustively described by us.  There is always more about Him to discover.  The ingredients of mystery and humility are part of what fuels our journey with Him.

David Rohrer, The Sacred Wilderness of Pastoral Ministry

 

Premodernism asserted that there was an objective truth that could be known by those who had the skill to see it.  Modernism objected that truth was relative, that different people saw truth differently according to their own situations.  Postmodernism insists that there is no truth at all, that whatever truth there might be must be created by each person, for any larger claims to truth are in reality disguised bids for power.  The meta-narrative of the Christian community compassionately demonstrates that Jesus is the Truth, an objective Truth who can be known.  We know Him only partially, but because we know Him we do not have to try to create truth for ourselves.  Furthermore, His truth is not oppressive, for as Mark Schwehn emphasizes,

     For Christianity, the quest for truth is bound up inextricably with discipleship, and therefore the  

     shape of power is for them always cruciform...So long as Christians remember that, for disciples,

     power is not dominion but obedience, faithfulness, and suffering servanthood, they can rightly

     claim an integral connection between truth and power.

The Christian story we offer to our neighbors introduces them to Jesus, the Truth, who brings healing to postmodernists' fractured souls.

Marva Dawn, A Royal Waste of Time

 

Order of Worship, April 28 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church



 

 

 

Words for Reflection

God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers.  The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into His heart.  Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.

It is said of God that no one can behold His face and live.  I always thought this meant that no one could see His splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see His sorrow and live.  Or perhaps His sorrow is splendor. 

And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness, the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent His beloved Son to suffer like us, through His suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil.

Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

 

Order of Worship, March 31 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church



Words for Reflection

The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast.  The earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.

Pope Benedict XVI

 

     God wants from us not numb obedience but devoted freedom, creativity, and energy.  That is what the grace of God is for -- not simply to balance a ledger.  In short we are to become responsible beings: people to whom God can entrust deep and worthy assignments, expecting us to make something significant of them -- expecting us to make something significant of our lives... For such undertakings, we have to find emotional and spiritual funding from the very God who assigns them, turning our faces towards God's light so that we may be drawn to it, warmed by it, bathed in it, revitalized by it.  Then we have to find our role within God's big project, the one that stretches across the border from this life into the next.  To be a responsible person is to find one's role in the building of shalom, the re-webbing of God, humanity, and all creation in justice, harmony, fulfillment, and delight. To be a responsible person is to find one's own role and then, funded by the grace of God, to fill this role and to delight in it. 

     To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace is to forget the resolve of God.  Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way.  Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler.  Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life.

     But to speak of grace without sin is surely no better.  To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ.  What had we thought the ripping and writhing on Golgotha were all about?  To speak of grace without looking squarely at these realities, without painfully honest acknowledgement of our own sin and its effects, is to shrink grace to a mere embellishment of the music of creation.  To ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel.  For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.

Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not The Way It's Supposed To Be

 

Order of Worship, March 10 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church 





Words for reflection

For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Hebrews 13:14

Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in locality or in speech or in customs.  For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life.  Nor again do they possess any invention discovered by any intelligence or study of ingenious men, no are they masters of any human dogma as some are.  But while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast, and follow the native customs in dress and food and the other arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvelous, and confessedly contradicts expectation.  

They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners; they bear their share in all things as citizens, and they endure all hardships as strangers.  Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is foreign.  They marry like all other men and they beget children; but they do not cast away their offspring.  They have their meals in common, but not their wives.  They find themselves in the flesh, and yet they live not after the flesh.  Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.  They obey the established laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives.  They love all men, and they are persecuted by all.  They are ignored, and yet they are condemned.  They are put to death, and yet they are endued with life.  They are in beggary, and yet they make many rich.  They are in want of all things, and yet they abound in all things.  They are dishonored, and yet they are glorified in their dishonor.  They are evil spoken of, and yet they are vindicated.  They are reviled, and they bless; they are insulted, and they respect   Doing good they are punished as evil-doers; being punished they rejoice, as if they were thereby quickened by life.  War is waged against them as aliens by the Jews, and persecution is carried on against them by the Greeks, and yet those that hate them cannot tell the reason of their hostility.

Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, excerpt from a 2nd century letter

Order of Worship, February 24 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church