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

Words for reflection

When I was 9 days old, my parents brought me to baptism.  I couldn't do anything to receive it, earn it, deserve it.  Totally by grace, the Triune God washed me in mercy, forgave me utterly, adopted me as His child, took up residency in me, initiated me into His Body and ordained me into the priesthood of all believers.  I could never be able to pay God back for all those gifts, nor does God want me to try.
Baptism therefore frees me to respond to the immensity of Trinitarian grace by loving God and loving my neighbors.  Because in my baptism I became inhabited by the Spirit and a "priest" in God's service, it orders my life and initiates my commitment to live according to the focal concerns God mandates.  Because baptism is not merely a rite, but also includes the whole life inaugurated by that rite, it is a source by which to challenge constantly my involvement in the technologized, commodified society.  Daily I renew my baptismal covenant because the Trinity is always faithful to God's side of the relationship.  Daily that grace and hope empower me to ask about everything: Is this appropriate to my baptized life?
Baptism thus equips us to engage in other practices that enable us to live as Christians in a technologized, commodofying world.

Marva Dawn, Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society

Order of Worship, February 17 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God.  It is not a divine afterthought.  It is not an accident of history.  On the contrary, the church is God's new community.  For this purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church.  The reason why we are committed to the church is that God is so committed.

John Stott, The Living Church

School of Discipleship, January 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

Words for reflection

A familiar phrase coursing through culture is, "The only constant in life is change." Weather changes, people change, relationships and attitudes change   Colors fade from clothing, our faces and bodies change shape and texture over the years.  Most change is small and unnoticeable,  but we'd be hard-pressed to find anything that does not change considerably over time.

For a guy like me, that's hard.  I spend hours perfecting one thing or another, honing life to my specifications.   Wood-working, a project, the beds I plant in the yard.   I even spent years perfecting my penmanship so I could write faster and neater and that my letters would look exactly the way I wanted. Yet, looking back, everything has changed.  Sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously.

Scripture teaches us again and again that Yahweh does not change.  "I Am that I Am," God told Moses.  Numerous authors of scripture have articulated the same truth.  God does not change.  We need to hear it, meditate on it, and see what difference it makes in our lives.  It doesn't make Him archaic, irrelevant, obsolete, or discarded; in fact, it should make Him the most significant part of our lives.  Everything else is fading away, and He remains.

Nate Conrad

Sermon Notes -- Psalm 102:1-28

We tend to rely on things that change to give us abiding contentment.  But that won't work -- we must rely on something that abides unchanged.  

His unchangingness makes Him God -- if He could be even more or less of what He is now, He wouldn't be God.  But His promises are sure and set.  If He changed, we couldn't depend on His promises, or even our own faith in who He is.  But He does not change & He keeps His promises.  

God brings change in our lives to show His perfect, unchanging goodness.  

Order of Worship, February 10 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

Words for reflection

We have so many things to do, we forget why we are doing them; we have so many things, we forget why they matter.

Marva Dawn, Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society

Christians can't be pessimists because we know the future and its connection to the character of God.  Moreover, the future aeon has already broken into this present age, and God's kingly reign has already begun.  On the other hand, however, Christians cannot be optimists either, because we know that this aeon is still in severe trouble.  This time and this world are still characterized by sinfulness, brokenness, evil, idolatries, overwhelming fetters.  Instead of being either pessimists or optimists  Christians are hopeful realists. 

Marva Dawn, Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society

What is desperately needed and seldom found in the church is an adequate theology of the family of faithful.  Paul believes that being brothers and sisters in Christ and sons and daughters of God transcends all other loyalties and should transform all other social relationships   Blood should not be thicker than the baptismal waters in the church.  Rather Paul calls for a "relativized" view of all this-worldly institutes, including marriage.  His idea of a family "church" is actualized where God's people treat each other as their primary family, not just as some secondary social gathering that happens once a week and that promotes the agenda of the nuclear family.

Ben Witherington, Conflict & Community In Corinth

Order of Worship,  February 3 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

Words for reflection

Prayer is language used in personal relation to God.  It gives us utterance to what we sense or want or respond to before God.  God speaks to us; our answers are our prayers.  The answers are not always articulate: silence, sighs, groanings - these all constitute responses   The answers are not always positive: anger, skepticism,  curses - these are also responses   But always God is involved, whether in darkness or light, whether in faith or despair.  This is hard to get used to.  Our habit is to talk about God, not to Him.  We love discussing God.  The Psalms resist these discussions.  They are not provided to teach us about God but to train us in responding to Him.  We don't learn the Psalms until we are praying them.

Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer

Order of Worship, January 27 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

Words for reflection

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy... (I Cor. 1.2).  Paul's salutation makes us uncomfortable: 'called to be holy ones,' literally, 'saints.'  In our world, saints populate stained glass windows, medals and automobile dashboards.  A politician will sometimes assure us: 'I'm no saint.'  He makes this modest disclaimer to divert attention from his past and assures us that he is human.  Under the scorn that dismisses saintliness lies a guilty avoidance of what it means to be human.  As rebels, we prefer to think that a saint is abnormal -- to be admired, perhaps, as a Mother Teresa, but not a real human being.  To be holy is to be genuinely human, for holiness is godliness, and life without God is life without meaning.

Edmund P. Clowney, The Church

Corporate Confession of Sin

Father, You have called us to follow Jesus and live Christ-like lives. 

You have called us to let the gospel shape our hearts. 

However, we come to You this morning, confessing

that we have allowed the world to shape us instead of Your lovingkindness. 

Where You desire us to serve, we have sought to be served. 

Where you desire us to sacrifice, we have sought self protection. 

Where You have sought us to engage, we have remained aloof. 

Where You have sought us as Your children, we have lived as orphans. 

Now, Father, accept our confession and receive us gladly.  

We do not ask for Your grace because we deserve it. 

We even doubt our ability to confess with full honesty the depth of our sin. 

Father pardon us for the sake of Jesus.  

Assurance of Pardon

God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!  2 Corinthians 5:21

Order of Worship, January 13 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church

Words for reflection

One wonders how many congregations would hire someone like Paul, who touts his weakness in personal presence, his penchant to find or stir up trouble, his run-ins with the law, and his lack of the skills so often most valued today in a preacher, namely, good oral form, verbal eloquence, powerful delivery, and meaningful gestures.  I suspect that all too often we evaluate our ministers using Corinthian, not Pauline, criteria. In doing so, we too, have bought into the world's dominant vision of what it means to be wise, powerful and of great worth and have, like the Corinthians, made void the preaching of the cross.  The wisdom of the cross is a message not about strength instead of weakness, but in fact about power through weakness, through self-sacrificial behavior, through reliance on God's power to work through us.  It is not about our human power to manipulate a situation.  Until we learn the meaing of the words "when I was weak, then I was strong," until we learn what it means to be empty of self and full of Christ, we will continue to misread Paul's theology of leadership, status, power and wisdom.  Until then, the 'church' will continue to play the game of power politics with ministry, an all too human and too Corinthian game indeed.

Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth 

Order of Worship, January 6 2013

Grace Presbyterian Church