How We Often Feel

Where is The Safest Place on Earth?  The Church.

Taken from the book The Safest Place on Earth: Where People Connect and are Forever Changed by Larry Crabb:

You're tired. Life isn't turning out as you'd expected.  When you became a Christian, you packed your bags for Bermuda but your plane landed in Iceland. Without a coat, you need the warmth of community to survive.

You thought by now you'd be farther ahead spiritually, less tempted toward bad things..., more content in a church fellowship, better connected to family and friends. You expected, after all those years in church and mornings with your Bible, to struggle less with spiritual dryness, greed, lonliness, and anger; to be happier in career and ministry, more optimistic and relaxed.

After all, you've been at this thing called the Christian life for quite some time. Like Peter, you tell the Lord that you've been working hard all night and haven't caught a thing. 

And He says, "Let down the nets. Row back into deep water."

Reading this this morning, I had the thought:  He is describing me and many of us.  Has he been snooping around in my mind and heart?

I had to jump on to the end of the chapter:

It's time to build the church, a community of people who take refuge in God and encourage each other to never flee to another source of help, a community of folks who know the only way to live in this world is to focus on the spiritual life--our life with God and others.  It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. Our impact on the world is at stake.

Saint Patrick's Day

Happy Saint Patrick's Day.  Like all too many celebrations and commemorations, this one has suffered from a lost focus.  The essence of Patrick was not Irish culture, not the color emerald, or drinking to excess.  Rather, we should remember that Patrick was an Englishman who set out to evangelize lost people.  In fact, he set out to evangelize the barbaric people who had once kidnapped and enslaved him.

Remember Patrick's Morning Prayer this day: http://grantian.blogspot.com/2012/03/st-patricks-morning-prayer.html.

And for a more detailed look at the life of Patrick, read the short biographical sketch written by the late Dr. Francis Nigel Lee:

Dr.  F. N. Lee

The Britannic Christian Padraig Converts Ireland, Going into All the World

By Rev. Professor-Emeritus Dr. Francis Nigel Lee

According to Britain's oldest Historian, the North-Brythonic Celtic Christian Gildas,¹ the Gospel arrived in Britain before 37 A.D. According to Eusebius, Maelgwyn, Isidore, Freculph, Nenni, Baronius, Cressy, Hearne, Rev. Dr. James Ussher, Rev. Dr. John Owen and Rev. Dr. H. Williams—there is some evidence that Joseph of Arimathea preached (and was also buried) in Somerset's Glastonbury.²

Also according to the American Rev. Dr. A. Cleveland Coxe in the Ante-Nicene Fathers,³ there is strong reason to conclude that the great Anti-Roman British General Caradog became a Christian—perhaps even while still in the West of Britain before his exile therefrom in 52 A.D. Too, from A.D. 75 onward, his relative the apparently-Christian Prince Merig is said to have ruled over the Britons from near my own birthplace Kendal in Cumbria's Westmorland.⁴

Read More....

Lenten Reflections--The Blood of Christ

Lenten Season Reflections

The New Testament uses the concept of Christ’s blood as a way of describing His sacrificial death and what it accomplished.  It makes several affirmations about Christ’s blood:

• Acts 20:28: God acquired the church through Christ’s blood.
• Romans 3:25:  God publicly set Christ forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood.
• Romans 5:9: Christians have been justified by Christ’s blood.
• Ephesians 1:7: Christians have redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of trespasses.
• Ephesians 2:12-13: Gentiles have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
• Colossians 1:20: God was pleased to reconcile all things to Himself and make peace through the blood of Christ.
• Hebrews 9:12:  Christ entered the Most Holy place once for all through His own blood.
• Hebrews 9:14:  The blood of Christ cleanses our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.
• I Peter 1:2: God’s elect were chosen for sprinkling by the blood of Jesus Christ.
• I John 1:7: “The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.”
• Revelation 1:5:  Christ loved us and freed us from our sins by His blood.
• Revelation 5:9-10: Christ purchased for God by His blood men from every tribe and language and people and nations, and made for God a kingdom and priests who will reign on earth.

[Adapted from A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond.]

Donate-A-Smile

Dr. Rick Skowronski

On Sunday, March 25, we will be hosting Dr. Rick Skowronski and his wife Joe'l.  Dr. Skowronski will be talking about the mission work of Donate-A-Smile.  http://www.donateasmile.org/about_us.php

This organization will be sending a medical missionary team to the Central African Republic in April.  Pray for this mission and for the fundraising efforts needed to make this possible.