New Grace Church Website & Blog Home

Take a moment to visit Grace’s new website. A few things you’ll find there are:

1. Much more accessible information about Grace Church
2. The GC blog is included in the website, but you can also subscribe to the RSS feed to more easily keep up with new posts.
3. There is an events calendar allowing you to click each event and stay on top of pertinent information.
4. The information throughout the site has been condensed and is better organized.

* Though the new site has been launched, we will continually be adding new information to the site and ironing out any bugs. As you see something that we can enhance or needs correction please supply a comment on this post or through the new site.

Nigeria Meeting

(ns)

This Thursday evening we will be having a meeting for those interested in either going to Nigeria this November, or if you would like to know more information about the pastors we are supporting and areas for intercession.

Location: Nathan and April Sawyer’s house

Time: 6:30p

Psalm 96:1-4

On Christ’s Glory

From First Importance:

“On Christ’s glory I would fix all my thoughts and desires, and the more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes and I will be more and more crucified to this world. It will become to me like something dead and putrid, impossible for me to enjoy.”

– John Owen, The Glory of Christ (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), 7.

Resolution For Responding to Sinful People (like Preachers)

“…We’ll return to church in the late afternoon to once more hear a sinful brother preach what I’m sure will be an excellent but somehow-imperfect sermon.”

That’s a quote from Tim Challies’ post. He’s aiming at how to develop an appropriate response to living in a sinful world. He uses examples of his selfish children, sinful pastor, personal sin, and fallen friends. So, how should we respond. I think the answer he found from a 300+ year old friend is the right response…

Read Tim’s short post & the answer from the 300 year old.

Modern-Day Acts 4

This story sounds like a modern-day version of the things Bryan shared with us from Acts 4.

Whoever Wishes to be Great Shall be Last of All

“Well would it be for Christendom, if empty boasts of churchmanship and orthodoxy were less frequent, and practical attention to our Lord’s words in this passage more common. The men who are willing to be last of all, and servants of all, for Christ’s sake, are always few. Yet these are the men who do good, break down prejudices, convince infidels that Christianity is a reality, and shake the world.” – J.C. Ryle

Needy Always

Commenting on Mark 9:14ff:

Let us learn a lesson of humility from the failure of the disciples. Let us strive to realize every day our need of the grace and presence of Christ. With Him we may do all things. Without Him we can do nothing at all. With Him we may overcome the greatest temptations. Without Him the least may overcome us. Let our cry be every morning, “leave us not to ourselves–we know not what a day may bring forth–if your presence does not go with us we cannot go up.” – J.C. Ryle

The Sermon: Aiming For Affect During or Effect After?

Jonathan Edwards said he aimed for the affect during the sermon.

“The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind in the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered” — quoted in Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden, pg. 282

So, taking notes during a sermon can be good… as long as we are not thinking that the truth we are hearing/writing is for later. Agreed?

Missionary Death

Please pray for the family of a summer student missionary in Peru who died in a bus accident.

Personal To-Do. Want to Join In?

(by: jt)

It has been too long since I’ve seen a well-recognized leader express this sort of powerful movement from God in his life through the means of other well-recognized leaders.

In response I’m making myself a to-do for Thursday of this week (so it doesn’t go into the notorious “never done” to-do’s):

Jordan’ To Do on Thursday, July 10: Read the following email 5 times and listen carefully and prayerfully to both of the sermons mentioned in it with Bible opened, pen in hand, and heart bare before God.

You’re invited to join the to-do from your own private hideout as your schedule allows.

Here’s the aforementioned email…

from Between Two Worlds by JT

Randy Alcorn, writing about the Monday evening session at the Resolved Conference:

It was an unforgettable evening, one of the most powerful I’ve ever been part of.

All the audio messages from the conference are available for free on the Resolved website; videos of the messages can be downloaded for $4 each. I’d especially recommend downloading CJ’s final message and John Piper’s final message. (These links are to the audio, but if you prefer the video, for the cost of a latte, buy it. Seeing CJ and John will enhance the message, I think.)

CJ and John,

I wanted to send this to the two of you in gratitude (mostly to God, secondarily to you) in particular for the final night of Resolved. I have been moved to tears and deep worship many times, but not in recent memory to the extent that I was Monday night.

Mark 15 and CJ’s “scream of the damned…for us” touched me at a profound level. The Holy Spirit spoke. And though I prayed and knew that John’s message would beautifully end the conference, I was not prepared for the way it happened.

I have never seen, orchestrated or unorchestrated (in this case orchestrated by the Holy Spirit), one single seamless message spoken by two men with nearly an hour between the end of one and the beginning of the other. I stood that night on sacred ground, as did you.

Yesterday early afternoon, in the Palm Springs airport, I opened to Mark 15 and wept again. I then did something I have done only twice before, once on the day my 85-year-old father, in a hospital bed, repented of his sin and surrendered to Christ. The other time when my best friend from childhood died next to me as I was reading to him Revelation 21-22, leaving this world precisely when I was reading 22:17: “The Spirit and the bride say ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes let him take the free gift of the water of life.”

What I did on those occasions was write a date in my Bible: Feb. 9, 1992 at my Father’s conversion, and October 8, 1992 at my friend Jerry’s home-going between “Come!” and “take the free gift of the water of life.” The date is still there beside the verse I was reading when he died.

Without thinking about this, yesterday at the airport I wrote next to Mark 15:34, “June 16, 2008.” Then something else happened. I wrote after the date, “The Scream of the…” And I suddenly stopped, overwhelmed, breathless, pen frozen in hand. Why? Because I suddenly realized I needed to capitalize the word “Damned.” It was physically hard for me to do it. It seemed almost blasphemous…and so it should.

The unrighteous damned have no right to ask God why He has forsaken them (the reasons are self-evident to all who understand His holiness and our sin), but God’s Son the Beloved One had the right to ask, even knowing the answer and having participated in eternity past in the damning decision. He is the Lamb damned before the foundation of the world. So while the (lower case) damned will scream forever, ultimately there is only one Scream of the (upper case) Damned. Unthinkable. Inconceivable. And yet it happened…for us.

A flood of tears came as God preached the message to me yet again. That Deity would be Damned. That the God who is called upon righteously by the saints and angels in heaven to damn people, and called upon habitually by unbelievers flippantly and unrighteously to damn people, would in fact damn his Son, would (from the Son’s willingness to drink the cup) damn himself…for us. That it could be said of the Beloved One, “God damned Him,” and that He screamed the scream of the Damned….it was too much for me. It is too much for me this moment. And in the ages to come it will continue to be too much for me.

The cup of His suffering has long seemed deep to me, but never deeper than Monday night and the two days since.

Thank you, brothers, for being cleansed vessels, usable for eternal purposes. It was not only 3300 students whose hearts were marked for eternity Monday night. It was mine. You are not celebrities to me, but you are my mentors, in more ways that I can express. Thank you.

And thank you, Lord, for these two men, who you used as one on Monday night—guard their hearts and empower them to finish well, bowing their knees to you moment by moment, day by day.

And thanks forever to the One who screamed the scream of the Damned…and whose praises we will sing for all eternity.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Grateful to be eternally undamned by the Damned,

Randy Alcorn