The Pharisees heard that Jesus had outwitted the Sadducees, so they sent a legal expert to Jesus in order to test him, "Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law?" (Matt 22:34-40). Jesus answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with...
How do you measure how you're doing spiritually? Do you measure yourself by the things you're managing well? You list all the things of the Christian life that you're living out decently enough - prayer, ministry involvement, seizing teachable moments with your kids - and conclude that...
In Mark 1:20, Jesus calls some disciples. Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. -- Mark 1:20 (NET) Notice what the call is ... to follow Jesus. It is not a call to go it alone. It is not a call to learn a bunch...
We want to be "called" by Christ! We want Him to speak our name, invite us to be close to Him, and give us a special assignment. We want our lives to matter, and what life can matter more than one that has God's calling on it? In Matthew 9:13, Jesus says, I did not come to call the...
1 Peter 1:2 says that we are presently "being set apart by the Spirit for obedience and for sprinkling with Jesus Christ’s blood." This isn't even a full sentence, but it's packed! First, we are being "set apart." Some translations say "sanctified." The root word is related to the...
Every January, we talk about giving - your financial support of the ministries of Grace Fellowship Church, which goes along with all the other ways you help Grace be a church for God's own purpose. Without us coming together financially, we wouldn't have the capacity to do the ministries we...
With the New Year come some changes in our leadership team - always a bittersweet transition for me. I have been blessed by those who are finishing their terms of serving: Howard Holthaus: serving as an elder, and most recently as chairman of the elders, Howard has helped us walk through the...
It was made more clear to me recently just how much of my identity I get from my successes. "Getting one's identity from" is a phrase we use to describe how someone knows oneself. Who am I? What makes me valuable (if anything)? How do I know I'm living the life I should? What should I feel good...
Scripture is clear - we are "called." We're not always sure what that means, but we know that Scripture says it, and so I believe it's true. All those in Christ are "called" by God, whatever it means. We'll be talking more about this calling in our series starting in 2020, so I won't try to...
We look at sin in many ways: doing bad things, disobeying God, acting against God's will, fallenness, imperfection, just to name a few. All of these views have good merit. They all help us to see the nature of our sin. One way that I am finding helpful lately is to look at sin as Unsurrender...