Grace Blogs

Note: what follows is not the approach we’re teaching in the Gospel Conversations class, but it’s good for a chuckle from the Jollyblogger:

The truth of the gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine… Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others and beat it into their heads continually. — Martin Luther

Just for fun… any captions you’d add to this picture?

“Have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?”

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[via JT]

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A number of Evangelicals have jointly issued An Evangelical Manifesto. Here’s an excerpt:

All too often we have trumpeted the gospel of Jesus, but we have replaced biblical truths with therapeutic techniques, worship with entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism, concern for the church and for the local congregation with expressions of the faith that are churchless and little better than a vapid spirituality, meeting real needs with pandering to felt needs, and mission principles with marketing precepts. In the process we have become known for commercial, diluted, and feel-good gospels of health, wealth, human potential, and religious happy talk, each of which is indistinguishable from the passing fashions of the surrounding

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There is only one reason to be a Christian: because it’s true. —Francis Schaeffer

Toward the end of the “Does God Exist?” teaching from April 20 (which was re-recorded and includes extra material we didn’t cover in church—call it the “director’s cut”), I offered the following “either/or” version of the Gospel:

Either God exists, or he doesn’t. The Gospel says he exists, so… Either we’re accountable to him for our lives, or we’re not. The Gospel says we’re accountable to God for our lives, so… Either we’re in trouble with God, or we’re not. The Gospel says we’re in trouble, so… Either God offers forgiveness, or he doesn’t. The Gospel says he offers forgiveness through faith in Jesus …

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This past Sunday in our Overflow class I promised to post an overview of some of Oprah’s beliefs and how they originated. I wish the clip simply played her commenting on her beliefs, but is wrapped in a type of “Oprah is the AntiChrist” garb.

This is not about cracking on Oprah. It is about reaching out to people, like her, who may believe that there “couldn’t possible be just one way” to God. It is also about encouraging people at Grace Fellowship and other churches into discussing subjects that may confuse us or that we may truly question. We need forums in which questions, like Oprah had, regarding God being a “Jealous God” can be …

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This past week we spent time slugging our way through another section of Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia (most likely the churches founded by Paul in the southern Galatian cities of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe; see Acts 13:14–14:23). During this teaching we reconnected with the Gospel message that must be the basis for any and all Thanksgiving activities.

How exactly does a person get right with God?

God’s acceptance of us comes only when we become justified in His sight. The word “justification” (dikaiosis), comes from the Greek verb dikaio which means “to acquit” or “to declare righteous.” The word is used by Paul in Romans 4:2, 5; 5:1 as a legal term used of …

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I thought the following review of Joel Osteen’s book was insightful, balanced and helpful for you to better frame the issues involved.

There are few things I love to eat more than bread. I just love a good loaf of white bread. I eat it the way many people eat junk food (and, I suppose, one could argue that it is junk food). Not too long ago we bought a bread maker from a person nearby who was selling all his possessions to move back to his native Poland, having found that North American living was not to his liking. The machine worked well for five loaves but on the sixth, while the bread was being kneaded, I heard a strange

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When we talk about “worldview” issues, we’re really talking about answering the “big questions” that every human being asks at some point: what do we believe about God, ultimate reality (or “metaphysics”), knowledge, ethics, and human nature.

Douglas Groothuis has posted an essay that deals with the big question of human nature (emphasis mine):

In the 17th century, a young scientific and philosophical genius named Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) marveled at our enigmas and inscrutability:

What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe!

Yet this

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David Ennis piqued the music team this morning with a story from the Washington Post titled Pearls Before Breakfast. Check out this premise: they induced one of the finest violinists in the world, Joshua Bell, to set up shop at a D.C. Metro station — incognito — and play as if he were your average street musician. The Post described it this way:

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of

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