Grace Blogs

On August 3rd, I didn’t quite complete my lesson and I mentioned that I would post the final points to the blog. Well, better late than never! Credit to Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology for the bulk of this lesson.

The Holy Spirit Unifies
When the Spirit was poured out on the church at Pentecost, Peter proclaimed that the prophecy of Joel 2:28-32 was fulfilled (see Acts 2:16-18)

The emphasis is not on the Spirit being poured out on specially anointed leaders (like Moses or Joshua in the OT) but the Spirit was poured out on the entire community of believers (sons and daughters, young and old, masters and servants)
The community of believers was marked by unprecedented unity (Acts 2:44-47)

Several times in the NT, …

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Today, we will continue our tour of a church that had its fill of spiritually gifted people, yet had serious issues with acting in ways that were, at times, completely not spiritual. The letter to the church at Corinth provides us some rock solid guidelines in how God’s Spirit is expressed through each of our lives. MP3 download.

 

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In Segment one of this series, we took three weeks to examine the marks of a God-owned Church (Knowing Who You Are).  Last week we began segment two (Knowing How You Function), and addressed how our oneness as a church is expressed through our distinctness in our spiritual gifting.  Today we will continue to see, based on account of what Christ has done in the atonement, how we can now shape each other with such effectiveness as to actually contribute to the spiritual health of one another.  MP3 download.

 

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Over the last three weeks, we have been moving through issues of identity of the Church. Today, we start the second segment in our ChurchWorks series: Knowing how you function as the Church.

 

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