Our singles event this month is on Saturday, February 28. We have the opportunity to participate again in a ministry called Bread of Life. Its main goals are to feed the poor and to share the gospel of Jesus with homeless people. You can find more information at the Bread of Life page.

Here are some reasons why it’s important for us to participate in this ministry:

• God is concerned with the poor. He gave commandments to make sure the poor had enough food (see Leviticus 19:9-10).
• Caring for the poor demonstrates our love for God (1 John 3:17; this verse primarily refers to the poor in the Church, I think, but we can also apply it to other poor people).
• Jesus became poor for us, so that we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul uses this as a motivation for the Corinthian church to give money to those in need. Giving to others is an ethical extension and illustration of the gospel.
• Jesus spent much of his time ministering to the poor. We follow in our Lord’s steps when we do the same.

I did a quick search for Bible verses on the poor, and found this page on the Bible and the poor. I never realized that the Bible talked so much about the poor and caring for the poor. Please look it over when you get a chance.

My heart here is for three things:

1. We glorify God when we care for the poor
2. The homeless people we’ll be feeding will benefit
3. This is a great opportunity to grow

The subtle love of comfort will often silently choke our spiritual growth. When we put this love to death by going to uncomfortable places, God often stretches us and grows our faith in ways that cannot happen through other means. I know that this is probably a scary outreach for many of you. Take heart, though–God’s promises to bless efforts like this are trustworthy! (Deuteronomy 15:10; Psalm 41:1) We serve a God who humbled Himself and became poor. He can help us in our anxiety and weakness and discomfort.

Tags: ethics, God, gospel, growth, homeless, outreach, poor, Sanctification, Scripture

You can now download the courtship message from last Saturday’s singles meeting. Right click and choose “Save As” to download it to your computer.

Note: The file size of the mp3 is around 72 MB.

Tags: courtship, dating, God, marriage, relationships, sermon, singles meeting, sovereignty, trusting God

I came to New Attitude 2008 with a tentative heart. The past year had been one of many changes in my life: moving back home after studying in England for four months, my sister getting married, moving in with her when my brother-in-law was deployed, then moving back in with my family after those 8 months, close friends leaving the church, and several other things weighing heavily on my heart that made me feel lost, forgotten, and just really unsure of what God was even doing in my life anymore.

I was excited about New Attitude, to get away from all of this confusion and to dive deep into God’s Word and learn how to better apply it to my life. I had been looking forward in particular to C.J. Mahaney’s message on “God’s Word and our Feelings” as I recognized that this troubled soul of mine needed to be addressed by Scripture. But in my pride, I was disappointed after that message, because I had heard it before, either from C.J.’s books or in other sermons. It wasn’t the “easy-one-step-solution-to-eradicating-your-feelings-of-depression” sermon that I guess I was hoping for.

But God mercifully did not leave me in my pride. At the end of the message, instead of individuals raising their hands, Joshua Harris had us pray in groups for everyone in the room. Here again, I was disappointed. “God, I know this is a good thing, to pray for others…but didn’t you have some sort of prophetic song for me, or something?” As I prayed, however, the Holy Spirit enabled me to get my eyes off of myself, and the words of truth that I prayed for others began to penetrate into my soul.

Afterward, a friend hugged me and I just started weeping. It was like the floodgates opened and I was able to truly let go of all turmoil I had been holding in heart. I didn’t know why that year had to be so hard—but God knew. I didn’t have to figure it all out or understand my heart—God did! And that was enough.

I was overwhelmed with the truth of the gospel. My soul sometimes feels crushed, but it never truly is. I feel forgotten at times, but my Lord was utterly abandoned so that I never have to face what I only think I’m facing in moments of depression. Christ fully bore the wrath of God that I deserved, and now I live in His righteousness!

Here is my hope and joy. Not in knowing God’s purpose for everything that happened that year—though now I do see fruit from it—but in the truth of the Cross. God gave me grace in that moment at New Attitude to stop listening to my troubled soul, and instead to start speaking the truth of God’s Word to it, as C.J. urged us to do.

It’s still a battle everyday, and I’ve enlisted the help of scholars and teachers such as D. Martin Lloyd Jones and Charles Spurgeon. But it is worth it. It is absolutely worth it.

Truly, no matter what changes happen in my life I can always sing this unchanging truth: “Hallelujah, all I have is Christ. Hallelujah, Jesus is my life.”

Tags: bible, Charles Spurgeon, CJ Mahaney, conference, cross, D. Martin Lloyd Jones, depression, direction, fruit, God, gospel, grace, growth, guidance, maturity, New Attitude, Next, Scripture, self-talk, speaking the truth to yourself

I just started reading From Every People and Nation by J. Daniel Hays. It’s an attempt to study what the Bible says about race and to apply this to black/white relations in the Christian church in America. I’ve been very personally challenged so far.

The book starts by recounting a conversation Dr. Hays had with a black colleague, Dr. Isaac Mwase. Dr. Hays said that racism was an important issue in American Christianity. Dr. Mwase replied that it is the most important in the Church. That was an interesting reply. If that doesn’t ring true with you, read what Dr. Hays wrote next:

This conversation illustrates to some degree a phenomenon that I encountered regularly as I read through some of the recent literature dealing with the race problem in the Church today. Black scholars identify the racial division in the Church as one of the most central problems for contemporary Christianity, while many White scholars are saying, “What problem?”

p. 17

I don’t know about you, but I can quickly identify with the person that ask, “What problem?” I think I’m in for a real eye-opener. I’m looking forward to the uncomfortable but always-healthy work of the Spirit as He unveils ways that I have been guilty of racism. It has no place in God’s church. We are all descended from Adam. If you’re reading this and you have been born again, we have all been united with Christ. It’s worth quoting Ephesians 2 at some length:

For he himself (Christ) is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

In context, God is referring to the Jews and non-Jews in the first century coming together. If Christ knocked down the wall between Jews and non-Jews in the early Church, blacks and whites should also enjoy the benefits of that same uniting work today. Culturally, there was far more that separated a Jew from a non-Jew than there is separating blacks from whites. This also applies to Asians, Hispanics, and other ethnic groups. I’m only confronting the subtle racism in the Church between blacks and whites because that is where most of the tension has been in America regarding race.

We have no business discriminating on the basis of race in the Church. The sad thing is that many of us probably don’t realize we’re doing it.

• Do you tend to ask, “What problem?” when people talk about racism in the Church?
• Do you have any hesitation about dating/courting or marrying someone of a different skin color?
• Do you naturally gravitate toward people of your own skin color?

If so, perhaps you need to ask God to reveal racism in your own heart.

Tags: church, racism, reconciliation, relationships