Forgiving Grace Ministries

Wow what a day! I am so exhausted but feel like I am walking on air. I have so much I want to say, but I am virtually speechless. What could make me that way? Today we had two people accept Christ as their Lord and Savior!

Welcome Matt and Tatum to the family! God is great and it is amazing to see Him work.

Lord thank you!

 Our look this week was to Simon, Andrew’s Brother.Simon also called Peter is a man that personally I can really relate to, a man who is strong in his faith, yet at times he seems to waver. He is a man who is impulsive, who sometimes sticks his foot in his mouth.  A man, who is acts before he thinks, yet finds himself bitterly weeping over his failures. Wow, can I relate. How about you? Can you relate? Well, if you think that God can’t use you or that you have nothing to offer, then our study in Peter will give you a new perspective. If you can relate or if you just want to learn some more about the Apostle Peter, then go check it out.

Well, today we began our series on the Apostles; I decided to look at them more or less individually rather than as a group. The reasoning behind such an undertaking was really quite simple; I wanted us to learn more abut the men that Jesus chose. In doing so there is much to be gained, first as we know more about these men we can see traits in them that we can identify within ourselves. For example, Andrew was the kind man who wanted and did bring people to Jesus and within the scriptures we can clearly see that from the very beginning to the very end we can see Andrew bringing other to Christ. Another thing we noticed from his life was that he was a man that was very passionate, in the account of Andrew telling his brother about Jesus our English text does not give us the picture that the Greek text does. For example in John 1:41, the English text tells us that Andrew “said” to Simon “we have found” the Messiah, the words in quotation marks are the keys to Andrews demeanor, in English said is a past tense verb no big deal, in the Greek, the word is NOT past tense nor is the single word for “we have found” in the Greek both of these are present tense active verbs which tells us that Andrew did not just simply go to Simon and say we have found the Messiah. No, this clue leads to a clearer picture of an excitable man who was intense in the repetitive telling Simon we found Him, we have found Him, we have found the Messiah We have found the Messiah. So as we learn about these men we will be looking for clues to their character, clues to the attitudes and behaviors, we will be looking and identifying their passion, their fears and failures the strengths and victories and in doing so we will see little glimpses of our own selves in the men that Jesus chose, and in that we will realize that Jesus still seeks men like with their qualities today and on any given Sunday morning churches all around this world are filled with men and women that fit the bill. Are you one of them, I bet you are! However, this question remains are you serving Him like they did, or like you should? 

That is probably one of the most agonizing questions one can ask. Go on I dare you, ask God if your worship is insulting to Him! You may be surprised at the answer. The whole idea of these last two weeks was born out of the sense and knowledge that America has slipped away from God and while many profess to be His children, increasingly they act like the world, and demonstrate an overwhelming lack of knowledge of God’s Word. This is a problem, our study this Lord’s Day is found in Malachi chapter one, but the heart of this message is the same as last weeks, and that is God’s heart. God’s desire for us is to be intelligent, loving, passionate, and diligent in our study and service to Him and His Kingdom.  

            Some of the questions, which we need to ask ourselves, are; are we doing what we are doing with passion or out of a rote mechanical programming? Are we going through the motions and like Jesus said just giving some pretty lip service, but having hearts that are far, far from God? The truth is it does not take much to gain a cold heart and from there even less for it to become black and in serious danger of dying. You can check out the message here.

Just as an fyi for everyone, starting next week and carrying on for 8-9 weeks we will be doing a in-depth study on the disciples. The series will be called “Who Are Those Men?” and we will begin with Andrew, with all that said I may not be blogging on each one as I am behind on several projects both here at home and at school, so I need to devote much extra time to getting caught up. I will be keeping up with getting the sermons up but that is about it for right now. Good luck, may God bless you in your desire to get to know Him more.

Brothers and sisters this is a very disturbing topic, Biblical Illiteracy is a huge cancer not only in our world, it is also very prevalent in our churches. There are a lot of churches that are dying, homes that are wrecked, lives that are faltering, and the reality is that this very problem “Biblical Illiteracy” is likely the major contributor to the all the rampant immorality in our midst.

Well, I guess I need to ask the question; Are you Biblically Illiterate?

I want to encourage you to take to heart the reality of this message; your eternity will depend on your answers to some very powerful questions that will be asked of you.

The whole of the Bible is the revelation of the story of God’s love for the human race. It is amazing when you study the scriptures and discover that from before the foundation of the world Jesus has been working, either in the creation of all that is, or He has been being revealed in and through various Old Testament figures, such as Job, or Moses. In the New Testament you have men like Simeon who longed for the revelation of Jesus and was promised that he would not see death until as he put it “the Salvation of God is revealed” and it was in Jesus.

Beyond the question of Who Jesus is, lies two more prevalent question that are birthed from knowing who Jesus is and they are; What does knowing who Jesus is mean to me?  And What do I do with Jesus now that I know who He is?

I guess for me the most important realization of who Jesus is manifests itself in these two statements.

Jesus is the Love of God

And

Jesus is the Heart of God

Well you can check out the message here

I am just in awe at the wonder working power of God, maybe I am just easy to amaze but God is just doing some amazing work in our midst. I want to just share this, it is just so amazing, but several weeks ago, I got some visitor information cards for the church and began to pray over them and distribute them in the pews, that same day we had two visitors that have been pretty regular attendees since, and today we had five more visitors, God is so faithful and so good, and I am so thankful for all He is doing in our midst.

This week we looked at 2 Timothy chapter 4, and this was a very different sermon for me and while I normally flesh out a fair amount of my sermon here, instead I want to ask you the reader the same questions I asked of my congregation and then encourage you to go and listen to the sermon for yourself.

Do you have any regrets about the way you have lived your life?

What about the things you have done or have not done?

How about this are there any regrets in any of your relationships, ones you have currently or ones that are strained or broken?

How about any regrets with the way you have raised your children?

Within your marriage, have you done things, said things that you regret?

If you answered yes to any of these then I would encourage you check out this weeks message

We had a great Sunday, since we have spent the last two weeks hammering out what a complete biblical plan of salvation includes, I felt that it was prudent to discuss the importance of sharing our faith.

This one fact is the one that should really get us all to think about the importance of sharing ones faith. In the Gospel record, Jesus healed 40 people and of those 34, were brought to him or Jesus was brought to them. So with only six people finding Jesus on their own, it is clear that very few people will find Jesus just by picking up their Bibles and reading them. 

The bottom line, we should tell people about what God has done for us and in us, in and through Jesus but we must turn that corner and tell people that God wants to similar things for them.

A simple plan would look like this;

(1) Pray everyday for God to provide a divine appointment, pray for that person that God would move them before your encounter, and during your encounter, so they will be impacted by your story and by what God wants for their life, and after so they would be so moved that they would act favorably to the gift that God has for them

(2) Share what God has done in your life, be bold and confident, temper this with love, humility, faith, and obedience and let your story the one God has developed in you be a source of power to let others know who Jesus is in real time, in your life.

(3) Share God’s story again temper this with love, humility, faith, and obedience, and you will do well. Tell them of what God has done for the whole of humanity and what He wants to do through Jesus in their life.

Well, if you want to know more check out the whole message here

What another phenomenal day! We awoke this morning to cooler temperatures and clear blue skies, the kind that says fall is in the air, ahh, I love this time of the year. Anyway, I need to get on with it, last week we left off with these three “Hearing, Belief, Repentance” as things that are in the scriptures when it comes to a plan of salvation, now as I told the congregation this morning do not get too hung up on order, as we go through this it appears the only things that require order is the first two, hearing and believing anyway, we looked at confession and how Jesus says we must confess Him before others and how He will do the same before His Father.
Next we looked at Baptism, which is probably the most argued point in all of Christianity. The scriptural teaching is reasonably clear, the scriptures command that we submit to baptism; it is a part of the salvation process and as much so as any other piece. Now, I am not arguing in favor of Baptismal regeneration, I am not arguing at all, I am simply stating the facts from scripture, for example, that word “for” is said to mean because so in other words, you are baptized because your sins are forgiven, (Acts 2:38) how ever if you were to turn your Bible to Matthew 26:28, you will find another “for” where Jesus said His blood was poured out for the forgiveness of sin, when you look to the original Greek text what you will find is this, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. The words are pronounced Ace, Aphesin, Hamartion, which in the English is for forgiveness “of” sins. OK, I know that is a lot to swallow, so I will refer you to the phrase study sheet which I have prepared. Anyway, the first word is the preposition “for” according to Thayer it means “to obtain” the second word Aph-es-in is a Singular Feminine Noun in the accusative case, the accusative case is the case of the direct object and it means “forgiveness” and finally Hamartion, which is a Feminine Plural Noun in the Genitive case, this case roughly corresponds to our English possessive case. The genitive expresses possession, and it means sins.
OK, Greek class is over, hang in there you are doing well, the only difference between the Acts passage and the Matthew passage is these two things which are both found in the Acts passage. In the Matthew passage, Jesus is referring to sin in general and at large, you know your sin, my sin, his sin, her sin and so on, while in the Acts passage, Peter uses the article “the” and the personal pronoun, “your” both in reference to a particular persons sin, yours, in other words “the sin of yours” Bottom, line is that there are five places where that phrase “for forgiveness of sin” occurs and in each and every case it is the same, so if we are to understand the Acts passage to read, the we are baptized “because” our sins have been forgiven then we must conclude that Jesus’ blood likewise was poured out “because” sin was forgiven. I simply can not do that because that really goes against everything the whole Bible teaches.
Next we moved to the last thing the scriptures say that lead to life and being saved and this my dear friends is perseverance, Jesus said just as He overcame we should also, for all practical purposes it works like this if Jesus can persevere against all He did surely we can manage in this life being faithful to the call and being faithful means, living our lives trusting that Jesus is who He said He is, that He will deliver on the promises He gave, and Obeying, this is lived out by following the commands of the scriptures and living life in a such a way as to say, no matter what because I love Jesus, I am going to do and teach what His word says.
Well, if you want to get a deeper understanding listen to both of the messages and look a the phrase study sheet, it is an excellent resource designed to strengthen and encourage you in your walk and growth in Christ Jesus. May the Lord Bless you in direct proportion to your study of His Word.

     Have you ever looked at all the “Plans of Salvation” that permeate the internet? Well, when redesigning the Forgiving Grace Ministry website, I was torn about putting one on the site. It is not because I do not want to share with people how to be saved, because I desperately want everyone to know the joy and peace contained in a relationship with Jesus, a relationship that brings salvation can not be beat. I was reluctant because scripture in every case of salvation that it tells us about involves the telling (verbally) of the Gospel and then there is immediate action. So, my issue is that Salvation at least as presented in the Gospel is not a thing done in private, it is done in relationship. Now that is not to say that God can not move an individual to Salvation without the aid of another human, because He is sovereign, and He can do all things, Amen. What really got me though was that I really felt that God wanted me to search out all the plans I could find, and when I did I came away astounded, and in some cases absolutely appalled, about what I was reading. One plan said that the whole idea of the Gospel teaching a need for repentance was absurd, yet Jesus said in Luke 13:3, 5 repent or perish, loose translation but you get the point. In Luke 15:7, 10 Jesus has told two parables one about the lost sheep and one about a lost coin, and He ends both with the idea that there is a party going on in Heaven when just one sinner repents. Now I do not know about you but how am I supposed to process these verses if we can be in our sin yet believe and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the one that really got me; another site said that just by acknowledging your sin and your need of a Savior you were repenting, now the last time I checked that was not good hermeneutics. In fact that would or should qualify as heresy, and that brings me here to that page and this 2 week sermon series. 

Friends we need to mine the whole of the scriptures and if they say something leads to salvation we might just want to check ourselves and see if that is what we are teaching, it should not matter if we personally agree with it or not. Are you teaching what you are teaching because the Scriptures teach it or because your denomination teaches it? Read the Scripture for all they say and ask yourself, am I teaching what it says or what I want it to say or what I have been told it says.  You know many times when I read the Word of God, I come face to face with His perfection, His Holiness and it shines a light on my imperfections and that usually causes shame, especially if I am not doing or living the way I ought to be living, and many people want you and I to think that, that shame is wrong and God does not want us to feel bad, Yet Paul, God’s chosen vessel said that Godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to Salvation.  Go figure, huh!

Well, we covered three things in this week’s message that the scriptures say lead to or bring one into a place of accepting salvation or being saved.  So, check out the message and mine some of that Gospel treasure.