Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “Convey grace to those who are suffering.”

Philip Yancey once wrote a great line which I totally agree with. He said, “I would far rather convey grace than explain it.” He meant that he would rather have people experience God’s grace as a result of his actions than for them to just hear about God’s grace as a result of his words.

One of the most important occasions for us to share God’s grace with others is when they’re suffering. When people are suffering they need to experience an extra measure of God’s blessings, and those blessings almost always come through other Christians. In order to do that, we must be willing to enter into their suffering with them. We must be there for them (the ministry of presence); we must feel some of what they feel (empathy); and we must allow God to work through us in order to bless them in the special ways they need it at that moment.

When we do that, we impart meaning and significance to their circumstances. The fact that we care tells them that they matter – to us and to God.

Philip Yancey tells the story of how his wife Janet had a ministry to sick senior citizens. One man she worked with had bad cataracts in both eyes and could barely see. Janet urged him to get the surgery he needed so he could regain his sight, but the man took no action. He was lonely, depressed, and had given up hope. He saw no reason to live and therefore no reason to get his vision corrected. But finally, after many visits and much urging, the man did get the surgery, he did regain his vision, and it resulted in a significant improvement in his outlook on life. He could see again and he had hope again.

It turned out that the reason he finally agreed to get the surgery was not because it mattered to him, but because it mattered to Janet. Janet imparted meaning and significance to his suffering – she graced his suffering by showing him that it mattered and she cared.

I encourage you to go out of your way to convey grace to someone who is suffering. When you show them that you care it could very well convince them that God cares too.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “We must be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

This week in our reading of Rick Warren’s 40 day devotional “What on Earth Am I Here For?” the topic is serving God. Rick writes that serving God and serving others is actually one of the primary purposes of our lives. God created each of us as a unique individual with specific gifts and abilities, so that we could then be of service to Him in His Kingdom-building work here on earth.

Rick writes, “You were put on earth to make a contribution. God designed you to make a difference with your life. While many best-selling books offer advice on how to “get” the most out of life, that’s not the reason God made you. You were created to “add” to life on earth, not just take from it.”

This is what Paul was writing about in Ephesians 2:10. Before you were even born, God had a purpose and a plan for your life. Before you even took your first breath, God had things planned for you to do for Him.

When Jesus was here on earth He inaugurated this new era of grace. But when His time on earth was done, He passed the work along to His followers. In John 20:21 He said, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And in Acts 1:8, just before ascending back into heaven He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

God’s grace is His undeserved blessings poured out upon people. In our day the way God’s grace is delivered is primarily through you and me – the followers of His Son Jesus. We have been designated to be the hands and feet of Jesus. People should be experiencing God’s grace through us. This is one of the primary purposes of your life.

Rick writes, “The last thing many believers need is another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles.”

If you are not intentionally serving as a conduit for God’s grace to flow to others, then you’re missing one of the primary and most rewarding purposes for your life. I encourage you to be a blessing to others. Get involved in ministry.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: ‘Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “… since all the people in my town know that you are a woman of noble character.” Ruth 3:11 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “A grace-filled, grace-full person is magnanimous.”

I love the word “magnanimous” (pronounced “mag nan ah mus”). It means “greatness of soul”. Some synonyms for magnanimous are, “Merciful, big-hearted, charitable, kind, gentle, forgiving, noble, and dignified.”

A magnanimous person is kind, patient, compassionate, forgiving, big-hearted, and generous, and they do it in a noble and dignified manner. Serene and confident, they move through their world in a graceful way, all the while being a blessing and making the lives of others better.

Although the Bible doesn’t actually use the word magnanimous, it does use many of the synonyms for it and it does ascribe the virtue of magnanimity to people such as Ruth. In fact, the synonym for magnanimous, “noble” is used often, usually with respect to women. There are a few occasions when men in the Bible are described as “noble”, but usually the person described as being noble, or magnanimous, or having a greatness of soul, is a woman (Ruth 3:11, Proverbs 12:4; 31:10; 31:29)

Over the years I’ve had the privilege to know some magnanimous men who truly had that “greatness of soul”, but I’ve known many more women like that. My mother was one of them. My wife is another. It probably has something to do with the kinder, gentler female nature.

What I do know is that our world needs more magnanimous people. We need more men and women who are kind and merciful; great of soul; big of heart; dignified and noble; blessing people everywhere they go.

That dignified and noble character comes from God and is the result of His grace at work in the lives of His people. The more grace-filled and grace-full a person is, the more magnanimous they will be. Developing that greatness of soul is a worthy pursuit for any life. I encourage you to be a more intentionally magnanimous person today.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “Love is patient; love is kind … love never ends.”
1 Corinthians 13:4; 8

Our thought for today: “God’s grace is best expressed in love.”

This morning I was reading Paul’s wonderful description of love in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-13. As I was reading, it occurred to me that this is a great description of grace. At its best, grace is expressed through acts of love.

“Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited, does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends … Now these three remain: faith hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Look again at the passage. Paul describes virtues like patience and kindness, forgiveness and hope; he says that true love avoids envy and boasting, selfishness and provocation; he urges us to be committed long-term and to endure all things for the sake of love. The passage absolutely exudes grace. Grace is all about love and grace is best expressed in love.

The great missionary Mother Teresa of Calcutta once wrote, “You can do no great things, just small things with great love.” Yes, the smallest act, done in love, is great.

This Sunday, as you gather with your church family, there will be people there who need to experience God’s grace, they need to be loved. I encourage you to be intentional about prayerfully seeking out those who need a word of encouragement, an act of kindness, a hug, or a pat on the back. The smallest act, even a smile and a word of greeting, can be an expression of God’s grace and can make a difference in someone’s life.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “We experience God’s grace in trials and troubles.”

God’s grace – His abundant blessings freely poured out upon us – is experienced even in the midst of our worst problems. Sometimes that’s hard to believe. Usually when we’re suffering and struggling we wonder where God is in the middle of it all. Seldom do we feel as if we’re being blessed.

But, the Bible is pretty clear that God does indeed bless us even in (maybe especially in) our times of trouble. Read Matthew 6:25-33 and Romans 8:28 for starters.

This morning I want to borrow a teaching from Rick Warren in his book, “What on Earth Am I Here For?” Rick teaches that God actually uses our troubles to transform us. He uses our tough times to grow us spiritually and to make us more like Jesus. Rick writes that, “God has a purpose behind every problem.” “He uses circumstances to develop character.” And, “God uses problems to draw you closer to himself.”

As evidence Rick offers these examples from scripture: “God could have kept Joseph out of jail, kept Daniel out of the lion’s den, kept Jeremiah from being tossed into a slimy pit, kept Paul from being shipwrecked three times, and kept the three Hebrew young men from being thrown into the blazing furnace – but he didn’t. He let those problems happen, and every one of those persons was drawn closer to God as a result.”

It’s often in the middle of our deepest darkest times of trial and despair that we come to know God best. It’s then that we turn to Him, rely on Him, and experience His grace in ways we never have before. And thus, our greatest blessings often come out of our greatest trials.

We’ll conclude today with one more thought from Rick: “Every problem is a character-building opportunity, and the more difficult it is, the greater the potential for building spiritual muscle and moral fiber … What happens outwardly in your life is not as important as what happens inside you.”

I encourage you to look for evidence of God’s grace in the middle of your trials and troubles. It is there. In some way He is blessing you. Learn from this, grow from it.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.” Colossians 3:13 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “Grace leads to forgiveness.”

Last Sunday in our evening Bible study we had a great group discussion about forgiveness. There were some tearful testimonies about the power of forgiveness – given and received. We talked about times someone forgave us, and times when we forgave someone, and of course we also discussed how much God has forgiven us.

That’s where Paul starts us in Colossians 3:13, with the fact that God has forgiven us: “Just as the Lord has forgiven you …” The Bible also says, “For I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin.” Jeremiah 31:34. And, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12.

Yes, God has forgiven us. His forgiveness is an essential element of His grace freely and abundantly bestowed upon us – our sins forgiven and remembered by Him no more.

And then, as Paul continues his teaching in Colossians 3:13, he tells us that we must forgive in like manner. Jesus told us this too in Matthew 6:12, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Unfortunately forgiveness is often easier in theory than it is in actual practice. Very often we are too slow to forgive ourselves and to forgive others. Philip Yancey writes,

“Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people.”

If you live in regret for past sins you have committed, even after you have confessed them to God and have received His forgiveness, then you are wallowing in unnecessary misery – you have failed to forgive yourself for the things that God has already forgiven you for.

And if you are harboring an unforgiving spirit towards someone else – holding a grudge and nursing bitterness – you have failed to extend to them the grace God extended to you. Not only is that wrong Biblically, but you are also harming yourself. An unforgiving spirit holds you captive to that past offense. It has been often said that the act of forgiving sets a prisoner free and that prisoner often turns out to have been you.

Forgiveness is an essential element of God’s grace – received and given. Have you accepted forgiveness? Have you given it? I encourage you to set the prisoner free.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God.” 1 Corinthians 2:12 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “God’s special grace enables us to understand spiritual truth.”

I was raised in a Christian home and spent virtually all of my childhood and teenage years in church. So I was familiar with the Bible. But I was not a Christian and truthfully, I found the Bible to be rather boring. Interestingly however, later in life, when I placed my faith in Christ and became a Christian, the Bible suddenly came alive; from that moment forward it became the most interesting and absorbing book I had ever read.

What happened to make what had once been boring to suddenly become so interesting? It was God’s gift of special grace in my life. Beyond the common grace of God which I had, up to that point, experienced right along with every other person on the planet, in the moment I opened my heart to Jesus and received the gift of His Holy Spirit, I was flooded with God’s special grace.

God’s special grace is multi-faceted and greatly varied, but one of the elements of it is spiritual understanding. This is what Paul was teaching in 1 Corinthians 2:12-16. In verse 12 he tells us that the Spirit helps us to understand that which we had previously been unable to understand. In verse 13 he writes that the Spirit explains spiritual things to spiritual people. In verse 14 Paul says that unbelievers do not understand spiritual things because they don’t have the Holy Spirit explaining it to them. Therefore those spiritual things seem foolish (and boring) to unbelievers.

In verse 15 Paul writes that the spiritual person, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, is able to evaluate things accurately; and in verse 16 he says we can even attain “the mind of Christ.”

But please don’t miss this very important point: Special grace is a gift that has to be received and embraced. This new ability of ours to be illuminated and instructed by God’s Holy Spirit does not happen automatically. We have to cooperate. You will not discover the deep riches of the Bible if you don’t bother to read the Bible. You will not hear the soft and gentle voice of God speaking to you in prayer if you don’t pray.

Rick Warren writes, “Spiritual growth is not automatic. It takes an intentional commitment. You must want to grow, decide to grow, make an effort to grow, and persist in growing.”

Part of God’s gift of special grace to you is the opportunity to gain new understanding of spiritual realities. But you do your part and He will then do His. God’s special grace enables us to understand spiritual truth.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? Colossians 2:20-21 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Christ freed us from the tyranny of manmade rules and regulations.”

Let’s be clear that grace does not give us a license to sin. We cannot simply do whatever we want. But grace does give us freedom from the bondage of legalism. Grace empowers us to live in the fullness of, and under the guidance of, the Holy Spirit, rather than being bound by a long list of manmade rules and regulations.

That’s the point Paul was trying to get across to his Colossian readers in Colossians 2:20-21, and it’s also what he meant in Romans 6:14 when he wrote, “For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under law but under grace.” If you have truly embraced the gift of grace, sin will not rule over you because the Holy Spirit does, and therefore you won’t need rules and regulations to govern your conduct, the Holy Spirit will do that for you.

Philip Yancey spoke about the tension between legalism and grace when he wrote, “Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey to heaven.” Legalism does that. It causes people to become so preoccupied with all the things they can’t do, that they forget to celebrate and enjoy all that they can do. Grace frees us to enjoy the journey.

If you have truly and fully surrendered your heart to the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you can trust Him to guide you to live in ways that are pleasing to God. That then gives you the freedom to just relax and enjoy life. This is what Solomon meant in Proverbs 3:5-6 when he wrote, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” If your heart is right, you can trust Him to guide you.

God has given us a big beautiful world filled with wonderful things for us to appreciate and enjoy. Embrace the gift and enjoy the journey!

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “But encourage each other daily …” Hebrews 3:13 (HCSB)

Our thought for today: “We must encourage each other.”

I’ve mentioned to you before that one of my favorite people in the New Testament is Barnabas, “The Son of Encouragement”. His real name was Joseph but the Apostles in the early church gave him that nickname because he was such a kind and gracious man. Every time we see Barnabas on the pages of the Bible he is blessing someone, giving a gift, reaching out to an outcast, or helping to mediate a conflict.

I love it. Over the years I’ve been so captivated by Barnabas’ winsome personality that once Linda and I even owned a book company which we called “The Barnabas Book Company.” We sold encouraging books designed to lift you up and improve your life.

On the pages of the New Testament we’re only given little snapshots of Barnabas in action but the fact that he was given such a nickname, “Son of Encouragement”, provides us with the fuller picture. He was a dispenser of God’s Grace. He was the guy whose presence brightened every scene, who raised people’s spirits, who brought joy into their days.

I believe that should describe the rest of us too. We are not to be harsh and critical of each other. That’s the work of Satan. He’s the one who tears down; he’s the one who is the source of gossip and slander; he’s the one who accuses and blames. When Christians do that to each other, they’re effectively doing Satan’s work for him.

No, we are to be dispensers of God’s grace. We are to build each other up, encourage one another, and as Hebrews 10:24 reminds us, we must spur one another on to love and good deeds.

I encourage you to consider who needs to hear a word of encouragement from you today. I encourage you to be Barnabas for someone today.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Grace”

Our Bible verse for today: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “We can learn to be gracious by spending time with others who are gracious.”

“The way of excellence starts by copying the excellence around you.” I read that quote just the other day and I like it. I’m also convinced it is true. We learn to do something well by studying others who already do that thing well.

The great philosopher Plato spent years studying at the feet of Socrates. He learned to think like Socrates, debate like Socrates, write like Socrates. In time Plato developed his own style and he was very much his own man, but he learned philosophy by studying under a great philosopher. Beethoven spent many years studying and copying the music of Mozart. The great home run hitter Barry Bonds learned the skill of hitting a baseball by studying the style of the great home run hitter Willie Mays.

Yesterday I confessed to you that I am not by nature a gracious person. God has had to teach me grace by continually keeping me in the presence of other people who are gracious. I can think of four men in particular over the last twenty-five years whom God has placed in my life as models of grace. As far as becoming gracious, I have a long, long way to go compared to them, but their examples have inspired me to want to be better than I am. This is what Solomon was referring to in Proverbs 27:17. We can help each other to be better than we are.

Once at a Promise Keepers Conference I heard a speaker say, “Every person should have three key relationships in his life, you should have a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy.” You should have a Paul – a person who is more spiritually mature than you are and who will build into your life. You should have a Barnabas – a person who is on an equal footing with you spiritually, who knows you well, and who will tell it to you like it is. And you should have a Timothy – a less spiritually mature person whose life you can build into.

When it comes to the spiritual attribute of grace, and of being a gracious person, we all need to be around others who are more advanced in this business of graciousness than we are. “The way of excellence starts by copying the excellence around you.”

I encourage you to seek out gracious people in your church family, observe them, learn from them, and strive to be more like them.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim