I received this e-mail from a friend a few days ago and had to pass it on. Who knew that there were Puritan tire stores?
Went into a tire store in Naples for a tire balance and rotation and while waiting, found on the table The Cross by J.C.Ryle, For whom did Christ Die, by Charles Spurgeon, and Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility by J.I. Packer. Now that’s some tire store……
James Dobson writing in 2001, Bringing Up Boys, p. 54:
…we as parents are raising the next generation of men who will either lead with honor and integrity or abandon every good thing they have inherited. They are bridges to the future. Nations that are populated by largely immature, immoral, weak-willed, cowardly, and self-indulgent men cannot and will not endure. These types of men include those who sire and abandon their children; who cheat on their wives; who lie, steal, and covet; who hate their countrymen; and who serve no god but money. That is the direction culture is taking today’s boys. We must make the necessary investment to counter these influences and to build within our boys lasting qualities of character, self-discipline, respect for authority, commitment to the truth, a belief in the work ethic, and an unshakable love for Jesus Christ.
(HT:Buzzard Blog)
Anxiety and worry are a burden that “weigh a man down” (Prov 12.25) and produce a daily pressure that affects our emotional, mental, and physical health. All of us from time to time carry the heavy burdens of worry and anxiety, some more than others. The question is, how (if at all!) can these burdens be relieved?
Here are three simple questions that will help direct you as you seek to deal with the daily pressures that life throws at you. (more…)
“He that . . . wants relief must come to Christ himself. He must not be content with coming to His Church and His ordinances or to the assemblies of His people for prayer and praise. He must not stop short even at His holy table or rest satisfied with privately opening his heart to His ordained ministers. Oh no! . . . He must go higher, further, much further than this. He must have personal dealings with Christ Himself. All else in religion is worthless without Him. The King’s palace, the attendant servants, the richly furnished banqueting house, the very banquet itself — all are nothing, unless we speak with the King. His hand alone can take the burden off our backs and make us feel free. . . . We must deal directly with Christ.”
J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Old Tappan, n.d.), pages 266-267.
If we go to church just to be with one another, one another is all we will get. And it isn’t enough. Eventually, our deepest unmet needs will turn to anger at one another. Putting community first destroys community. We must put Christ himself first and keep him first and treat him as first and come to him first and again and again. He can heal as no other can. Can, and will. If we come to him.
(HT:Ray Ortlund)
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (Luke 22:19-20 ESV)
Of the Lord’s Supper John Chrysostom wrote “The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is the commemoration of the greatest blessing that ever the world enjoyed.” At Trinity we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, this commemoration of the greatest blessing every week. Weekly communion with God through the bread and wine of His supper was important to the early church as Scripture demonstrates (Acts 2.42). In terms of our own specific spiritual heritage in Anglicanism, nothing in Scripture stirred our own English Reformers to write more eloquently, or with so much passion as did their writings on the Lord’s Supper. Thomas Cranmer called the Lord’s Supper “Christ before our eyes…by inward faith.” Nicholas Ridley declared that those who feed on Christ in their hearts by faith eat nothing less that the “food of life and immortality.”
In terms of my own spiritual development, I look back on my early days as a Christian taking the Lord’s Supper at St. Andrew’s, Mount Pleasant as an especially sweet and encouraging time in my life. My classmates from the Citadel and I would take the Lord’s Supper together, then kneel, grasp hands and pray for the mission of the Gospel on the Citadel Campus. During these times I knew that I was not only having deep spiritual fellowship with my classmates, but I was also communing with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who had nourished my soul through the preaching of the word and the giving of the bread and wine.
Now as a Pastor, I not only continue to feast on the Lord’s Supper with God’s people, but I find myself in the humbling position of presiding over the banquet. One of my great desires for this church is that you and I fully appreciate just what it is that we are feasting on. For this reason, after much prayer and council with the pastoral staff, we have decided during the Season of Lent (March 13-Arpil 10) to abstain from the Lord’s Supper. Our worship will be Morning Prayer, a simple order of worship common in the Episcopal Church before 1979. Over the course of those five Sundays in Lent, our preaching will focus on the Lord’s Supper. My hope is, as a good waiter can make the mouths of the guests water so too will your pastor’s make your souls thirst for the spiritual food and drink of the Lord’s Supper. On Palm Sunday (April 17th), Trinity will host a banquet for the soul as we gather together for the first time since Ash Wednesday to take bread and wine together.
We wish to be sensitive to those visitors who we only see for a few weeks a year, who long to take the Lord’s Supper with us here at Trinity. For that reason, we will hold a communion service throughout Lent at the 8:00 a.m. service in the Chapel.
My hope is that absence will make the heart grow fonder. When we gather together on April 17th we will do so with great expectation and hopefully, by God’s grace, a greater understanding of an act so central to our worship here at Trinity.
If you or your small group would like a supplement to study the Lord’s Supper as a Lenten devotional, I could not recommend anything better than Thomas Watson’s little book, The Lord’s Supper. You can buy it by clicking here.
blessings,
Rob
This was by far one of the best conventions we’ve had in years. Mark put forward a vision for the Diocese that I found captivating. Make sure to click through and read the whole thing
To begin to think seriously about church planting is to begin to reframe the opportunities that lie before us. Imagine the vitality that would be released if two of our congregations in the four deaneries which have the greatest unchurched demographics (Beaufort, West Charleston, Charleston and Georgetown) planted two new congregations or satellites in the next five years. What new life would emerge within our communities and within the Diocese of South Carolina from eight new congregations or even twice that number? I believe this can be done even during a season of economic downturn. We often get fixated upon buildings and property. But for many in our present culture it is not the aesthetics of the building which attracts; it is the dynamism of the preaching, worship and fellowship which wins the heart of the unchurched person. Certainly we cannot leave entirely behind the need for property and buildings; a drab setting blesses no one’s heart. But if we can focus upon reaching the lost I believe the issues of property and building will emerge in many cases as quite secondary to the winning of the seeker and the transformation of his or her life in Christ. This change from building church plants to growing missional communities is a concept we need to embrace more fully. This will have the dynamism of a movement rather than the often stagnating effect of tending an institution.
The Diocese has in recent years held to the model of established parishes being planters of new churches or congregations. This has worked well in such places as The Cross, Bluffton where a satellite congregation was established at the Buckwalter Campus. So also with Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island in the planting of a satellite at Daniel Island and their future plan of a third satellite congregation at ‘Ion in the Mount Pleasant. Such vision is inspiring. Others like St. Paul’s Summerville, St. James’, James Island, St. John’s, Johns Island, and Christ Church, Mount Pleasant because of adjacent land were able to build ministry centers, essentially planting “congregations” on campus. There has been no lack of vision and creativity among us. Today, two of our congregations in the Georgetown deanery have begun initiatives as well. Trinity, Myrtle Beach, under the leadership of Rob Sturdy and Iain Boyd, has initiated a church plant in the Carolina Forest community. This is making good progress. The Rev. Wilmot Merchant and the people of St. Stephen’s, North Myrtle Beach with the help of the Congregational Development Committee purchased property in the Loris area for a potential church plant in the future. They are presently making a strong witness for Christ by their volunteer work in Loris Elementary School therein making a difference in children’s lives. It will also work as a relational base from which to plant a congregation in the future. Nevertheless, elsewhere we have lagged behind, and others have seized the day—God will have his witnesses – with or without us.
read it all here
Watch, weep, pray, and praise God .
This is the story of Zac and Mandy Smith.
Jailed Christian in Afghanistan writes letter to U.S. President asking for help.
http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/23987/28442/
*update*
Sayeed has been released, prayer request for another convert in prison
What are your thoughts when you hear the phrase “unconditional love” when speaking of God?
Does the phrase fall short of the Gospel truths of God’s love for His sheep?
Justin Taylor has a good post on the phrase read all of it here.
this paragraph jumped out to me:
it’s not true that unmerited grace is strictly unconditional. Jesus Christ opened a way for us to experience the biblical love of God by fulfilling two conditions: a life of perfect obedience to the moral will of God, and a perfect substitutionary death on our behalf. Powlison writes: “Unconditional love? No, something much better. People who now use the word unconditional often communicate an acceptance neutered of this detailed, Christ-specific truth.” (more…)
Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of the soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.”
– J. C. Ryle
Now a days the church lingo is to be “missional” which is a way of saying we do missions everywhere and not just in Africa or S. America.
There are a couple of young men from Trinity who are planning a trip to Burundi this summer, so I hope they read these words for encouragement. Those of us staying can pray these things for them as well. I also think we can apply some of these to our “missional” lives here in the Myrtle Beach area.
Got this from Ray Ortlunds blog about William Carey’s 11 commandments for missions.
1. Set an infinite value on immortal souls.
2. Gain all the information you can about “the snares and delusions in which these heathens are held.”
3. Abstain from all English manners which might increase prejudice against the gospel.
4. Watch for all opportunities for doing good, even when you are tired and hot.
5. Make Christ crucified the great subject of your preaching.
6. Earn the people’s confidence by your friendship.
7. Build up the souls that are gathered.
8. Turn the work over to “the native brethren” as soon as possible.
9. Work with all your might to translate the Bible into their languages. Build schools to this end.
10. Stay alert in prayer, wrestling with God until he “famish these idols and cause the heathen to experience the blessedness that is in Christ.”
11. Give yourself totally to this glorious cause. Surrender your time, gifts, strength, families, the very clothes you wear.
Listed in Christian History, Issue 36, page 34.
from a Barna report here
from an interesting article talking about Molinism. Don’t know what that is, check it out here.
Thought the last question in this paragraph is a good one to think about.
does God’s own self-revelation (Scripture) assert that God should be worshipped because He has set aside the exercise of His divine attributes in order to let man be libertarianly free, or should God be worshipped because He actually exercises his sovereignty to pursue the heart of man as he exists in human history? In fact, is there any instance in the Bible where God is praised for making man libertarianly (autonomously) free?
boydmonster
limabean03
doulos tou Theou