A Fire of Devotion before God

"Luther's piety may be likened to a fire, a fire of devotion before God. If coal be our symbol of burden and responsibility, then huge loads were deposited on that fire. One might think such loads would extinguish the fire, but in Luther's case, the opposite was true--the fire of piety only came to burn more heatedly and brightly. A life of devotion explains his accomplishments. We can be sure that Luther laid his preaching commitments, writings, burdens, problems, gladnesses, and griefs before God Triune during that prime time of communion." Erroll Hulse in The Preacher and Preaching, The Preacher and Piety, page 65.

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Election or Not, We Are United

I've probably lost my ever-loving mind posting on such an issue.

This has been, for many, a very contentious and discouraging election season. Families have been at odds, friends find themselves in pitched battles with one another and Facebook comments between Christians have seen an exceeding number of exclamation points and angry face emoticons.
However, regardless of the vote you cast and for whom, we should not be divided as friends, families and fellow Christians. Let me make my case by laying out four categories of voters (there are probably more, but work with me). These categories, in my view, are legitimate reasons to cast your vote (or not) for whoever you think you should cast your vote for.
If that is the case, Christian charity (patience, grace, love) compels us to understand one another.
It is an opportunity to listen to one another with humility. We may disagree, but that disagreement should not be a barrier in our relationship (or, even worse, destroy them).

I wi…

My Teachers

Ephesians 4:11-14

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (ESV)

In the last couple of months, I've heard of the death of a couple of influential professors. The tributes I read reminded me of how God has blessed His church with these men. I began to think about the teachers and professors who have influenced me.

And then I read a post recently from someone who graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS). What he wrote about WTS was foreign to me. He admitted it was based on "his experience" but it was full of char…

YouTube and Worship

We believe that corporate worship is the most important gathering we take part in each week. So we want to encourage the members of Grace Community Presbyterian Church to prepare to worship together every week.

In a previous post I gave the reasons why we want to make our order of service available a few days before we gather on the Lord's Day to worship. We provide links to our order of service on Facebook and Twitter and those links take you to this page, where a pdf of our bulletin can be accessed.

A member of our church had the genius idea of taking each week's order of service and building a playlist of the hymns we will be singing that week. The response has been very encouraging. Families are playing the playlist while they eat dinner, it becomes the music they play as they are running errands or exercising. One mom told me that her children look forward to the playlist each week. These playlists are available on YouTube and we also provide links to each playlist each …

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