WORLD | From protester to penitent | Tiffany Owens | Feb. 20, 2013
A very interesting story about a young woman caught in the bondage of an oppressive cult/family church in Kansas who found grace - at least a beginning of understanding the nature of redemption. I know this group well, having served as a pastor in the same town. I have written about their views in previous places - they claim to be Calvinists, but in truth reflect the most hideous version of hyper-calvinism (a term I dislike) ever to appear in recent times. Grace sends us out, in a humble gratitude of repenting and believing disciples, into a hurting sinful world with a message of "truth in love."
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Friday, February 8, 2013
The Knowledge of God by Herman Bavink
God is the highest good of man-that is the testimony of the whole Scriptures. The Bible begins with the account that God created man after His own image and likeness, in order that he should know God his Creator aright, should love Him with all his heart, and should live with Him in eternal blessedness. And the Bible ends with the description of the new Jerusalem, whose inhabitants shall see God face to face and shall have His name upon their foreheads.
Between these two moments lies the revelation of God in all its length and breadth. As its content this revelation has the one, great, comprehensive promise of the covenant of grace: I will be a God unto thee, and ye shall be my people. And as its mid-point and its high-point this revelation has its Immanuel, God-with-us. For the promise and its fulfillment go hand in hand. The word of God is the beginning, the principle, the seed, and it is in the act that the seed comes into its full realization. Just as at the beginning God called things into being by His word, so by His word He will in the course of the ages bring into being the new heaven and the new earth, in which the tabernacle of God shall be among men.
That is why Christ, in whom the Word became flesh, is said to be full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
He is the Word which in the beginning was with God and Himself was God, and as such He was the life and the light of men. Because the Father shares His life with Christ and gives expression to His thought in Christ, therefore the full being of God is revealed in Him. He not only declares the Father to us and discloses His name to us, but in Himself He shows us and gives us the Father. Christ is God expressed and God given. He is God revealing Himself and God sharing Himself, and therefore He is full of truth and also full of grace. The word of the promise, I will be a God unto thee, included within itself from the very moment in which it was uttered, the fulfillment, I am thy God. God gives Himself to His people in order that His people should give themselves to Him.
Between these two moments lies the revelation of God in all its length and breadth. As its content this revelation has the one, great, comprehensive promise of the covenant of grace: I will be a God unto thee, and ye shall be my people. And as its mid-point and its high-point this revelation has its Immanuel, God-with-us. For the promise and its fulfillment go hand in hand. The word of God is the beginning, the principle, the seed, and it is in the act that the seed comes into its full realization. Just as at the beginning God called things into being by His word, so by His word He will in the course of the ages bring into being the new heaven and the new earth, in which the tabernacle of God shall be among men.
That is why Christ, in whom the Word became flesh, is said to be full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
He is the Word which in the beginning was with God and Himself was God, and as such He was the life and the light of men. Because the Father shares His life with Christ and gives expression to His thought in Christ, therefore the full being of God is revealed in Him. He not only declares the Father to us and discloses His name to us, but in Himself He shows us and gives us the Father. Christ is God expressed and God given. He is God revealing Himself and God sharing Himself, and therefore He is full of truth and also full of grace. The word of the promise, I will be a God unto thee, included within itself from the very moment in which it was uttered, the fulfillment, I am thy God. God gives Himself to His people in order that His people should give themselves to Him.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
God's End Game Romans 8:28-30
God's End Game Sermon
Here's the sermon that takes a look at the big three P's of grace: Providence, Predestination, and Perseverance.
I wrote a paraphrase of Rom. 8:28-30 :
Here's the sermon that takes a look at the big three P's of grace: Providence, Predestination, and Perseverance.
I wrote a paraphrase of Rom. 8:28-30 :
“ There is a lot we don’t know, but God is working in all that happens for the good of those that love him, because those that love God have been appointed for the fulfillment of his plan. This is what we do know.
God’s knowledge of us, was intimate and personal, so that he chose us and then drew us to Himself so that we might then reflect the same character of his Son, who being sinless and perfect and having all rights of Sonship, now share in that right.
Those that God predetermined to love he has also drawn to himself, and those who been chosen he also declares right on the basis of His Son, which in the end, will reveal the full glory of that new relationship.”
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