-
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
"Grace is everything Jesus. Grace lives because he does, works because he works, and matters because he matters. He placed a term limit on sin and danced a victory jig in a graveyard. To be saved by grace is to be saved by him – not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership, but by Jesus...
You won’t hear from Paul’s lips some of the phrases that are commonly heard from many Christians. In the New Creation language, you won’t find longing and wanting. You will find endless praises declaring that the waiting and wanting is over. It’s a language and song of blissful fulfillment and...
When the law was given, a sin-consciousness was added to man’s self-consciousness… Then into the darkness of this pitiful plight came the brightness of the gospel. We will find that it is in the nature of grace to always rush toward need: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom...
Grace is God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.
Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it...
There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do...
Grace is a gift only the non-religious can accept. They’re the only ones who can understand it, and put it to use. “Religious” folk see grace as soft and weak, so they keep trying to manage their junk with willpower and tenacity. Nothing defines religion quite as well as attempting impossible...
The Gospel is not a call to do something, but the announcement that all is done in the One Who stood for all. Nothing is so contrary to our natural human tendencies, even as Christians, as the acceptance of such powerlessness, weakness, inability and inadequacy that must rely on God's action of...
The pastoral epistles are becoming increasingly dear to me. As I read them, serving now as a senior pastor, I am constantly encouraged, corrected, challenged and guided by Paul’s words. I am thankful to God for including these letters in His Word for the repeated use and divine wisdom they...
God is love and love that stoops is called grace. The gospel of grace is really the gospel of his love. Grace is what God’s love looks like from our side. Grace is love come down.
An illustration may help. I love my kids with all my heart but I live in a different world to them. The things I...
Have you been changed by grace? Shaped by grace? Strengthened by grace? Emboldened by grace? Softened by grace? Snatched by the nape of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace? God’s grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about...
“But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love...
“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and...
“Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting - no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and...
The Religion Shop is Closed
Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity...
An excerpt from,“The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-up, and Burnt Out” - Brennan Manning.
Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes...
An excerpt from,“The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-up, and Burnt Out” - Brennan Manning.
On a blustery October night in a church outside Minneapolis, several hundred believers had gathered for a three-day seminar. I began with a one-hour presentation on the gospel...
As a kid, I'd only level up my party a little bit at the beginning of the game and avoid getting into battles later on, making my party weak and too weak to beat future stronger enemies. This costs me to lose and also lose some money after getting a game over. I also lose in battles and get a...
Recently I saw a TV ad for great invention: a stuffed animal that glows, and even projects light onto the ceiling to comfort a child who has difficulty with bedtime or falling asleep and remaining asleep. If the child is afraid of the dark, this invention would benefit them all the more.
But...
I'm a Christian, but...
Some conservatives think I'm not a Christian because I'm a nudist;
Some liberals think I'm not a Christian because I carry a gun;
Some people wonder: where does a nudist conceal a gun?
I wonder what Jesus would say?
Hopefully, something like: "How about a skinny-dip...
Back in High School, I was told not to walk away from the school to go home when school was over for the day so I decided to walk with my friends to the bus stop on the next block so we got robbed. Later, during the evening I walk all the way to GameStop to buy some MapleStory iTCG cards that...