Rick Warren on the Church Part 3

5. The Church provides the highest motivation.
Why do any of us do what we do in ministry? It’s not to make money, not to make a name for ourselves and not for duty to our nation. We do it out of love. Jesus stated it as the Great Commandment: “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.” We wouldn’t do the hard work required to tackle these global giants for money, for fame, or for anything else. It just wouldn’t be worth it; we’d quit before the end.
We’re motivated to keep at the hard work of ministry because we love God, and our love for God compels us to love other people. It is love that never gives up; it is love that keeps moving forward despite the appearance of impossible odds; and it is love that outlasts any problem.

6. The Church provides the strongest authorization.
God authorized the Church to take on global giants, such as spiritual lostness, egocentric leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance. With God’s authorization, the outcome is guaranteed to be successful.
When you know that God has authorized you to do something, you don’t worry about failure because God doesn’t sponsor flops. If God says we’re going to do it, it’s going to happen. It is inevitable. In fact, the Bible teaches that God will give us his power to complete the task. This is God’s way - ordinary people empowered by his Spirit.

Rick Warren on the Church Part 2

3. The Church provides the longest continuation
The Church has been around for 2,000 years. We’re not a fly-by-night operation. The Church has a track record that spans centuries: Malicious leaders have tried to destroy it, hostile groups have persecuted it, and skeptics have scoffed at it. Nevertheless, God’s Church is bigger now than ever before in history.
Why? Because it’s the Church that Jesus established, and it is indestructible. The Bible calls the Church an unshakable kingdom. In Matthew 16, Jesus says, “I will build my Church and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.” All the powers of hell – in other words, no hurricane, no earthquake, no tsunami, no famine, no pandemic, no army will ever conquer the Church established by Jesus Christ.

4. The Church provides the fastest expansion.
Did you know that every day 60,000 new people come to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? By the end of today, thousands of new churches will be started throughout the world, and that will happen tomorrow and the next day and the next.
In one country that is closed to traditional Christian missions, more than 60,000 house churches have been started in one province by the work of lay people, no different from the people who fill your church sanctuary every weekend.
Why is fast expansion important? If you’ve got a problem that’s growing at a rapid rate, then you need a solution that will grow even more rapidly. For instance, HIV/AIDS is growing at an incredibly fast rate in the world. Yet thank God the Church is outgrowing the disease, so more and more believers can help minister to those with HIV/AIDS.
If we’re going to tackle global giants like poverty, disease, or illiteracy, then we must be part of something that’s growing faster than the problem. The Church is doing just that!

Rick Warren on the Church Part 1

The Church will last for eternity, and because it is God’s instrument for ministry here on Earth, it is truly the greatest force on the face of the Earth. That’s why I believe tackling the world’s biggest problems – the giants of spiritual lostness, egocentric leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance – can only be done through the Church.

The Church has eight distinct advantages over the efforts of business and government:

1. The Church provides for the largest participation.
Most people have no idea how many Christians there are in the world: More than 2 billion people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. That’s one third of the world’s population! The Church has about a billion more people than the entire nation of China.

For example, about 100 million people in the United States went to church this past weekend. That’s more people than will attend sporting events in the United States throughout this year. The Church is the largest force for good in the world. Nothing else even comes close.

2. The Church provides for the widest distribution.
The Church is everywhere in the world. There are villages that have little else, but they do have a church. You could visit millions of village around the world that don’t have a school, a clinic, a hospital, a fire department, or a post office. They don’t have any businesses. But they do have a church. The Church is more widely spread – more widely distributed – than any business franchise in the world.

Consider this: The Red Cross noted that 90 percent of the meals they served to victims of Hurricane Katrina were actually cooked by Southern Baptist churches. Many churches were able to jump into action faster than the government agencies or the Red Cross. Why? The Church is literally everywhere, and Christians who could provide help to the Gulf Coast communicated with Christians in need of help so relief could be sent immediately.

Spurgeon on Grace

Never did a man sincerely seek but what he found the Lord willing to give. Go to your chamber, look at your past life, survey your mistakes and your sins, and confess them; and then lift up your eyes to the cross, and say, “O Jesus, given for sinners, have mercy upon a guilty one - have mercy upon me!” He cannot refuse you. As I read in an old Puritan this week, he says, “Come to Jesus, sinner; and if you are lame, come lame; and if you say you have no feet, come on your stumps. Come as you can, for he cannot reject you till he denies himself. He must cease to be faithful before he can reject any sinner that comes humbly to rest upon him.” Try him to-day, you aged people! Seek him, and he will be found of you. You young people, turn not your backs upon him! and you in middle life, O close in with him this day, and may he give you the water of life! Did not he say to that woman, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”? Ask, and he will give. What! not ask when it is to be had for the asking? Ah! Lord, we ask. Grant it now for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Where's Your Scar?

By Amy Carmichael

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?


No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?

James MacDonald says "You are Chosen"

With all due respect to blood relatives, there is something powerful about being chosen. If you were adopted into a family, you were chosen. Your parents looked around and said, "We want her." Or "We choose him to be our son." Did you know that adoption's legal bonds are so strong that an adopted child cannot be disowned?
If you are married, then you also know the wonder of being chosen. Out of all the world your spouse chose you to share their name, to share their life, to share everything good and bad that they would encounter for the rest of their years.
But even these powerful bonds can't compare to the truth that God in His infinite grace chose to set His love upon you!

Some people struggle with this truth. They're like, "How dare God choose one person and not choose another!" If that bugs you, you still have a lot to learn about God. "How dare the clay say to the potter, ‘Why have you made me like this?'"(Isaiah 45:9). If God wants to make one vessel for honor and one vessel for dishonor (2 Timothy 2:20), that's what it means to be sovereign. I can't explain that to you. All I can tell you is that when people resist the truth about God's sovereignty to choose, it has led to two errors.

The first error people say is "A loving God wouldn't choose certain people and thereby reject others." So their rationalization leads to the idea that God chooses everyone. Yet John 1:12 says— "only those who receive Him are given the authority to be called the children of God."
Other people say God doesn't have anything to do with it. It's totally us. We're the ones that choose. If you know the Lord, it's because you choose." Of course that's not what the Scripture teaches either. Here are two verses that prove otherwise:

• Psalm 91:14: "Because He has set His love upon me, I will set Him on high. Because He has known my name"
• Ephesians 1:4: "According as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world"

Somehow, before the world was made, God looked into eternity future and chose to set His love upon you. Your inner assurance shines through when you are convinced that God is personally committed to you. For no reason you can claim, you were on His most wanted list.

Worship Mythbusters: Ten things that damage a worship ministry and hamper worship in a church

Here is a great 10 list on worship in the church:
Worship Mythbusters: Ten things that damage a worship ministry and hamper worship in a church

Chandler on the Reformed Community

From "The Good Fight," an interview with Matt Chandler in the current issue of Leadership.

"I'm unapologetically Reformed, but nine times out of ten I cannot stand the Reformed community. I don't want to be around them. I don't want to read their blogs. They can be cannibalistic, self-indulgent, non-missional, and angry. It's silly and sad at the same time. Reformed doctrine should lead to a deep sense of humility and patience with others. How it produces such arrogance baffles me."
Matt Chandler is the pastor of The Village Church in Highland Village, Texas