Quote of the Day

A heart for others and their actual needs should be what stirs us 'to the heart' - we are to look on others, not for how they can encourage us, but how we may encourage the. The potential of lives forever changed should drive us, fulfill us, as it did our Lord - many did not respond as this group (later in Jesus' ministry), but it did not change His 'fulfilling sustenance' (doing the will of God and not allowing predictable norms to dictate the possibilities we look for) Our focus is to be looking for God's working (readiness for harvest) realizing He may have been "working on" someone long before we met them. 

- Don Lambert 

excerpts from his studies on John 6

You may listen to the sermon here: http://dbc.sermon.net/main/main/21629112

Quote of the Day

(Speaking of Heb 10:24-25)This passage calls us to regular gathering together as a church community.  It could be easy to assume that this simply means that we all need to be together so we can worship together, but the beginning of that passage says otherwise.  In verse 24, the author frames for us why we need to gather together:  in order to push one another to 'love and good deeds.'  This strikes us as a more intimate expectation.  This call reveals an awareness of each other's lives and an intimacy with how those lives are lived.  We are specifically encouraged to gather together so we can be in each other's business.

From the book: Leveling the Church: multiplying your Ministry by Giving it Away - By Micah Fries and Jeremy Maxfield

Quote of the Day

The preacher must not be surprised if in some cases the effect of his preaching is the opposite of what he expects. Offense, or no offense, I shall not cease to proclaim what God has given me.  I would rather see a soul leave me, because offended at my words, than that he should drift calmly to Hell without a word of warning from me."

Macrae(?)

Quote of the Day

(On Ephesians 1:15)

There is also gratefulness expressed in his prayer to God for their love expressed 'to all the saints'.  This gratefulness is not just for 'love' being shown and demonstrated, but that it is non-discriminatory among the 'saints' - there is not preferring one above another (Just as a parent is heartened to see their children loving each other equally and not neglecting some)  Knowing what we already know (of what God has done on our behalf) and the uniting us together into one purpose as family (and as a 'team', our understanding of this will draw us toward each other as fellow beneficiaries of God's grace, called to a special purpose together. It is not our distinctions that unite us,but our common likeness (in Christ) and our unified calling - we have the same purpose and so find our love for one another understandable.

- Don Lambert
From his Ephesians sermon series:  http://www.dansvillebaptist.org/ephesians.html

Quote of the Day

The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.  WE have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more.  One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood.  He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood…..

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.  The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship in in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
From his book: Life Together

Quote of the Day

I am consistently struck during my travels how a bond is immediately created with other believers, regardless of the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences between us.    In many respects, this bond is stronger than the biological bonds that exist between father and son, or mother and daughter.  In face, Jesus plainly says that his advent will break such biological bonds, and if we are not willing to forsake these natural relationships when necessary, we have no business seeking a supernatural relationship with Christ.    

- Victor Kuligin

Quote from his book:

The Language of Salvation:  Discovering the Riches of What it Means to Be Saved

Quote of the Day

...God establishes a rule of life by which you can live together in wedlock:  'Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives' (Col. 3:18,19).  With your marriage you are founding a home.  That needs a rule of life, and this rule of life is so important that God establishes it himself, because without it everything would be out of joint.  You may order your home as you like, except in one thing: the wife is to be subject to her husband and the husband is to love his wife.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Not only are Christians to be collective representatives of Christ on earth but also individual representatives as each one strives to be like Him.  That's the key to unity in the church.  If all of us were more like Christ, we' have no problem getting along with each other.  But unfortunately, we are not always in tune with one another because we are not all fully following Christ.    A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) once said that if a hundred pianos were merely tuned to each other, their pitch would not be very accurate.  But if they were all tuned to one tuning fork, they would automatically be tuned to each other.  Similarly, unity in the church isn't the result of running around and adjusting to everyone else.  Rather, the key to unity is becoming like Jesus Christ.

- John Macarthur