First Southern Blog

I found this book on Timmy Brister’s blog post back from October.  Then, I found this one as well, making me think how we can continue to sharpen our Gospel Care Community Groups.  Let me know what you think about them.

It’s disappointing to see yourself sin; you can feel so stupid.  It’s another thing to sin in front of 20 other people!  That’s exactly what I did at our members meeting this past Sunday.  What a poor attitude.  I felt like such a failure.  Later, I was reminded of the statement I made just minutes before our members meeting from Dave Harvey: ‘[Failure] is God’s way of removing our glory and restoring his own. God will lay low anyone who competes for his supremacy. Our dreams crumble, and in desperation we reach out to God and his rock-solid promises. In the cleft of his Word, our vision of God grows, and we shrink to our rightful place’ (Harvey, Rescuing Ambition).  Thus: I feel like an idiot!  Well, this morning, I found this article from Charles Bridges and took to heart this statement:

I know, O Lord, that thy rules of proceeding are agreeable to thy perfect justice and wisdom; and I am equally satisfied, that the afflictions that thou hast laid upon me from time to time, are only to fulfil thy gracious and faithful promise of making me eternally happy in thyself.’ Blessed fruit of affliction!

Hopefully, this will be my prayer…and yours too.

Enjoyed a great trip to the South (Mississippi) to learn about church planting.  Randy and I are praying about what God would want First Southern and Village Park Baptist to do at this point.  Please pray with us.  We got connected with a group called one8.org.  Check it out.

You may want to check out this link for books that are for sale from the Good Book Company.  They sell some great books, and they have a sale on some of their books for this month only.  Check it out!

I read Piper’s blog this morning, and it made sense.  He mentioned how we can serve God to make Him look thrilling instead of threatening.  You probably know what I mean by threatening — serving God because you have to, not because you want to.  It’s serving out of fear, so that I can merit God somehow by my works.  That’s silly…and unbiblical.  How do you merit/gain with God?  He does not need anything (Acts 17:25).  What does He need from us?  Nothing!  Instead, when we serve Him, we trust moment-by-moment that He will supply what we need.  Our serving really comes from Him, that is, His supply.  He gives what we need to serve Him, and that makes Him more glorious.  Here’s the post, it sounds better from Piper than from me.

Join us for a new study we will begin this Sunday based upon the book by D.A. Carson, The God Who Is There. We will watch the DVD for the first half hour, then Travis will lead us in some discussion questions. This will be a good foundational study taking us through the whole Bible! Awesome!  Hope you enjoy.

Yes, folks, I haven’t posted in a while. I could give you the excuse that things have been busy, but that’s probably a given. Between ministry with God’s people at First Southern, chaplaincy for Verde Valley Community Hospice, being on the board of the association where we live, and much more school oversight for my two oldest (junior and sophomore, respectively), I have been slightly busy! Best thing to do is check out our facebook page. Just look up First Southern Baptist, and find the logo of the cool looking cross — that’s us! I post more things there than our blog.

BUT, since I haven’t posted in a while, I’ll give you all a little something to chew on (I will put it on our fb page too):
‘You cannot have a thriving church without a core of men who are true followers of Christ. If men are dead, the church is dead…’ (David Murrow). Ouch.

This is a great exhortation for all of us members of First Southern:

“The ultimate concern of most church members is not the worship and service of Christ in evangelistic mission and social compassion, but rather survival and success in their secular vocation. The church is a spoke on the wheel of life connected to a secular hub. It is a departmental subconcern, not the organizing center of all other concerns. Church members who have been conditioned all their lives to devote themselves to building their own kingdom and whose flesh naturally gravitates in that direction anyway find it hard to invest much energy in the kingdom of God. They go to church once or twice a week and punch the clock, so to speak, fulfilling their ‘church obligation’ by sitting passively and listening critically or approvingly to the pastor’s teaching.

[ . . .] Since their understanding of justification is marginal or unreal–anchored not to Christ, but to some conversion experience in the past or to an imagined present state of goodness in their lives–they know little of the dynamic of justification. Their understanding of sin focuses on behavioral externals which they can eliminate from their lives by a little will power and ignores the great submerged continents of pride, covetousness and hostility beneath the surface. Thus their pharisaism defends them both against full involvement in the church’s mission and against full subjection of their inner lives to the authority of Christ.”

By Richard F. Lovelace

We won’t have the band or the violins, but it’s my desire to put this song in our mix for Sunday morning worship songs.