Hi everyone,
When I think of this message I think of the old song, "Amazing Grace"! Wow, God is so good to us!
Here are my questions to prime the pump of dialogue for this week. Hope you have a great week of living in the freedom of Christ and His grace!
Pastor Rick
Becoming a Family of Purpose
1. How do I need to grow in my understanding of God's grace? How can I help my family in better understanding God's grace? How does this come out in how we disciple and discipline one another?
2. How do we help children and youth understand God's holiness and God's mercy? How does this affect how we discipline our children? How do we avoid teaching our young people that Jesus and His grace is to be taken advantage of and at the same time teach them how to be confident in the grace of God? (See 1 John 2:1-2; Romans 6:1-14.)
3. Verse to memorize: Psalm 23:6
To listen to Pastor Rick's sermon from Sunday, April 27, 2008 click here.
To read the PDF transcript of the sermon click here.
2 comments:
I think as individuals and as a familyl, both Dean and I agree upon discussing this after church, that having confidence in God's Grace, is to a great extent being able to really trust in God's soveignty in our lives. Giving up control and believing in our souls that he is totally in control (which as humans is hard to do) is what really speaks the truth about ones confidence in His Grace. We both agreed that if we do this, we are less apt to take advantage of His Grace and more apt to convey that silent confidence (that will come so much more naturally)of His beautiful Grace that He gives so freely, that we are so undeserving of! I guess that is what we both concluded, and with that in mind, it is much more natural to "show" our children Jesus, and then it will be that much more natural for our children to "show" Jesus back to us. Of course none of this comes "easy" but through the Holy Spirit, we agreed it is possible!!!
Just our food for thought....my thought is just this, (sometimes, in my lack of giving up control): "why can't we have foresight instead of hindsight at the footprints God leaves on our lives, wouldn't it be so much easier" but we have to choose and so therefore, we have to trust, and hindsight is always 20/20. Sometimes just being still and praying hard, will reveal His footprints in our lives, that we are so eager to resist in order to have control over something we clearly don't have control over.
Now, the trick is to get ourselves and kids in alignment with this belief in our God on a 24/7 basis!
Thanks Danielle,
These are insightful thoughts. I agree. Another way I would say what you are saying is this: the bigger God becomes to us, the more influence He has on us. So, we eat and drink and do everything to His glory. And when we mess up, "we have an Advocate" who will go to the Father for us.
I recall certain individuals in my life who seemed so captured by the amazing grace of God and the glory of God--they had great influence on me.
I pray we can all grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Pastor Rick
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