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Keith Price Joins The Blogging World

Keith Price, one of my former students and a fellow Shepherd with the Troy Church of Christ in Troy Michigan has joined the blogging world.

Keith did not come to International School of Evangelism to become a minister. Keith came to prepare himself one day to be an Elder.

Keith and his wife Lora are special people and I hope you will visit his blog from time to time. Click here to take a look. The link is also listed in the blog roll on the right.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN WE BELIEVED THE LOST WERE REALLY LOST!

One of the major influences in my life to preach was missionaries. Whenever a missionary came through our small town he would preach on Sunday and tell of the lost and how the Gospel was saving them from an eternity without God and keeping them from a place called Hell. I admired these men and women who left their families and traveled thousands of miles away from there friends and family to tell the lost about Jesus.

Not long after I began preaching I read a copy of, “The Shadow of the Almighty” by Elizabeth Elliot. She describe the life and death of five young missionaries who sought to reach out to a tribe of people who had no contact with the outside world and were killed trying to share the message of Christ. That settled it for me. I would always be a preacher and a missionary. Missions and Missionaries was for many back then a priority…a priority that changed my life.

The church today and its attitude toward missionaries is vastly different. Only once in the last seven years have I heard a missionary speak from the pulpit on Sunday morning. During my early preaching days you could pick up a phone, call an elder or preacher and schedule a meeting to talk about a mission work. Today there are so many “gatekeepers” and hoops to jump through that it takes almost an act of congress to get an audience. It has become a world of not what you know but who you know that can open a door and get you a hearing.

Part of the reason for our present reality is the result of our information age. Information overload is a term coined by Alvin Toffler which refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we cannot see the validity behind the information. Personal contact has been replaced by email, printed information and a pile of request so high it is simply overwhelming. This all results in a cursory look over the material, a “well we can’t help everybody” attitude, and into file 13 the request goes.

To use another phrase from the past, we are “shell-shocked” by so much information about so much need that we have literally become numb. We are no longer moved emotionally at the site of a starving child or people dying for lack of clean water. Much in the same way our senses have been numbed by the gore and reality on TV, we are amnestied and no longer feel emotional about what we see and hear.

The reason for our condition IMHO is that our priorities are totally out of whack. We have placed multi-million dollar building programs ahead of reaching the lost. We have been more concerned with our own comfort than the genuine life sustaining needs of the less fortunate. Our faith has been placed in the tangible and not the intangible. Those things that were “first” priority with Christ have been replaced with “our personal” priorities and His work waits until our needs are met.

We have lost the ability to sacrifice for the needs of others. Oh we buy a few groceries for the church pantry and drop a few dollars in the collection plate and then turn around and spend more on a night out than we give to God in a whole month…maybe a year. We have a whole generation in the church that has not been taught to give because we have been afraid of sounding like the charlatans on “Health and Wealth” TV.

But there is hope. The younger generation that is growing up today is seeing right through our faulty reasoning and they are walking away in favor of doing what really brings about change in the lives of people. They are turned off of our institutions and turned on by doing something with their lives that really matters. Right now most of the energy is focused on meeting people’s physical needs only, but hopefully they will come to see that as important as the physical is, it needs to be coupled with meeting the eternal needs as well. When that happens, and only when that happens, will the Great Commission be restored to its rightful place in our priorities. Then the lost will be saved and rewards will be eternal.

May the grip of His grace cause us to see that we live in a world filled with people that do not know Him. And may we repent and make His priorities ours once again.

God’s Faithfulness

When God established His covenant with Abram, (later Abraham), to seal His promise He “cut covenant” with Abram. The custom went something like this. An animal was cut in half and each half was placed on either side of a pathway. The two parties making the covenant would then pass together through the bloody half’s of the animal. This covenant carried with it a two fold promise. First, they promised to both walk in accord with the covenant they were making. Second, to break this covenant would mean that the person doing so would suffer the same fate as the animal they were walking between.

But this covenant between Abram and God was different. Everything was in order; the halves of the carcass had been laid out on the edges of the pathway. But God had put Abram to sleep. Gen. 15:12-21. As Abram slept, God walked the path alone.

Here is how the writer of Hebrews describes the scene, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” Heb. 6:13, 14.

There would be no chance for human failure no room for weakness or uncertainty. God would see to it that His promise was fulfilled.

In there book “Furious Pursuit” Why God Will Never Let You Go, Tim King and Frank Martin describe what this means to the security of those who follow Christ.

“When God walked between the severed animal pieces, he was saying to us, “This has never been about your faithfulness; it’s about my faithfulness. It’s not about your strength, your ability to remain in covenant with me. It’s about my strength, my ability, my love, my resolve to save you. I pledge to fight for you, to stay in relationship with you, to walk with you no matter what, from now until eternity.”

Because of the sacrifice of Christ we are heirs of this covenant and the faithfulness of God as well. Paul said this about His faithfulness, “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” II Tim. 2:11f. The only way to break our relationship with Christ is to walk away from it. We can disown Him and He will disown us. But if we are unfaithful, make mistake, struggle, and more…He is faithful.

PHIL IS NOW A BLOGGER! ABOUT TIME (-:

Phil Barnes came to Madison to fill the Senior Minister position late in 2004. Madison has been blessed by his teaching and leadership in faith. In the estimation of this shepherd one of Phil’s greatest qualities is his transparency, but that is only one of the qualities that have endured him to the Madison family. Phil has now entered the blogging world. I can assure you that you will be blessed by his writing. His blog is called Madison Church of Christ, were we Worship God – Connect People – Reach the World.

Your World Is About To Change – You Must See This Video!

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AREWA AID’S BENEFIT DINNER ANOTHER SUCESS!

 

CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT AND SEE MORE PICTURES FROM THE EVENING.

INPRESSIVE VIDEO DONE BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

When The Sky Falls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ed Fudge

 

If there is ever a time for turning our eyes and hearts toward God,
surely that time is now. The United States is bogged down abroad in
seemingly interminable wars against unidentifiable enemies, at a cost
to date of 4,100 dead, 30,000 injured and almost one trillion
dollars. Meanwhile, at home the bears have emerged from the jungles
of high finance to ravage the stock market, which this past week saw
the greatest losses of any week since the Great Depression.Desperate and clueless, the federal government is borrowing first-aid
kits from the warehouse of socialism, in hopes it can save the
demigods of capitalism and free enterprise. Treasury officials
worldwide are collaborating in hushed tones, the citizenry are
screaming in outrage at the ungodly compensations and bonuses netted
by the actual culprits, and everyone seems to have forgotten that the
two most powerful engines driving Wall Street have always been greed
and fear.

Less than a month away from a presidential election with no coherent
vision offered by either party, extremists on both sides have
resorted to empty clichés, unequivocal misrepresentations and
outright lies. The configuration of presidential candidates,
international banking interests and general sense of panic has
created a field-day for biblical prophecy speculators who, armed with
the internet, are adding their own layer of End-Time doom and gloom
to the fearfulness that already exists.

In the midst of such circumstances, believers do well to remember
that God has no special deal with America, and America has no
guarantees from God. However, actions do have consequences, and
societies cannot plant one crop and harvest another. Whether God
still chastens nations directly or simply allows their own moral
corruption to take its course, the effect is the same. Godly people
often suffer and die alongside the scoffers and scoundrels. Faith
does not mean that God will always protect us from evil now. It does
enable us to trust him, whatever may come, in the confidence that he
will have the final, victorious, eternal word.

Jesus Lover of My Soul

This song was especially meaningful for me today. Hope you enjoy.