Gaming at Parkside

"Let's get a bear hug," my captain says to the team at the end of practice. We've spent two weeks training hard, practicing, competing amongst ourselves, working on formation, and sprinting...lots and lots of sprinting.

Today we come together as a team to win a game. No longer competing in a practice against each other, but we come together to compete as a whole against the other team. We are confident in each other's strengths. Ignorant of our weaknesses. Fearless of our opponent's strengths.

"We're not the team that can just show up and win games," my coach says. "We have to out work every team--that is how we will win." Patience with the ball, always looking for opportunities to get a goal.

So how is this like life? Can a sport translate to somehow relate to my relationship with an all-powerful, supreme, sovereign God--who ultimately has control over even this, soccer?

In 1 Corinthians 9:24-26, Paul says, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air."

The opponent is real. The competition is tough. Yet with Christ, victory over sin is sure--and the prize, Paul says...is imperishable.

So in competing on the soccer field it is a joy to remember that to win is great. To win is good. To win is exciting. But even this, a victory and its praises are perishable. Yet I know a man, Jesus Christ who purchased a sinful people with His blood on the cross--conquering sin and death...and whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

This is the imperishable victory. Looking to Jesus Christ for a righteousness we can never obtain. He is our mediator that makes it possible to actually know God, by the Holy Spirit revealing things to us in the Bible.

Today I step onto a field to compete to win a game against Parkside, to the praise of God's glorious grace. Recognizing that competition points me to Jesus...above all else. Because He conquered the greatest battle of all, the sin of the nations.

May Christ be made much of in and through this soccer game with this mindset. To know that it is good to receive the perishable wreath, but far better and satisfying to receive the imperishable prize in Christ Jesus.

I'm getting dunked...what does that mean?

There are several hours before I go to a lake and am baptized by a Pastor from my church with 14 other friends. Before setting out to do this, I've been looking for two answers: what is baptism? and how important is it?

In short, baptism is a symbol of union with Christ in his death, and resurrection. This video helps to explain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g08kQvQ5-8k)



Christ conquered my sin at the cross, and purchased my very willingness to believe. The cross is where my testimony starts and ends. Jesus Christ is my righteousness!

God revealed that to me in high school.

I was a 3 sport athlete my freshman year, with a lot of potential. Success produced attention, and I love that. Praise was my idol, treasure, identity.
The following year I was injured, unable to play any of "my sports". I was angry at God because I thought he existed to give me anything I wanted.
Pride surfaced.
The following summer at a Campus Crusade conference, I heard the Gospel again and understood it for the first time. I recognized that I am an idolater, loving created things over the creator; therefore this offense is against none other than the God of the universe, deserving infinite punishment in hell.

God replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and the cross of Jesus was no longer foolishness to me, but irresistible! Immediately I embraced Romans 3:24-25, "We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith."

This summer I have come to see the importance of baptism. Baptism symbolizes Christ's death and resurrection that conquered my sin "through faith".
Colossians 2:11-12 says, "In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead."
Here circumcision of the heart is a symbol of the New Birth. This symbol is being paralleled with what happens in baptism: therefore also a symbol of being buried with Christ and then raised with him through faith. (So if this symbol represents the New Covenant, should it be given to babies like the symbol of circumcision was given on the 8th day to members of the Old Covenant? No, because the "Church" by definition is no longer a physical nation, but a spiritual nation. Not by physical birth, but only by Spiritual birth.)

"Paul shows the same way of thinking about baptism and faith in Galatians 3:26-27: “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” We become sons of God through faith and no other way. Then he says, “for”—connecting this way of becoming sons of God with baptism—“for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
That explanation with the word for only makes sense if baptism is understood as an acting out of faith. “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Or to turn it around: Since you were baptized into Christ, therefore we know that in Christ you are all sons of God through faith. Why? Because that is what baptism means: You were baptized into Christ by faith. Baptism without faith was inconceivable to Paul. (http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/2008/3037_What_Is_Baptism_and_How_Important_Is_It/)

So why is this important to do?

-Jesus commands it.
-In every instance of Baptism in the Bible it was given to Christians, not non-Christians (it is not a means to make anyone a Christian, as if the Holy Spirit is bound to a sacrament. Jesus says in John 7,8 "You must be BORN AGAIN. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.")
-"It was uniquely connected to conversion as an unrepeatable expression of saving faith." (Someone should only be baptized once because Christ only died and was raised once.)

God willing, my baptism tonight will glorify and make much of Christ, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To proclaim to all at the lake, and all friends and family attending, that indeed Christ has risen!

"We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God" the Bible says. Punishment for sin is death and eternal separation from God in hell, the Bible says. But let it be known that whoever believes in Christ Jesus will be saved by His grace through faith!

May the cross become irresistibly beautiful to you,
Sara

Theology to Doxology

"Make every effort, to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love" (2 Peter 1: 5-8).

Truth is not an opinion. The Word of God is Truth. I'm realizing more and more that what I think it says makes no difference, what I want it to say makes no difference--but that what it does say, in fact, makes all the difference. God commands that no one "add to it or take from it".

Understanding and loving the truth in the Bible is not merely a privelage or a job for a Pastor or Theologian. We are each called to personally know God! And knowing comes from hearing His Word...the Bible.

So that, by the power of the Holy Spirit we "may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph 3: 18,19).

Christian, keep watch, because there are false gospels: (video--see original post)


There is absolute truth, and it is objective, not subjective. Let us fight for this, the Gospel of Jesus Christ! We are to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3)



We are all called as Christians to be students of the word, lovers of Truth.
We are all called as Christians to contend for this Truth.

And above all, this knowledge of the truth, "theology"... is meant to lead us into a "doxology".

That our joy is not in the knowledge itself, or its pursuit.
That our joy is not in the contending itself, or its pursuit.

But that our joy of the knowledge of God brings us down to our knees in awe and in wonder of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The covenant-keeping King. Because through Christ, by grace, we know the Sovereign God! Yahweh. "I am". The one true God, the God of the Bible.

Doxology means to "ascribe glory to God". Our theology should serve no other purpose than to glorify GOD through it!



The only reason anyone exists is to the praise of God's glorious grace.
The only reason anyone is saved from hell is to the praise of God's glorious grace.

"He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of HIS WILL, to the PRAISE OF HIS GLORIOUS GRACE" (Ephesians 1:4-6).

Therefore we must KNOW the supremacy of Christ!



For through trusting in Christ by grace through faith, God gets the Glory!



So then, let our "seeing dimly" be ever focused on worship, and "ascribing glory" to God, who indeed is worthy of praise because He sent his Son Jesus to appease the wrath of the Father, so that "whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life"!

"Theology to Doxology", Paul does this well:

Romans 11:33-36, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen."

So let this video be our doxology:




Glory To God through Christ, by the Spirit,
Sara Grace

Prayer, and God's plan...

Hot topic: "So If you believe God has elected people before the foundation of the world those who will be saved and those who will not--why not just sit in your basement and eat cupcakes and not tell anyone about Jesus"?

My first two responses are this...

1: Jesus has commanded us to, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:19). This command is something I not only strive to obey, but delight to obey because God has replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and given me new desires.

2: How is anyone going to believe if they haven't heard about Jesus? "But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?...So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:14,15,17).

Bottom line...the Gospel needs to be preached in order for people to even hear about Christ. Not only doing nice things for people with church friends. That's not the gospel. God created language...he wrote Truth with words...we must articulate the Gospel with the Word... not only in deed, that is not the whole gospel.

So here's the long answer: God is sovereign; He uses means like prayer and preaching.

"the preaching of the gospel is just as predestined as is the believing of the gospel: Paul was set apart for his preaching ministry before he was born (Galatians 1:15), as was Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5)" (Piper).

Saying "why evangelize if God has already chosen?" is like saying "why pray about anything if God's will is to be done?"

God command's it. Also, He sovereignly uses prayer---because His Spirit is the one who guides us in prayer.

"Prayer is like preaching in that it is a human act also. It is a human act that God has ordained and which he delights in because it reflects the dependence of his creatures upon Him. He has promised to respond to prayer, and his response is just as contingent upon our prayer as our prayer is in accordance with his will. "And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (I John 5:14). When we don't know how to pray according to God's will but desire it earnestly, "the Spirit of God intercedes for us according to the will of God" (Romans 8:27)" (John Piper, The Sovereignty of God and Prayer).


God uses means to accomplish His purposes. He uses prayer, so we should pray all the more...in accordance with His will. He uses preaching, so we should speak the Gospel all the more.


Holding tightly onto truths of God's supreme Sovereignty and Predestination do not create laziness. On the contrary, these are the very truths that spur me to action...to prayer, to speaking. These truths have caused me to fully recognize man's inability to freely "choose" salvation (John 6:44). These truths are beautiful because they give God ALL OF THE GLORY because salvation is all of God, and God alone--The Father, Son, and Spirit.

"The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever"

"For your joy,"
Sara Grace