By Rob Flood 

Jonathan Edwards is a well-known name in these parts.  He has a reputation for being a prolific writer, a dynamic preacher, a wonderful theologian, a passionate disciple.  What you may not know is that he is also an all-star resolution maker. 

When Edwards was a young man, he set out to determine the way he would live his life.  Without infringing upon the providence or sovereignty of God, Edwards determines how he wanted to live and then resolved to do it.  He even wrote them down.  His record of resolutions began: 

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ's sake. 

He was fully aware that not a single one of these resolutions was possible without the help of God.  Yet, his dependence upon God’s help did not stop him from making these resolutions.  In fact, it was this very dependence upon God’s help that motivated him to be so bold in his resolutions.  Bold enough to make 70 of them, which he read weekly for the rest of his life. 

Here is just a sampling of his resolutions: 

#5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

#6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.

#7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

#16. Resolved, never to speak evil of anyone, so that it shall tend to his dishonor, more or less, upon no account except for some real good. 

#25. Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it. 

#43. Resolved, never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God's. 

I’m not suggesting that we set out and make 70 of our own.  But we can learn something from this.  Even wise, gifted men such as Edwards need to choose purposefulness for their lives.  We can sometimes see men like this and think they are other-worldly.  They don’t struggle with temptation.  They aren’t normal.  They aren’t like us.  Yet, these resolutions defy that. 

No…his gifting isn’t normal.  But his temptations are.  His tendencies are.  And his choice for purposefulness in his Christian life is as necessary for us as it was for him.  

Will you act and speak only as though it is the last hour of your life? (#7)  Will you choose to act always as though you belong only to God? (#43)  If not these resolutions, what will you use to help you live purposefully, for as long as you live? 

Edwards’ resolutions were for Edwards.  They are not Scripture nor are they binding on your life.  His example, though, for purposeful living is a call placed on each of us.  

Interested in reading the whole list of 70 resolutions?  Click HERE.

As a church, we have spent recent Sundays exploring the wonder of the birth of Jesus, the Christ…God with Us.  We have learned that the coming of Christ, the First Advent, is more than a miraculous birth of a baby.  It is the Son of God becoming man.  It is the first step toward Calvary.  Yet, Calvary is not the end in itself…God means to redeem a people for himself…to himself…through the work of Christ on Calvary. 

So, as we remember and celebrate the birth of our Savior, let us also remember and celebrate our salvation through these words by Charles Spurgeon: 

"Immanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent splendor." 

As your pastors, we count it a great honor to remember and celebrate with you the First Advent of our Lord.  And, we count it another great honor to labor along with you as we look forward in great anticipation to the Second Advent of our Lord. 

We pray that your Christmas is characterized by grace and peace…by worship and wonder…by love and joy.

Merry Christmas!

Last year in December I read I narrative poem to the church.  I wrote the poem as something to help me reflect on the story of the birth of Christ.  It’s called The Letters of Joseph and Mary, and you can watch it here.

Or, if you prefer to read an excerpt, here’s one drawn from the end of Matthew 1 (the sermon text from a week ago):

Then one day Joseph wrote again
And this is what young Mary read:

Dear Mary; my dear, dear Mary!
An incredible thing occurred last night.
Though I’d resolved with all my might
That married we would never be
An angel of God appeared to me

Saying, “Son of David, don’t be scared
To marry her.  For God prepared
This woman to become your wife
And the Holy Spirit conceived the life
In her and she will bear a son
And he will save his people from
Their sins.  You’ll call him Jesus, so his name
Will tell the world why he came.”

And not just angels, but prophets of old
Spoke by the Spirit when they foretold
These things.  Mary, I’ve come to see and to believe
That when the prophet said, “the virgin will conceive
And be a sign and bear a son”
He spoke of you, my love, the one
Appointed to give birth to he
Who saves the world from misery!

If possible, return here soon.
So I can give my life to you
And we will raise this baby boy
Who brings this world peace and joy.

All my love,
Joseph

By Rob Flood

There are some wonderful retellings of the Christmas Story.  From the movie, “The Nativity Story” to the show at sight and sound.  From some fun children’s movies to books that we’ve built traditions around.  These are all wonderful and good parts of our holiday traditions.

However, in recent weeks at our church, I’ve had a thought.

During our Sunday series, “God with Us,” we are preaching through the Christmas story from the Gospel According to Matthew.  At our recent Christmas Concert, we recited the Christmas story from the Gospel According to Luke.  And I’ve been struck by something:

You can’t really improve upon those accounts.

What would it be like if reading the actual Scriptures became a regular part of your Christmas traditions, regardless of your stage of life?  Parents could read it to their children.  Spouses could take turns reading it to one another.  Even singles could incorporate the audible reading of Scripture into their Christmas traditions with friends, roommates, or house mates.

Three of the four gospels have some form of the telling of the coming of Christ: Matthew, Luke, and John.  You could use them all in one year or switch it up.  You could choose just one and read it every year.  You could choose to read smaller portions every night of the week prior to Christmas.  You could read the first half on Christmas Eve and finish the story at breakfast on Christmas morning.

The possibilities are many…and so are the blessings.  We swim upstream of the culture on so many areas of Christmas.  We try to focus our own hearts, let alone the hearts of our children, on Christ at Christmas.  The writers of the gospels were not fighting the same secularizing that we’re fighting.  However, they were attempting to create a retelling that caused all readers to wonder at what had happened…and even ponder the events in their hearts.  We can benefit from their efforts when it comes to focusing on Christ at Christmas. 

The gospels were given to us to tell us the good news of great joy: that the Son of God came to earth to save what was lost.  That is their singular focus: the telling of the story of Jesus.

So, this Christmas, watch that movie.  Read that story.  Utilize every tradition that has marked how you celebrate this holiday.  But consider…just consider…a Scripture-laden Christmas.  Let the Word of God do its work…by drawing your heart to the Savior who came in the flesh:  God with us.

By Gina Flood

I love preparing for the Christmas season.  I love watching the same movies with family every year, pouring over cookbooks to glean ideas for tasty treats to share, decorating the house with homey yuletide comfort, driving the neighborhoods gazing at Christmas lights with yummy mugs of hot chocolate, visiting a live nativity, and celebrating the birth of the Savior with family and friends.

I don’t usually think about the Christmas season as an opportunity to grow, more just to enjoy and then to survive.  But the Lord taught me a great lesson last year that I’m looking forward to practicing this year. 

As I was planning the annual Christmas cookie bake-a-thon last year, I thought I was wisely considering my current season of life – 4 young children, home school, pregnancy, busy schedule, and so on.  So…in my wisdom, I thought making 10 different types of cookies was conservative.  After all, my truly wonderful mother-in-law makes 27 different kinds at Christmas and I feel almost certain that the amazing women in this church are able to make at least 15 different cookies, home school their children, make all new decorations from home-grown ingredients, host 3 parties, keep their home sparkling clean, build a new shed, and potty train their child all at the same time and without sinning.  Hmmm…that’s my wisdom.

Now, my husband, who has carefully studied his wife for many years, wisely asked, “So, how many kinds of cookies you planning to make, hon?”  I replied full of self-glorifying false humility, “Only 10.”  Can you just hear my wonderfully humble tone?  Oh, yuck!  Well, the negotiations began.  Rob lovingly reminded me that I am in a “One-thing Season”.  Adding more than what God has called me to do, especially when it is for my glory, was not going to bless anyone with the love of Christ in that season and most likely was going to add tension to our home and my face.

When all was said and done, I was to make only one more cookie (I had already made 2 kinds) and I had a heart full of thanks for a godly husband who sees my limitations better than me and cares for me abundantly.

I am thankful for my One-thing Season.  I love being a wife, mother, homemaker, home school mom, and member of this incredible church!  I would not want anything else.  Yet I can so easily be swept into the cares of this world - comparing my productivity to others, and striving to make myself look wonderful.  I can “temporarily” set aside what God has asked me to do in favor of what I want to do.  I can easily be tempted to trade my God-given One-thing Season for a three ring circus for the sake of my own vainglory.

I am looking forward to revisiting my One-thing Seasonal frame of mind this year, remembering God’s kindness, mercy, and grace and allowing that to inform my choices for each day.  I am truly and joyfully thankful for this One-thing Season and my desire is to glorify God in it – every day.

May God give us the grace to embrace our One-thing Seasons with undivided hearts and unwavering confidence that we are exactly where our sweet Savior wants us to be.  To God be the glory.

By Rob Flood

When we lived in Little Rock, we discovered the wonder and the magic of the Super Walmart.  In one place, you could buy lettuce, soda, produce, socks, motor oil, potted plants, and a television.  It was the ultimate in one-stop shopping.  A task we all need to do made simple by putting everything we could possibly need in one place.

As we depart Thanksgiving and run head-long toward Christmas, many of us will see family and friends.  We will find many we encounter far more open to spiritual conversations than they may be at other times of the year.  Wouldn’t it be great if you had a Super Walmart at your disposal in your conversations with such people?

Well, we have created such a wonder for this holiday season.

Celebrate Christmas is our winter season invitation intended to be used for evangelism.  Just like the Super Walmart, it has a vast variety of items in it, to fit nearly every occasion.  Check out what it covers:

~   God with Us (Our Christmas preaching series)

~   The Christmas Concert

~   Christmas Eve Services

~   The Children’s Christmas Musical

~   A Holiday Blood Drive

~   The Alpha Celebration Dinner

~   Financial Peace University

~   Explore

~   Word of Comfort (Our preaching series that will follow Christmas)

Folks, that’s better than motor oil and lettuce.

But notice that this blog is not titled “The Mission Done for You.”  It is titled “The Mission Made Simple.”  This “Super Walmart” of an invitation is as useless as the Super Walmart is if you never go.  It has to be used.

It provides all the information you would need to communicate, so you don’t have to remember anything.  It covers a wide array of topics, so you don’t have to fear it will be irrelevant.  The only hitch is that they still need to be carried from our church to people’s doors, desks, pockets, etc.

Consider picking up 5, 10, or even 20 of them.  Consider the block you live on, the department you work in, the gym you workout in.  Consider having one handy at all times and praying that God would open your eyes to opportunities to hand them out.  When you run out…we have plenty more. 

By Andy Farmer

Note:  This is the ninth and FINAL in a series of posts on Christian liberty based on a pastoral letter written by John Newton in 1776.  For background on the letter see the 6.18.09 post.  You can read the letter in its entirety HERE.

When we get to the end of this letter we’d love a big payoff – a final zinger that would bring it all home.  Instead we get an odd warning about being careful in how we interact with our relatives.  Was Newton running out the door and needed to wrap this up quick?  Was he having some in-law problems that surface here? 

But as I’ve thought about it, this is a fitting end to his advice.  Newton lived in a time and place where family connections and relationships were crucial to social standing and financial security.  To fall out of favor with your family was understood to be a sign of poor character and untrustworthiness.  It was assumed that personal religion shouldn’t have the poor taste to infringe upon a person’s role in the extended family.  And certainly, evangelism of family members was considered very bad form. 

So the pressure to live a certain way in the world and another way in the family was pretty intense.  Newton was offering a godly, yet practical way to maintain the consistency of witness in our lives.  In considering our (extended) family connections we should seek to maintain them but be careful not to allow family obligations to require ‘concessions’ that we cannot make in good consciousness as followers of Christ.  In effect Newton is making a practical application of Jesus’ words to the disciples after the confrontation to the rich young ruler - ‘Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.  (Matt. 19:29)

To be a Christian is to undergo a profound change in family relations.  We move from a primary identification with a biologically created family to a spiritually created family.  And it is our place in the spiritually created family that should define and impact our behavior and identification with our biologically created family. 

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve realized this really is good Newtonian advice.  One of the hardest places to live out Christian convictions is among our natural relations.  They know who we ‘really’ are behind all that religious talk.  They’re not afraid to remind us with words, or maybe just with subtle looks, that they don’t ‘buy it’.  And we don’t like being talked about by other family members when we’re not around – ‘What’s his problem?  Does he really think he’s better than us?  Is he in a cult?  He used to be so much fun, now he seems so up tight.  Does he have to come to the Christmas party?’

I get the sense that if we can walk out our convictions in a humble and loving way among those who have known us since we were little tykes, and whose opinions of us have already been set,  we will be well prepared to stand for what we believe in the rest of our lives. 

So, that’s it from the pen of John Newton, Pastor and sinner amazed by grace, on the subject of Christian liberty.  Let his close be my close to this series.

I dare not be dogmatical; but I think what I have written is agreeable both to particular texts, and to the general tenor of Scripture.  I submit to your judgment. 

Posted by Jared Mellinger

This year our Good Friday service and our Easter service will flow out of the theme of our current sermon series, “In My Place”. 

Good Friday is the Friday before Easter and is the day Christians historically commemorate the suffering and death of Christ.  This year, rather than preaching a sermon on Good Friday, there will be several short reflections from Isaiah 53 – ‘the song of the Suffering Servant’ - during our time together.  Also, in addition to singing and prayer, we will be participating together in the Lord’s Supper. 

The Lord’s Supper, or communion, is one of the ways Jesus teaches us the centrality of his death.  John Stott writes,

“What did the bread and wine signify?  The words he had spoken explained.  Of the bread he had said ‘This is my body given for you’, and of the wine ‘This is my blood shed for you’.  So his death spoke to them from both the elements.  The bread did not stand for his living body, as he reclined with them at table, but his body as it was shortly to be ‘given’ for them in death.  Similarly, the wine did not stand for his blood as it flowed in his veins while he spoke to them, but his blood which was shortly to be ‘poured out’ for them in death.  The evidence is plain and irrefutable.  The Lord’s Supper, which was instituted by Jesus, and which is the only regular commemorative act authorized by him, dramatizes neither his birth nor his life, neither his words nor his works, but only his death.  Nothing could indicate more clearly the central significance which Jesus attached to his death.  It was by his death that he wished above all else to be remembered.”  (The Cross of Christ, p. 68)    

That is what we will be remembering together at our Good Friday service. 

Then, on Easter Sunday, there will be a sermon on the resurrection, also from Isaiah 53.  Yes, Isaiah 53.  A resurrection sermon, full of joy and hope, drawn from a chapter on the death of the suffering servant!  The sermon text will be Isaiah 53:10-12.  These verses are what enable John Stott to say, “It is from Isaiah 53 that Jesus seems to have derived the clearest forecast not only of his sufferings, but also of his subsequent glory.”  (The Cross of Christ, 31)

I’m eager to reflect on the sufferings of Christ and celebrate the subsequent glory of Christ together.  Let’s also remember that we go through Easter week in a world full of lost people blind and desperate for the message of the death and resurrection of Christ for them.  Pray that during this week God will stir cold hearts to seek him afresh, and that some of those he is drawing will join with us in our celebration.