Gnostic Gospels, did your bookstore cheat you out of the WHOLE bible?

Someone asked me on Sunday, "One of my friends is big into the gnostic gospels like Gospel of Thomas. Is there something i can read. Yep.Window on the World

Lord's Supper Prep: Things for which to ask and seek Sept 5th

http://morestill.blogspot.com/2004/08/lords-supper-prep-things-for-which-to.html

Prayer Meeting 9:20am

Special Prayer Meeting will be held in Student Center on Sunday August 29

Every verb in the summary of Acts 4:32-35 is in the imperfect tense, but in 4:36 Luke shifts back to the aorist tense—a signal that Barnabas’s gift is both a specific example of a general trend sketched in the summary and the immediate introduction (instigation) to the hypocritical generosity of Ananias & Sapphira (5:1-11).  In 5:12-16—another summary—the characteristic verb tense is the imperfect.  Johnson, Acts in History of Rdmptn

 

It is clear, from many “clues” in the text, that the early church was not any formal kind of communism or socialism.  However, we must not minimize the fact that their love made them almost de facto communalists.  Their life together was intimate in the extreme.    --Tim Keller

 

Acts/Revelation Side by Side

For a full understanding of the early church we need to read
*the Acts of the Apostles* and *The Book of Revelation* side by
side. Both tell much the same tale of the church and its
experience of conflict, but from a different perspective. Luke in
Acts chronicles what unfolded on the stage of history before the
eyes of observers; John in the Revelation enables us to see the
hidden forces at work. In the Acts human beings oppose and
undermine the church; in the Revelation the curtain is lifted and
we see the hostility of the devil himself, depicted as an enormous
red dragon, aided and abetted by two grotesque monsters and a lewd
prostitute. Indeed the Revelation is a vision of the age-long
battle between the Lamb and the dragon, Christ and Satan,
Jerusalem the holy city and Babylon the great city, the church and
the world. Moreover, it can hardly be a coincidence that the
symbolism of the dragon's three allies in Revelation corresponds
to the devil's three weapons wielded against the church in the
early chapters of Acts, that is, persecution, moral compromise,
and the danger of exposure to false teaching when the apostles
became distracted from their chief responsibility, namely, `the
ministry of the Word and prayer'.

Sermon follow up...

A couple of brief prayers of praying in God's character to our corporate heart weakness:

Heavenly Father, the one who runs to greet the lost son and welcome him home. You continually sought to bring us into your family. Your hospitality is pervasive and warmly persuasive. Make us a church like you.

Generous Father, you shower your world with good gifts. Your hand of blessing is never clutched shut like ours tend to be. You gave your precious--your Son Jesus-- to earn for us what we were penniless to buy for ourselves. Make us a church like you.

Love Picks You Up

I'll never forget driving down the road and hearing this quote:

The Apostle Paul sees love not so much as a set of guidelines that you pick up and do. Real love is a living active power that comes and picks you up and changes you.
We will never become loving only by trying hard. Paul implies that we’ll only become loving through meeting and encountering. Becoming a person of love is not a mechanical process. Something profound must happen to us. We must meet Love. We must have an ongoing encounter with the person of Jesus.
(excerpted from the curriculum that the women will study this fall, 1 Corinthians 13)

"I don't pick love up... love picks me up? Wow. Was I a Christian five minutes ago? This truly is good news."

Hurricane Charley Relief efforts

We've got our Disaster Relief Coordinators in an RV at one of our churches in Sarasota. They are coordinating our efforts to help the victims of Hurrican Charley.

If you would like to volunteer, or send food/materials/money you can let us know and we'll put you thru to the people in sarasota.

Keller on Tolerance

The young man in my office was impeccably dressed and articulate. He was an Ivy League MBA, successful in the financial world, and had lived in three countries before age 30. Raised in a family with only the loosest connections to a mainline church, he had little understanding of Christianity.
I was therefore gratified to learn of his intense spiritual interest, recently piqued as he attended our church. He said he was ready to embrace the gospel. But there was a final obstacle. "You've said that if we do not believe in Christ," he said, "we are lost and condemned. I'm sorry, I just cannot buy that. I work with some fine people who are Muslim, Jewish, or agnostic. I cannot believe they are going to hell just because they don't believe in Jesus. Entire article at http://morestill.blogspot.com

You can download song free... and legal!

Mindy Smith : One Moment More [Music CD]

posted stott stuff at yada

 

Healing & Miracles

John Stott on the application of healing to modern day is absolutely exactly what i wish i could write, for it is what i believe. Here is http://robyadayada.blogspot.com

Never Eat 35 Spiderman Vitamins

Took john reid to ER last nite after he ate way too many Spiderman Vitamins. 110 children a year die from too much iron in bloodstream after doing this. This morning i watched him (with his batman cape on) wave to the garbageman.

post by email? amazing

text section

Healing as Illustration for Salvation

I couldn't find a translation that used the word "saved" in Acts 4:12. Seems they should. The word that they translate "healed" is used around 110 times in NT and usually it is saved. Some places of note are: Acts 2: 47 added number of those being saved. Philippian jailer in Acts 16 "What must i do to be saved?" So, in Acts 4:9-12 you have Peter moving in and out of talking about physical healing of the crippled man and spiritual salvation. To me, John Stott was convincing that these words combined with the use of the word "SIGN" in Acts 4:16 and 22 mean that primarily we take Acts 3 to be a mind-blowing demonstration of the power of the risen Christ to totally heal our souls. Dead hearts can be made alive. Marriages & friendships and battles with idols can be resurrected by the continuing works of the risen Christ. This doesn't minimize the reality that physical healing is wonderful and still takes place. But that is not the main point of this text, according to this text.

1st timer

I plan to use this as a place to put stuff i think might be of interest to those whose lives intersect mine.