Christ Church

Bible Challenge #24

Becky Pliego on

¡Hola, hola! Time to re-group, Friends, and time to remember why we are doing this challenge.  Remember where we started? Yes, Psalm 119. We read of the Psalmist’s love for God’s Word. Of the way his heart, and soul, and flesh longed for it.  We read how the Psalmist, through being in the Word, came to understand the fear of the Lord and clung to His testimonies. We saw Him praying, struggling, asking God to incline his heart to His testimonies and not to selfish gain. He wanted to know God more, to understand the Word of the Lord more, to obey Him more. And that is why we are here. Because we want that in our own lives. We are not reading to check boxes, we are reading because we know that if we don’t feed our souls and minds with the Word of God we will starve. And this is not hyperbole, this is true. So, as you see, we need this reminder, we must not forget that this challenge is not about us feeling good for keeping up with our readings; the goal of the challenge is to be able to come before God with a humble heart, putting aside all our cares and perfectionism to pray every day: Lord, I need you, feed me with your Word. May my life be a testimony of how much I love your Word.

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Communication Strategy

Christ Church on

Dear Congregation,

As we grow in size as a congregation, communication challenges also increase. Our church community is about the size of the city of Troy, so we need to be aware of this as we send and receive communication. In Jim Wilson’s Principles of War, one of the key components of an effective battle strategy is communication. The elders, staff, and deacons of Christ Church recognize that as our church grows (alongside the growing sister ministries of Christ Church), not only the difficulty, but also the need for effective communication grows. We do want to strive to be efficient and effective our communication to you.

There are a couple challenges to be aware of as we work on building better communication in our community. First, with technology comes multiple channels for communication. These channels include cell phones (text/calls), Facebook messenger, email, and of course other various forms of social media. If we really aren’t careful, we could have channel overload, which adds to the challenge of how to maximize our communication and what channels to use to make sure everyone receives adequate church communication. Secondly, when there is a serious matter to be communicated to the church, we do not want to put this out over email. Obviously, some communication is for our church body only, and would be inappropriate to be publicly distributed. So, in the cases of sensitive information, we try to use head of household meetings for this type of communication. Lastly, communication is a two-way street. This means the church needs to be communicating to the best of our abilities, and active engagement from the congregation with the proper channels of communication is also necessary.

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 85

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters” (Rev. 14:6–7).

We should first consider the fact that in this place the gospel is being proclaimed by a flying angel in the midst of the sky. We know from the record of Scripture that the gospel was fundamentally entrusted to the church, and not to angels (Matt. 28:18-20). But the fact that men are the ordinary preachers of gospel does not require the angels to be silent about it, as in this instance the angel isn’t. When Paul chides the Galatians for drifting away from the gospel, he says this: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). The problem here was that it was a different gospel, and not the fact that it was preached by an angel. So ordinarily men are to preach the gospel, but this proclamation from the heavens fits in with what we are taught elsewhere.

We are coming to the climax of God’s wrath being poured out over Jerusalem, and Jesus had predicted this very thing before that destruction. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). This angel speaks to all nations—to “them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” This is a sign that the demolition of Jerusalem is about to happen.

This angel preaches, it says, with a “loud voice.” What is the content of what he says? What is the shape of this everlasting gospel? What the angel says here fits in with what we are taught elsewhere. He says that men are to “fear God” (Luke 1:50; Luke 12:5). “But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:35). He says that men must “give glory to him” (Matt. 5:16; Matt. 9:8). “Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel” (Matt. 15:31). He says that “the hour of his judgment is come” (John 12:23, 31-32). “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged” (John 16:8–11). And as we saw in the first chapters of Genesis, the God of the gospel is the God who made all things—whether “heaven, and earth, and the sea,” or “the fountains of waters.”

In short, what the angel declared in the preparation for Jerusalem’s destruction sounds very much like what the apostle Paul declared.

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:24–31).

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Bible Challenge #23

Becky Pliego on

¡Hola, hola! Please give a big welcome to Week 22 of our Bible Reading Challenge and to those women who are just joining us and to those who, after a long break, decided to join us again. Welcome!

I am sure you have said, at least once this past week, “How fast time flies. January is gone!” And as the clock moves forward and we change the page on the calendar, without any extra effort we all have grown a bit older. We had coffee or tea each morning, ate our regular meals, did every day life, and without much purposing here we are, a month older today. So why I am bringing this up? Because I am afraid that we sometimes think that we can add to our New Year’s Resolution this: Grow in the Lord. But I have some news for you, we can’t. Just like we can’t add a day to our life, just like we can’t purpose to live to x number of years, we can’t purpose to grow in the Lord. The good news is that just as God is the one who determines the number of our days, He is the one who gives the growth in our lives (1 Cor. 3:7)

So, Friends, don’ make growth your aim. God is the one who gives the growth. Strive to know Him more and love Him more. Put all effort to make time to read the Bible and pray. Plan ahead, then open your Bible and read it in faith. The growth will come because He has promised that He will complete the work He has started in us (Phil. 1:6, Psalm 138:8). We plant the seeds of His Word in our hearts as we read it every day, and we keep coming to Him faithfully -even if nothing spectacular seems to be happening. And just like when we look at ourselves in the mirror one morning and wonder how we became who we are now, just like that, after being immersed faithfully in the Word, after going to Church faithfully, after partaking of the sacraments, we will look at ourselves in different circumstances and think, “Wow. What just happened? I am responding to these situations in a more biblical way.” Or, “Wait a minute. it has been weeks since I’ve had any anxiety take control of me.” etc. God gives the growth. God gives the growth. We cannot forget that. So everyday we strive to love Him more and know Him more and by His grace, also obey Him more.

What are we reading this week? We will finish reading Hosea, Psalms 23-25, Proverbs 9-11, Amos, Obadiah, and Zephaniah. Wednesday, February 7 we will have a catch-up day and I suggest you read the book of James or Colossians and Romans 9-10 again.

This week’s readings are wonderful and sobering. We will see God’s relentless love and amazing grace in the book of Hosea, we will read about social justice and the importance of right, biblical worship in Amos. In Obadiah we will see what Proverbs reminds us over and over again: The prideful won’t stand for too long, God will humble those who trust in themselves and act like gods. In Zephaniah we will see God judging the nations and then, in His kindness, bringing the nations to Him.

The Psalms will remind us that God is our shepherd, our King, and our Teacher. These are great Psalms to pray and meditate and relate to what we will be reading in the Minor Prophets and in Proverbs. I know you will be greatly blessed as you consider the Word of the Lord this week.

One more thing, please if you have not done so, go and check out this wonderful resource that Rachel Jankovic and Jemma Merkle put together: the book of Proverbs in 144 voices read by women all over the world for the Bible Reading Challenge. You can find it here:
https://www.nsa.edu/proverbs-144-voices/

I hope to “see” many of you in on Monday during our weekly Webinar at 10:00 PST And if you come, let me know in the live chat!

May our prayer this week be,”Lord, may we press on to know you, deliver us from discouragement and help us persevere knowing that you will surely come as the dawn, as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6:3)

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky Pliego and the Christ Church Ladies Fellowship

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Getting Counseling Into Our DNA

Christ Church on

Introduction to the Side By Side, by Ed Welch

Our recent church survey confirmed what the elders have thought for some time, that our church is healthy and growing in the Lord. Over the past 20 years or so we have grown numerically such that we have had to hive off Trinity Reformed Church, our second service Christ Church Downtown, and are discussing what to do with all the people who are coming to the Logos service, Christ Church Uptown. We are doing really well.

That said, we don’t want to assume or presume anything. We know that pride goes before destruction (Pro. 16:18), the devil is prowling around looking for someone to devour (2 Pet. 5:8) and the moment we rest on our laurels, we are likely to get smoked.

As we explained in our HOH meeting in January, the elders voted to excuse Doug from most of his counseling ministry starting in June. The way we are going to compensate that part of his ministry is to increase the counseling ministry of the whole church. The elders will be participating in more counseling, the PDG leaders will be the next level, and we’re officially appointing everyone else in the church to be a kind of counselor. As it says in Romans 15, we are confident that we are all competent to counsel one another (15:14).

According to the Bible, what counseling is is actually discipleship. We all know that we have been called to make disciples (Mt. 28:18-20), but what that text actually says is something more like, “go into all the world discipling the nations.” This would mean that it is not only an evangelism text—get them into the kingdom, not only a dominion passage—disciple the nations, but also a teaching message—help everyone become like Jesus. These things accord with the rest of Scripture. We are not just creating people who will go to heaven when they die, not only conquering the world for Jesus, but we’re also striving to present every man mature in Christ (Col 1:28).

Paul told us in Ephesians 4 that God has given the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors/teachers to train the people to do the works of ministry so that the body of Christ might be built up (4:11-12). Biblical counseling is part of the teaching ministry of the church. It is bringing the word of God to people who are having a difficult time trying to live their lives, with all the distractions, in a way that pleases God (2 Cor. 6:9). Biblical counseling brings the Word of God to one or a few people in order to brings God glory and blesses the people; resulting in joy and peace.

As we said at the HOH meeting, when you think about it, we are all doing discipleship all the time. When you help your children learn to tie their shoes to the glory of God, you’re doing discipleship. When you love your wife by laying down your wife and thus sanctifying her, you are doing discipleship. When you cheer for your husband in front of the neighbors, you are doing discipleship. When you go to coffee with friends and talk about how glorious God is in the light of your recent choir practice, you’re doing discipleship.

Sometimes, topics and situations come up when we feel ill equipped to apply the good news of the Bible to people’s situations. We want to help, but don’t know where to begin or how to proceed. Sometimes, we don’t think we know our Bibles in a way that will help.

As a way to begin enhancing our discipleship/counseling ministry we need to know that Paul was right about our ability to help one another walk with God in the midst of our struggles with living. As a way to encourage one another and to spur one another on to love and good works, our PDG’s will be studying Ed Welch’s book, Side By Side.

The first part of Side By Side talks about the need for helpers to have people to help and how to go about acknowledging and then asking for help.

Part 2 takes us back to remembering that because life is hard, others need our help. The goal for some is to them walk with God better than they are right now, for some the need is to come to Jesus for the first time, and some simply need help in becoming more mature in Christ than they are right now.

Our church motto is All of Christ, for all of life, for all of Moscow. Biblical counseling/discipleship is all about sharing Christ with people in the midst of their life situations, for evangelism, counsel, and simply befriending one another. Side By Side will help us think about doing this better, and will give us a method for doing so.

Memory Verses for Counseling

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3).

“So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him” (2 Cor. 5:9).

“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

“Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

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