Steps of Repentance

1. Are you able to receive the rebukes of others - even from individuals who don't deserve to give them? Are you willing, for the sake of love, to rebuke a brother or sister in sin?

2. When's the last time you confessed sin to God? To another person? Are you willing to embarrass yourself before those you want to impress with a frank acknowledgement of your sin? (In doing so, of course, you should take care that no weaker or younger Christian is attracted to the sin you are confessing).

3. When you are confronted with your sin, either by another person or by the quick flashes of your conscience, do you take steps to repent, that is, to cease and desist? Or do you, honestly, go easy on yourself? Are you quick to point to circumstances? Can you think of a recent occasion where you went easy on yourself?

4. Once you have confessed a sin and owned up to your responsibility, do you get angry when the other parties still ask you to take responsibility for the consequences of your sin? When was the last time you did that?

5. How quickly would your parents (or spouse, sibling, friend, co-worker) say you grant forgiveness? Or would they say you tend to let bitterness fester? Or consider the question like this: Jesus told us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). Would you really want God to answer that prayer?

What are you doing, or what can you do to promote these five steps of repentance in your local church?
Wednesday February 3, 2010

Ten Questions for the New Year

The following article is by Donald Whitney, associate professor of biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of several books to include the highly recommended, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.

Ten Questions to Ask at the Start of a New Year or On Your Birthday

Once, when the people of God had become careless in their relationship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. "Consider your ways!" (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things happening to them, and to evaluate their slipshod spirituality in light of what God had told them.

Even those most faithful to God occasionally need to pause and think about the direction of their lives. It's so easy to bump along from one busy week to another without ever stopping to ponder where we're going and where we should be going.

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

In addition to these ten questions, here are twenty-one more to help you "Consider your ways." Think on the entire list at one sitting, or answer one question each day for a month.

11. What's the most important decision you need to make this year?

12. What area of your life most needs simplifying, and what's one way you could simplify in that area?

13. What's the most important need you feel burdened to meet this year?

14. What habit would you most like to establish this year?

15. Who do you most want to encourage this year?

16. What is your most important financial goal this year, and what is the most important step you can take toward achieving it?

17. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your work life this year?

18. What's one new way you could be a blessing to your pastor (or to another who ministers to you) this year? 

19. What's one thing you could do this year to enrich the spiritual legacy you will leave to your children and grandchildren?

20. What book, in addition to the Bible, do you most want to read this year?

21. What one thing do you most regret about last year, and what will you do about it this year?

22. What single blessing from God do you want to seek most earnestly this year? 

23. In what area of your life do you most need growth, and what will you do about it this year?

24. What's the most important trip you want to take this year?

25. What skill do you most want to learn or improve this year?

26. To what need or ministry will you try to give an unprecedented amount this year?

27. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your commute this year?

28. What one biblical doctrine do you most want to understand better this year, and what will you do about it?

29. If those who know you best gave you one piece of advice, what would they say? Would they be right? What will you do about it?

30. What's the most important new item you want to buy this year?

31. In what area of your life do you most need change, and what will you do about it this year?

The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn't considered the question.

If you've found these questions helpful, you might want to put them someplace--in a day planner, PDA, calendar, bulletin board, etc.--where you can review them more frequently than once a year.

So let's evaluate our lives, make plans and goals, and live this new year with biblical diligence, remembering that, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage" (Proverbs 21:5). But in all things let's also remember our dependence on our King who said, "Apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).
Wednesday December 30, 2009

2009 Summer Camp Sermons

The sermon audio from the 2009 Ephesus Students Summer Camp (Already/Not Yet: Living In Between) is now posted online under the media tab. Go check it out -- email your friends, download, and make as many copies as you'd like. We'd only ask that you do not change the content in any way without permission.
Monday October 19, 2009

Memory Verse Cards

Check out this awesome new tool to create and print your own memory verse cards. One of the most effective ways to memorize something is constant recall -- to have compact, portable cards with the verses you want to recall on them makes the process easier, and much more effective for the long term. Go -- Check it out!
Friday September 4, 2009

35 Reasons Not to Sin

  • Because a little sin leads to more sin.
  • Because my sin invites the discipline of God.
  • Because the time spent in sin is forever wasted.
  • Because my sin never pleases but always grieves God who loves me.
  • Because my sin places a greater burden on my spiritual leaders.
  • Because in time my sin always brings heaviness to my heart.
  • Because I am doing what I do not have to do.
  • Because my sin always makes me less than what I could be.
  • Because others, including my family, suffer consequences due to my sin.
  • Because my sin saddens the godly.
  • Because my sin makes the enemies of God rejoice.
  • Because sin deceives me into believing I have gained when in reality I have lost.
  • Because sin may keep me from qualifying for spiritual leadership.
  • Because the supposed benefits of my sin will never outweigh the consequences of disobedience.
  • Because repenting of my sin is such a painful process, yet I must repent.
  • Because sin is a very brief pleasure for an eternal loss.
  • Because my sin may influence others to sin.
  • Because my sin may keep others from knowing Christ.
  • Because sin makes light of the cross, upon which Christ died for the very purpose of taking away my sin.
  • Because it is impossible to sin and follow the Spirit at the same time.
  • Because God chooses not to respect the prayers of those who cherish their sin.
  • Because sin steals my reputation and robs me of my testimony.
  • Because others once more earnest than I have been destroyed by just such sins.
  • Because the inhabitants of heaven and hell would all testify to the foolishness of this sin.
  • Because sin and guilt may harm both mind and body.
  • Because sins mixed with service make the things of God tasteless.
  • Because suffering for sin has no joy or reward, though suffering for righteousness has both.
  • Because my sin is adultery with the world.
  • Because, though forgiven, I will review this very sin at the Judgment Seat where loss and gain of eternal rewards are applied.
  • Because I can never really know ahead of time just how severe the discipline for my sin might be.
  • Because my sin may be an indication of a lost condition.
  • Because to sin is not to love Christ.
  • Because my unwillingness to reject this sin now grants it an authority over me greater than I wish to believe.
  • Because sin glorifies God only in His judgment of it and His turning of it to good use, never because it is worth anything on it's own.
  • Because I promised God he would be Lord of my life.
Friday September 4, 2009

Don't Let the Beanbag Get You


Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. 
It will be healing to your flesh; and refreshment to your bones. 

Honor the Lord with your wealth; and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 
then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. 

My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

Proverbs 3:7-12
Friday September 4, 2009

Living Dangerously

Monday August 31, 2009

Family Worship Guide

(By: Pastor Nick)

A new website is set to launch on August 30 called, Family Worship Guide. It looks to be an excellent resource for every Christian family.

Family worship has become an almost mantra-like exhortation from me to our congregation as I emphasize the vital importance of the family worshiping God together, in the home, day after day. Please, check out this new resource and utilize it to improve your family's worship of the one true God!
Wednesday August 26, 2009