Glory of Christ Fellowship

In Hebrews 1:2-4, the author makes seven claims about Jesus that when taken together greatly exalt his glory. The second claim the author makes is that the Father created the world through Jesus. The simple word “through” implies that the Father is ultimately responsible for creation but that he created all things by means of the Son. As the Apostle John said in John 1:3, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” So we see that the Father is the visionary, the architect, the provider, the supervisor, and the one who is ultimately responsible for the finished product of creation, while the Son is the implementer, the builder, the one through whom all things actually come into being. For example, the Father envisioned a galaxy and laid out its seemingly endless specifications, and the Son actually formed the galaxy. The Father pictured so many varieties of trees, and the Son actually fashioned each tree. This means that when we beho

Please take a moment to pray along with our friends at Operation World for Botswana. And after watching the video, you can learn more about the country  here .

Reflections on the Biblical Counseling Training Conference Earlier this month, Pastor Jordan and Pastor Kevin spent a week   at Faith Lafayette Church in Lafayette, Indiana for their annual Biblical Counseling Training Conference (BCTC). We are both currently trying to complete our required course work in hopes that we can become certified biblical counselors through ACBC (Association of Certified Biblical Counseling) and become helpful ambassadors of the Kingdom of God among hurting people. Below are some highlights of the week: The Making of a Biblical Counselor This message by Dr. Charles Ware, President of Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis, IN was a wonderful encouragement from 2 Corinthians 4:1-16 about the making of a biblical counselor. We teach Christ with our mouths and our lives. We can learn to be counselors in the class but nothing matches the effectiveness for being compassionate towards hurting people than suffering ourselves. Being perplexed, persec

I love India. For me, while I have a passion for global missions, I don’t have the bandwidth to know many countries well. Therefore, I have chosen to know one besides my own well, and that one is India. In the few years I’ve spent studying and visiting and praying for the country, I’ve seen firsthand many ministries that seem to be legit but in the end are not. Indians seem, more than other countries I’ve visited and otherwise been aware of, prone to greed and various methods that help them obtain western dollars. So last week when I saw a blog post on this topic on the Training Leaders International website, I was eager to read it. The author, who is an Indian man, writes at length at the issues involved with missions in India. Then he writes this: “Let me share with you another personal story, this time, of a foreign missionary. I knew a missionary who lived and worked in India for years—well over a decade. He established a business in a major city and labored slowly and

Thursday Morning Prayer Meeting: Beginning on Thursday, February 12, Pastor Charlie will lead an early morning prayer meeting at the church office. The meeting will be from 6:00-7:00 a.m., and all are welcome to attend. Women should bring at least one other person with them so that we can honor the Lord and maintain appropriate boundaries. If you are unable to stop by the church office, feel free to join in this hour of intercession from wherever you are. For more information, contact Pastor Charlie at charlie@gcfmn.org. “Be Filled” Women’s Retreat :     all ladies 12 and older are invited to participate in our conference on   March 20-21st   at the beautiful Koinonia Retreat Center in South Haven near Annandale.    We will explore together what it means to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God.    Registration forms are available on the information table.    Contact Cheryl Perry with questions. Adult Sunday School:   Please join us each Sunday at 11:00 a.m. The cl

In Hebrews 1:2-4, the author makes seven claims about Jesus that when taken together greatly exalt his glory. The first claim is that Jesus was appointed by God the Father to be heir of all things. The word “appointed” here literally means “to put or place” and it was sometimes used in royal circles to refer to the installation of a king or to another person who was being granted a position of authority. So the point of this first claim is that God the Father has exalted the Son to an utterly exclusive, unique, and permanent place to which no other will attain, specifically, the Father has made him the sole heir of all things. The word “heir,” as we would expect, refers to “one appointed to receive an inheritance” but the emphasis is not so much on what the Son has inherited as it is on the high position he has inherited. In other words, since Jesus has come into the possession of “all things,” he has come into the position of God. Let’s think this through for a mi

Please take a moment to pray along with our friends at Operation World for Bhutan. And after watching the video, you can learn more about the country  here .

I’m about to bite off more than I can chew in a blog entry. I’m about to overstate and understate, and probably misstate, some important things, but hopefully this train of thought will make some sense and inspire you to think about some things for yourself. This came to mind as I was reflecting on Acts 2:42-47 and the genius of God in the creation of true community. Here we go… In the heart of every person is the innate knowledge that we are designed to live in community, but the question is this: what creates true community? On the one hand, socialism attempts to force from the outside what can only emanate from the inside, namely, a genuine love of neighbor. On the other hand, the Bible argues that true community, in which every member contributes what they can and every member receives what they need, is the fruit of the Spirit of God at work in each person’s life (see, for example, Acts 2:42-47). The attempt to force from the outside what can only emerge from the insid

Thursday Morning Prayer Meeting: Beginning on Thursday, February 12, Pastor Charlie will lead an early morning prayer meeting at the church office. The meeting will be from 6:00-7:00 a.m., and all are welcome to attend. Women should bring at least one other person with them so that we can honor the Lord and maintain appropriate boundaries. If you are unable to stop by the church office, feel free to join in this hour of intercession from wherever you are. For more information, contact Pastor Charlie at charlie@gcfmn.org. “Be Filled” Women’s Retreat :     all ladies 12 and older are invited to participate in our conference on   March 20-21st   at the beautiful Koinonia Retreat Center in South Haven near Annandale.    We will explore together what it means to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God.    Registration forms are available on the information table.    Contact Cheryl Perry with questions. Adult Sunday School:   Please join us each Sunday at 11:00 a.m. The cl

Over the next several weeks, I want to draw our minds back to the Letter of Hebrews and meditate with you on several aspects of the glory of Christ. The author begins his letter with these words: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...” (1:1-2a). Here the author draws a comparison between two things that begin to establish the superiority of Jesus over all things. One the one hand, God spoke and spoke and spoke over a period of about ten centuries, through a number of people, and in a variety of ways. He spoke to Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and many others by means of commandments, exhortations, oracles, stories, miracles, visions and dreams, theophanies, natural and supernatural events, pillars of fire and smoke, the Urim and Thummim, a still small voice, and so on. God issued an extensive amount of speech, over an extensive period of time, through a number of p

Please take a moment to pray along with our friends at Operation World for Austria. And after watching the video, you can learn more about the country  here .

In his book Foolishness to Greeks , Lesslie Newbigin argues that the central value of democracy is freedom, and that in America this takes on a particularly individualistic flare. Conversely, Newbigin asserts, the central value of socialism is equality though it’s hard to discern what this means in practice since there has been no example of a truly socialistic (or communistic) nation as these terms were conceived by Marx, Engels, and those who followed after them. Contrasting these divergent worldviews with the teaching of the Bible, Newbigin suggests that there is a third way. “From its first page to its last, the Bible is informed by a vision of human nature for which neither freedom nor equality is fundamental; what is fundamental is relatedness…Human beings reach their true end in such relatedness, in bonds of mutual love and obedience that reflect the mutual relatedness in love that is the being of the Triune God himself. Neither freedom nor equality are words that can ta

We've been talking a lot about prayer at our church these days, here's a quick promo for Tim Keller's 2014 book entitled, Prayer .

Thursday Morning Prayer Meeting: Beginning on Thursday, February 12, Pastor Charlie will lead an early morning prayer meeting at the church office. The meeting will be from 6:00-7:00 a.m., and all are welcome to attend. Women should bring at least one other person with them so that we can honor the Lord and maintain appropriate boundaries. If you are unable to stop by the church office, feel free to join in this hour of intercession from wherever you are. For more information, contact Pastor Charlie at charlie@gcfmn.org. “Be Filled” Women’s Retreat :     all ladies 12 and older are invited to participate in our conference on   March 20-21st   at the beautiful Koinonia Retreat Center in South Haven near Annandale.    We will explore together what it means to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God.    Registration forms are available on the information table.    Contact Cheryl Perry with questions. Quarterly Meeting Dates: At the last Quarterly Business Meeting, severa

John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407) was a fourth- and early fifth-century pastor and bishop who sought God with all of his heart for over forty years, and who exercised great influence over the church for many centuries. He was an extremist who was tempered by God and mightily used of him to exalt the glory of Christ and preserve the church, so as we look at his life, what lessons can we learn? I see at least three. First, Christians must learn to rest in the finished work of Christ. As we have seen, John was an extremist who even lived in a cave for two years because he thought excessive self-denial was the highest way of seeking God. But God, in his grace, redeemed this time of John’s life by teaching him that Christ was punished for us so that we have no need to punish ourselves. As Paul has taught us, self-discipline is an important part of life in Christ (see 1 Corinthians 9:27), but this must be distinguished from self-punishment. The first is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5

Please take a moment to pray along with our friends at Operation World for Armenia. And after watching the video, you can learn more about the country  here .

In his book Foolishness to Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), Lesslie Newbigin wrote: “While the church can never identify itself with the kingdom [i.e., any nation] and must seek only the role of a servant, witness, and sign of the kingdom, yet the church can never admit any limitations of its role to the private sector. The church witnesses to that true end for which all creation and all human beings exist, the truth by which all alleged values are to be judged. And truth must be public truth, truth for all. A private truth for a limited circle of believers is no truth at all” (page 117). Indeed, the church as an institution must remain focused on the gospel and protect itself from being coopted for particular political parties and purposes, however, the values of the church, since they are rooted in the eternal God of truth, must bear upon public matters, political or otherwise. We cannot, therefore, allow ourselves to be pushed to the

Beyond the Veil - Say Hello   conference for women,   February 7th .   This will be a one-day training to encourage Christian women to bring the hope of Christ to Muslim women through friendship. To learn more about the topics covered at the conference and register, go to the   Crescent Project   website at   www.crescentproject.org. If you want more information from a live person, talk with Carmen Gunderson. “Be Filled” Women’s Retreat :     all ladies 12 and older are invited to participate in our conference on   March 20-21st   at the beautiful Koinonia Retreat Center in South Haven near Annandale.    We will explore together what it means to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God.    Registration forms are available on the information table.    Contact Cheryl Perry with questions. Quarterly Meeting Dates: At the last Quarterly Business Meeting, several of you requested that we change our meeting times to Sunday after church, on Agape Meal Sundays. Therefore, the