Skip to main content

Delighting in Truth: Our Membership Affirmation of Faith, by Pastor Charlie

By Anonymous
     At Glory of Christ Fellowship, we operate under two affirmations of faith: the Member Affirmation of Faith (MAF) and the Elder Affirmation of Faith (EAF). The MAF is a basic theological statement that we require all church members to affirm while the EAF is a more detailed statement that we require elders, deacons, team leaders, and interns to affirm. The reason we have two theological statements rather than one is this: while the door into the body of Christ ought to be as wide as the Bible will allow, the door into the leadership of the church ought to be more narrow, assuring as much theological and practical unity as possible.
     Over the next nine weeks we’ll be dedicating the Sunday morning devotionals to the MAF, one section at a time. The purpose of this statement is to express the truths that a Christian must not deny, or preferably, would affirm. It is not meant to represent all that a Christian should believe, but rather to lay a general theological foundation upon which this church can unite “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:13-14).
     Since the MAF is designed to help us affirm, celebrate, and unite around truth, we have made copies of the MAF available on the Information Table. I want to encourage you to grab a copy and study it along with the devotionals each week. In fact, if you’re looking for something to do for your family worship time, you could take one section of the statement per week, look up every text, seek to understand and celebrate the truth that’s articulated there, and then worship the God of truth together.
     Let me close, then, by asking three questions that you can consider as you study each section:
1) How can a better understanding of biblical truth help us to worship the God of truth?
2) How can a better understanding of biblical truth help us to love other believers?
3) How can a better understanding of biblical truth help us to gain a greater passion to share the gospel with unbelievers near and far?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflective Glory: How the Moon Displays the Mercy of God

By
Our sun is a fitting metaphor for the glory of God. In the context of our solar system, it is massive, bright, beautiful, powerful, self-sufficient, heat-producing, life-giving, and dangerous. It is, by far, the dominant feature of our solar system and without it the system would fling apart and all living things therein would die.  On the other hand, our moon is a fitting metaphor for human beings, especially for those who believe in Jesus Christ. First, compared to the sun, the moon is tiny and dim. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, its mass is 27 million times greater than the mass of the moon, and from our perspective its light shines 450,000 times brighter than that of the moon. The sun is so much greater than the moon that it’s difficult to quantify and express the difference. Likewise, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is so much great than each and all of us that it’s impossible to quantify or express the difference. Indeed, the Lord is very great and greatly...
Post a Comment
Read more

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rejoicing in the Wrath of God: Part 1 by Pastor Charlie Handren

By Anonymous
This Sunday we resume our study of the book of Revelation and within the first eight verses of chapter 6 we will encounter the wrath of God being poured out upon the world. In one sense, being confronted with the reality of God’s wrath is uncomfortable at best, but in another sense, it fills the believing heart with joy.  One of the first essays I wrote in college was on the wrath and love of God, and probably the main effect it has had on my life is to cause joy to rise up in my heart whenever I contemplate God’s wrath. Sometime ago I shared this with a pastor friend of mine and though he said nothing in response, he looked at me as if to say, “If you knew anything about the wrath of God, you would not rejoice in it.” At the time, I wasn't sure how to respond, but I knew that the joy in my heart was not stemming from a belittling of the horror of the wrath of God. Then several years ago, as I was reading through Revelation, I came across a couple of passages in chapters 15 and 16 ...
Post a Comment
Read more