Glory of Christ Fellowship

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. - Psalm 77:13-14 This is our Fighter Verse this week and I would like to help explain how this verse helps us to fight the fight of faith. There are four basic assertions these verses make. Let me list them.  The first thing we are told is that God’s way is holy. Holy is a word that describes the way God is completely separate from us. God is separate from sin, he is utterly pure. This assertion draws attention to the ways of God and not necessarily the being of God. The Psalmist is saying that God has his own ways of doing things, which alerts us to the fact that the way man approaches life and the way God does are often at odds. This verse helps us to fight by setting our expectations right, allowing us to take comfort in the very different ways God operates from the way we would.  Second, God is uniquely great. God’s holy ways make h...

There is no doubt that 2020 keeps getting more and more unpredictable. By the time we hit April no one would have disputed that what we were experiencing is something no one would ever have seen coming. Now that GCF is pushing into November we can say the same thing, we couldn’t have seen this coming and our situation keeps getting further and further from normal.  I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has faithfully been walking with us through this season of life at GCF. It has been a corporate season of affliction but it has been more than that. As I make my rounds within the church and visit with people I can see many people are burdened. They are burdened with church, with life, with family, with big decisions about their careers, with bosses who are lacking compassion, even deaths of loved ones.  It has led me to the conclusion that God does his work in seasons. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 tells us that “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter ...

When people say that their relationship to their church is not equivalent to their relationship to their spouse they typically mean that they are not married to their church for life. I would agree with this and in this way, your covenant relationship to the church is not on par with the covenant you make in marriage. Thus, as a church we don't want to be cultish in the way we never allow people to leave the church. Far from it.  On the other hand, covenant is a serious word and it should be meaningful. While your covenant relationship to your church isn't equal to your covenant relationship to your spouse there are some similarities that should be seriously considered. Covenant is first displayed by God and it is a word that tells us that he is committed to his people in and through all of our flaws. Despite our sin and shortcomings, we have confidence God isn't going to leave us because of his covenant love. This gives us some real freedom to move and operate as believers...

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. - Colossians 4:6  Salt has many functions. It flavors food. It preserves food. It also rusts cars. Assuming camels or donkeys didn't deal with rust issues we can be confident Paul wasn't thinking about our Toyotas or Fords. When Paul talks about salt in this passage it probably has to do with flavoring. Just like salt makes food taste good so speech should taste good to other believers.  The passage begs the question: how does a believer season their speech with salt. I know how to do it on French fries, not so much on the words exiting my mouth. To answer, let’s ask a question of the text, namely, what's the connection? What's the connection between letting your speech be gracious and knowing how to answer each person? This is the way the verse is constructed. Let your speech be gracious so that you may know how to answer each person." In other words, ...

  If someone were to ask you "what does it mean to be a woman" or "what does it mean to be a man"what would you say? It is a little trickier than it first seems, isn't it? I imagine I would stumble and bumble and fumble through some words or thoughts and ultimately not come to anything all that concrete. I might say say a few things that are true along the way but leave the person I was speaking with more confused than they were before I opened my mouth.  Here is a very helpful and thoughtful answer from Kevin DeYoung. To combat the a "alphabet groups" such as the LGBTQA+ groups Christians can form their own. ABCDE is the new group designed to answer and articulate with biblical clarity: A - Appearance  ("Men and women are different and should look different...Confusing the appearance of our genders is contrary to nature. When Paul says that nature itself teaches long hair is a disgrace to man, he's not making a universal statement about hair-...