Surrender, Serve, and Suffer for the Lord

Today is Friday but Sunday’s coming! If you have never heard that sermon by S.M. Lockridge, I invite you to listen to a clip of it here. Three days after the crucifixion, Jesus resurrected from the dead. What does that mean for His followers today? We celebrate His victory over sin and death but what does that mean for us in the 21st Century? That’s what I am going to speak on during our Sunrise Service this coming Sunday morning.

Be a good steward of the grace of God!

The year 2021 is here! Some of us are very excited. Others are very nervous. Whether things go back to normal or things continue to get stranger and stranger, as followers of Jesus Christ, our marching orders still remain the same. The grace of God has been manifested to us. Jesus is full of grace and He manifested grace to us when we took on human form and dwelled among us. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, not only has the grace of God been manifested to us, the grace of God has also been entrusted to us. Our job is to be a good steward of the manifold grace of God. How do we do that in a practical way? The Apostle Peter does a great job in his first epistle (letter) explaining this to us in a very practical way. I would like to dig down into I Peter 4:10-11.

Jesus the Servant, Messiah, and Redeemer

Last week, I was able to lead our Connect Group lesson via a Facebook live post due to the Coronavirus. This week, we are still not able to meet in our small groups due to the restriction of public gatherings by the Governor of Maryland. As a result, we are going to have to do things a little differently when it comes to church. Our entire service will be virtual. I will be teaching via Facebook live and then our senior pastor will preach a sermon via Facebook live. The church will gather in the virtual sphere, which is a blessing in our modern times. In the last lesson, we learned that Jesus was born to be the King, the Savior, and the Servant. This lesson will focus on Jesus as Servant, Messiah, and Redeemer. We continue to study through the Gospel of Luke. This week, we will continue to look at chapter 2.

Forgiveness, Love, Service, and Salvation

I am getting ready to teach during our AWANA class tonight at church. The subject of our study is Luke 23. We are going to focus on the crucifixion of Christ and the fact that will suffering unjustly, Jesus was still ready to offer to His enemies:

1. Forgiveness
2. Love
3. Service
4. Salvation

Praise and Service please the Lord

I’m preparing to teach during our AWANA program this evening at church and we are going to study the topic of praising the Lord in our daily lives. Our passage of study is Luke 19.

The context of Luke 19 helps us understand why Jesus wept over Jerusalem during the festive time. The Triumphal entry marks what we call Holy Week today in the Christian calendar. It was a time of praise and worship, Palm Sunday, and yet, during the height of the festivities, Jesus wept. Why? Luke 19 explains why.

Joseph: Forgiveness and Service

This week during our Connect Groups at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to continue covering the life of Joseph. This is part of our overall, three year plan of walking through the Bible. We began the journey in August. It is now December. God has really blessed the study of His Word. We have learned so much over the past four months. We have covered such topics as:

The Blueprint for Biblical Unity

As I sit and prepare for Sunday School, I cannot tell you how excited I am for this lesson. I constantly hear calls for “unity” in the church but, very few of the proclaimers for unity, actually give a clear path of action, a blueprint if you will, that leads to Biblical unity. The vague call is “we just need to love more”. I understand that but, how to you express that call in concrete ways? I am a concrete thinker because when concepts are concrete, people are more likely to apply them. When concepts are abstract, people are less likely to apply because they are not sure what or how to apply the concept. God’s Word presents concepts in concrete ways so that we are able to apply them. In fact, when Jesus gives many of His teachings in parables, He lays the understanding and application in the lap of the audience by exclaiming, “he who has ears, let him hear”. In other words, if you heard this message, you are responsible to understand it and then apply it to your life. This is why God teaches concepts to us in concrete ways, because He wants us to understand them and then apply them. If we have a hard time with understanding, then the Lord tells us to ask Him for understanding and He will give as much as we ask for, without chastising us for asking again and again. In this lesson, we are going to examine Romans 12 in order to discover the blueprint for unity in Christ.

Pastors and Elders; Is there a difference?

I write this article from personal experience. Whatever denomination you are part of, as a follower of Jesus Christ, your local church has a form of “government”. The English word “government” comes to us via Old French, according to Online Etymology Dictionary. The meaning is “control, direction, administration”. The origin of the Old French word is of course the Latin, “gubernare”. The Romans borrowed the word from the Greeks, modifying the Greek word “kybernan” (pronounced cybernan). It was a nautical term for steering a ship in the right direction. A local church is made up of redeemed sinners who still fight a moment by moment battle against their sin nature and as a result, they need to be guided through life. God created man to be led by Him. Once mankind rebelled against God, we traded God’s leadership for the leadership of others. We still need to be led, even to this day. Communities and relationships fall apart if there is not strong leadership. Your local church needs leadership. God has provided leadership in the local church, just like He has established leadership in local, secular government. When God set the guidelines for leadership in the church, He chose mature believers who had certain experience and spiritual giftings to lead. God chooses what spiritual girts we receive upon salvation and He also provides ministry (service) for those gifts in order to build up the body of Christ. Biblically speaking, people do not choose a path to leadership in the church. God equips them and calls them according to His desire. In order to understand church leadership, we need to examine a couple of passages in the New Testament, passages that were written under the inspiration of God and these passages are the heart of God when it comes to church leadership.

Getting Connected with God through Christ

I have spent the better part of this school year teaching through the Gospel of Mark with my preschool teachers. We have all learned so much about our Lord and Savior, how He interacted with people to share the message of the Gospel with them in order to help them connect with God. All throughout the history of Israel, God had established spiritual leaders to help the common people connect with Him. For the most part, the spiritual leaders used their position and authority to lord over the people instead of help them connect with God. In Mark 10, Jesus reveals what people who are not connected with God are like. Most of the examples are the spiritual leaders. This is yet another opportunity for the spiritual leaders to admit their failure, repent of their mindset and actions, and connect with God through Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, most of them were so caught up in themselves that they could not admit their wrong doing and therefore continued to live disconnected from their Creator. This same problem exists to this very day in all churches, no matter the denomination or creed. I would like to examine this idea of getting connected with God through the Lord Jesus Christ as presented by Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10. 

Encountering the life changing power of Jesus Christ

It has been a lot of fun studying through the Gospel of Mark. I have been studying this Gospel with my preschool teachers on a biweekly basis. So far, we have covered 8 chapters. It is amazing to see how Jesus transforms people through the power of His Word. His message is for the entire world. In case you have not been studying along with us, here is a list of the previous lessons.

1. Jesus: Experiencing His Life and Ministry
2. Jesus the Rescuing Teacher
3. The unpardonable sin
4. The parable of the sower and the seed
5. Failing Faith needs a Faithful Friend
6. Jesus serves individuals
7. Discipleship according to Jesus
8. Genuine faith honors Scripture over Religious Traditions
9. The teachings of Pharisees vs. The teachings of Jesus Christ

In Mark chapter 9, we are going to discover the transforming power of an encounter with Jesus Christ. Just meeting Jesus is not enough.