Archives for February 2014

9 February 2014 — 10 AM Worship

9 February 2014 — 3 PM Worship

Greg Hoadley writes:

“Then I became a Christian, and all of my problems just went away!”

I don’t remember the name of the girl who said it. She was about my age, and she had brown, shoulder-length hair. We were at a Student Venture gathering at someone’s house with about 50 or so high school students—Student Venture is the high school version of Campus Crusade for Christ, the group started by the late Dr. Bill Bright.

She made her comment after being asked by one of the leaders to stand up and give her testimony. At first she seemed rather nervous, and she talked about how she had gone through various problems. But then, someone told her about Jesus Christ, she accepted Him into her heart, and then she made her bold statement.

At the time I was a month or two shy of fifteen, and I was still in the process of mourning the loss of my older brother—we lost Jeff in a car accident just 13–14 months previously. I was also the kid that got picked on, and my biological parents were divorced. My family and I were then going to a mainline Protestant church where Christ and the doctrines of grace were not preached. Suffice to say, this offer of giving one’s heart to Jesus and seeing all of your problem being eradicated sounded pretty good. I remember thinking, “Where do I sign up?”

It didn’t take long to realize that that’s just not the way it works—and to be fair to Student Venture, I recall some of the leaders looking uncomfortable when that girl made her declaration of having a problem-free life.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

John Chapman writes:

The basic message of the Bible can be summed up in a passage from 2 Corinthians 5:19: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”

The story of the Bible is how God achieves this. It has many important themes and subthemes, the most important of which we will now trace, first by looking at the “shadow” of this reconciling work in the Old Testament, and then at its glorious fulfillment and reality in Jesus.

[KEEP READING]