We have curated 12 passages to memorize this year which are connected to our 2023 rallying cry, "We are humble before and joyful in Jesus!" Let's treasure God's word in our hearts each month.
January
James 4:10 – Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
We are here to make disciples and plant churches by proclaiming and displaying the grace of God to sinners and sufferers. After seeking the Lord we’ve discerned our rallying cry for 2023 is not a new project or hill to charge, but a focus on being:
We are humble before & joyful in Jesus!
The road to how we got here is a long one. When you walk into Grace Church and see us with our five teenage boys, with a happy marriage, and the Aledo life it is hard to see where we came from.
We are thrilled to be a part of Grace Church and serve the children and families of Aledo. Our hope and prayer is to see families discipled and formed into the image of Christ so that the next generation of saints may know, trust, and love our good and gracious God.
Never a part of a church?
Burned by church?
Skeptic? Irreligious? Prodigal?
We are a new church starting this fall for you. We love Jesus and we love Benbrook. No matter your background you are welcome to join us. We have space for you and your doubts, wounds, and frustrations. Jesus has grace for you. (Read that last sentence again slowly)
We desire to have a culture of “one-anothering throughout our church. Where we don’t have a church with biblical counseling but a church of biblical counseling when one–anothering is normative in our church life.”1 This happens in the life of Grace Benbrook primarily through Community Groups, which is a place where people learn how to follow Jesus and love one another because of how He has loved us. We are not a church with groups but a church of groups.
I was 28 when I became the pastor of Highland Village First Baptist Church (now known as The Village Church). I had had a rough go early on in my church experience, and at that time I was not fully out of my “disenchanted with the local church” phase.
In all honesty, I wasn’t sure at the time that church membership was biblical. Despite that, the Spirit had made it all too clear that I was going to be pastoring this small church in the suburbs of Dallas. That was one of the many ironies of my life in those days.
How should we evangelize? There is a certain balance that we want to strive for in our evangelism, a balance of honesty and urgency and joy. Too often we have only one, or at best, two, of these aspects rather than all three. The balance is important. These three together most appropriately represent the gospel.
First, we tell people with honesty that if they repent and believe, they will be saved. But they will need to repent, and it will be costly. We must be accurate in what we say, not holding any important parts back that seem to us awkward or off-putting.
Our Creator God is holy, just, and loving. We are his people, made in his image. Though we were once in fellowship with God and loved by him, we are now cut off from him. That separation of God and his people started with a rebellion by our ancestors. At root, the rebellion was our choice not to believe God and to attempt to make ourselves God instead. That treasonous rebellion failed, and the judgment was eternal death. Horribly, the sin of rebellion is passed on from generation to generation as a curse: all people inherit both the sin and the judgment. Our sin nature makes it impossible for anyone to earn his way back to God.
Nothing is more important for us than to know what forgiveness is as well as what it isn’t. So what I propose in this study is to look first at five myths about forgiveness; that is to say, five lies many of us have embraced about what it means to forgive another person. Then I will turn to five truths about forgiveness, or five essential elements apart from which true forgiveness will never take place.
After we discussed forgiveness yesterday the Holy Spirit may convict you that it’s time to forgive someone who has sinned against you or you will in the future. The following forgiveness prayer can be used as a template to guide you in your own prayer to God. You may adapt this one, or read it as your own prayer, filling in the specific offense and name of the one you are forgiving.
In Western culture, individualism is like a windshield or a pair of glasses. We’re so used to “seeing through” it that we don’t even see it. We need some help to recognize how our self-centeredness actually manifests itself. Below are some indicators of individualism, some ways it may express itself based on who you are and how you’re wired.
Here is a portrait of biblical repentance seen through six stages to equip you to live a life marked by repentance and belief–turning to and worshipping Jesus. It is taken from Mike Wilkerson’s book Redemption.
You have to be convinced by the Holy Spirit working through God’s Word that you are guilty of sin. If you move too quickly past this point, you will spin in the cul-de-sac of self-deception because you will end up telling yourself and others that you are repenting of something that you aren’t even convinced is wrong. We do this often because we love looking repentant more than we actually want to love God or others.
