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.
In my years as a follower of Christ, I often looked at the ministry of healing suspiciously. Healing was a show put on for televangelists or stories that were told to make a person sound impressive. Maybe, God would grant this for really sick people - the type of requests that make the top of your bible study prayer list; maybe cancer or a car accident. However, last year my entire view on healing, and the power of the Holy Spirit was made alive.
A heavy “A-frame” medal ladder at full extension blew over and struck me across the top of my head just as I bent over to move a child sandbox. For thirty minutes I had been walking the yard with a fertilizer spreader. The blow was serious: 14 staples and three months of headache, sleepiness, lethargy, inability to concentrate and sensitivity to light/loud noises.
A friend recently asked me if I thought that the coronavirus would cause division within the church. I’ve thought quite a bit about her question since then. The short answer, is yes, I think the coronavirus has the potential to cause division within the church for many obvious reasons. I mean, we’re people. So if you ask ten people what their opinion is about the coronavirus and all that goes with it (social distancing, conspiracy theory, wearing masks, the like) then you will get ten different answers. Multiply that by a congregation of 200+ people and the opinions multiple like rabbits. And in all seriousness, God bless the pastors that are trying to shepherd us stinky sheep through all this.
What is this “certain way” that we are called to suffer? Above all it is, as we mentioned earlier, suffering in Christ. It does no good to try and bear our suffering ourselves; we must cling to Christ. That sounds easy enough when you are not suffering. But it is not so easy when you are actually suffering. How can I respond to God when he appears to be abusing me?
The idea of using prayer cards instead of a prayer list came to me one day when I was sitting on our living-room sofa, trying to pray. Life over the past few months had become almost unbearable. I was frozen on the inside.
While sitting like this, spiritually numb, a thought suddenly came to me: Put the Word to work. I got some three-by-five cards, and on each one wrote the name of a family member, along with a Scripture that I could use to shape my prayers for that person. I began developing a stack of prayer cards that allowed me to pray through my life—for loved ones and friends, for non-Christians I’m building relationships with, for my church and its leaders, for missionaries, for my work and my co-workers, for character change in my own life, and for my dreams.
Jesus’ brother James comes to the rescue and balances out Jesus’ extravagant promises. James describes two dangers in asking. The first danger, on the left side of the following chart, is Not Asking. James writes, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” The second danger is Asking Selfishly: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2-3). We can fall off either cliff.
One person washes their hands compulsively to feel some sense of cleanness. One person sits in the shower for 45 minutes after being defiled by another person trying to feel clean. One person drinks to forget their guilt. One person erases any standard in their life so they won’t feel guilt. One person cuts themself to experience relief from their anger and shame. One person tries to re-invent themselves to get away from their shame.
Different actions but what they all are doing is dealing with sin. We all create rituals or processes to address the guilt, defilement, and shame, from our sin and others’ sin against us. You may not think sin is a real thing. But your actions show you functionally think it is real because you try to address it—even if that means ignoring it.
We can open our Bibles and pray for all sorts of odd reasons—as a religious duty, an attempt to earn God’s favor, or thinking that it serves as a moral self-help guide, a manual of handy tips for effective spirituality. That idea is one main reason so many of you feel discouraged in your spiritual disciplines. Hoping to find quick lessons in the bible for how you should spend the day, you find instead a genealogy or a list of various sacrifices. And how could page after page of histories, descriptions of the temple, instructions to priests, affect how we rest, work and pray today?
The coronavirus is now affecting everyday life for almost all of us. You may be wondering what you can do to help on a practical level, when physical connection is becoming increasingly prohibited. As Christians, we know that we can pray. Here's an adapted extract from 5 Things to Pray For Your World by Rachel Jones to help guide you in praying for those working on the front line response, based on 2 Corinthians 1 V 3-11.
