Praise the Lord for this good day, indeed a gift from the Lord. I trust you had a very blessed weekend of worship and renewal. The Lord blessed us wonderfully during our Saturday evening and Sunday morning worship services. Praise the Lord for the way He is at work around the corner and around the globe. We see before our very eyes the winds of change that blowing in the Middle East and spreading across the region. The nation celebrated President Reagan's 100 birthday this month. During his presidency the Lord moved in the Soviet Union and Europe to bring down the strongholds of communism. We are witnessing the crumbling down of totalitarian regimes of Islamic oppression and tyranny. We will keep on trusting in our Lord God who is sovereign in every way and in every age.
I have a copy of the book by Francis Schaeffer titled, "How Should We Then Live?" This title is also a quote from the King James Version of Ezekiel 33:10.
Schaeffer had a gift for using words well, and this is nowhere seen more clearly than in that book’s title. Then is a very simple word. We hardly think twice about our use of it, but when we reflect on the word then in "How Should We Then Live?" it is clear at once that it is the most important word.
Schaeffer is very clear about where he thinks Western culture is headed. Even though Schaeffer wrote this book in 1976 his writing is remarkably up-to-date. He looked at trends such as increasing economic breakdown, violence in all areas of life and all countries, extreme poverty for many of the Third World’s peoples, a love of affluence, and the underlying relativism of Western thought and concluded that the choice before us is either totalitarianism—an imposed but arbitrary social order—or “once again affirming that base which gave freedom without chaos in the first place—God’s revelation in the Bible and his revelation through Christ.”
Schaeffer’s point is that those who have received this revelation must also act upon it, because that is the very nature of the revelation. It demands application. Schaeffer wrote, “As Christians we are not only to know the right world view, the world view that tells us the truth of what is, but consciously to act upon that world view so as to influence society in all its parts and facets across the whole spectrum of life, as much as we can to the extent of our individual and collective ability.”
So, for example, we live in a culture in which there is an increasing assault on God’s existence, God’s law, and biblical revelation as the basis for how we should then live.
Several years ago, particularly during the elections of the nineties, there was an emphasis on “family values”, but unless we acknowledge God and God’s saving acts as the source and basis for our values, anyone who thinks clearly may refute our concern with such questions as these: What kind of family values are we talking about? A nuclear family? A single-parent family? A homosexual family? Why should one be preferred above another? Or why should we want families at all? In other words, the call for values always invites these rejoinders: Whose values are we talking about and why those?
Paul's writings in the Book Romans12 state, “therefore” (meaning “In view of what I have just been writing), you must not live for yourselves but rather give yourselves wholly to God.” Finally, the Apostle Paul said, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers. . . .to present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (12:1 b, e). Only believers can do that.
Unbelievers cannot present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God. They must first receive and embrace the mercies of God before they can present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God. John MacArthur wrote, "The key to spiritual victory and true happiness is not in trying to get all we can from God but in giving all that we are and have to him."
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEfJpJ1lhQc
Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church. Endicott
53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott.
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott
Saturday February 12, 2011
6PM Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music .: Worship Band from Hawleyton UMC
Speaker: Rev. Bill Puckey
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