This past Thursday morning during our Bible Study time we changed up our plans a bit as God impressed on my heart the need to share some of the meaningful things He had shown me in the past few days. First I briefly shared some highlights from the opportunity I had to speak on Biblical marriage to the ladies in Valdivia, Chile. Then the bulk of our time was spent telling of the wonderful conference Chris, Mark and I attended last week on preaching the gospel. If you missed Thursday morning and would like to know some of the content of my presentation to the Chilean ladies, let me know. For now I plan to share some of the crowning quotes from Steve Lawson’s 3 day conference on preaching the gospel taken from Romans 1-3.
Our church needs to be as much like Heaven (not the world) as possible.
We must not sugar coat what God Says.
God has heated passion against sinners (Romans 1:18)—no one giggles through the Narrow Gate. Rather, they come limping.
Don’t separate the sin from the sinner. God sends sinners to Hell. (Romans 1:18b—and many other verses.)
Professing to be wise, they became fools about the true meaning of life (Romans 1:22). Man now worships himself—total depravity.
“Depraved minds” (Romans 1:28-32)—not able to think straight; common sense is gone.
Romans 1:29ff—longest vice list in the Bible; an overwhelming sense of self.
There is only one way out of this—the gospel. There are no political solutions to a spiritual problem. Democracy cannot work if the people are reprobate! We need the gospel. Gospel preachers are the only hope for our society.
You are a great sinner—Jesus is a great Savior.
Strong preaching produces soft hearts; soft preaching produces hard hearts.
Justification—God declares us righteous—not makes us righteous.
Sanctification—growing in righteousness.
Sin will be present, but not president of your life.
The greatest joy in life is to know Jesus. The 2nd greatest joy is to make Him known.
For every one look at self we need 10 looks at Christ. Burnout is when we look at ourselves 10 times and Christ 1—then we are done.
We are saved by works—just not our works, but Jesus’ works.
If you would like to know more about any of these points Steve Lawson preached on, please let me know.
This Thursday we will be discussing Psalm 102. We have had 2 weeks to meditate on it—so we should be all set for a good time of discussion. Also, please come prepared to show our appreciation for our dear babysitters in the nursery. Liesel and Anne are so faithful to come every week and care for our little ones. I’m very thankful for them. See you on Thursday morning.