Song of the Redeemed

I love hymns, I love deep hymns that are rooted in the truth of God's Word, and the one that I love the most is, "It Is Well." This song has shaped me and comforted me through most of my adult life. I believe that it is so powerful because of the place from which is was birthed, out of the deepest possible pain. Maybe you have heard the story but if you haven't let me share it with you, and may today it be a source of comfort, but also may it spur your faith on and give you a place to stand. You may not be facing a difficult time in your life right now, things may be good, but life is going to tell us those times are coming and we would do well to begin to build our foundation on the rock that is Christ.

The story goes like this: "Horatio G. Spafford and his wife, Anna, were pretty well-known in 1860’s Chicago. And this was not just because of Horatio's legal career and business endeavors. The Spaffords were also prominent supporters and close
friends of D.L. Moody, the famous preacher. In 1870, however, things started to go wrong. The Spaffords' only
son was killed by scarlet fever at the age of four. A year later, it was fire rather than fever that struck. Horatio
had invested heavily in real estate on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1871, every one of these holdings was
wiped out by the great Chicago Fire.

Aware of the toll that these disasters had taken on the family, Horatio decided to take his wife and four
daughters on a holiday to England. And, not only did they need the rest -- DL Moody needed the help. He was
traveling around Britain on one of his great evangelistic campaigns. Horatio and Anna planned to join Moody in
late 1873. And so, the Spaffords traveled to New York in November, from where they were to catch the French
steamer 'Ville de Havre' across the Atlantic. Yet just before they set sail, a last-minute business development
forced Horatio to delay. Not wanting to ruin the family holiday, Spafford persuaded his family to go as planned.
He would follow on later. With this decided, Anna and her four daughters sailed East to Europe while Spafford
returned West to Chicago. Just nine days later, Spafford received a telegram from his wife in Wales. It read:
"Saved alone."

On November 2nd 1873, the 'Ville de Havre' had collided with 'The Lochearn', an English vessel. It sank in only
12 minutes, claiming the lives of 226 people. Anna Spafford had stood bravely on the deck, with her daughters
Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta clinging desperately to her. Her last memory had been of her baby being
torn violently from her arms by the force of the waters. Anna was only saved from the fate of her daughters by a
plank which floated beneath her unconscious body and propped her up. When the survivors of the wreck had
been rescued, Mrs. Spafford's first reaction was one of complete despair. Then she heard a voice speak to her,
"You were spared for a purpose." And she immediately recalled the words of a friend, "It's easy to be grateful
and good when you have so much, but take care that you are not a fair-weather friend to God."

Upon hearing the terrible news, Horatio Spafford boarded the next ship out of New York to join his bereaved
wife. Bertha Spafford (the fifth daughter of Horatio and Anna born later) explained that during her father's
voyage, the captain of the ship had called him to the bridge. "A careful reckoning has been made", he said, "and
I believe we are now passing the place where the de Havre was wrecked. The water is three miles deep." Horatio
then returned to his cabin and penned the lyrics of his great hymn.

The words which Spafford wrote that day come from 2 Kings 4:26. They echo the response of the Shunammite
woman to the sudden death of her only child. Though we are told "her soul is vexed within her", she still
maintains that 'It is well." And Spafford's song reveals a man whose trust in the Lord is as unwavering as hers
was.

It would be very difficult for any of us to predict how we would react under circumstances similar to those
experienced by the Spaffords. But we do know that the God who sustained them would also be with us."

No matter what circumstances overtake us may we be able to say with Horatio Spafford...

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul!

It is well ... with my soul!
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

May our faith be grounded and rooted not in the outcome of outward circumstances, but in the fact that our great God and King is triumphant and He will keep us from falling, He will hold us up and He will deliver us from the fire of affliction.

LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE and be blessed today

article taken from www.biblestudycharts.com/a_daily_hymn

Grace-Driven Prayer

I have never meant someone who has said, "I pray all that I need to," or "I am really good at prayer." Prayer is just one of those areas of the Christian walk that is tough, one that I don't think we will ever fully comprehend or master, but it is none the less important. I think that so often prayer is driven by what we feel we want. We lay out our petitions before the Lord, "be with Susie, and little Jimmy and be with my dog, etc." And so often we come to the great throne of God with our burdens, as He has asked us to, but so often our hearts are driven more by our need than by His grace, and we become burned out and distracted from the end goal of prayer and petitioning, which has and always will be to drawn nearer to the Father.

He tells us in His word, come to me all you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest. For prayer to be something that we grow excited about and dive into more and more, it has to have a proper heart and mind going forth. I have thought of 3 things that characterize grace-driven prayer.

1. A proper perspective of God-WIthout this we are doomed. God is not santa in the sky, He is not our fairy-god father, He is not the genie from Aladdin. We do not snap and God is forced to answer, He is supreme, He is sovereign over all things, HE is GOOD. We may not understand all His ways, Is. 55:8-9, but we know and trust that all His ways are right and just, Hosea 14:9. God is above all powers of this earth, He is not bound by the same things we are and He knows the beginning from the end. This mindset starts us off on the right foot, knowing that in all things are God is greater then anything and He is unchangeable and He is the standard for truth.

2. A proper view of ourselves-Matt. 11:28 says that we are weary, we must know that we are finite, that we are in need of help, that we cannot do this on our own strength or power. That we are the ones in need of saving, that we come before Him humbled to be in the presence of the almighty. Having this mindset helps us to come before the throne of God without feeling entitled or arrogant. We know that we have been saved and that He is in the end, through all the trials and fires, going to refine us for His glory and our good.

3. Believe that He answers-Ps. 118 shows us this clearly. When we call on the name of the Lord we believe, with our whole hearts that He will hear us and He will answer. That He loves when His children petition His throne with a right mindset. We believe that He is wiling and able to do far beyond what we expect or hope for. Remembering that the answer may not look the way we wanted it to, but we know that He heard and answered it for our good and His glory.

I think so often of Job as the example for proper grace-driven prayer. He knew who His God was, and when His world came crashing down, he had a firm foundation that would not curse God, and when the Lord built Him back up, he had the same foundation to not be arrogant in all his stuff. He saw who he was, and yet He believed God would answer him though it didn't look like it all the time.

So today may our prayers be grace-driven, may we pray because of what He has done and what He has yet to do.

LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE

Thoughts From a New Dad

So there I was sitting in a long hallway, the world had stopped and it just hit me, "I'm going to be a dad tonight." Now I knew I was going to be a dad, I just thought it would be a little later, I guess your never really ready for that. Thoughts came rushing into my head from everywhere, finances, my wife, how Calvin was going to be, and in the midst of this whirl wind of emotions the world seem to slow down and the voice of the Lord became to resonate in my heart by reminding me of a verse I had read many of times, it is one of those coffee cup verses, but one I never really stopped to think about, and let it affect me this way.

Philippians 4:6-7-"do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

What a great verse, to know that our minds can do crazy things, they can take us to really dark places, that so often I am prone to let my mind take me to the worst case scenario, and I can begin to fret and think that things are never going to be any better, this verse says that by prayer, by talking to my Father, by being intentional about my prayer life, that He will guard my heart and my mind. This is not a magic potion that makes your situation easier or turn out the way you want it, but what it does do is it allows us to put our hope and faith, not in ourselves or anything of this world, but it changes our mindset to place Christ as preeminent, that He becomes our hope and He is our great sustainer.

I don't know where you find yourself today, or in what situation you find yourself. I do however know that with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving we can see Christ as good, not just in the good or easy times but in all times. So today may we take this verse from coffee cups and into our hearts. And may we today guard our lives and doctrine.

LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE

Mercy and Merit

This week as I was reading on some of the blogs that I follow, this one really stuck out to me as encouraging and challenging at the same time. Take the time to really mediate on these words and what this implies for your life.

Mercy & Merit
Justin Holcomb Director of the Resurgence

The clearest message of Jesus and the deepest message of the Bible is “God’s mercy, not our merit.” When it comes to our salvation we are neither saved by our merits nor justified by works. We are justified—declared righteous before God—solely through faith in Jesus Christ because of God’s mercy and Christ’s merit
Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leading figure of the English Reformation, describes justification by faith in his sermon entitled A Sermon of the Salvation of Mankind by Only Christ Our Saviour from Sin and Death Everlasting:

"This justification or righteousness, which we so receive by God’s mercy and Christ’s merits, embraced by faith, is taken, accepted, and allowed of God for our perfect and full justification… For all the good works that we can do be imperfect, and therefore not able to deserve our justification: but our justification doth come freely, by the mere mercy of God; and of so great and free mercy that, whereas all the world was not able of their selves to pay any part towards their ransom, it pleased our heavenly Father, of his infinite mercy, without...our...deserving [it], to prepare for us the most precious jewels of Christ’s body and blood, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied. So that Christ is now the righteousness of all them that truly do believe in him. He for them paid their ransom by his death. He for them fulfilled the law in his life."

Cranmer died for this belief. At age 66, on a rainy Saturday morning, March 21, 1556, he was taken down from the pulpit at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford as he was preaching and driven to the center of town where he was burned at the stake for his convictions.
Our justification is due solely and completely to the mercy of God, a mercy Cranmer described as “great,” “free,” and “infinite.”

RePlanting a Church

I am amazed at what the Lord is calling FCL to, a new era in the life of our church. We have been given this crazy opportunity to be apart of something big, where we are more than a meeting place, with cool ideas, cool music, relevant messages, but God is calling us to be a place for the hurting and the lost, to be a place that shares the truth of the Gospel message in a way that makes Him look glorious and His name supreme. This is not about FCL or me, or any of our other pastor's, this is about the name of the Lord, this is about His glory being what consumes us.

This fact has driven me through hard times and through times when I think it would be easier to hang up the preaching jeans. In an age where success is determined by numbers and growth, it is easy to become discouraged and forget what He has called us to. But the reality is that the Bible calls us to depth, it calls us to pursue Him as our one and only. This is what Paul reminds us in Philippians 3:7-8-"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ..."

If I could sum up my desire for myself and for our FCL family and for the church world-wide that would be it. To see men and women growing close to Christ, placing faith in Him, and that pushing us to follow Him. So as we begin a new season for FCL, one that I pray will produce this mindset, I ask for your support and partnership, for your unity in prayers, in the Gospel message, and for your faithfulness and consistency in difficult time. That we may be men and women of the Word, not creativity or ingenuity, but may our strength and passion be found in the glory of God going forth.

With our dependency and hope in the Lord, may this be what we encourage one another toward, and may we look back and be able to say with Paul, "I want Christ more then anything."

LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE