A TRUE HEART

There are several things I constantly beg from God for this congregation and for myself. One of them is a true heart. I don’t want to just know some things about Christ. I want to KNOW Christ. I want to know Christ so that I truly love Him and trust my soul to Him. I don’t want to just know some good religious jargon to use in public so people will be impressed with me. I want to be able to speak from the heart in genuine love for God and love for people. I don’t want to just know some verses of scripture that I can twist to use for my own purposes. I want to know how Christ is the true meaning of those verses so that I see more of Him. I don’t want to just change my behavior so I act more religious before men. I want God to give me a new heart that believes Christ, that loves God, and that worships God in Spirit and in truth. I want God to give you and me a new heart that God loves and that God accepts.

Pastor

THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST

Paul said in II Corinthians 10:5 that every thought is to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. After death, when we no longer have a sin nature, every thought will be brought into captivity to obedience to Christ. But that is not what the text says! Every thought is to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Any thought I have that runs contrary to the obedience of Christ being my only righteousness before God is a wrong thought that is opposed to the Gospel of Christ.

Pastor Todd Nibert

John Gill’s Last Words to a Nephew

“I depend wholly and alone upon the free, sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love of God; the firm and everlasting covenant of grace; and my interest in the persons of the Trinity for my whole salvation; and not upon any righteousness of my own, nor on anything in me, or done by me under the influence of the Holy Spirit; nor upon any service of mine, which I have been assisted to perform for the good of the church do I depend; but upon my interest in the persons of the Trinity, the free grace of God, and the blessings of grace streaming to me through the blood and righteousness of Christ, as the ground of my hope.

“These are no new things to me, but what I have been long acquainted with and what I can live and die by! I apprehend that I shall not be long here, but this you may tell to any of my friends.”

And he added, “I have nothing to make me uneasy,

He raised me from the depths of sin,

The gates of gaping hell;

And fixed my standing more secure

Than ‘twas before I fell.”

A Few Last Words from Ebenezer Erskine

A friend, calling on Ebenezer Erskine during his last illness, said to him, “Sir, you have preached to others all these years; what are you now doing with your own soul?”

“I am doing with it,” he replied, “what I did forty years ago; I am resting on God’s Word, which says, ‘I am the Lord thy God’; and, on this, I mean to die.”

To another he said, “The covenant of grace is my charter; and if it had not been for his grace in Christ, my hope and strength would perish.”

TRUE CONVERSION

True conversion gives a man pardon but does not make him presumptuous.

True conversion gives a man rest but does not make him less watchful.