For at least the near future, instead of publishing online, we’ll be printing and mailing out our newsletter. We hope to do this a few times a month, but it may be less.
If you’d like to receive letters by mail, please enter your address here.
Because this is such a dramatic shift, I’ll also try and follow up with each of you by email to field any questions or concerns.
To give you a look ahead, we are 90% of the way done with a verse by verse devotional based on Acts chapter 5 called, “And the Fullness Thereof.” I hope to send these entries out as part of our printed letter by mail. I’d like to share an excerpt from the introduction:
And the Fullness Thereof
A verse by verse devotional based on Acts 5
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For the most part, I believe the Bible is misused.
We start with the concordance and then work our way backwards. We come to the book with a topic in mind and then look for the specific answer, the proof text, and the intellectual fact. In this way, we can form our defense, find our formula, and put our conscience at ease, “Yes, I am in the right.” Bible-as-textbook does have some benefits, we cannot discount it completely, but if this is our primary method of study it will lead to the development of a people who know the word of God, but know very little about the God of the word. A people who confuse intellect with knowledge and knowledge with wisdom.
When we become a people such as this, the best we can do is to examine life through the lens of morality, a checkbox of rights and wrongs, quickly leading to the establishment of factions. Groups within a larger group who derive more energy and passion by defining and evangelizing according to what they are against, rather than what they stand for. If we are not careful, we become those who know how to communicate but not compel because we have memorized but never meditated. Priding ourselves on the worship of truth but knowing very little about the worship of the Spirit. Learning how to say all the right things, but knowing nothing about groans which cannot be uttered. In this state, there will be very little weeping, few tears, and no agony in our reading of the Scriptures. This is a great tragedy that our short devotional will hope to remedy, at least to a small degree.
The world feels the absence of a people who know their God.
If we are to know Him again, it must begin with the Scriptures and an examination of how we read them. Acts chapter 5 contains 42 verses. We’ll go through each one, offering a mix of commentary, devotional, and exhortation. You, the reader, will be both confronted and encouraged, corrected and stirred onto good works. All in the hopes that we, the people of God, would once again know Him as He truly is. And in knowing Him, that we would love, obey, and glorify Him. May we once again be a people “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1) Let us be renewed in our repentance, “so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” (Acts 3:19)
As we read, we must also pray
God does not change, yet how we perceive Him can change and it is for this change of perception that we must pray. Brothers and sisters, as you read this short book, pray also for a revelation of a higher view of God. Let us cry out, as Habakkuk did, to see a vision of the One before whom the nations bow. And let us wait until He answers, “Look among the nations and watch - be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.” (1:5)
Oh to be a people changed, equipped once again with a view of eternity and a vision into the heavenlies. Speaking as seeing Him who is invisible, that we might proclaim Him as He actually is to a world who does not yet see, cannot yet hear, and, at the moment, lives in darkness.
Oh that we would once more carry voices like trumpets as Paul did in Athens, addressing those who felt God unknowable, “Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you...He is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:23,27)
Oh to sing to the Lord as long as we live! Come, let us rejoice! “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions - this great and wide sea, in which are innumerable teeming things, living things both small and great. There the ships sail about; there is that Leviathan which you have made to play there. These all wait for You. That you may give them their food in due season. What You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works. He looks on the earth, and it trembles; He touches the hills, and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be consumed from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 104:24-35)
In love,
Derek
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