Bluesman

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

By The Grace Of God I Am What I Am

In spite of all the talk about grace and how many Christians say they believe in and understand grace there do not seem to many in our churches who actually believe in grace. J.I Packer says "there have always been some who have the thought of grace so overwhelmingly wonderful that they could never get over it. Grace has become the constant theme of their talk and prayers. They have fought for it, accepting ridicule and loss of privilege if need be as the price of their stand ... with Paul their testimony is "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor 15:10) and their rule of life is "I do not frustrate the grace of God" ((Gal 2:21). Knowing God pg 128-129

Is your testimony "By the grace of God I am what I am"? Is your rule of life "I do not frustrate the grace of God"? Whatever I am its only by the grace of God that I am it. I am going to avoid everything that frustrates the grace of God in my life. I am pressing into grace its amazing.

Blow Wind Blow - The James Cotton Band

Marinating Meat In Beer

Otis Rush- You're Breaking My Heart

Eric Clapton & B.B. King- Three O'Clock Blues

Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven - Albert King

Monday, April 7, 2014

Lyle Lovett "That's Right (You're Not from Texas)" 04/03/14 On Conan

"Going Down" - Freddie King

From his 1971 record, "Getting Ready," which was largely written and produced by Leon Russell and features Duck Dunn on bass. Russell wrote "Going Down," as part of an attempt to introduce Freddie to more of a "rock audience" through this record.

Friday, April 4, 2014

We Are Not Justified By Sanctification

"One is unlikely to assert that we are justified by sanctification, but, whether done intentionally or not, that is what happens when we allow the teaching of Christian living, ethical imperatives, and exhortations to holiness to be separated from and to take the place of the clear statement of the gospel. We can preach our hearts out on texts about what we ought to be, what makes a mature church, or what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives, but if we do not constantly, in every sermon, show the link between the Spirit's work in us to Christ's work for us, we will distort the message and send people away with a natural theology of salvation by works. Preaching from the epistles demands of the preacher that the message of the document be taken as a whole even if only a selection of texts, or just one verse, is to be expounded. Every sermon should be understandable on its own as a proclamation of Christ. It is no good to say that we dealt with the justification element three weeks ago and now we are following Paul into the imperatives and injunctions for Christian living. Paul wasn't anticipating a three-week gap between his exposition of the gospel and his defining of the implications of the gospel in our lives. Nor was he anticipating that some people would not be present for the reading of the whole epistle and would hear part of its message out of context."
Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible As Christian Scripture, p. 237