Pastor Mark Staples
2 Peter 1:12-15

1. We need to be reminded about what really matters. What are “these qualities?”

God is speaking to 4 types of people:

• Those who don’t know the truth.
• Those who do know the truth.
• Those who know the truth and are established in it.
• Those who remember the truth.
2. We need to have our memories refreshed. Life is short!

We need to learn two things from Peter’s life:

• We need to remember and live the Gospel.
• We must remind others to join us!
3. We must remember!

A thought: The more we know the more we remember.

What is God calling me to remember today?

Listen to Mark.

Pastor Bob Fox
May 16, 2010

Five Biblical Presuppositions about Homes

1. Healthy homes are key to a healthy world. God wants them.
2. Sin is self-centeredness. Self-centered people are unsafe. Sin made marriage risky, and homes dysfunctional.
3. Self-centered husbands set up self-centered rule. Self-centered wives seek to do the same.
4. Safety comes through getting back to healthy relationship with our Creator.
5. Homes centered on Yahweh become healthier.

Three Biblical principles on Marriage are:

1. A father/husband sets a healthy tone in his home through self-denial and self-control, holding up for all the grander vision of God’s objectives.
2. Through her own self-sacrifice, a wife/mother helps establish healthy tone in the home, and helps sharpen the understanding of God’s objectives.
3. Children learn through practice the discipline of obedience—the key life skill that guarantees blessing from God.

Listen to Bob.

Get Pastor Bob’s personal notes on Colossians.

Implementing the Bible’s statements on male headship in marriage has proven to be a great challenge to Christian people over the centuries. There is no question that the concept has been warped, distorted and abused to the advantage of males. We know that evil has warped everything within God’s creation and every aspect of His revelation of Himself and truth to humanity. So the distortions of this idea should not cause us to jettison it. The perversion of the truth, rather than causing the easy pendulum swing reaction, should cause us to carefully study, examine, and test it in order to discern truth from error.

The statements about the husband’s headship in marriage are present throughout Scripture in words addressed to fallen people in a fallen world. It must be possible to rightly implement them in a way that marginalizes no one. As people of the Scripture we feel the responsibility to reckon with these statements and come to an understanding of what God desires in our homes.

The term and concept of male headship comes from verses like this one in Ephesians 5:22-24.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Our essential task is to understand verses like these and their implications in 21st century American Culture.

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Pastor Bob Fox
Colossians 3:15-17

Individual Christians make a choice to make a series of choices that enable them to re-learn life from the Creator. When many do this a culture is established in a Church marked by these things:

1. A soothing, collective presence that imparts composure. We turn each other away from fear to what is true.
2. An all-pervading spirit of thankfulness. We give each other perspective that assigns proper meaning to trouble.
3. A dogged pursuit of the words of Christ FOR each other. Through our words, both their tone and their quality, we add momentum to what God is doing in our friend’s lives.
4. An unswerving consistency—behavior in all matters that testifies to others of the presence of Christ.

Conclusion—The truth/love culture in local churches is the primary means through which God will make a difference in and through your life. Invest in it!!

Listen to Bob.

Get Pastor Bob’s personal notes on Colossians.

Kyle Fox
Galatians 4:4-7

Communion, May 2, 2010

Listen to Kyle.

Pastor Bob Fox
Colossians 3:9-14

Individual Christians make a choice to make a series of choices that enable them to re-learn life from the Creator. When many do this a culture is established in a Church marked by these things:

1. A relentless pursuit of truth and truthfulness.
• We naturally lie because it enables us to remain who we are.
• We naturally lie because it is a quick, easy way to get our needs met.
• We naturally lie to escape the unpleasant.
• Truth—right information—enables freedom.
• Truthfulness—right perspective—renews.
2. An unwavering commitment to equality—An embrace of all people as equally loved by God.
3. An intensifying preoccupation with others. God’s vision for us is that we be deep feeling, useful, embracing, mild-mannered and safe, longsuffering, thick-skinned, grace-granting, all in perfect proportion through love.

The View From Halfway—God’s plan is to transform pretenders into authentic instruments of transformation through a truth/love culture in local churches.

Listen to Bob.

Get Pastor Bob’s personal notes on Colossians.