Sharing is Caring

  The church added by the Lord     [Acts 2:42-47]     Pastor Rick Warren (Saddleback Church) said: ‘The most important issue of the 21st century church is not church growth, but church health.   The problem is not whether the number of the church membership is large or small, but its health.’   And he proposed five ways to measure church growth: The church needs … (1) To grow warmer through fellowship, (2) To deepen through discipleship, (3) To become stronger through worship, (4) To be widen through ministry, and (5) To grow bigger through evangelism.   He said that rather than the number of church members, the percentage of church members who are mobilized for ministry and mission is a more accurate measure of the health of the church.   Is our church truly healthy?   Is it becoming stronger through worship, deepening through education, expanding through ministry, growing warmer through fellowship, and experiencing significa...

“Be saved from this  perverse generation”           [Acts 2:37-41]     Dallas Willard states in his book "Renovation of the Heart" that efforts to change behavior without inner transformation are in vain.   However, it seems that we are more focused on changing behavior rather than inner transformation.   For example, nowadays many churches are putting more emphasis on hardware rather than software.   In an internet article titled "The 'Plate' Has Shifted" on the Church Communication Research Institute website (July 11, 2002), Eui-yong Lee talks about ten ways the world is changing.   The third change is described as follows: ‘The third change is a shift from hardware to software.   If we consider the piano as hardware, then the sheet music can be considered as software.   Until now, it was important how big and high-performing the piano was.   But now, how to play the piano, similar to the sheet...

The result of justification (10): Saved from God’s wrath     “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!” (Romans 5:9)                       This is similarities and differences from Romans 5:9 (“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!”) and 5:1 (“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”): (1) Similarities: The first similarity is the same “we” (vv. 1, 9).   Here, “we” refers to we who were still helpless (v. 6), we who were yet sinners (v. 8), and we who were enemies (v. 10), that is “we” of the past before we believed in Jesus.   The “we” of the past refers to the “we,” whose souls were dead, as we were forever punished and forced to go into the fires of hell becaus...