California Here We Come

We flew to Phoenix this morning to return three of our grandchildren to their parents. It has been a delight to have them with us the past few weeks--first at the conference and then at home for a time of fun. They are growing up so fast! But we needed to get them home before grandma spent all our savings showing them a good time.

One delightful piece of info: Rick tells me that they are perhaps a week away from securing their own location for Southwest Grace Fellowship. One of the men in the church is trying to purchase a property and if the deal goes thru, the assembly will be able to aquire part of it for a permanent facility all their own. If it works out, both the location and venue will be great. PTL!

We will all drive to California tomorrow. Camp starts tomorrow evening. I'll be speaking on "Finding Rest In a Restless World." There are certainly many things to be jittery about these days. Rest, however, is not conditioned on circumstances but rather is grounded on our idenity in Christ Jesus. Gal. 2:20 is the secret. I'll be teaching thru II Thess. 2:13-17, with special attention to Paul's prayer in verses 16 and 17. Why not read it for yourself!

The rest of the week I'll be doing a series on "The Faith of Christ." I've found that everytime I have had opportunity to teach this topic it has resulted in great blessing. The fact that Jesus Christ was the God-Man makes Him the unique person of the universe! While His incarnation did not in anyway lessen the fact that He was and is the Second Person of the Godhead, it did add something never before imaginable: God Himself was "made flesh, and dwelt among us." He was also truly "the man Christ Jesus," as Paul says.

The term "the faith of Christ" is a Pauline term and refers to the fact that as "the Man" our Lord lived His life in the flesh in exactly the manner in which God intends man to live--in total dependence on the will and word of the Father. No wonder Paul exhorts, "let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus"!

I'll be going over new material--or at least approaching the subject from a new angle, so I'm looking forward to what I have to say! Give them a week or two and then check out www.Helpersofyourjoy.com and I'll bet they have all the camp studies available for download.

We are expecting a good turn out for camp. Do pray for this important week. John Verstegen and the saint at Berean Bible Ministries do a wonderful job and are making a real impact on the "left coast" for the message of grace.

Marantha!

Life After Conference Time

We just concluded our Summer Family Bible Conference. This year we met on the campus of Wheaton College, one of our nation’s oldest Christian colleges. The city of Wheaton, Illinois was founded in 1859; Wheaton College was established in 1860. This probably explains why the campus covers half of “downtown.” It is an ultra modern facility and provided an outstanding venue for the conference.

The preaching and teaching were amazing. It is a benediction to my heart to see so many brethren delivering the rightly divided Word with such clarity and power. This is largely the fruit of the commitment of Grace School of the Bible to following the Pauline Design for Edification and as well as his Ministry Model. Men who have been with us “from the beginning” and men who were speaking for the first time demonstrated that a grasp of the message of grace brings insight and unction to the ministry of the Word. We had over 30 speakers and still didn’t have everyone on the program. A genuine “high grade” problem!

We had our usual house full of before-and-after conference guests. Cynthia is especially “given to hospitality,” and everyone is always well taken care of. It’s a joy to be able to enjoy the fellowship in a relaxed setting. We enjoyed the Baxter and Strydom families. Their kids are growing up and have numerous friends in our Shorewood Bible Church family, so it was a really active time. Our after-conference-picnic was an opportunity to unwind with workers and out of town folks who were staying over for a day or so. The Townsends from New Zealand were a special hit, as was Susi from Switzerland. We tried our best to teach them to speak "american," but that's still a work in progress!

Cynthia and I also brought home from the conference a very special treat: our three Arizona grandchildren. Rick and Danielle (11 year old twins) and Emily (9 years old) will be with us until we all fly to the California conference the end of the month. It is a treat to have them for a couple of weeks. I don’t get to see them too often (Grandma usually goes out there several times a year), and it is a delight to see how they are growing up. It has certainly made an active (and noisy!) time for us!

Yesterday Cynthia got the Tape of the Month ready and into the mail—usually a three-day job, she managed it in one day! (Did I mention that she works harder than anyone I know?) Today I did radio for our Chicago broadcast and prepared my studies for the California conference. Tomorrow I’ll get the school programs ready and in the mail. It is a genuine privilege to broadcast over these stations. The Chicago station alone covers over 9 million people—twice as many people as are in the whole of our home state of Alabama! They don’t all listen, of course, but the potential audience is tremendous. We have folks visit our meetings almost weekly from the WYLL (AM1160) broadcasts—in fact, last night two men came to visit who started listening “by accident” (they were taping the program before ours and accidentally taped ours too) and now rejoice in the riches of God’s grace to us in Christ!

Well, this is enough to let you know I’m still in the game—still pressing toward the mark. My blogging hasn’t been too regular; life has been full of things we could have been talking about; I won’t promise to do better—so I don’t set myself up for failure! But I do appreciate you stopping by and hope you’ll come back soon. I’ll try to, too.

Maranatha!