ONLY LOVE AUTHENTICATES FAITH

After Indu and Jürgen Eisenberg led in the opening songs of worship, Triza Joseph sang a Hindi song proclaiming the lordship of Jesus.

Rev J T Raja led the service and officiated at communion.

Mark Syn, Ruth, Nathan, Elizabeth and Benjamin were members of the church till they moved to Noida in March.  The family was visiting for the weekend and Mark brought the message ONLY LOVE AUTHENTICATES FAITH:

The Challenge of Faith

There was once a painting exhibited in London, which showed a monk, head bowed and hands clasped, deep in prayer. However, on closer inspection, you could see that it was actually a monk squeezing a lemon into a bowl. This is so often a picture of our Christian life – seemingly impressive when viewed from a distance, but less authentic when seen from close up.

Most of us have experienced the challenge of not just conforming to what the outward expectations of our faith in Christ are, but to remain connected to God on the inside as well. Even mature believers may stray into ‘playing the game’ – knowing how to say prayers in a ‘spiritual’ way, knowing which meetings to turn up to – yet inside, losing that intimacy with the Lord.

The Jews fell into this trap too. In Jesus day, he criticized the religious leaders for being white-washed tombs – looking perfect on the outside, but housing nothing but death on the inside. (Matthew 23: 27-28). The prophet Amos criticized the nation, saying that the Lord ‘hated their religious feats’ (Amos 5: 21-24). Even though they brought Him burnt offerings, he despised them. He scolded them for the empty noise of their songs. In modern language, it is akin to the Lord telling us off for coming together for church, paying tithes and worshipping him. How can this be? Because all these things are valid and good outward expressions of our faith, but they only mean something in the context of our relationship with God.

There is nothing wrong with rituals. In fact, many people say rituals are very important to the life of a healthy family. Rituals communicate values, give an anchor to children’s lives, and even help the family pass through transition and tragedy. But rituals are only meaningful in the context of relationship.

We were made for love and relationship

When I was in University, we often used a booklet called “Knowing God Personally” to share the Gospel. The first point laid the foundation for the rest of the booklet: God loves you and created you to have a personal relationship with Him. This is the basics of the Gospel.

Love changes us. Love is a transforming power and people change when they feel loved. Consider the bride on her wedding day – she absolutely glows. Consider a child who grows up in a loving family environment – they grow up to be able to give and receive love as adults.

However, also consider the converse: supermodel whose flawless beauty hides feelings of worthlessness inside. There are stories of models who find everybody around them telling them are ay ravishingly beautiful, yet inside they feel ugly. This is because love only transforms if the person knows and believes they are loved. Likewise, there are wives who do not know that their husband loves them, and children who feel that their parents do not love them.

How can we know the depth’s of God’s love more each day? Love transforms us all, but there is only one love that truly fills the gap inside us – the love of God.

Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac – a picture of God’s love for us

In Genesis 22: 1- 18 we glimpse the depths of our heavenly Father’s love. This story reminds me of a couple I knew who were wanting to adopt a child and the circumstances threatened to derail that process. The long years of disappointment from childlessness, and the risk of losing their last hope for a child saw them weeping in despair. Only when their child was finally adopted did anguish turn to joy. In the same way, imagine Abraham and Sarah’s joy at finally receiving the miracle child of promise at the age of 80 and 100 respectively. Their joy would have known no bounds… until the day when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son.

As a father I cannot imagine anything worse in life than losing one of my children – let alone sacrificing one. Abraham knew God had spoken and he obeyed God, but what anguish the three day journey from Beer-Sheeba to Moriah would have been. We know the end of the story but Abraham did not. Abraham simply obeyed and believed God.

Finally God sees Abrahams’ heart and stops Abraham with the words, “Now I know you fear God because you have not withheld your son, your only begotten son”. This is a picture of the depths of God’s love for us - God, our heavenly Father loves us so much that He did not withhold His Son, his only begotten Son, who died for us. This is the love God has for each one of us.

Experiencing God’s love personally

Romans 8: 38-39 tells us that NOTHING can separate us from God’s love. We can know this with our head, but we can also know it in our hearts?

Many of us may feel at times that we do not know God’s love. Intellectually we know he loves us because the Bible tells us so, but inside we feel unloved and far from God. We might feel we have let God down through our own unfaithfulness. The thing about God’s love is that we cannot earn it or be worthy of it. All we can do is received it gratefully.

I’d like to challenge you to discover God’s love in a deeper way. Like a wife who asks her husband from time to time to tell her that he loves her, we too can ask God to show us His love afresh. There are many things we can do to develop our relationship with God, but the beginning of this is knowing how to experience His love.

May our prayer be: “Restore unto me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51: 12). Restore to me the joy of our first love, Lord.

12th Anniversary Service – August 30, 2009

 

The service began with Noel and Nive Eisenberg joining their dad Jürgen in leading the opening songs while mother Indu looks on.

The church had a very special speaker for our 12th anniversary:

Pastor Kuru proudly introduced Riya Jacob who grew up in Grace Bible Church and went on to do her biblical studies in the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.     

Here is what she told us all:

 

Remembering God’s Faithfulness:

In celebrating 12 years of journey, we are celebrating ‘our togetherness’, the milestones we’ve covered, the setbacks we’ve had, the people who’ve been a part of us, our ministries at Grace Bible church, and above all God’s faithfulness in leading us to be the church that He wants us to be.

Remembering who we are:

When we think of church, we think of it in terms of the partial picture of what a church is, most commonly as a building or a place of worship. Therefore, Peter implores us to take a deeper look at what it means for us to be a church, to recognize who we are in light of who God has called us to be.

Paul in this letter earnestly calls the Christian believers to take upon this great privilege reminding us in 1 Peter 2:9-10 that:

* We are people who’ve been called, named, and destined. We are no longer people who are groping about in darkness, but people who have been given a name, people with a unique purpose, a much higher calling than this world can ever offer.

*We are now people who are part of the redeemer’s plan of making for Himself a remnant, a people who are called to carry His name forth.

* Although we are strangers and aliens of this world, we are no longer rejected or abandoned, but people who are carefully joined together to form the household of God, the body, the temple of the Holy Spirit or in other words, the church, the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 2:21- 22)

Remembering the task:

With this great privilege also comes great responsibility to live a life that is worthy of our calling:

In a world where success is measured by numbers and our identity by what we do, we easily confuse our calling with doing one activity after the other. While doing certainly has its proper place, being a church means something more than just going about our day or merely getting the work done.

*First, Peter says that He calls us to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness in to His marvelous light” ~ We have been called forth to announce, to tell, to declare, to speak a word of love, of grace in the darkest, difficult, incomplete, irregular path of life. *Secondly, He calls us because of who He is and not because of the perfect life that we lead (‘coz we don’t & He is not impressed with the ways that we try to be perfect either) It is because of His grace alone that we are called forth.

* He calls us in our imperfectness, in our brokenness to be something more of a creative force in this world. Regardless of who we are and where we’ve been, He calls us to be the church in the darkest valley, in the midst of doubt, confusion, and chaos.

*We are called forth to be agents of change to those around us, in our work places, neighborhood, in our church, schools and colleges in order to speak a word of kindness, of goodness to the parched world, ever so thirsty for the goodness of the Lord. In 1 Peter 2: 10-12, Peter reminds us that we are called forth as people who has tasted His goodness, as people who’ve been shown mercy, as people who have received grace. The call is to rise up to be the people of grace, mercy, and of goodness to others. There are enough people to criticize, to condemn, and to judge but very few to love, and to be the agents of grace.

* The challenge, therefore, is to rise above these typical patterns of the world that may not always be easy, fun, or as great as it sounds. Nevertheless, we are called, both as individuals and on a cooperate level to surrender and to lean in to listen to the Spirit as He leads us to be the church that God intends us to be.

The service was followed by a special time of fellowship:

CHURCH’S NEWSLETTER – Sept 2009

Vol. XIII/1

September Pulpit Calendar

All services begin at 9.30 a.m.

06 HOLY COMMUNION SERVICE

Preacher: Mark Syn

13 Preacher: Pastor Kuru

20 Preacher: Pastor Kuru

27 Family Service

Fridays, Sept 11th & 25th at 7 p.m.

In the home of the Sarwans:

E 16 Mahanagar Extension.

Women’s prayer time

Second Sunday 13th

after the service.

Be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect...as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers (1 Peter 3:7).

from the pastor

Dear People,

We’re 12 years old. We started with 110+ in fellowship. In 1997 Operation Mobilization families and singles, who were not attached to any church, attended our services because it was at their base. Whenever any OM teams visited their HQ, they would also attend our services.

In 2001, when we shifted to the home of the Phillips family, the OM teams no longer took the trouble to attend church, and in 2005, when OM started its own services, the OM families started to drop out. Along with a number of people leaving the city (families that relocated to other parts of India, young people who went away to college and careers) our number has dropped to 68.

It’s true we could carry on as we are. But that’s not what we are here for. We need to grow so that we are bringing more people in contact with the Lord our God.

Some who attend our services are less fluent in English. For their benefit we need to go bilingual. Apart from singing songs in English and some in Hindi, we will also need our messages to be translated into Hindustani. (Don’t worry. Messages will be shortened, so that you won’t get bored).

Grace Times of course can’t go bilingual. Unless someone else wants to do it.

In Christ’s love,

Kuru

Sonia, sister of Nalin Phillips, died after battling cancer. Pray for sons Kunal and Nicky, and brothers Rajan, Ajit, Nalin and their families. Pray for Aunt Shireen Revis and her family.

Elsie Thomas (in Dehra Dun) had surgery to remove a fibroid and is recovering.

Vinita Singh has been battling viral fever for a long time. Pixie and Anand, Shobha and mother, Ravi Modwell, Sanjay Massy, Jeba have all recovered from flu. Jürgen had a relapse but is recovering well.

Pooja recovered from a sprained leg, but has been doing well academically.

Cindy and Naomi have both had baby boys and Shwetha is to have her delivery in another 15 days. Prabha and Shobha’s niece Poonam had to have some bed rest, but is doing well now.

Triza Joseph has some serious problems for which she has to undergo long term treatment.

Rev J T Raja started work in a new village. Devotional meetings to take place every Monday evening. The village work is growing. Praise God for what He is accomplishing

Ishaaq is having a baby! Jess is 12 weeks pregnant. Jess has rather high BP. She still has a troublesome and painful ankle.

Birthdays in Sept

04 Shrishti Lugun

21 Arpit Prakash

25 Shireen Revis

27 Neha Eisenberg

Credo

Not what, but Whom, I do believe,
That, in my darkest hour of need,
Hath comfort that no mortal creed
To mortal man may give;—
Not what, but Whom!
For Christ is more than all the creeds,
And His full life of gentle deeds
Shall all the creeds outlive.

Not what I do believe, but Whom!
     Who walks beside me in the gloom?
     Who shares the burden wearisome?
     Who all the dim way doth illume,
And bids me look beyond the tomb
The larger life to live?—
Not what I do believe,
But Whom!
Not what, but Whom!
—John Oxenham