The Excellent Way!: married

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Thursday, February 15, 2018

Betrothed to Christ

Listen and learn about the 7 elements in the 3 phases of the Jewish wedding tradition that point us inescapably to the great truths of God’s love for us. Do you realize that He is calling you today and wooing your heart to surrender to Him? He wants us to believe on Him, to enter into covenant with Him, to receive the gift and promise and purifying fire of His Holy Spirit, and to wait patiently and expectantly for His promised return when He will carry us away! Are you His? Are you betrothed to Christ?

Friday, February 26, 2016

CHERISHED

Listen as Pastor Rick shares with us a "valentine" from the Lord.

"Justice demanded a cross for our crimes. Love demanded a Savior. And so, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is the glorious message of the Gospel that I never want to escape! I a wretched wicked sinner – with all the potential evil of history locked up in my heart just waiting to escape; I who wanted God less than I wanted my sins; I who was doomed for Hell and deserved it; I was whom He loved. And because He loved me, He purposed that I would not go to Hell if He could help it. And so, while I stood condemned, a cross was erected on Calvary from which dangled the lifeless body of God. And the wrath of God was poured upon Himself instead of me. Justice was served. Love was lived. And the opportunity to be cherished was offered…to me.

He sealed the transaction with His resurrection and with it offered an eternal marriage proposal to mankind. Like the prophet Hosea of old, he called us from our whoring in sin to be cherished in His hands. Rather than leave us to our justly deserved doom in the darkness he called us into the kingdom of light and promised to always be at our side in this life and the next. He does not need us – but He WANTS us."

Monday, July 29, 2013

Called to the Feast!

Listen as Pastor Rick uses last week's message as a springboard for this week's sermon and invites us to feast on the Word and be filled with His fullness: a call that was given in the past, applies in the present, and gives hope for the future!

Favorite Quotes!

"I stand vigilantly on the precipice of eternity speaking to people who this week could go over the edge whether they are ready to or not."
- John Piper

Careless seems the great Avenger;
History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness
'Twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,--
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
- James Russell Lowell

"Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell."
- C. T. Studd

"I preached as never sure to preach again and as a dying man to dying men."
- Richard Baxter

"Would ministers preach for eternity! They would then act the part of true Christian orators, and not only calmly and coolly inform the understanding, but, by persuasive, pathetic address, endeavor to move the affections and warm the heart."
- George Whitefield

"I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn."
- John Wesley

"It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher"
- George Whitefield

"We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results."
- R.A. Torrey

"Nothing is more needed among preachers today than that we should have the courage to shake ourselves free from the thousand and one trivialities in which we are asked to waste our time and strength, and resolutely return to the apostolic ideal which made necessary the office of the diaconate. We must resolve that we will continue stedfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the Word."
- G. Campbell Morgan

"The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. . .
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important thing to be prepared -- the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon...It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do not study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the right way to show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect -- not that we know too much, but that we do not meditate on God and his word and watch and fast and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching. . . "
- E.M. Bounds

"God is looking for broken men who have judged themselves in the light of the cross of Christ. When He wants anything done, He takes up men who have come to the end of themselves, whose confidence is not in themselves, but in God."
- H.A. Ironside

"Science is a window through which we may view the spectacular and glimpse the hand of God."
- Rick Alexander

"Never forget: things are not as they seem to have always been nor will they remain always as they are." - Rick Alexander

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