Free to Serve

"I'm a Sinner Saved" -- Gerry Chatham

A few weeks ago, one of our elders at MVBC was diagnosed with Leukemia. He immediately went on a round of chemotherapy in the hospital, and now visits a clinic each day for several hours for treatment. In a few days he will get the results of a test to see if he is improving or if the cancer is having its way.

Gerry is 73 years old. He grew up in Georgia, played baseball at Georgia Tech before majoring in journalism at Georgia State. After working as a reporter for what was then the Atlanta Journal newspaper, Gerry spent most of his life in publishing.

He married Carolyn in 1962 and they are getting ready to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Gerry came to Christ as a young man, and has been a member of Mount Vernon since 1999. In my brief time here, he has been a real encouragement. He is hungry to know the Word better, has organized evangelistic bible studies, and poured himself into dozens of boys through children's basketball. He has labored to see relationships built between younger and older members in the body. He is a faithful shepherd, one of our first elders.

At least for now, Gerry can't come to church--too many people carrying too many infections for his weakened immune system to tolerate. So at our last Church in Conference (a members' meeting) we decided to show a brief recording. In the following, three-minute video, Gerry says how he's doing, talks about the sufficiency of God's grace through this trial, the beauty of marriage, and the call for believers to rejoice in suffering. After all, as he put it, "I'm a sinner saved."

Gerry Chatham Interview from Mount Vernon Baptist Church on Vimeo.

 

 

Sports, Sin, and Sanctification

Is it possible that, in some small way, our passion for sports is also a means of our sanctification? This must be the case. Enjoy March Madness. Root. Spend time with family and friends. Talk during the games, build relationships. Use the whole "event" as an opportunity to share life together--much the way friends build bonds while shooting a round of golf. 

Just don't let sports be your first love. Make sure your kids know you love Jesus more than your team. Make sure they know you love the body of Christ, the church, more than you love those players. And think twice before becoming a Portland Trailblazers fan. Seriously.

"Courageous Confidence in God"

The church that I am privileged to serve has a number of elderly saints. It is tempting in a church like this to think that death is something that comes upon the old. Though that is certainly true, we must all be prepared to die, and die well at that.

None of us is ready for death naturally. Death is unnatural and our flesh rejects it. God's Word and Spirit must do a supernatural work in our hearts to prepare us for death, whether it take place when we are 90 or 19.

Nancy Guthrie has edited a nice volume of essays on the topic of death. O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God. Published last year, the book includes contributions from the past, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, B.B. Warfield, Abraham Kuyper, Jonathan Edwards and the present, J.I. Packer, Michael Horton, Randy Alcorn, Timothy Keller.

Here's a taste from Keller, "Rubbing Hope into the Reality of Death":

Our future is not that we will live in an ethereal, immaterial world. You're not going to float around in the kingdom of God. You're going to eat; you're going to love. You're going to sing because you'll have vocal chords! In realms and degrees of joy, satisfaction, and power that you cannot now imagine, you're going to eat and drink with the Son of Man. On that day we're going to see each other and say, "I always knew you could be like this. I saw glimpses of it, flashes of it, and now, look at you!" You're going to get the life you always wanted. This is only the real defeat of death.

So the Christian hope, in distinction from the religions and cultures that offer you an impersonal future, gives you a world of love. In distinction from religions that give you an ethereal, immaterial future, the Christian hope gives you the life you've always wanted. Lastly, while other religions and cultures talk about an afterlife, none gives you the assurance of it. 

Eliot Mooney's Short Life

An amazing reminder that life is a gift from God.

HT: Justin Taylor

99 Balloons from Igniter Media on Vimeo.