Month: October 2009

Upcoming Teachings

Here’s what is planned, if the Lord wills, for my upcoming Bible teachings:
Thursday night’s study at the home fellowship in Cluj: Study through Galatians continues with chapter 3 verses 1-14 “Let the Spirit finish what He started”
Sunday am at the worship service, the study through Luke continues in part of chapter 14 on “The Three Best Reasons to Reject Christ–And Why None of Them is Good Enough”
Then next Sunday on a one-weekend visit to the US, preaching at Calvary Chapel Garland TX–(10am Sunday Nov. 1 if you’re a Texan and want to come) on Matthew 6:5-13 — “Repairing Your Prayer Life.”

Are tracts worth it?

“Had you asked me when I graduated from seminary how many you met who came to Christ through a tract, I would have said none. Since then, I’ve met so many people who came to Christ through reading a tract I hand them out at every opportunity. I try to never be without one.” –Evangelist Larry Moyer of EvanTell, from his blog

How I Met God

When I was in 1st grade, I used to like watching cartoons after school. One day I saw one with a highly accident-prone cat who got himself into the strangest mishaps by chasing a clever mouse, who kept himself just out of reach. Each time the cat was taunted into chasing the mouse, he was led into dangerous territory and violently killed, at least temporarily. When he died, two elevators appeared side by side. One went up to heaven with an angel, the other down with the devil to the fiery dungeon. As the cat arrived at the elevators, he was informed that since he’d been bad in mistreating the mouse, the DOWN elevator was the one for him. He pleaded for another chance to go back and try again to be good enough for heaven, and his request was granted.
I’d been taught the truth in church and at home by my parents, so I said to my mom, who was watching with me, “That’s not right, is it? You can’t be good enough to get to heaven, right?” That night my parents fully explained to me how Jesus had come to die on the cross to pay the full price for what I owed God. A few days or so later, I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and He forgave all my sins so that I could go to heaven when I die. Since then, I’ve found that God loves me more than I can understand. He has been a wise Guide, a reliable Source of strength, and a faithful Provider of unlimited comfort in every situation I’ve ever faced.
Jesus will do the same for you!
All you have to do is admit to Him that you have done bad things that anger God and that you can’t earn heaven. Then you ask for His forgiveness because of your belief that His death on the cross was for you. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” the Bible says. (1 John 1:9)
We can’t rely on ourselves or on trying to be “good enough” to get to heaven. We must just put our faith in Him that He was punished in our place so the bad things we’ve done will be erased by God.
If you do that, believing that Jesus rose again from the dead, you can be absolutely sure that Jesus will take you, just as you are, and take away the bad things you’ve done that anger God and save you from God’s anger when you die. The Bible in Romans 5:9 gives you that guarantee: “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!”
Will you let Jesus save you now?
Will you accept Jesus’ free gift of eternal life and reward in heaven?
Heaven is a place I want you to go to with me! It’s a place where you’ll never be lonely again. You’ll never be angry again. You’ll never be bored again. You’ll never be hurting or feel left out again.
And you can get your ticket there from Jesus right now, because God will hear you pray asking Him to save you. “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” says Romans 10:13.
Here’s what you need to say to the Lord in prayer right now to be saved (the prayer itself doesn’t make you right with God, but believing in your heart what the prayer below says DOES):
“God, I admit I have done bad things that you didn’t want me to do, and I understand that Your word in the Bible says because of this, I don’t deserve to go to heaven when I die. Nothing I could ever do or give could erase my sins and get me to heaven. But Your word promises that if I believe Jesus died to be punished instead of me for what I’ve done wrong, and rose from the dead, I will become Your child and be loved by You forever. I ask You now to forgive what I’ve done because of the innocent blood Jesus shed on the cross. Please save me by erasing the bad things I’ve done from Your record of my life. Right now, I accept Jesus as my own personal Saviour. Thank You for Your guarantee that because I am now Your child, I will live in heaven with You forever!”

Meriti Toata Slava Chords

Meriti Toata Slava pianochords
If you’d like to use this song in your own worship services, here are the chords for it. (See the video to hear the song and the post below for the lyrics in English and Romanian)

New worship song/our church’s team

For those who would like to see our church’s worship service, here is a clip from Sunday Sept 27’s service. The church is singing a brand new worship song written the week before by Ajay Torres, who ministered here with us for three weeks last month. The words in Romanian and English for the song, “Meriti Toata Slava” (You Deserve All the Glory), are printed below so that English speakers can know what is being sung.

Lyrics in English:
I want to give You my praise
I want to give all my worship to You
I want to give my whole life to You
For You gave Your life for me

You deserve all the glory
All honor belongs to You
All the world can know my love
I lift up my hands to You

Lyrics in Romanian
Vreau să-Ți dau lauda mea
Vreau să mă-nchin numai Ție
Vreau toată viața mea să Ți-o dau
Căci Tu mi-ai dat-o pe-a Ta

Tu mi-ai dat-o pe-a Ta
Meriți toată slava
Cinstea toată e-a Ta
Toți pot vedea iubirea mea
Mâinile Ție le ridic

Turn from your self-righteousness to Christ alone

You were not saved by the good work of “turning from your sins,” so don’t lay that burden at the feet of lost people to whom you are preaching Christ. If you are saved, it was by God’s grace alone which you received by faith alone in Christ alone. Faith in Him and His finished work on your behalf is the only way you could have received Him, and if you trusted your works and your efforts to “turn from sin,” you failed to receive Him and therefore do not have Him.
“Straighten up and get your life right and clean, and then come to God to receive His favor” is how a muslim pleases Allah. It’s how an unconverted Jew pleases his rabbi. It’s how a Buddhist seeks to come to peace with the universe. But it is not how a child of the true and living God becomes pleasing to Him.
Tonight’s Bible study will look at Galatians 2, and at how when under pressure, even those like Peter and Barnabas who have a record of standing for the pure gospel message can be frightened into compromising the purity of that message to be pleasing to legalists and “false brethren” who seek to bring men, not to Christ, but into bondage to themselves.
In evangelical churches today, it looks like this: A pastor preaching the gospel for years grows weary of the fact that some profess faith in Christ but show no outward signs of change. His weariness, combined with the critics of his teaching, who say “Your converts aren’t saved because they live like the world,” make him try to alter the message. He starts to preach Christ plus repentance, defining repentance as changed behavior, being good instead of bad now. This pastor is trying to bring about the external result of good works by means of human effort, no longer trusting the Spirit of God to bring about those changes of behavior He works out in all who put their faith in Christ.
But you can’t perfect the people of your congregation through demanding that they turn from their sins, which is something no unregenerated man could ever dream of doing.
Even though we preach and don’t always like what we see in people’s response, we still have to keep the message the same. That Christ alone can save, and that man is irreparably corrupt in heart and nature apart from a new birth that comes about only by faith and never by actions or a determination of the human will.
Repentance unto salvation involves not making oneself good to earn God’s favor, but admitting to one’s hopeless state as a sinner in need of mercy, and coming to the throne of grace to receive such by asking for it in faith in the One who lived a perfect life in our place and died a sacrificial death in our place on the cross. When someone has done this, faith and repentance are present, and Christ is acknowledged by this repentant one as his only hope as Savior and Lord.
Lord-willing, a recording of the study will be posted on this blog afterward, and you’re invited to listen to it online, if you’re not in Cluj and able to attend the discussion in person.