Well, sunday saw the celebration of our 5 years as a church together.  The DVD we showed reflecting back on those 5years, and God’s grace and faithfulness towards us, is being converted to a youtube format and will be posted on the blog as soon as it is ready.

But sunday also saw the beginning of our next 5years!!  And the start of our latest mini-series “Each One Reach One”. 

Take It Home Sheets will be available for download from tomorrow, but for now here’s the quotes that were used in the message.  I trust they serves a s a reminder and provocation. 

J.I. Packer:

“[We were dead]. ‘Dead’ evidently signifies total unresponsiveness to God, total unawareness of his love, and total lack of the life he gives: no metaphor for spiritual inability and destitution could be stronger.”

Jerry Bridges:

“We contribute nothing to our own salvation other than the sin God so graciously forgives.”

Colin Kruse:

“The heart of the gospel is Christ crucified as Lord.  The great plan of salvation…is God’s, and it is [he] who through Christ reconciled us to himself.  Wherever the language of reconciliation is found in the New Testament, God is always the subject of the reconciling activity.”

J.I. Packer:

“While we must remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it is God who saves.  It is God who brings men and women under the sound of the gospel, and it is God who brings them to faith in Christ.  Our evangelistic work is the instrument that he uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not the instrument: it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument.  We must not at any stage forget that.”

John Stott:

“To evangelise is to spread the good news that Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the scriptures, and as the reigning Lord he now offers to all the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe.”

Charles Spurgeon:

“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies, and if they will perish let them perish with our arms about their knees imploring them to stay.  If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”

Kenneth Maresco:

“What we are involved in here is far more than a religious club.  It is not just simply about men and women praying a prayer.  Our assignment is far more significant than that.  It’s participating in God’s plan of redemption.  His plan to reach down onto this earth, and save rebellious sinners, to touch their lives, to transform them completely, so they can know the one who made them and the purpose for which they were made.  That’s our task, we have the privilege of going in his name and proclaiming his message to a lost, rebellious, dieing, sin-filled world.”

Charles Spurgeon:

“If you are eager for real joy, such as you may think over and sleep upon, I am persuaded that no joy of growing wealthy, no joy of increasing knowledge, no joy of influence over your fellow creatures, no joy of any other sort can ever be compared with the joy of saving a soul from death and helping to restore our lost brethren to our great Father’s house.”