Fresh Bread from the Pastor's Pen

In this blog post, Pastor Brandon explores the profound impact of persistent and effective prayer, illustrated by a story from the China Inland Mission. It delves into the biblical principles of righteous prayer, emphasizing the need for humility and alignment with God's will, as taught in James 5:16-18 and Matthew 6:5-8.

This blog post explores the power of prayer during life's trials, drawing from the examples of John Flavel and the Apostle Paul. It encourages readers to develop a prayer life aligned with God's will, trusting in His sovereignty even when facing overwhelming challenges.

This post reflects on how God uses difficulties to deepen our prayer lives, highlighting insights from the book of James and the example of Isaiah's simple, heartfelt prayer. It invites readers to embrace the trials that drive them to depend on God in prayer, preparing their hearts for a deeper understanding of prayer through Jesus' teachings.

Christians cannot use ignorance as their reason for not acting upon the truth. God will hold them accountable for their access to the truth and will hold pastors responsible for teaching biblical truth. Expository preaching gives God's people a weekly opportunity to hear the Scriptures read and explained so they will grow in their longing for the Word and their walk with Christ. In short, they will grow in knowledge and understanding, thus, fulfilling God's requirement of His teachers and His people.

We can define an expository sermon as text driven preaching where the point of the sermon and its outline are derived from the correct interpretation of the text of Scripture. The preacher arrives at the interpretation through careful exegesis using the literal, historical, grammatical method. In the act of preaching, the preacher carefully explains the God-intended meaning of the text giving its modern implications.

As our families and churches face significant headwinds in this culture, many Christians don’t know the answers to what they see in the culture because they have lost confidence in God’s word and don’t believe in its power to change our families and churches. In this post, Pastor Brandon shows the power of Expository Preaching to fortify our families and churches against this culture.

God's people long for challenging and life-changing preaching, even if they don't fully know it. Yet, most cultural Christians would request a topical sermon packaged in a bite-sized, easily digestible form. In other words, they want a magic pill. In this post, Pastor Brandon explains why expository preaching benefits God's people.

Christians must know that God has given us everything we need, starting with eternal life. This incredible truth ought to be enough to cause us to praise Him and give thanks to Him in all we do!

We all can struggle with knowing what to do in life. Some of our youth here struggle to understand what college to attend, whether to attend college, go into the military, or work in a trade. In life, it's okay to struggle to get on the right path, especially when you're young. Looking back on my life, I struggled to find the right direction. Yet each move was ordained by God, who guided our family. I'm sure if you look at your life, you can see many of the same things.

As we move forward, there will be continued pressure for Grace Bible Church to change with the times. This pressure originates from our surrounding culture, but there is more than a subtle push to change from within the church. On the one hand, we understand that change in the church is like the seasons. Our ministry is in a constant transition, with people coming and going. On the other hand, we know that not all change is biblical. Therefore, how are we to evaluate our current path and direction as a church? How are we to assess each ministry in the church? These questions underscore our need for a biblical Philosophy of Ministry (POM).