First time hearing prayer in a Bible Church like ours I was taken aback. You can pray not from a book? i had only heard group prayer in the Catholic Church I had gone to sporadically as a kid. So I was like, who are these people who freely talk to God? how do they know what to say? And especially, they must really know God to talk to Him so freely.

And I stuck around, and I became a Christian. Like, a real Christian. And a proud Christian. I looked down on churches that had formalized prayers. After all, I had been in a church with formalized prayers and never once heard the gospel. So I cam to believe that there was a difference between religion - stuffy, formalized, ritualized prayers, and churches that taught that you needed a relationship with God - which meant spontaneous, informal, personal prayers. And I hated recited religion-y prayers.

There was probably a lot of factors in my mindset changing a bit. Probably maturity helped. A lot. In many areas. But I really had a bit of a mindset change on Japan. Let me tell you about our church in Japan. The recited literacy was the only way to participate in the service. Gave me a language to pray.

That’s exactly what recited prayers are supposed to do - give us a language to pray, to literally teach us to pray. Not to become ritualistic, but to teach us how to do something that to be honest, many of us are not good at. How do we speak to God?

Comment

While the reformation impacted the entirety of life and culture, the question that emerged and energized the movement was theological - how can man be right with God? This question through Europe into upheaval and re-formed Church and State, but the answers that emerged from the upheaval point us back to the firmest of foundations, the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reformation identified 5 core truths, called the five solas of the reformation, because they each contain the latin word meaning “alone”: sola gratia, by grace alone; sola fide, through faith alone; solus Christus, in Christ alone; sola scriptura, on the authority of scripture alone, soli Deo gloria, to the glory of God alone.

Ours is also a time of massive social, religious and political upheaval. So many people sense this, we know society is fracturing and we see it in ourselves as well. Yet the secular answers in our age seem powerless to stop the upheaval.

This fall, many churches are joining together to point us back to the only truths that provide a lasting and sure foundation. Over the next five weeks we are going to be returning to the 5 truths that the reformation rediscovered. 5 Truths to Hold you Firm in an age of upheaval.

Comment

Sermon

Yours is the Kingdom

To God's Glory Alone