1 Peter 4:8-11

We live in a world starved for community. As believers we often take for granted the extraordinary grace that God has provided in and through Christian community - our fellowship. Like vital signs that indicate a healthy body, love, hospitality, and selfless service are indicators of a body that manifests and witnesses grace to one another and a watching world. In the end, the goal of Christian Community is to love, embrace, and serve one another all to the glory of God.

1 Peter 4:8-11

We can easily take for granted the power the Christian community around us helps us persevere and flourish along the path of sanctification. As we experience the love of Christ through mutual forgiveness, the inclusion of Christ through intentional hospitality, and the hands of Christ in self-sacrificial service we are transformed. The ordinary means of grace in Christian community will create an immovable and faithful church with a beautiful apologetic to the world.

In our continuing series ‘The Ordinary Path to Extraordinary Grace’ we discover a beautiful purpose of the local church; The Purpose of Discipleship.  The church is not a building with a street address but rather the group of people who meet together to worship, learn, love and serve.  All the ordinances and practices within the local church are part of the discipleship process.  We are discipled so that we can disciple others.

Ephesians 4:11-16

The church is designed to be a body made up of many members who build one another up into maturity and the fullness of Christ. We are also called to imitate others who are following Christ and disciple others in such a way that they also can disciple others.

Ephesians 4:11-16

The primary context for discipleship is the local church. It is the primary place that God desires to shape and form His people more and more into the image of His Son Jesus. For this reason, the local church is an ordinary yet extraordinary means of grace.

Colossians 3:15-17 lists 3 different ways that God pours out his grace upon followers of Christ as the church gathers corporately. Each one of these is an opportunity for thankfulness and a means of grace that should point us closer to Christ.

Colossians 3:15-17

When we consider all the means of grace Jesus has given to His Church, corporate worship may be the most significant. Through it, we participate together in every other means of grace as the gathered body of Christ. As a result, our spiritual health is deeply shaped by how fully or how little we engage in corporate worship.

Colossians 3:15-17

The church gathering is the place where God has determined to regularly and routinely meets His people through the ordinary means of grace of preaching, the ordinances, singing, prayer, and Christian fellowship. Not only is God honoured when we gather to worship Him, our souls desperately need the weekly rhythm of corporate worship and He gladly nourishes our souls with His grace.

2 Timothy 4:1-5

Preaching the Word of the Living God is the pinnacle of the means of grace because it is through God’s Word that Christ is most visibly displayed to the Church. In biblical preaching, a congregation encounters the living Christ and what glorious grace that is! We find in Scripture both the explanation of what true preaching is and the effects that faithful preaching produces as the Holy Spirit mediates God’s grace to us. It is imperative that we take the charge of gospel preaching seriously in our churches because only the Word can give spiritual life to the hearer. God graciously uses the preached Word to call the lost and grow the found. It is grace that saves and grace that sanctifies. This grace comes to us as we hear and receive the Word by faith.

2 Timothy 4:1-5

Of all the means of grace, preaching may be the most mundane. Who likes to sit for 40 minutes and listen to someone talk? Today, explore why God values preaching so much, and how you can experience the transformative glory of Jesus through the preaching of Scripture.