Grace & Peace PGH

“Preaching is a living process involving God, the preacher, and the congregation...”

“Jesus alone can satisfy the heart. In a society which has experimented to the point of satiation with every form of material, physical and spiritual palliative to fill the inner emptiness of its heart, Jesus’ invitation comes with wonderful relevance - He who comes to me will never go hungry... will never be thirsty.”

“What we believe is not a matter of intellectualizing salvation but rather a matter of knowing what to love, knowing to whom we pledge allegiance, and knowing what is at stake for us as people... In reciting it each week, we rehearse the skeletal structure of the story in which we find our identity. It’s cadences become a part of who we are, and they function as rival cadences, sometimes doing battle in our imagination with the cadences of other pledges that would ask for our allegiance and loyalty.”

“He who sings prays twice.” – St. Augustine

“The host of the worship service is divine. We do not invite him to be present. He invites us to ‘come before him’ (Ps 100:2). God calls us from all other preoccupations to join the people he has redeemed in recognition, praise, and service of his omnipresent glory. Because the Call to worship is from God, we are reminded that he always initiates; we respond. This is a profound truth, not only for our salvation but also for our worship of the One who saves us.”

“It is possible that people can refuse to believe [the Bible’s] testimony, functioning as if Jesus’ tomb has a No Vacancy sign hanging outside it. It is also possible that we verbally affirm the resurrection and still fail to be changed by it. The Spirit’s work is essential. But when he works... the resurrection radically transforms our lives. The resurrection, the key to understanding the biblical story, becomes the key to our story as well, the key to a new way of understanding and living in the world.”

“They forgot their confident assertions made a few hours before. They forgot that they had declared their willingness to die with their Master. They forgot everything but the danger that stared them in the face. The fear of death overcame them. They ‘forsook him, and fled.’”

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. —James 4:17

"Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts