God has knit into the hearts of every mother the tender attention to help those in need, the hurting, and the discouraged. As the writer of the book of Proverbs finishes he lays out 5 unique characteristics of a woman with Godly character.

Pastor Dave Anderson served here at Grace for more than 15 years. Although he, like any shepherd, had moments of difficulty, his overwhelming observation from those years of ministry was a keen awareness of the love of God as displayed though the parishioners here at Grace. However, it was only in his final months that that love became for him a symphony of encouragement, that helped carry him through his battle with cancer.

The role that husbands and wives fulfill within a marriage is modeled after the completed work of God in Christ for the church. As the church submits to Christ, so are wives to submit to their husbands, and as Christ loved the church, so are husbands to love their wives. In the world we live in today there is much confusion over these roles. And unfortunately poor cultural values have invaded the minds of many to bring a false determination of the expression of harmony within a marriage.

The need and application for showing grace to one another is perhaps no more clearly seen than between husbands and wives. The unity required in a marriage is continually under threat from the indwelling of sin, the absence of forgiveness, and a failure of husbands and wives to correctly understand their roles as God has purposed them. Paul addresses this need for unity as we reach chapter 5 of his letter to the Ephesians.

Paul’s exposition to the Ephesians reaches the apex of worship as he offers is prayer for the church to experience God’s love through their shared unity from the power of God’s Grace. His understanding is quite clear, humans need outside help to free them from both the everyday struggles towards unity and the eternal enslavement under sin’s curse of death.

One of the great privileges for those who have had their sins washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ, is sharing the joy of the grace of God with others - in a sense “carrying Christ” into the many spheres of our influence. It really is actually quite a shock that God would include us - with all our many flaws - to be used as His vessels to announce the Kingdom of God.

There is no shortage of differences between individuals today. Unfortunately, these differences too often get controlled by our insecurities and selfish desires to morph them from differences to divisions. The great weapon of the evil one is bringing dissension and division to the body of Christ. We are in an all out war on the battlefront of the image of God’s church from both outside influences and from within.

The world we live in today has a negative influence on how we perceive of God and of God’s love. For the career individual promotion only comes with good performance, and much of human acceptance is contingent on what benefit others can derive from your good works. This is not so with God. God offers His unconditional acceptance to us before we have anything to offer to Him. He gives us Jesus, before we can give Him anything.

God’s grace has been revealed in the coming of Jesus Christ. And this appearing of God’s grace serves as a teacher to us. The real question for the Christ follower is are we learning from this arrival of grace and conforming our lives after the one who has purchased us and cleansed us

We tend to recoil whenever anyone gets into our personal life and tells us how to live or act. Thankfully the scriptures don’t hold back when it comes to offering instruction as to how a Christian ought to conduct his/herself. Paul walks Titus through 5 arenas of human categorization and pulls no punches as he instructs him how to teach the church character and conduct that is in accordance with sound doctrine.