Showing results by narrator "David K Martin" in All Categories

This devotional walks listeners through the path of God’s salvation, from eternity past, through life and death, and into eternity future. The book explores rich, substantive theology, making it accessible and clear without dumbing it down, and includes applications. The stages of the Ordo Salutis are spread across 30 daily devotionals. Life in our world can include uncertainty, anxiety, and tragedy. In this context, the theological richness and profundity of God’s salvation plan offers the believer confidence, comfort, clarity, and perspective, to God’s greater glory.

The Gospel is primarily about God. Part of the glory of the New Testament is that it explains the Gospel to us in terms of the glorious work of the three persons of the Trinity. Yet many can miss the rich Trinitarian backdrop of the New Testament because they are not looking for it. Knowing the Trinity shows that knowing God is knowing him as Triune and that to know him is to love him. Each section leads listeners to meditate on God’s work and how they relate to him in light of passages of Scripture that appeal to all three divine persons.

Christians have some navigating to do. The culture we live in hates the message we cherish. We know the gospel we share is offensive, but sometimes we make it more offensive by our behavior. Is there a way to share an offensive message to an offended culture while not being gratuitously offensive? Blake Long challenges evangelicals: Let the gospel do the offending, not us. The gospel is offensive enough. Our attitude - our smugness - shouldn't make the gospel harder to believe. Long helps us find the problem and points us to the solution: Jesus Christ.

In his spiritual autobiography, Thomas Scott (1747-1821) describes entering ministry in the Church of England under false pretenses. Through the unexpected friendship of John Newton (author of Amazing Grace) Scott becomes convicted of his sin and need for God's grace. As had John Wesley, Scott considers himself "snatched...as a brand from the burning".

Many people will agree that we are living in a world in which many people seem to be experiencing an identity crisis. To complicate the matter, this identity crisis has found its way into the Lord’s Church. The question must be asked, “What does it mean to be and live as a Christian?” At the center of our Christian experience, we discover that our union with the crucified and risen Jesus shapes our identity and our spiritual formation.

If you work in Christian ministry, it’s likely that at some point in your career, God will call you from one church to another. Do you know how to make this transition effectively? Moving can be scary and full of questions: Where do I start the job search process? Which people do I talk with, and what do I send to them? How do I know if my family and I will fit in at a new church? And how do I tell people I’m leaving?

Ordination is the affirmation of God’s call to pastoral ministry. It is also the verification of theological and moral fitness for ministry. The full process of ordination in the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) lasts several years. The final step involves an extensive oral exam and writing a dense paper organized around the EFCA’s statement of faith. In the summer of 2019, the EFCA broadened its statement of faith to include all orthodox views of the glorious return of Christ. Benjamin Vrbicek is the first pastor who holds an amillennial view of the return of Christ.