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Showing posts from September, 2011

Honoring a True Friend and Partner

Today I recieved the heartbreaking news that one of WME's longtime partnering Pastors has passed away. Brother Pearl Cornett was Pastor at the Cave Hill Church for many years. He and his wonderful wife, Sister Elaine Cornett, have been such a rich encouragement to myself and all the work of World Missions and Evangelism for over 10 years. And the people of the church and the new Pastor who has taken the leadership this last year or so, Pastor Doug Norman, are following in the pathway of advancing the Kingdom of God that has been so faithfully pioneered by Pastor Pearl. The partnership between Cave Hill and WME began the very first year that WME began its church planting ministries, the year 2000. That year WME helped start the very first CTC training center for church planting in India and the result was 12 new churches within about a year. That very first year, Pastor Pearl Cornett led Cave Hill Church to partner with WME and they have been a powerful help to the process of bringi

Looking Forward

Randy and Linda Travis have just flown back to Honduras. They have been in the United States since early May and are now back in the nation that they love. Keith and Juanita Travis are also back there after having to make a special trip to Mexico. Please pray for these 2 couples who serve as the strategy coordinator team for the Honduras Church Planting Movement project. They will be traveling across the country of Honduras a great deal in this week, in order to do some important work for WME and the CPM project. Pray for : 1. Traveling Mercies and Protection and Health for them as they drive many miles. 2. Special favor with officials concerning a Visa issue. They will be at the Embassy on Monday. 3. Wisdom and the right Open doors as they travel to several locations in behalf of the project. We are doing some research to benefit the forward movement of this work in the next several years. 4. Arrangements for a CPM training of a new possible catalytic partnering group in the next m

Simple Obedience 5: Practical questions

Here are some questions that we can ask of ourselves to check how we are practicing Simple Obedience. Remember the Great Commandments and Great Commission can be summarized as : Love God, Love People, Make Disciples. But if we unpack the commands themselves from Matthew 22 and Matthew 28 we can examine our own responses to these commands. LOVE GOD 1. Am I loving God with all my heart? Am I truly "Hearing" the Word of God and allowing it to sink down into the center of my being? 2. Am I loving God with all my soul? Am I truly "Understanding" the Word of God and allowing it to bear fruit in my thinking to the level of understanding what obedience will look like? Is it so deep in me that even persecution or ridicule cannot make me forsake God and His Word? 3. Am I loving god with all my mind? Am I moving from merely understanding to "Obeying" God? (In a conversation with my wife I came to understand that the Mind leads to speaking and acting....actual obedien

Simple Obedience 4: Why the Great Commission sums up the New Testament

We know that the 2 great commandments sum up the whole Old Testament simply because Jesus said so (Matthew 22:40). So no argument is necessary to establish this, we simply take Christ's word for it. But I am also setting forth the theory that the Great Commission summarizes the New Testament, and since as far as I know, this is not directly stated in Scripture, I need to take 1 blog to make the case. Here is why I believe this. Each section of the Great Commission can be linked to some part of the New Testament....the following illustrates this. Matthew 22: 18-20 Verse 18:And Jesus came and spoke to them saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" This verse summarizes the 4 Gospels because this establishes the fact that the commission is from Jesus the God/Man whose eternal existence, Deity, virgin birth, perfect life, miraculous ministry, atoning death, and glorious resurrection have just been described previous to this verse. It is because of Hi

Simple Obedience: Part 3

We are thinking about the concept of Simple obedience, the idea that the Word of God summarizes God's obedience requirements for His people in 3 commands that we know as the Great Commandments and the Great Commission. Let me quickly say here that I am not saying that these 3 commands are taught in scripture as the method of personal salvation. We are saved, not by our obedience to any commands....these or any others, but rather by receiving by true faith the gift of eternal life from Jesus Christ our Lord, based on His perfect obedience and His perfect sacrificial death on the cross and His resurrection. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." So it is by Faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the Cross, and in full assurance that God has raised Him from the dead (Rom. 10:9-10) that we are saved. Our works or for that matter and by exten

Simple Obedience Part 2

In Part One, we looked at the 2 great commandments and the great commission and summed them up as: Love God, Love People, and Make Disciples. We made the point that from what Jesus said in both cases (you can read it all in Matthew 22:34-40 and Matthew 28: 18-20) it seems that the first 2 summarize the fulfilment of the Old Testament and that the 3rd sums up the New Testament. The most simple way that the requirements of obedience, that are expected of God's people in our present day, can be listed is : Love God, Love People, and Make Disciples. In coming blogposts , I plan to share some more thoughts about why this is so and ask some practical questions on how we can use this simple idea in our lives, but in this short posting, I just want to make 1 point. The point is: 1 comes before 2 and 2 comes before 3. Or to say it a different way, you can't really make disciples of people for the Lord if you don't love those people.....and you can't love those or any