NEW YEAR 2016

Happy New Year 2016!

2016 - A YEAR OF HOPE!                                   R. D. Ice

      Christians are people of hope!  2015 was a year of severe change in many things.  Loved ones went home to stand before the Throne of God.  Terrorists struck.  We are a nation at war.  Things will never be the same.

      God is still on His Throne!  Jesus is the same - yesterday, today, and forever!

Lord, I need Your eyes to see,

give me a living faith.

I need Your heart of love,

 a love to withstand any test.

I need Your Holy Spirit, breathing life,

giving to me and to all Your church

hope and joy and Christian love,

that all the world may know

we are Christians as they see Christ in us.

May we the redeemed show that we are redeemed

by a warm and generous heart and

unfailing optimism that rises from

that everlasting spring of joyful hope

that is Your Holy Spirit, the Breath

Who blows where He will, in gusts

and sudden winds or that light touch

with which You call us to follow You.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST               R.D.Ice

      Ron Clayton writes about the Churches of Christ in India where he and Karen have worked as missionaries.  He makes an important point.  “But there is a false perception on the part of many American Christians - that our brethren in other countries are ignorant of the Scriptures, and because of this somehow are ‘2nd class citizens’ in the Kingdom of God.  The truth is, most of our Indian brethren are serious students of the Bible, eager to learn and loyal to the Truth. . . Even those who are illiterate know the Scriptures better than you might imagine.  One such group of women quoted the entire book of Galatians to Sister Ann Scott - and each could do it!  Christianity is a worldwide religion; the church is stronger numerically in India than in any nation on earth, and growing in the knowledge of God’s Word, spiritually and commitment to Christ.  Praise God for these brethren.”

The LORD’s Church in 2016                                    R.D.Ice

      “A ‘Brotherhood’ is a group of members in the Lord’s Church who rally around a specific set of beliefs and scruples.  The Lord’s One Church contains every saved person (2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Cor. 12:13).”

      In 1974 one wrote of the future he saw for his “Brotherhood.”  “We shall have, therefore, a period of greater freedom in the life of the Church and of her individual members.  It will be a period of fewer legal obligations and fewer interior restraints.  Formal discipline will be reduced; all arbitrary intolerance and all absolutism will be abolished.  Positive law will be simplified, and the exercise of authority will be moderated.  There will be promoted the sense of that Christian freedom which pervaded the first generation of Christians.”

      He adds: “All (local) churches were once a new church... Perhaps it is time for us to realize that as long as we debate institutions and structures, and not the mystery of the Church in her depths, we are by-passing the real issue.”

      The Holy Spirit leads us through the Written Word, to:

      1. See Creation wracked with the birth pangs of the great Kingdom of God.  Romans 8:18-28.

      2. Feel the Presence of the Risen Christ.  Rev. 1:4-8.

      3. Know that the Gospel of Christ Jesus - Crucified, Risen, Coming Again - is the power of life.  1 John 4:1-21.

      4. Through the Church bear witness to God the Trinity - Father-Son-Spirit.  1 Timothy 3:16; Matt. 28:18-20; Luke 9:28-36.

      5. Our mission is a “Pentecost” as we speak the Gospel of Christ to everyman in their own languages.  Acts 2:7-12.

      6. Our worship is both a memorial of Christ-on-the-Cross and an anticipation of Christ Coming Again.

      7. We - the Church - are servants of the God Most High.  See Acts 4:24-31; Rev. 6:9-11; 7:9-17.  Note what Jesus said in Luke 22:24-30; and compare 1 Peter 5:1-11.