NewsDay Tuesday: October 31st edition

Yes, it is Halloween, but do you know the other significant event in history that occurred this day? It’s Reformation Day. This is the day that Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on Town Church in Wittenburg. Luther posted these in Latin to spur an academic discussion, not begin a reformation, but the rest, as you say, is history. The first thesis is so compelling and strong…we need to hear it every day of our lives. It is this:

1 Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

I hope you spend some time today thinking of God’s grace in your life. Here are some quotes about the reformation.

“… nothing is more fundamental in the doctrine of the Reformers than the complete inability of man and his absolute need of divine grace;” and against nothing do the Reformers set their faces more firmly than the ascription to man of native power to good. To Luther, Pelagianism was the heresy of heresies, from the religious point of view equivalent to unbelief, from the ethical point of view to mere egotism. It was “for him the comprehensive term for all that which he particularly wishes to assault in the Catholic Church.” His treatise De Servo Arbitrio written against Erasmus’ Pelagianising exaltation of human ability was esteemed by him the only one of his books, except the Catechism, in which he could find nothing to correct.” -B.B. Warfield

Dr. Luther, if I believed like you, I would do anything I please.
Luther: Exactly. And as a child of Christ . . . what pleases you?

Dr. Luther, what about works of penance?
Luther: What is it about your own miserable works and doings that you think you could please God more than the sacrifice of His own Son?

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Announcements

1. Flag Football game! – Oak Mountain has challenged us for a flag football game coming up. It is now scheduled for this Sunday Nov. 5th. Last I checked we have two games (one of these is with Briarwood as well). Plan to be there after church (before 1 p.m.). We’ll need all the help we can get as well some athletic ladies (Staci, Hannah, Dawn, Fox, the Dilling twins! Etc.) Since they did the challenging and have the field, we’re subject to their rules. It should not matter, night or day, sunshine or rain. We WILL be Victorious! Vance Waldron is setting it all up. Please let us know if you plan to show off your skills.

2. Pumpkin Carve Tonight!!! – Walker Renneker is hosting us tonight. “Last Great Pumpkin Carve” @ the Barn
Tuesday night 7:30 – Come with your pumpkin’s carved and $5 for the prize pot.

Directions from Downtown Birmingham
Take US-280 East to first exit past I-459
Exit off 280 onto Colonnade Drive (Colonnade will be on the left – Cracker Barrel etc.)

Take a right @ light – this is Colonnade Parkway and will become Blue Lake Drive (Blue Lake will be on your right) go appx 1-1.5miles

3. Night of Bonfire Vanities – Saturday night, November 4th at 7:30 p.m. we’ll be having a CAMPFIRE at the Doyle’s place. We’re hoping to invite another class or two to join us. We’ll need some guys to come over and help split some wood (ladies come see Justin’s Lats fully flexed). We’ll have some good food (s’mores etc.) and fellowship. Eat before you come, but there will be snacks and such for us to munch on. Please let me know if you can spit some wood!!!

4. Holiday time – our pre-Thanksgiving dinner at the Frese’s is Tuesday night, November 14th. Our annual Progressive Christmas dinner is Saturday night, Dec. 16th. Fun, fun, fun

5. Living in Grace – Just to give you all a heads up. The entire church will be hosting a “Living in Grace” conference January 19-21. I promise you won’t want to miss this. I did this three years ago and it is one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.

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Prayer Requests

1. We’ve started a prayer journal in the Fuel class. Please let us know if there are things we can lift up in prayer.

2. Please let me know if you have personal requests that you’d like shared with the group.

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Theology 101

Martin Luther was born in 1483 into a strict German Catholic family. His parents intended him for a law career, but he became a monk and a theology professor instead. A sensitive soul, he struggled mightily with a guilty conscience and an intense fear of God and hell until he realized the doctrine of “justification by faith” while studying the book of Romans. This doctrine, his Augustinian understanding of the bondage of the will along with his conviction that the Bible should be the basis of religious life and available to all, became the theological foundation of Protestantism.

“As Luther grew in understanding, he had come to detest scholasticism as a betrayal of the biblical message. He violently opposed the way that the schoolmen had blended Christianity with the philosophy of Aristotle. He had also, by this time, rejected the neo-Pelagian teachings of William and Ockham and Gabriel Biel about salvation, and followed Staupitz in becoming a disciple of Augustine of Hippo; from now to the end of his life, Luther was to be a whole-hearted believer in Augustine’s doctrine of the sovereign grace of God who chooses helpless sinners for salvation by His unmerited mercy. This was the first of Luther’s two great spiritual breakthroughs, and it occurred around 1513 …(what fully developed Protestant theology would call “regeneration” and “sanctification”)…Luther’s second great breakthrough was when he came to understand faith as essentially personal trust in Christ rather than assent to the Church’s teachings, and the ‘righteousness of God’ as God’s imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer’s account, changing the believer’s legal status before God but not the believer’s heart (justification in the sense in which Evangelical theology uses the term). This second breakthrough did not happen till much later, probably in the period 1518-19.”
– excerpt, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation pg 70