Saturday Morning Prayer and the Grace of God

I woke up today at 5:30am.

Now, that might seem a little too early for a Saturday morning for most people, but this has become a normal waking time for Ali and I. We had a hard time initially waking up this early on “our only day off.” Over time though, this waking time has become something we look forward to.

We wake up to go to a small group gathering called Morning Prayer. Karis Church, the church that we have been members at for some time now, started a morning prayer time for each day of the week. Each morning, at 6am, there is an organized time to pray for God to work in our lives, our friends and family, the city of Columbia, and for the church.

As the elders introduced this to the church I immediately felt a conviction. I didn’t understand what the conviction was at first, but I knew I desired to be involved with a Morning Prayer time. I remember hearing that there were still two morning slots that needed leaders - Tuesdays and Saturdays. 

I can’t remember much of the sermon that morning because all I was thinking about was if I should step up and lead one of the open dates. I immediately crossed off Tuesdays because I have Staff Meeting for the church on those mornings, so I knew that it would conflict with that time. So… Saturday was all that was left.

I sat in the pew that morning thinking about why I would want to do this. Did I want to do it because “real” leaders step up? Did I want to do it because I wanted to conquer a challenge? Did I want to do it because I could tell people I am choosing “the hardest morning?” (By the way, waking up at 5:30am is hard any day of the week!)

Those are all twisted reasons to get involved in leading others in prayer, but the one reason that came out from all of it was this:

I struggle with prayer.

I remember sitting there being struck with this healthy conviction that I am robbing myself of God’s intimacy by not spending time in prayer. This reality struck me because I knew it affected my relationship with God.

Why do I say that? Well, I say that because I see how easy it is to fall into believing lies that influence my heart and thoughts about God and His grace. I, like most people, stray into focusing too much on my sin and not our Savior.

"Dear Father, teach us to give our greater efforts to reveling in Your grace rather than groveling in our sin.” Art Azurdia

My lack of prayer reveals that I am more focused on my sin than the grace of God, and I know that the more I focus on my sin the more that I feel guilt and shame for falling short. Sinning in the first place is not “reveling in [God’s] grace,” but refusing to come to God in prayer is also not reveling in His grace. 

There are plenty of reasons why most of us don’t pray: guilt, shame, pride, self-sufficient lies, unbelief, anger, etc. I think of the reasons that I struggle with prayer because I feel extreme guilt and God won’t forgive me for something so offensive to His holiness. While it is true that my sin does affect my relationship with God, the truth is that my sin does not change my standing in Christ. I have placed my life in the grace of God for my salvation and not my works, so when I fall short - and I certainly will - His grace is sufficient to forgive me.

The same thing is true for you if you have trusted in Christ: His grace is sufficient to forgive you and His love for you is the motivation to come before Him for forgiveness and thank Him for His glorious grace.

We have the freedom to come before God, humble ourselves, and ask Him to give us eyes to see Him as He truly is. God is faithful and forgiving to those who are humbled before His holiness and His glory.  

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:9-10 ESV)

Saturday mornings have now become a blessing from God. It started off with just my wife and I, but now we have three others joining us. I wake up groggy each time, but I wake up knowing that God is faithful to hear our prayers. 

If you are interested in joining me pray, please let me know and I would love to connect with you. 

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Baptism Sunday at Karis Church

MC Prayer - Acts 4 Generosity

I pray that God moves and empowers us to be generous and sacrificial for our brothers and sisters in Christ like you see in the early church. 

Read this and ask God to reveal how He wants you to serve your brothers and sisters with your blessings...

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 4:32-37 ESV)

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Busyness Won't Save Me

photo courtesy of David De Lossy

The last couple of days have been... slow.

After receiving an ice storm this past weekend and receiving over a foot of snow in the past 36 hours I have realized something about myself:

I struggle with rest.

I woke up on each of the past four days with this anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I think it all comes from the idea of not being in a rhythm. When I slow down and sit to ponder what happened in my day I am overcome with this restlessness that is unexplainable. I have tried to explain it a couple of times to people, but deep down I have an issue with stopping after I get home.

Ali helped me realize this a while back, so now I intentionally don’t answer emails or notifications that pop up on my phone until the following day because I know that I just desperately want to keep busy. I have tried to make a small step to resting. But, when the phone buzzes or rings I immediately wonder what am I needed for. I immediately rush with curiosity what I could do to keep busy and productive.

This feeling is not just for work. This feeling is the feeling I have a lot of the time in my walk of faith in Christ. I don’t know about a lot of people, but I usually have the thought that I should be doing more. I should sharing the gospel more, I should be building up the community of saints more often, I should read the Bible more, I should pray more, etc. While all that might be slightly true I find myself feeling restless and anxious to get out and do more.

Wanting to do those things is actually good, but we begin to overcome our minds with worry and/or anxiety then it reveals something about us that needs to be addressed. In some manner, this points to something that we believe in our relationship with God.

Aarik Danielson, pastor at Karis Church, said:

"A lot of us have busy hearts. Hearts that pump out as much anxiety and worry as they do bloog. They're always churning inside about what people think or how we performed today or how we can move on to something better. We sit around with this anxious feeling, like we're supposed to be doing... something. Something else. But what?"

I hope that this is helpful and gives you an honest picture in my struggles at this present time.

I have just begun to dig into why I struggle with rest, but here are some of my early findings.

I Am Needy

To be honest, I struggle with the truth that I am a needy person. We are all needy people, but we usually like to think of the people that suck the energy out of you as the needy people. We all like to think of the ones who text us too much, call us too much, or email us too much as the truly needy and clingy people.

I am a needy person. I don’t always want to see how broken I truly am. I don’t always want to see much I have fallen short of God’s demands. I want to be seen as mature. I don’t always want to see how much I have chosen to rebel against God’s law. I normally want to be seen as a young man growing in holiness. I don’t always want to be seen as weak. I normally want to be seen as strong.

The truth is that I am more broken than I will ever see. I have and will sin against the God of the universe in more ways than I want to believe. In the light of acknowledging these things I am a needy sinner in need of God’s eternal and brilliant grace. The only way that God can forgive me is that He gives me grace. This leads me to my next point…

My Busyness Will Not Save Me

When I grew up I believed that if you did good things that means that you are a good person and that earns your way to heaven. I thought that heaven is the reward for those who tried to do some good things in life and didn’t hurt that many people. Those things more line up with Buddhism and the idea of Karma then with Christianity. Why do I say that? Because the Bible says that.

All over the place I read that there is nothing that I can do that warrants eternal life, but instead the Bible is very clear that I actually wanted to rebel against God. I openly and emphatically chose rebellion over loving obedience to His law. If my works give me anything, they give me what I deserve: hell.

Now, I know that talking about hell is usually seen as fire and brimstone, but hell is not a theory. Hell is not something that God created only for the super-villains. Hell is not only a place for the worst of the worst. The saddest and more humbling part of all of this is that without God’s help I would actually choose to rebel against Him in every way so that I end up in hell.

My work will not save me. So, what will?

The grace of God. 

Stop. Follow me closely.

Jesus’ works include a sinless life. Our works include a sinful life. Jesus’ works include perfect submission to God the Father. Our works include rebellion against God the Father. Jesus’ works include a complete trust in God the Father. Our works include doubting God the Father. Jesus’ works include willingly dying for sinners. Our works include rejecting Jesus’ life and death on the cross as unimportant and irrelevant. Jesus’ works include raising from the grave and ascending into heaven. Our works include calling Jesus’ power impossible and ridiculous. 

So, how does God offer us reconciliation? He offers us all of Jesus’ righteousness by having faith that Jesus is God. God will give us Jesus’ righteousness if we have faith that Jesus died died for us while we openly rejected Him.

If we have faith in what Jesus did we will be given a new nature that won’t desire to rebel against God anymore. We are to repent of our sin against Him and begin following Jesus for the rest of our lives.

I have faith in Jesus’ works, not my own works. So, whenever I struggle with rest I am struggling with God’s works being enough to save me. 

That’s a tough pill to swallow, but its important to know so that my faith and trust in God’s works might increase and I might rest more confidently in God’s finished work on the cross.

If we trust in Jesus and repent of trying to save ourselves, He is faithful to forgive us.

I am an needy sinner in need of God’s grace in every moment of my life, and I pray that you see that you are in need of God’s grace for salvation. Place any work that attempts to save you before God and place your faith in what Jesus did for you.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

God: Gracious

“God is gracious.”

Let me begin by stating this up front: There is too much to say about how God is gracious. The amount of things that I could write about, explain, and expose are going to be limited and not the entirety of God’s graciousness. He is infinitely gracious and immeasurably gracious to all of us, so I have chosen to look at a couple amazing truths about God’s grace.

Grace is undeserved.

Seriously stop and think about this. I mean it. Stop and think about it.

The pure, huge, and infinite God of all creation chooses to be gracious to men and women who consistently disregard His rule and reign. We constantly seek after things that kill us, but the worst part of it is that we want to sin against God. We openly, blatantly and emphatically sin because we think it leads to a free life when in reality it leads to death (Genesis 6:5, Romans 1:18-32, Romans 6:23).

If we have sinned against God, and we openly acknowledge that we have, we must realize that there is nothing that could make us earn His favor. By grace’s very definition it means that God gives us unmerited favor and blessing. 

Karis Church, the church I am an intern and have been a member at for two years, sums up God’s grace like this:

Our God is a God of grace. He welcomes undeserving people to His table even though He is not obligated to do so. As frail, finite sinners we can do nothing on our own. We deserve nothing at all - that is, except judgment.

The good news is that even though all we are owed is to be separated from His presence, He gives us Jesus to reconcile the relationship that we damaged. 

Grace is found in Jesus. 

Jesus lived the life we could never lived, died the death that we deserve, and ascended into heaven to give us new life. 

God is gracious to forgive us from all of our sins. God is gracious to forgive us for our sinful motives behind our “good” deeds. God is gracious to come to the help of needy sinners who need His grace for salvation. God is gracious to choose us when we would never choose Him. God is gracious to sustain our faith in His grace until we die, and God is gracious to come back to take His children from all over the world to heaven. 

Grace frees us from proving ourselves.

Let’s be honest with one another… We all feel like we have something to prove to someone, to some group, to ourselves, to our family, to our professors, to our children, to our spouse, or to our boss. We all feel like that to some extent, but God flips all of that on its head!

Since we know that we can do nothing in our own strength to reconcile ourselves to God, we have to trust that His works are enough to save us. When we place our trust in Jesus’s works and not our own we are free from feeling like we need to prove ourselves to God. God knows that we are finite and frail human beings, and when we see that we are to respond by faith and trust that He is enough for us.

Grace enables us to fight and kill sin in our lives.

After we place our trust in God’s grace for salvation we aren’t done with God’s grace. God’s grace is what enables us to stop pursuing and committing sins. Romans 8 tells us that is we have the Holy Spirit within us, then we will, not might at times, kill sins in our lives (Romans 8:12-17). Clearly we will never have a sinless day, but God is making us more like Jesus moment by moment if we lean on His grace.

John Piper also says that God’s grace is “not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon” (emphasis added). 

Grace is not simply just the access point of faith in Jesus, but grace is interwoven in all facets of the Christian faith that it is impossible to fully depict God’s perfect, holy, and beautiful grace in our lives.

Grace is available for you.

Do you trust in Jesus Christ? Have you placed your life in God’s hands? Are you in need of a Savior? 

God’s perfect, loving, and forgiving grace is only found in Jesus and His perfect life, His brutal crucifixion, and His power to rise from the dead and defeat Satan, sin and death!

Jesus died so that the world would place their lives, their hopes, their dreams, and their desires in His gracious hands.

If you have not placed your trust in His hands, I would plead that you would. He is gracious to forgive if you whole-heartedly ask Him to forgive you. Pray and ask for Jesus’s grace to change your heart to love and pursue Him.

If you have already trusted in Him for salvation, please pray and ask God to continue to change your heart, your desires, and your mind so that He will be what you seek for joy and fulfillment. He loves you and He wants you to keep pursuing Him.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

God: Good & Gracious

Some of you might have noticed that at the end of most of my blog posts, I use this sentence:

“God is good and gracious.”

I started writing this as a simple reminder for myself of God’s goodness and His graciousness, but as I kept typing that simple sentence the more normal it became. The more I typed that sentence the more I began to gloss over the true and deep meaning behind those words. I’ll be honest, sometimes I need to be reminded of what those words mean. 

In today’s age we are so used to hearing jargon like this that I fear that we are all missing out on the profound impact those words should have.

“God is good.”

Okay, but what does that mean? How are we to define goodness? Is there a difference between how we see good and how God sees good? How is God’s goodness different than ours?

“God is gracious.”

Okay, what the heck is grace? What does grace have to do with us? How is God actually gracious to us? How does God’s grace change anything?

These are the things that I will be exploring in a short series called God: Good and Gracious. The next two Monday mornings will feature a short post.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy the posts and that they are an encouragement to anyone who doubts God’s goodness or gracious, which is all of us!

Jacob Luis Gonzales

My Workstation

Here are a couple photos of where I work. I currently am working part-time at the Brain Imaging Center while I am interning at Karis Church part-time. This job has been fantastic! Each coworker has been kind, curteous, and encouraging since I started in May.

Love this job and I thank God for His faithfulness in providing me an amazing place to come to work.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Better Than I Deserve

I am taking a course through Ligonier Connect called Understanding God's Sovereignty in Suffering. It has been an amazing course so far, and we came to a lesson called "Better Than I Deserve." After watching the lesson's video we are asked to answer a question or two about what we learned.

The first question that was listed was the one that I answered, and I thought it might be helpful to post my answer.

What do you really deserve?

In what ways has God given you things that you do not deserve? Conversely, how has He not given you things that you do deserve?

It is not that God owes me nothing. God owes me something: death. If we say that God owes me nothing it is secretly saying that our standing before God is neither justified or condemned. We are not in this foggy, middle ground of goodness and badness. We deserve death because the wage of sin is death. Our intentional and purposeful sin has separated us from God, but God made a way through Jesus so that what we deserve was taken and nailed to the cross. God has given His children grace, which is undeserved and unmerited by its very definition. We do not deserve a right and justified relationship with the perfect, loving, and holy Father of the universes. 

What I do not deserve is grace. What I do not deserve is to be justified. What I do not deserve is to be seen as blameless, sinless, and forgiven. But, Jesus has given us this in His sinless life, His voluntary and atoning death, and His triumph over the grave. 

We all deserve death, but Jesus sacrificially took our penalty through His death on the cross. We all do not deserve grace and forgiveness, but Jesus gives that to those who trust that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

God is so good to us. God is so gracious to us.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

#JesusisGreater - Review

This morning was the official release of the new book by poet, speaker, and - as of today - author Jefferson Bethke. The book is called "Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough."

I met Jeff last year at a speaking engagement he had at the University of Missouri here in Columbia. He did a couple of his famous poems that included "Why I Hate Religion , But Love Jesus." That particular poem was received well that night, but the poem received commentaries from all sides. Atheists were talking about it, Agnostics were talking about it, Muslims were talking about it, Jews were talking about it, Christians were talking about it... Everyone was talking about it. The discussion that this poem and video created was encouraging to see because people were talking about Jesus. This book is a follow up to his poem, and I believe that there are three reasons that everyone should talk some time to read this book.

1. He is Honest and Authentic
Jefferson Bethke has to be one of the most honest and authentic writers of my generation. He is honest about his battles with fighting against lust, which can be incredibly difficult to share in a book that will get tons of attention. Also, he is open about when he grew up in poverty and how he passionately loves his openly gay mother. His honestly about how the disagree yet they love each other is inspiring and convicting.

He even speaks about how, as a Christian, he still struggled with lust all the way to the point of sleeping with an ex-girlfriend. This is how he described his feelings afterwards:

I’ll never forget the feeling when I got home. I felt hollow, sick, dirty. I was a Christian now. I knew better. I wasn’t supposed to do that anymore! On top of that, I felt even more shame because I had planned what I did and had many opportunities to say no. I’d never had this happen before, and I’ve never had it happen since. The shame and guilt were so palpable that I literally became sick. I stayed up until six o’clock that morning throwing up, feeling so dirty and worthless and thinking I had completely failed God and that he must hate me now. (page 133)

When was the last time that you read a Christian author explicitly tell you the low points of their lives? When was the last time that you read someone open up their lives for their readers to see that they aren't perfect and above the point of the book? Probably never.

Jeff's ability to convey a sense of vulnerability and a sense of strength at the same time displays how Jeff trusts in Jesus' righteousness and His work on the cross. Even thought Jeff openly says he struggles with self-righteousness - which most of us do - but his clear dependance on God's work is evident throughout each chapter of the book.

2. Created For Discussion
It is obvious that this book is for discussion because at the end of the chapters are lists of questions that could be discussed or answered on your own. I found the questions insightful and helpful for each chapter, but I found his writing style probing me to ask my own questions.

Jeff talks about a time his girlfriend broke up with him and how he struggled with suicidal thoughts. He dives into why he struggled with those thoughts:

My worth, my identity, and my satisfaction were all wrapped up in her, and when I lost control of the situation and control of her, it felt like my god was being taken from me. That’s the truth with any idol—it will rock you to your core when it leaves. When a good thing leaves you, it might make you sad. But when an ultimate thing leaves you, you feel like you can’t live anymore. (page 115)

My first thought was, "What, if it left my life, would drive me to think I could not survive without it?"

I immediately felt convicted about two things that I needed to repent of: money and control. I am currently talking about these things now, and I pray that I overcome these idols and start worshipping Jesus rightly.


3. Jesus is Proclaimed
One clear thing about this book is that Jeff talks in depth about how scandalous God's love is for us. I'll let his words speak for the messages he wants to convey:

God doesn’t hide sin. In fact, he put it on display two thousand years ago in a splintered T-shaped piece of wood. Jesus came down to earth, lived the perfect life we never could have, and died the death we should have. And every drop of blood that poured from him was another drop of love falling on us.
Have you ever felt like your sin should be paid for?
It has been. 

All our sins.
All our filth.
All our guilt.
All our shame.
(Page 135).  

The minute we trust in Jesus, our standing becomes his standing. We no longer represent ourselves; Jesus represents us. Our faith isn’t earned. It’s counted. When we trust in Jesus, God then looks at us the same way he looks at Jesus. Even when we mess up, God looks at us and says, “Pure, spotless, blameless, perfect, holy, my child, you’re free!”
That’s what changes a heart and what stirs us to worship.  

That’s what changes someone’s life.
You don’t have to keep trying.
You don’t have to hide your sin.You just have to trust in Jesus who exchanged himself for you at the cross. (Page 137-138). 

The word worship is defined by glory and thanksgiving. We are worshiping when we give glory to something. Whatever we give glory to, we sacrifice for. Sometimes that’s sex; sometimes that’s our jobs; sometimes that’s our reputations. But we all worship something, and we all put pseudo-gods on the thrones of our hearts. 

When Jesus died on the cross, he completely reversed this curse, allowing God to retake his proper place as the one true God of our lives.
(Page 168).  

Go out and buy this book. I know that I saw Jesus in a new light and in a new way, and I know that if you commit to reading this with an open heart that God will shatter what you thought it meant to love God and follow Jesus Christ.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Jesus Is Greater - Buy This Book!

Just finished this book tonight. I received an advanced copy, and I am pretty sure that everyone should buy this when it comes out next week. Read it, share it, and be blessed by Jefferson Bethke's writing style and authenticity that jumps from each page. Having met this guy before, I respect him as a brother in Christ, a poet, a speaker, and now a writer. Check this out! ‪#‎jesusisgreater‬

#Marriage Preview - The Purpose of Marriage

Jesus has freed us to be married as we were originally designed. God the Father is freeing us to live a life of joy, freedom, and love through the grace and power of His Son, Jesus Christ. God is making all things new, and one day all marriages will accurately reflect the grace, love, and truth of our Savior.

Friday Night Reading

I am doing some fun reading tonight. This book has honestly been one of the best books I have ever read. God has given me a new look on what it means to trust in His sufficient and powerful future grace.

I am very thankful that this book was written.

It is called "Future Grace" by John Piper. 

Have a great night! 

Jacob Luis Gonzales

The Gospel in 2 Minutes

#PraiseHim - God's Name Matters (Psalm 113:1-3)

God's Name Matters

Psalm 113: 1-3

Praise the Lord!

Praise, O servants of the Lord,

praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of The Lord

from this time forth and forevermore!

From the rising of the sun to its setting

the name of the Lord is to be praise!

Names are important. We are always asking others what their name means, why their parents chose their name, and how it is spelled. This is no different with God. God's name should be known and praised. Moses asked God for His name so he could tell his people who sent him to rescue them. God told Moses to tell them that "I am" (Exodus 3:13-14) sent him, which does not make too much sense to us, but I am sure that we have all heard of the Hebrew translation of that: Yahweh (YHWH).

We later see in the Ten Commandments,

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain."

God takes His name so seriously that if someone uses His name incorrectly He promises to judge them for doing so. That is a serious thing, right? Yes. Yes it is.

The ESV Study Bible says that this commandment "refers primarily to someone taking a deceptive oath in God’s name or invoking God’s name to sanction an act in which the person is being dishonest." We usually think that is whenever someone uses His name when cussing or swearing, which still is using His name in vain, but its origins are a little different than we tend to think.

The point: God's name matters. He desires us to use His name to bless each other and to remind each other of God's grace, goodness, and greatness. His name was supposed to remind them of how He saved them from the Egyptians and from slavery. His name mattered to them and matters to us.

Why does it matter today to Christians today?

Eventually we learn from Jesus that He identifies as God when he said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). The Jews in that day knew what He was saying. Jesus is confidently, directly, and clearly stating that He is God in the flesh. Jesus stated that He is God.

Jesus shows Himself to be God in His character, the miracles He displayed, His sacrificial and loving death, and His triumphant rise from the grave.

God is so infinitely mysterious, yet He makes Himself clearly known. Jesus showed us, along with the entirety of the Old Testament, that God wants a deeply personal and unconditional relationship with His people. He wants us to know His name. Jesus wants us to know Him as our savior, our everything, our friend, our brother, our God.

God's name matters. If we get the name of God wrong then we will spend eternity realizing our tragic mistake. I do not say this without understanding that it takes a lot to acknowledge that God exists and that He cares for us personally, but I urge us all to reflect on God's identity and trust in the God that makes Himself known in the Bible. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He gives life through Jesus, and He gives grace abundantly to those who love and trust Him. He gave us His name so that we could identify who He is, know what His character is like, and grasp how much He loves us.

God's name: Jesus.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

It's Not Enough

My Wife and Friends

Today has been a very interesting day so far. There has been so much random happenings throughout this short day that it forces me to think about how good God has been to my wife and I. All of this started from my beautiful best friend.

If that doesn't make too much sense, give me a chance to explain:

Scenario:
Ali is spending her only day off this month with our friends to help them prepare for their wedding this Saturday. These two individuals we have only known for a little over a year, but I would consider them such great friends.

Why God's Grace?

There are two reasons:

1. My Wife
Ali is my best friend. She makes me laugh everyday, and most people understand how hard that is to do. She challenges me to become a more godly man, and she makes me desire to search Jesus every single day. She makes me seek ways to serve those around me on a daily basis. She is certainly flawed in many ways, but God is growing her on a daily basis and her transformation in Jesus has been amazing to see. God's grace is shown to me by giving me such a loving and generous friend and wife to spend my life with. God has shown His grace by transforming her heart from reject Him to seeking after Him and pursing to proclaim His goodness and gospel to the world.

When we met for the first time I knew that she would challenge me in many ways. I remember the first conversation we had. It was centered on how God saved us both from ourselves, our sinful nature, and the sin that sought after for so many years. She made me feel challenged and encouraged at the very same time, and at that moment I knew I wanted to get to know her more. To this very day she challenges and encourages me to be a better man, friend, husband, future father, and follower of Jesus.

God is gracious.

[I will be writing a new series called #Marriage that will be coming out in October.]

2. Community
These two individuals have been such great friends over the past fifteen months. Over this short amount of time we have seen them go through so many hard situations that I sincerely respect them for their commitment and dedication to one another and their Savior. They have persevered through it all and they are pursuing Jesus through it all. I am sure that they have struggled - I know this to be true because they openly talk about - but they have remained strong in Christ and confident in His grace. I can't wait to see them get married on Saturday!

Community is essential and necessary at every level of the Christian church. A healthy and biblical community in a Christian church is unfortunately uncommon. A community that is pursuing the gospel of Jesus Christ while going out on mission to make Jesus known is not common, and I can confidently say that I know that these two friends are seeking after authentic and genuine community at Karis Church. Karis has grown all four of us over this period of friendship and I trust that it will continue. God's grace is evident in saving them, bringing them to this point, and joining them in marriage before brothers and sisters in Christ and ultimately before Himself.

God is gracious.

It has been a great day so far, and I hope that this post challenges and encourages you to pursue Jesus.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

What Is The Proper Response To Grace?

This article is a great explanation of how we are to respond to God's grace. When someone says that God is gracious (most likely you see me write that) or that God gives grace, what in the world are you supposed to do with that information? How we are to respond? 

One thing that I try to do with my website is connect people with solid and biblical views on the world around us. This article comes from Ligonier.

What Is The Proper Response To Grace?
By Derek Thomas 

There can be only one proper response to grace: a life of grateful holiness. Christ’s atoning death was “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4). 

There are two ways of understanding these words. One way is to view them as a statement of what our Lord achieved on the cross: He fulfilled what the law required by offering up a perfect obedience (the active obedience of Christ) and by meeting the law’s retribution for our sin by His death (the passive obedience of Christ). He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law for us in His life and death. 

More likely, however, Paul is stating (what he will elaborate on later in this chapter) that Christians, whose sins are forgiven, now live in holy, obedient gratitude for the grace they have received. Grateful law-keeping is the saved sinner’s response to received grace. The rest of our lives are a way of saying, “Thank you.” 

Of course, salvation by grace rather than our performance can be seen as a license to sin (antinomianism). Paul’s response in Romans is something like this: if we are not tempted to think like that, we have not understood the gospel. The apostle anticipates our objection at the beginning of chapter 6: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6:1). 

Grace must raise the temptation to think we can sin as we please; if it does not, we have not understood the true extent of grace. However, at no time can we yield to the temptation to think this way (note Paul’s answer to his question in 6:1—“by no means”), because Christians are called to a life of holiness—holiness motivated by gratitude for all that God has done for them in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The key to subduing the downward drag of sin in our lives is to know the impulse of gratitude that follows the experience of forgiveness and reconciliation. Law-keeping out of love is the true path of holiness. 

Excerpt from How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home by Derek Thomas.

God's grace enables us to live godly lives that honor Him and proclaim Him to the people around us.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Dead In Sin, Alive In Christ

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1-10, ESV)

True Lies, Water, and Ice Cream

Good morning!

This morning I woke up with very little pain in my mouth. They are still sore, but I have been taking medicine regularly, drinking cold water, and eating ice cream. The pain seems to come and go surrounding the times I am taking the medicine.

Ali has been taking such good care of me that she deserve a hug and tons of love from family, friends, and everything in between. Next time you see her give her a huge hug for her amazing attitude through all of this. I know it is not easy to be constantly serving someone else, but she has been a grace given by God the past 24 hours.

Your support has meant a lot so much to Ali and I that it can not be expressed. I am very grateful for the comments, tweets, and texts telling me that you are praying for us. These verses have given me great  comfort this morning.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7, ESV)

 This verse talks about suffering as being persecuted for having faith in Jesus, but I love that it calls God "the Father of mercies and God of all comfort." God is continually giving me mercy, grace, and comfort through all of the pain.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

How the Trinity Works Together in Salvation

Amazing Article I found on the theology of salvation. This is a little heady, but I thought it was awesome! Click HERE to read more articles from this website.

One of the most important insights of Reformed theology is the unity of the works of the Trinity. Calvinists believe that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are united in the work of redeeming lost mankind. We do not believe that they act against one another or even on one another, but with one another in our salvation. For instance, Jesus did not die to convince the Father to change His attitude toward us from enmity to love. Rather, Jesus died on the cross because of the Father’s love for us, as John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Father and Son are united in their work for the salvation of those who believe: the Father electing and sending His Son; the Son atoning for the sins of those chosen and given to Him by the Father (John 6:37–40). The same harmony exists between the Son and the Spirit. Jesus did not die for the sins of all people, only to have the Holy Spirit apply the benefits of His work merely to some. Rather, the Holy Spirit regenerates precisely the people for whom Jesus offered His atoning death, so that the work of the second and third persons of the Trinity harmonizes perfectly.

This emphasis on the unity of the Trinity in salvation may be seen in the doctrines of grace as organized by the TULIP acrostic. The doctrines of grace start with a problem: T—man’s total depravity. The answer to this problem is brought about by the unified work of the Trinity. It begins with unconditional election, which is focused on the Father’s sovereign purpose in predestination. Salvation is then accomplished by the atoning work of Jesus on the cross, which, according to limited atonement, was offered for those elected by the Father. This salvation is then sovereignly applied to those same elect individuals by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, which is the point of irresistible grace. Therefore, just as unconditional election describes the grace of the Father and limited atonement describes the grace of the Son, irresistible grace presents the grace of the Holy Spirit. While acknowledging that where one member of the Trinity acts, all are involved, we may identify irresistible grace as the Holy Spirit’s own doctrine of grace.

This brief excerpt is from What’s So Great about the Doctrines of Grace? by Richard Phillips. Download the digital edition free in July, 2013.

This is so awesome to think about. God, His Son, and His Spirit all work together in perfect harmony, unity, and as a community to save His children! Amazing!

God is good and He saves His children.

Jacob Luis Gonzales