Church Family: Do you hate your sin? Do you justify sin? Do you excuse your sin? Do you see other’s sin before your own? Do you psychologize your sin to the point of your sin losing its sinfulness? Do you feel the sting of your sin? Do you feel the weight of your sin? Do you weep before God over your sin?Ezra gives us a perfect understanding of how we are to look at our sinfulness as he responds t...  Read More

Church Family: Is trusting God opposed to living by facts? In other words, should we always be practical Christians who are responsible and cautious, not prone to take risks, always sniffing out facts and figures and possibilities to do an analysis to determine success or failure before we move forward in faith? Or should we be bold, daring and entrepreneurial in our faith moving forward trusting ...  Read More

“The Hand of God!” What does that even mean? God is Spirit (John 4:24) without physical hands but He gives this picture to His children who have hands to help us understand His powerful loving relationship that is available to us. Just as an earthly father lovingly leads his children with encouragement, prompts, favor, discipline and even a powerful boost of his own strength, so also a child of Go...  Read More

Church Family: Does God get angry? Yes. Is His anger filled with out-of-control evil or darkness? No. Scripture repeatedly declares that God is slow to anger. He is not a hothead. When God is angry He remains perfectly good with no darkness in His anger (1 John 1:5). God is both perfectly holy and righteous and yet He gets angry. Would a God who did not respond in anger to evil in His world be mor...  Read More

Church Family: Would you know if your religious freedoms are being taken away? The first amendment to the United States Constitution begins like this, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” We now live 250 years after that was written and we find ourselves struggling to uphold religious freedom in our American culture today....  Read More

Church Family: Do you live in the past? Do you find yourself reminiscing and longing for the “good ole days” or "what could have been" instead of being fully present in the now and finding joy in this present moment? If you find yourself living a life looking backwards to what once was you are discounting what God is doing in the present. Looking backwards will incapacitate God’s work in the prese...  Read More

Church Family: Yesterday evening one of my favorite things happened. A summer evening thunderstorm powered through Hampstead and then headed off the coast with lightning and thunder revealing the majesty of God. The storm was small enough that the sun came out quickly and I watched God paint a rainbow across the back of the thundercloud as it moved off the coast.I was thinking, why did God create ...  Read More

Church Family: We are starting a new series in Ezra-Nehemiah. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the epic story of God’s people returning to their land from captivity. The story goes like this, God raises up Cyrus, a Pagan evil king, to supply what is necessary to lead the rebuilding of the House of God in Israel. God actually works in the evil heart of Cyrus to fulfill His holy purpose and plan ...  Read More

As a follower of Christ you are a part of His body, the church, and together we are all responsible for building up His church. How are you to build it? Jesus commands you to make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). Paul tells you to speak the truth in love so that the church will become mature (Eph. 4:13-16). Peter calls you to use your gifts to serve each other (Rom. 12:6-8; 1 Pet. 4:10). Jude says bu...  Read More

Church Family: This Sunday evening at the beach we will be baptizing fifteen brothers and sisters in Christ. Five of these are children and ten are adults. Praise the Lord! Did you know that as you read the New Testament you will not find any unbaptized Christians? Baptism is very important to God, so much so that Jesus, the Son of God, commanded and ordained it to be practiced until He returns. T...  Read More

Church Family: What could be important than God's work through motherhood forming a human soul? Mom's form a child's spirituality, morality, identity and worldview. God does an amazing beautiful work through moms. I want to share with you a description of a mother's love that I read this week that communicates the love I see in the moms of GCT, especially the moms of adult children. This was writt...  Read More

Church family:When you learn that the sermon for Sunday is going to be on the topic of prayer, what thoughts come to mind? Does it bring you a sense of guilt and despair over your own prayerlessness? Or does it bring a sense of peace and joy to your spirit as you look forward to being refreshed by what God’s Word says regarding communication with Him? Or maybe you’re somewhere in between…God has b...  Read More

Doctrine is one of the most divisive things in the church. What we believe Scripture teaches determines our understanding of God, the gospel, salvation, ourselves, others, life, and much more. Have you ever heard the saying, "There is no doctrine a fundamentalist won't fight over and no doctrine a liberal will fight for." You may not consider yourself a fundamentalist or a liberal when it comes to...  Read More

Church Family:Can you imagine not having a church family? Can you imagine that you have never heard the gospel or of Jesus Christ? Can you imagine living in a country as an ethnic group where you have no knowledge of anybody following Jesus Christ? Can you imagine having no hope? Tragically, there are over 3 billion people on this earth who are part of over 7000 different people groups that are in...  Read More

What is a miracle? Our culture today uses the word “miracle” to mean just about anything that is amazing or extremely unusual. Even within the Church the word “miracle” is loosely used for everything that amazes us or not easily explained. But what really is a biblical miracle?There is no universally agreed-on biblical definition of miracle but probably the most useful one is: A miracle is a super...  Read More

Church Family: We talk about the gospel all of the time but do we know the fundamentals of the gospel? Do you know the gospel well enough that it remains your only hope and confidence before our Holy God? Do you know the gospel well enough to share with others? The gospel has become a victim of massive distortions or over-simplifications to the point that many times it is not the gospel any longer...  Read More

Church Family: Astonishing Good Friday to you! Today we celebrate one of the many benefits of Christ's death. The Son of God put on flesh and blood so that through His own death He would destroy the one who has the power of death, the devil (Heb. 2:14-15). While God cannot die the incarnate God-Man can die and He did die. Jesus, the Son of God, was born to die. His death was the very purpose for H...  Read More

Church Family: Today is the Thursday of Holy Week, it is known as Maundy Thursday. The term maundy comes from the Latin root mandatum, or commandment, from Jesus’s words in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”  This commandment was given by the Lord on the Thursday before his crucifixion when He was te...  Read More

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, “the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God’ ”(Mat. 27:41-43). The arrogant, powerless crowd were taunting t...  Read More

Church Family: You and I were created to hope. Hope is what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning and keep doing what God has put before us to do – go to work, teach the kids, go work out, serve the Lord and others, or whatever else may be on our schedule for the day. The general equation of hope goes something like this: You hope that if you do _____ you will then receive _____ as a resul...  Read More

Welcome... How are you doing... See you later. That can sometimes sum up our effort of a welcome to another. Is that the way God intended it to be? Actually, that is somewhat opposite of what God intended. Romans 15:7, commands us as followers of Christ "to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." Paul does not say, “say hi to one another.” The Greek word translated “...  Read More

Church Family: As a family of believers there is no greater evil that we can do against each other than cause another brother or sister in Christ to sin (Luke 17:2). The end that awaits those who cause others to stumble into sin is horrific. It is so horrific that it is better for that person who leads others into transgression to have a "great millstone" hung around their neck and to be cast into...  Read More

Church Family: Do you ever struggle as a Christian to make God honoring decisions? Many times we come to do a decision that needs to be made in life where the answer is given clearly in Scripture. We can find specific behaviors and actions strictly prohibited no matter who you are or in what situation you find yourself needing to make a decision. God has given us His commandments, precepts, statut...  Read More

Church Family: Christ is coming back! Are you living in a way that you will be found faithful? Throughout Scripture we are told that Christ is coming back unexpectedly. We have no time to be living carelessly, fulfilling the desires of the flesh. For believers, the return of Christ is meant to give us great hope and joy as we endure sufferings in this present world. Also, the anticipation of Chris...  Read More