Chuck is available as a coach for fundraising, and personal and organizational leadership development. Specific church ministries include preaching and teaching opportunities for special services and retreats, and pulpit supply. He currently serves as the Divisional Development Director for the Maryland & West Virginia Division of The Salvation Army, is an ordained minister, and has served the church in various pastoral and staff ministries.



Thursday, September 30, 2010

Thursday, September 30, 2010






"O how melancholy is it, to leave all below; unless we have an earnest of a better inheritance!  How can any reasonable man bear the thoughts of death, till he has a prospect beyond the grave?"  John Wesley, Thursday, January 4, 1753





"In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience." ---Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion




"We are placed here in this world to learn. Some lessons we could doubtless get along very well without. Some teaching is essential. A good deal of our information came through processes that were simply heartbreaking, though afterwards it was heartmaking. Strange to say that nearly all learning is attended with pain. There are lessons that in their mastery we felt soul and body would part. The obtainment of still other knowledge left us stricken, stunned, and all but hopeless as we saw the sun go down at midday with no prospect apparently of ever rising again. But the ivy grew over the life ruin. There came strange, sweet resurrections from the tomb we had built. And another Sun rose upon us bringing healing in his wings, and under whose gentle, penetrating, revealing light we learned more precious, heart comforting, life delivering and character-exalting truths than could ever be acquired under the natural sun, or all the illuminations of candle, lamp, arc light and burner falling on manuscript and book, and streaming over desk, platform and pulpit itself." ---Beverly Carradine in A Box of Treasure



"Why are we enchanted by tales of transformation?  I can't think of a movie or novel or fairy tale that doesn't somehow turn on this.  Why is it an essential part of any great story?  Because it is the secret to Christianity, and Christianity is the secret to the universe.  'You must be born again' (John 3:7).  You must be transformed." ---John Eldredge in Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive 







"Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer.  He had the boundless certainty that prayer is always answered." ---Oswald Chambers
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Charles,

Regeneration in John 3

These different ways of talking about being "born again" describe effects of baptism, which Christ speaks of in John 3:5 as being "born of water and the Spirit."

In Greek, this phrase is, literally, "born of water and Spirit," indicating one birth of water-and-Spirit, rather than "born of water and of the Spirit," as though it meant two different births—one birth of water and one birth of the Spirit.

In the water-and-Spirit rebirth that takes place at baptism, the repentant sinner is transformed from a state of sin to the state of grace.

Peter mentioned this transformation from sin to grace when he exhorted people to "be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38).

1:03 PM

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