Confident Considerations of our Faithful, Covenant-Keeping God

• The Eternal Church Entity was born of God apart from man and is built up by the Lord Jesus Christ through His entrusted stewardships and gifts given to men. No one person in particular sustains the pillar and support of Truth, which is the Church, but our Chief Shepherd, High Priest, Prophet, and King alone. This principle within the Church universal is also true of the true church local.
• The Church is the Body of Christ and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, for He is the Sovereign Head over all affairs of men, as He acts daily as Lord and Savior of the Body by intercession as our Great High Priest who has bought us by blood unblemished, and sustains us by continued efficacy.
• Jesus Christ has prayed for the unity of His people to be expressed through love and joy one to another even when confronted by difficult, potentially divisive, and unanticipated circumstances.

• Man can never fully rationalize nor understand the infinite mind of God nor fully discern the hidden purpose of God from the limitations of our finite frame of reference. His ways are not our ways, and neither are His thoughts our thoughts. The secret things belong to God only.

• God is always able to bring glory to His name through the most dire or painful circumstances. Difficult days are designed to show God strong through human weakness, failure, and fear. Trials ultimately refine Christian character, and when rightly received offer cause to rejoice in hope of glory and joy.
• Pain and difficulty, challenge and suffering are all often associated with the perfect will of God. Our perseverance by divine preservation through our use of the ordinary, but primary means of prayer and the Word of God are foundational to validate the calling of God by the comfort and aid of the Spirit of God through use of these means.
• We are members of one another and as such we are called to serve one another in love through the mutual ministry and exercise of spiritual gifts to the building up of one other in full maturity of Christlike behavior for the advancement of the kingdom of God.
• It is through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God, but Jesus said take courage, that He has overcome the world. Should we never suffer tribulations we would have reason to question the legitimacy of the faith once delivered. Historically we know that God’s choice servants have always experienced challenges and hardships for purpose of glory and sanctification, that no man may boast but in the Lord.
• The loss of a pastor is not the loss of the presence of God, nor does it diminish the purpose of God, nor does it indicate the displeasure of God, but rather it advances aspects of our journey of faith which were heretofore easily neglected, but now affirmed by a fresh sight of Christ alone who will “never leave you or forsake you.” Where all men fail, God comes in assurance of comfort and hope.
• God is faithful in His universal call to all men, and we shall reap the reward of the inheritance if we do not grow weary in well doing by our responsiveness through faithful implementation of His particular call today to seek God in secret. Those who know the Father’s pleasure in secret are inclined to the place of public and corporate prayer. Few pray today and this accounts for the erratic and weak pulse beat of the Church corporate. “This kind only comes out by prayer.”
• The Christian is never called to walk by sight but by faith alone, looking unto God with assurance of the covenant promises that He has made to preserve us even unto the end of time. God actively enforces His Covenant as He removes any potential idols which would hinder personal or corporate first-love obedience, which must be experienced primarily through personal and corporate communion with the living God.
• Sorrow and pain are always calculated to drive us to a nearer dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Rock of ages, the Cornerstone. He learned obedience through the things which He suffered. The servant must be like his Master.
• Loss is gain when accompanied by contentment of the knowledge that all God takes away in wisdom is restored in His gracious timing over and above our expectations for our growth in grace and faith.
• The best of men are mere dust at their best and prone to err in discernment of God’s prompted or anticipated will. Despite the inherent weakness of the flesh and the clouded judgments of a heart that is Biblically described as deceitful above all else, the Church may rejoice in the sovereign, secret will of God that does continually prevail in the people of God. He brings good of our errors and wanderings through the weaknesses of our flesh and humanity. His Kingdom continually comes as it methodically advances without pause or fail. (Consider the Joseph narrative in Genesis.)
• We should have every reason to believe that times of refreshing are upon SGBC as we expectantly wait upon the Lord to see His goodness in the land of the living. Light shines especially bright and with greater assurance of direction where darkness has previously prevailed.
• As we by faith anticipate the good hand of the Lord to lead us in His triumph in Christ Jesus, so must the application of diligence to heed the voice of the Spirit be discerned by disciplined devotion to the totality of the Word of God in all of life and practice. Man’s wisdom is from below and earthy; God’s wisdom must be sought in faith from above and is pure, peaceable, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, unwavering without hypocrisy.
• The life of the Church is hidden with Christ in God. We must seek Him and not man, nor search for Him or God’s man by the methodology of man.
• Should all fall away and none go with you, would you still follow… no turning back? No turning back! Keep yourselves in the love of God, praying in the Holy Spirit! Grace can be received in vain; labor more than all the rest. Continue doing that which results in graces cultivated.
• The unique manifest glory of God to a lost and dying world is the supreme desire and purpose of the Church of God through the calling out of the elect in all ages. Our Father neither slumbers nor sleeps, but is always vigilant for that people whose heart is stayed on Him. Grace prevails where faith remains vigilant.
• When circumstances change, God and His purpose in Christ Jesus remain the same.