The Gospel.

Ht Frank Turk

The Bad news in the Bible is that God is Good.

HT Mongernism

Martin Holdt's funeral.

I will not be able to attend but here is the time and directions to Martin Holdt's funeral.

Repentance.

This is word ignored by many and unknown by some.

This state of affairs is most probably the saddest thing on earth. In this day and age all still feel bad about their sin and their mangled sense of love.

True repentance is what saves you. Don’t get me wrong, we are saved on the grounded of what Christ has done. You are also saved by your faith in Him. (The faith by the way also is a free unmerited gift from God)

The question is which kind of faith saves you? A repentive faith is what saves you. Your faith is a faith of action; you do something on the ground of your faith. Do not for one moment think that you are saved by works. A true faith which saves you sprouts work, the work of repentance.

True repentive faith is you turning from one love to the love for Christ. Obedience to Christ is repentive faith. You obeyed your own lusts and chased after them, now that you are saved by repentive faith you chase Christ, He becomes your all.

Many people will and have accused this as just another form of works righteousness. It is not, I do not have the time to go into it here but. Think about this.

If you feel guilty about something and ask the person you wronged forgiveness but, continue doing it, are you really sorry you did it or not?

Repentance only comes when we are confronted. God calls us out through His scripture. The only way we are ever going to repent is, if we are called out and confronted by our sin in the light of what God thinks of it.

In today’s church the preaching of the law has been replaced by sermons about feeling good about ourselves and how we can have a best life now.

Actually if you think about it, the best way to have your best life now is to have a life of continual repentance, of continually turning away from your sinful desires towards Christ, which is called sanctification.

You see we mustn’t just repent the day we come to Christ, but true repentance is doing it daily, making the choice for Christ, moment after moment.

Only when we live the sanctifying life will it be great, only when we search the scriptures and through it we see our camouflaged sin and turn from it will we become what we already are in Christ.

Repentance is not just our birth but our growth.

A Good and a Bad start to the year.

Let me start with the bad news. Here in sunny South Africa we have lost a great father in the faith Dr Martin Holt.

About Martin Holdt

Martin Holdt was born in South Africa and has travelled to many parts of the world to speak at various conferences. In his forty-one years in the ministry, he has planted four churches and been pastor of four others. He has also been a regular speaker on a national Christian radio station for over twenty-five years. He is married to Elsabe and has five children and seven grandchildren.

He died on the 31^st of December; we attend Constantia Park Baptist church the last church he served on a full time basis before “retiring”.

You see he didn’t really retire he got involved in church planting and was still rector at the Seminary where I studied.

He impacted more lives than anyone will ever know.

We were late Sunday morning and missed the first 20 minutes of the service so we didn’t hear the news. (We attended another church service the night before with a friend and got home very late with our kids, I just love double headers)

We went back on the 3^rd to go and look for my sons shoes and found them, thanks to the friendly cleaning lady.

I wanted to get a book for my friend from the book shop, Augustine’s Book room and the lady their told me about the news.

Now for the good news, my friend, yes the same one invited me out for breakfast, see he is going through a tuff time and wanted to chat. So I got all prepared, flipped through a few books, looked up a few relevant passages, prayed and trusted in God for the right words.

In the car it dawns on me that he has a totally different need, Oeps. A much deeper question with no short answer so I decided to buy him a book.

Later in the conversation he turns the tables on me and offers to pay for further studies. Jaw drops and God gets praised.

http://eardstapa.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/martin-holdt-goes-home/