Worship @ Covenant PCA

“…when we say ordinary means of grace-based ministry, we mean a radical commitment to following the direction of God’s Word as to both the message and the means of gathering and perfecting the saints. Ordinary means ministry has a high view of the Bible, preaching, the church, the ordinances or sacraments, and prayer. Ordinary means ministry believes that the key things that the church can do in order to help their people know God and grow in their knowledge of God are: First, emphasize the public reading and preaching of the Word; second, emphasize the confirming, sanctifying and assuring efficacy of the sacraments, publicly administered; and, third, emphasize a life of prayer, especially expressed corporately in the church. These things are central and vital but sadly often under-emphasized, underappreciated, and undermined.” - - Dr. Ligon Duncan in Tabletalk, October 2007 Pastor of First Presbyterian (PCA), Jackson, MS President, The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

For the Lord's Day

“The way to heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh. We should follow Christ; the path he traveled was the right way to heaven. We should take up our cross and follow him, in meekness and lowliness of heart, obedience and charity [love], diligence to do good, and patience under afflictions.” -- from The Christian Pilgrim, Jonathan Edwards

For the Lord's Day

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ." - Martin Luther

For the Lord's Day

"May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplating the mysteries of his heavenly wisdom with increasing devotion, to his glory and our edification." - John Calvin

Pentecost & Packer

Today is Pentecost; the Holy Spirit is fully given to the church. Thanks be to God!
“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all. – J. I. Packer, Knowing God

Ascension Day

Yesterday was Ascension Day. Christ's ascension means the Spirit was able to come and it also means the next event in God's timetable of redemptive events is the return of the LORD. What a glorious hope!

 The golden gates are lifted up, the doors are opened wide;

The King of Glory is gone in unto his Father’s side.

That where thou art, at God’s right hand, our hope, our love may be:

Dwell Thou in us, that we may dwell forevermore in Thee.

-- Cecil Frances Alexander

The Natural Man

“Christ enlightens and teaches men the will of God variously, gradually, plainly, powerfully, sweetly, purely, and fully. There is a natural ignorance and blindness in men about the things of God. The world is in darkness. It is true, in the state of innocence man had a clear apprehension of the will of God, but now that light is quenched in the corruption of nature (1 Cor. 2:14). The natural man not only has native blindness that he cannot discern the things of the spirit, but also a natural enmity. Until his mind is healed and enlightened by Jesus Christ the natural faculty cannot discern the things of the Spirit.”  -- John Flavel, Works, I