Dr. Mike Callaghan |
This year Dr. and Mrs. Callaghan are celebrating their 20th Anniversary of leading the ARLINGTON BAPTIST CHURCH of Richmond, CA., just outside of Oakland, CA. We have known the Callaghans for some 30 years plus. They are wonderful friends not only to us but to the independent Baptist movement in America. Dr. Jack Hyles would often say to me about pastors who pastor the same church for 20 years that they are a part of an “elite group of men.”
Auditorium Sunday school class |
I taught the Auditorium Sunday school class my lesson on “GRACE.” They were very responsive and obviously love the Scriptures.
Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve while “grace” is God giving us what we do not deserve. No place in the Bible do you find anyone who cries out to God “Have grace on me” but over and over in the Bible you will find people crying out to God “Have mercy on me.”
What does it mean? Mercy is when God brings us back to where we were, while grace is when God gives us bonuses taking us above where we were. God does not send us to Hell and that is mercy and God does not bring us back to earth, but he takes us to Heaven and that is “grace.” We had a body tainted by sin and we fell. God did not bring us back just to that body, tainted by sin in the Garden of Eden, for God goes beyond that giving us a perfect glorified body like the body of Jesus Christ. “Where sin did abound grace did much more abound.”
Mrs. Lee Ann Gray Honored |
Sunday night the ARLINGTON BAPTIST CHURCH honored my wife. Mrs. G was able to travel with me this week for only the fifth time in ten years. She has had 33 surgeries with the most recent one being a total hip replacement. She was unable to come to church this morning, but she came tonight. She told me she was so glad to hear a new sermon. Ha! I did not realize that the previous four times I preached the same sermon each time. I told her she must have finally caught it. Of course then I caught it! Ha!
Tonight I preached my sermon “ODD MAN OUT.” If there ever is a day where we need to be out of step with the mainstream it is today. We will never produce another Lester Roloff or Jack Hyles with this homogenized, monolithic, “getalongism,”where we are afraid of offending the powers that be in independent circles. GOTTA LOVE BEING INDEPENDENT BAPTIST!
Tonight I preached my sermon “ODD MAN OUT.” If there ever is a day where we need to be out of step with the mainstream it is today. We will never produce another Lester Roloff or Jack Hyles with this homogenized, monolithic, “getalongism,”where we are afraid of offending the powers that be in independent circles. GOTTA LOVE BEING INDEPENDENT BAPTIST!
ARLINGTON BAPTIST CHURCH had a total attendance of 2,092 with over 200 trusting Christ. This church has been an aggressive soul winning church in the bay area for over 20 years. I believe there efforts will not go unnoticed by our Lord and their future will be a blessed one. GOTTA LOVE SOUL WINNING!