September already.

Here are the handouts for Ephesians 4:11-16.

• PDF Speaking the truth in love, growing up in Christ HANDOUT ONE 090813
• PDF Speaking the truth in love, growing up in Christ 090813 HANDOUT TWO

I wrestled with this text over the last couple of weeks. So many questions to answer. I pray that by going through the winepress I will present to you on Sunday “the very wine of strengthening.” See Oswald Chambers below.

• Oswald Chambers
  If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to re-express some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to someone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily — “I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say,” the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you believe to be the absolute truth of God, and you will be allowing God the opportunity to pass it on through you to someone else. Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.
•  From “My Utmost for His Highest”  December 15 reading
• For more Oswald Chambers click here to link to online “My Utmost for His Highest“

Love,
Dave