Understand

On Sunday, Pastor Jamey Bryant opened with Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese intelligence officer who kept fighting on a Philippine island until 1974, twenty-nine years after the war ended, convinced the surrender leaflets were a trick. Pastor Jamey said most of the world is still in that jungle, striving over a battle won at the cross, and that many believers are too: exhausted, keeping score, afraid that slipping up might prove their faith was never real. Returning to the well in John 4, he drew four things. Grace is a free gift, living water offered without cost, echoing Isaiah 55:1. Grace is not earned but received, since Jesus made the offer before He ever named her five husbands. Grace is secure, held in what he called the double grip of God, the way a parent holds a toddler across a parking lot even when she lets go. Then the text turns at verse 31, where the vocabulary shifts from ask, receive, and drink to work, sow, and reap. Speaking to men who already believed, Jesus calls them to the harvest, and Pastor Jamey said salvation is free but discipleship is costly. He also announced that in October he moves from worship into a new role as Lead Pastor of Equipping.

Look up Romans 4:4-5, Titus 3:5, 2 Corinthians 5:10, and 1 Corinthians 9:24-25. Romans sets wages against gift, so that the one who does not work but believes is the one credited with righteousness; Titus says He saved us not on the basis of deeds we had done in righteousness; and then Paul turns to what comes after, with the judgment seat where believers give an account of what they built, and the race run for a crown that does not perish. How do these passages together shape the way you keep the free gift and the reward distinct, and what would it look like this week to serve one person without checking whether it earned you anything?

For everything happening at Faith Bible Church, including the Like Never Before series and registration for Understand: Discipleship, visit faithbible.church/news. That is where you will find current news, events, and ways to get involved.