Fight the Good Fight of Faith, English Edition

Lesson : The Edification We Seek • 

Biblical Christianity is by God’s plan universal in nature; it can take on itself the identity of any culture. We see this universality of the Gospel in the book of Acts. The day of Pentecost, when the gospel was preached in every language of the world, is clear proof that the Christian gospel is not locked into a particular culture or language. We see its universality as it was communicated and absorbed in Jewish and Greek cultures in the first century. The call of the church was to penetrate every nation, every culture, with the message of salvation, that all peoples might submit to God in their ethnicity. So, in Christianity, if I do not worship God in my own culture , I am being inconsistent with my faith. ~ Carl F. Ellis, Jr. Beyond Liberation: The Gospel in the Black American Experience. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983, p. 137. Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226) was an Italian church leader and preacher. He organized a group of people dedicated to preaching and living a life of poverty for the sake of Christ and serving others, called the Franciscan Order. He helped organize other orders throughout his lifetime. He is one of the most respected Christians in history. Prayer of Dedication, Francis of Assisi

Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love,

Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith, Where there is despair, hope, Where there is darkness, light, Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, not so much to be understood as to understand, not so much to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.

~ Don L. Davis. A Sojourner’s Quest. Wichita, KS: The Urban Ministry Institute, 2010, pp. 95.